Untamed - Glennon Doyle Page 0,72
this order of things as unjust, untrue, and unbeautiful. They saw that killing one another for money is absurd because what lies within each person is more valuable than gold. They saw that slavery and hierarchy are evil because no one is born more worthy of freedom and power than another. They saw that violence and greed destroy the powerful just as they destroy their victims: because to dishonor another’s humanity is to bury one’s own.
They saw that humanity’s only hope for salvation was a truer, more beautiful order of things.
They asked themselves:
What kind of story might help people see beyond the lie they’ve been taught that some are worth less and others more?