A Christian Conversation about Steven Universe (Part VII): The Crystal Gems and Accommodation

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One of the challenges we bump into pretty quickly when we try to have a conversation about Christian theology and LGBTQ issues, is the problem of labels. On the one hand, labels are helpful, even necessary ways of quickly and simply orienting ourselves in the conversation. On the other hand—and anyone who has been unfairly slapped with a label like “gay activist” or “homophobe” will probably understand what I mean here—they eliminate all the nuance that we need to retain, if we’re going to have the conversation well. George Orwell once warned that if we’re not thoughtful in how we employ our words, the words will start to do the thinking for us, and that is a very real risk when we start to talk about the LGBTQ experience and the teaching of the Bible.

I say that because over the course of this series, I have used the terms “affirming” and “non-affirming” to describe various theological postures, and I want to acknowledge that the issues are far more nuanced than can be captured by the simple either/or of those terms.  I have used these terms primarily because a blogpost format like this does not allow much space to let the nuance breathe, and I have wanted to orient readers to the conversation as quickly and as simply as I can.

That said, I would not describe myself with the label “non-affirming.” I serve as a pastor in a denomination that remains committed to its reading of the Scriptures, that “same-sex sexual intimacy does not fulfill the Creator’s intention for sex,” and I agree with this reading of the Scriptures in that regard. Even so, I also believe very strongly that a church with this theological posture can, indeed must, find ways to welcome, embrace, and include LGBTQ people into its community, its ministry, and its fellowship. To do this well will mean a great deal of intensely contextual discernment, weighing all the particulars of any given situation and moving forward guided by the Holy Spirit. There is no single, no one-size-fits-all theological “position” nuanced enough for this kind of work. What we need instead are a number of prayerfully discerned theological principles, held in tension with each other, that we can lean on and draw from as we respond to each person in our community as whole people, without reducing them to the lowest common denominator of a convenient term.

If I had no choice but to label myself, I would probably call my position, such as it is, an “accommodating” one. What I mean by this term is that, although I remain convinced after a careful reading of the Scriptures that same-sex sexual intercourse was not the creator’s intention for sex when he created man and woman in the beginning, still, I am compelled by the Gospel—a Gospel of radical holiness expressed through the sacrificial love of others—to find ways to make loving accommodations within my theology of sex, for those whose experience of their sexuality does not fall within the biblical vision as I perceive it. Sexuality is far too powerful and complex an experience—shaming, rejection and exclusion is far too harmful—and the causes of atypical sexualities are far too mysterious—for us to do otherwise.

I have been talking with enough people about these issues for long enough now to know that saying “I’m accommodating in my theology” is likely not really to satisfy anyone. It’s too grey a response in a conversation that seems to have space only for black-and-white answers. The most ardent affirmer will ask me if I will perform a gay marriage, then; and the most intractable non-affirmer will ask me if I would attend a gay-pride parade, then.  And both would ask me what accommodations actually look like, then, in real time.

And to both I would have to say, it depends. But whatever else it looked like, it would mean responding to people as whole people, the entire complex of experiences and longings, hopes and needs that make up the human heart, taken together. It would mean, too, responding from within a whole theological framework, where things like grace, hospitality, the healing power of community, friendship, and the radical inclusion of the marginalized have as much to say as any “vision for sexual ethics” that I may have taken from the scriptures. 

Accommodation is the art of loving the world that is, even as we hold tight to a biblical vision of the world as it will be (which, incidentally, will not include sex at all, either heterosexual or homosexual (Matt 22:30)); and it means holding on to this vision of what the world will be, without ever turning our backs on the world as it is. 

This is hard to do. It takes great risk, and even more humility. It’s probably why the “accommodating position” is so unsatisfying.

But in seeking to be accommodating, I take some small inspiration from one of the least likely places: a children’s cartoon about some mysterious intergalactic Gems who have banded together to save planet earth, simply because they fell in love with the world as it was.

If you’ve been with me since the start of this series you will know that I’m talking here about Steven Universe. If not, let me explain. The central heroes of the show are a group of alien life-forms known as the Crystal Gems, who originally came to earth as part of an invading army of Gems from a planet called Home World. When the Crystal Gems arrived on Earth, however, they discovered here a world worth loving, so they defected from Home World and set about defending the planet that they’d initially come to destroy. 

As strange as it sounds, as an accommodating pastor, I sometimes feel like I’m one of the Crystal Gems, defending a world-worth-loving from being trampled over by my own people. I hesitate to write that, partly because it’s so melodramatic, but more importantly because I am afraid I will sound like I’m vilifying those of my colleagues and fellow-Christians who are most decisively non-affirming.  That is not my intention at all; and it’s certainly not the parallel I see between an accommodating theology and the Crystal Gems.

Rather, the parallel is here: that the Crystal Gems are neither humans from Earth nor the Gems of Home World. They are Gems, to be sure, but they sworn protectors of planet Earth; and neither are they earthlings, rather they are outsiders who have nothing to recommend them to the planet other than a simple (sometimes naïve) love.  Like an accommodating pastor, you might say, the Crystal Gems inhabit this “both/and” grey space in a universe that wants to divide everything up into a nice, tidy, “either/or” of black and white.

And like an accommodating pastor, they are willing to stand in that "both/and gap," if for no other reason than a profound love for planet earth, and a beautiful commitment to the precious human beings that call it home. I hope that when it is all said and done, I will be able to say as much about my own ministry as a pastor, that I stood in the gap between an "affirming" and a "non-affirming" theology, refusing to reduce people to the simplest terms of a convenient label, and choosing instead to embrace all of God's children in all the complexity of their experience as whole people.

Where Is Your Sting? (a song)

Where is your sting?

Where is your victory?

He broke your chains

And he has set me free

Where is your sting?

The poison in your tongue

The mark of Cain

Is lifted and gone

'cause your fate was sealed

When you bruised his heel

Where is your sting?

I've got one hand holding heaven

And my feet pressed in the earth

With forever burning brightly in my chest

I've got serpents underfoot

And I got angels flying overhead

I'm a baby with his hand in the viper's nest

Cause the grave is standing gaping wide

And I'm standing by his glorious side

Until we all stand there on judgement day

You're gonna hear me say...

Where is your sting?

Where is your victory?

He broke your chains

And he has set me free

Where is your sting?

The poison in your tongue

The mark of Cain

Is lifted and gone

'cause your fate was sealed

When you bruised his heel

Where is your sting?

There weren't no cross he couldn't carry

And no tomb could hold him back
When they lay his holy body down to rest

Cause he rose up full of glory

Now he's holding out his victory

To this baby with his hand in the viper's nest

Cause the grave is standing gaping wide

And I'm standing by his glorious side

Until we all stand there on judgement day

You're gonna hear me say...

Where is your sting?

Where is your victory?

He broke your chains

And he has set me free

Where is your sting?

The poison in your tongue

The mark of Cain

Is lifted and gone

'cause your fate was sealed

When you bruised his heel

Where is your sting?

There's a Trick of the Light I'm Learning to Do, a song

The second track from my latest release, a song about overcoming depression and discovering the grace of God on the way through.

 

There's a trick of the light I'm learning to do

Where I stand in the dark but don't believe that it's true

And I stare down the shadows till I catch a glimpse of you

There's a trick of the light I'm learning to do

When I'm incandescent

In your incandescence

There's a trick of the light I'm learning to do

The noonday demon dropped by just the other day

Kicking ass and taking names

I went out to greet him told him that he couldn't stay

But if he wanted I knew someone who could break his chains

There's a trick of the light I'm learning to do

Where I stand in the dark but don't believe that it's true

And I stare down the shadows till I catch a glimpse of you

There's a trick of the light I'm learning to do

Where I'm incandescent

In your incandescence

There's a trick of the light I'm learning to do

And Candy stopped by to say hi the other day

Dressed to kill and all alone

I didn't have the heart to turn her away

So I blessed the child and helped her find her way home

There's a trick of the light I'm learning to do

Where I stand in the dark but don't believe that it's true

And I stare down the shadows till I catch a glimpse of you

There's a trick of the light I'm learning to do

When I'm incandescent

In your incandescence

There's a trick of the light I'm learning to do

And Billy fell from grace, O just the other day

Maybe he climbed a bit too high

But by your grace I know I might have gone that way

So now I'm calling him back into the blue sky

There's a trick of the light I'm learning to do

Where I stand in the dark but don't believe that it's true

And I stare down the shadows till I catch a glimpse of you

There's a trick of the light I'm learning to do

When I'm incandescent

In your incandescence

There's a trick of the light I'm learning to do

The Question of Queer Christian Representation: A Christian Conversation about Steven Universe (Part VI)

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In a 2015 interview, Rebecca Sugar, the creator of the groundbreaking children’s cartoon Steven Universe, indicated that one of her goals for the show was to address the lack of queer representation in mainstream children’s programming. “I hope to represent people who have felt a lack of representation,” she said, “but I hope to also show people who have felt represented that they can also relate to characters that are not heteronormative, and to families that are not traditional, maybe even more so than the more generic characters and families that they’ve been seeing on TV.”*

In other interviews she has spoken about how important this kind of representation is, that it is critical “that there are LGBTQIA characters in G-rated content,” because “as long as certain people are considered to be inappropriate for families and children, there is no equality.”* 

In creating a show like Steven Universe, in other words, Rebecca Sugar was not simply trying to tell a fascinating story with compelling characters and universal themes—though she was trying to do that too, and succeeded—but she was also trying to use her medium to address what she saw as a social problem, and effect positive social change.  And as far as I can tell, she succeeded in that, too.  Alex Hirsch, the creator of the Disney Channel’s hit cartoon Gravity Falls (which we’ve also discussed on this blog) has gone on record praising Sugar for “driving a race car way, way ahead of everyone else” when it comes to the representation of queer people in cartoons. 

In 2016, Steven Universe made animation history when it became the first cartoon ever to portray a same-sex marriage proposal, in its much-lauded episode “The Question.” In discussing that episode with Entertainment Weekly, Sugar wrote, “We absolutely must tell LGBTQ+ children that they belong in this world and they deserve to be loved. … We cannot wait until a child grows up to tell them they deserve to exist and that their story matters.”*

I am sharing all of this as part my on-going analysis of Steven Universe, because it illuminates a vital issue that Christians must wrestle with if they want to address LGBTQ issues biblically.  

I’m thinking here of the so-called “the gay agenda.” 

At least, that’s what the most ardently non-affirming Christians I’ve known would call it. The idea is that the relatively rapid shift in Canadian social mores—from viewing homosexuality as a crime up until 1969, to embracing gay marriage as a progressive leap forward in 2005—was the result of an well-organized political effort on the part of LGBTQ people, to change the world as we know it into one we no longer recognize. It is often used with an undertone of suspicion, as though those who have worked towards this goal have not just been trying to change the world but actually to destroy it.

I am writing as a Christian pastor, serving in a denomination which teaches that, biblically speaking, same-sex sexuality does not fulfill God’s creation-design for sex. In simple terms, my denomination is “non-affirming.” That needs to be on the table in the interest of full disclosure here.  And to be sure, as far as I can tell, there has indeed been a very intentional effort on the part of LGBTQ people and allies over the years, to see laws changed, to have school curricula revised, to ensure that queer people will not be unfairly mistreated simply because of their sexual orientation, and so on. I think this is relatively well-documented fact and shouldn’t cause a great deal of dispute.

But even so, I want to explain why I do not think it is at all helpful to talk about a “gay agenda” and why, as a pastor in a denomination like mine, I don’t use the term. It’s because when we do, we are treating the pain, and alienation, and isolation of another human being as though it were a threat to us, turning a very real hear-cry for compassionate acknowledgement into some sort of a diabolical conspiracy theory. This does not strike me as an especially Christ-like thing to do.

And this is why a kid’s show like Steven Universe is so helpful in this conversation, because it illustrates the problem with a term like “the gay agenda.” Did Rebecca Sugar have an “agenda” when she created this show?  I guess it depends on what you mean by agenda. It is well documented that she began with a particular end in mind—to help under-represented, and misrepresented children know that there was a place for them in the world, a place where they mattered just as much as anybody else.  Whether or not you call that an “agenda” (in the “gay-agenda” sense of the word) depends entirely on whether or not you think this is a “manipulative” or a “subversive” thing to do.

I don’t think it is, either manipulative or subversive. In fact, I think it’s the work the church should be doing, and it’s the work that we consistently see Jesus doing. I say this without settling here whether theologically the church be affirming or non-affirming. I believe very strongly that Christians can do for LGBTQ people what Rebecca Sugar was trying to do for queer children when she created Steven Universe, and tell them that there is indeed a place where they belong, without necessarily settling the theological question about same-sex sex.

What a show like Steven Universe shows us is how important, and indeed, how beautiful it can be to do that. It also gives us a hint of what it might look like to do it well—by telling stories that include those who do not fall into our typical, or “normal” categories for gender, marriage, family and so on—to use language that acknowledges that not everyone is part of the heterosexual mainstream—by going out of our way to represent those who are not “normally” represented in our discussions of what it means authentically to follow Jesus.

It may not look like a cartoon about a band of alien superheroes dedicated to saving planet Earth, for the church to do this.  I have a hunch, however, that if a church sincerely acknowledged the presence the LGBTQ people in its midst—if it included the queer experience its portrayals of what a well-lived Christian life might look like—if the church took a small cue from someone like Rebecca Sugar, I mean, and did the work of LGBTQ representation well—I think we would find we have a lot more in common with the so-called “gay agenda” than we ever realized. Not least of these would be a desire to see those who are on the edges of the social-circle brought close to the centre, those who are voiceless to be given a voice, and those who have always wondered if they were loveable, to discover that they are loved more purely and more divinely than they ever could have imagined.

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Coming Home from Babylon, a song

Here's the first track from my most recent release, a song called "Coming Home From Babylon." It's a song that grew almost entirely out of the opening riff, which I had kicking around for months before I finally sat down and tried to turn it into a song. It's about exile and return, and receiving the joyful welcome of God at the end of a long, hard road.

I rose with the dawn

I sank into the deep

But everywhere I went

You were waiting there for me

And I wandered through the dark

And I reached for the heights

But everywhere I went

I was always in your sight

Now this prodigal 

Is reaching for

The open door 

Of your waiting arms

And I did not know

You were magnetic north

For the compass of 

My longing heart

I'm coming home,

O home from Babylon

I'm taking down the harps

From all the trees they were hanging on

And every road 

Every road I've traveled on

Is pointing home

O home into your arms from Babylon

You are the guide

The first and final step

You are the road

You are the journey's end

My oasis in the desert

O the signs along the way

No matter where I went

You were always there with me

Now this prodigal 

Is reaching for

The open door 

Of your waiting arms

And I did not know

You were magnetic north

For the compass of

My longing heart

I'm coming home,

O home from Babylon

I'm taking down the harps

From all the trees they were hanging on

And every road 

Every road I've traveled on

Is pointing home

O home into your arms from Babylon

Of Games and God (Part XI): The Adventures of Elroy

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Three months and ten posts ago I started this meandering journey on my blog, examining video games from a theological perspective. In that time we've explored a wide range of ideas and issues, from the way in which video games promote community, to the problem of video game addiction, from the way in which video gaming can help us understand the nature of kairos time, to the challenge of developing a distinctly "Christian" video game. We've talked about free will and predestination, the quest for transcendent immersion, and the moral quandaries we encounter as we game. 

If you've been with me throughout this series, you may have noticed that my personal tastes in video games are, in fact, somewhat limited. I am hardly avid in my gaming, and when you string together the titles I've spent any serious time with, a clear pattern begins to emerge: Dragon's Lair, Skyrim, The Witcher III, Minecraft, The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time.

What all these games share in common, of course, is that they are all fantasy adventure games, set in some vaguely medieval time and place, played out in worlds misty with magic and ringing with the sound of swords drawn from scabbards.  Minecraft and The Witcher III are as unlike as any two games could be, and yet their appeal, for me, is the same. They both invite the gamer to explore an enchanted landscape, triumphing over evil with little more than a sharp sword and an even sharper wit.

As I write this, it occurs to me that perhaps I am not all that interested in gaming after all.  Perhaps I'm simply using gaming as a new means to an old end. All my life, my reading tastes have tended towards the fantasy genre. From Robin Hood to Narnia to Lord of the Rings, I read it all voraciously. So too with my favorite movies as a child. However bad the acting or thin the plot, if it included mystical creatures fighting evil in a magical world, I was sold. Maybe gaming for me is really just another way to scratch an itch I've always had for enchantment.

In his spiritual autobiography, C. S. Lewis discusses the ache he felt as a child for magical worlds and mythic beauty, referring to it poignantly as "the stab of Northerness."  Lewis himself felt the stab of Northerness in particular among the epic landscapes and tragic sagas of Norse mythology. I felt it reading the Narnia books he would go on to write having been so stabbed.

I found it other places, too.  The Lord of the Rings is sharp with the stab of Northerness.  So are Ursula Le Guin's Wizard of Earthsea books. And so are the best of the fantasy adventure video games I've mentioned here.  This, for me, is their great appeal. They create opportunities to feel the stab of Northerness while playing them.  If we are attentive to our own spirits when that stab is sharpest, we may just find that it is not really a swashbuckling adventure in the Kingdom of Hyrule that we're after, but just the experience of longing for it, itself.  And if we are attuned to this experience, we just may find that the real object of our desire is something that no mere earthly experience can satisfy.

Of course, it could all just be some old fashioned swashbuckling fun that we're looking for; and maybe those two things aren't so different as all that, after all. I'll let you be the judge. A number of years ago my son and I were learning how to use a video game design platform called Game Maker Pro.  After familiarizing myself with the basics, I decided to give my hand at video game design a serious try. You will probably not be surprised to learn that for my theme I chose a fantasy adventure quest, set in a Zelda-esque world crawling with orcs and swarmed with dragons. 

I am humbly happy with how my game turned out. I call it The Adventures of Elroy. And yes: I freely admit it's hardly no Witcher III for quality, but bear in mind that I did everything myself-- from the graphics to the music to the animation--and all of it from scratch.  

As a way of ending this series on a playful note, and as a way of possibly stabbing someone else with the same longing I found in the best fantasy adventure games, from Dragon's Lair to Skyrim, I thought I would post it here for your playing enjoyment. If you'd like to explore The Adventures of Elroy, click *here,* to download it and give it a try. May you experience, among other things, the stab of Northerness as you play.  And may you discover in that stab a desire for something--for Some One, in fact-- next to whom all the video games in the world look ho-hum in comparison.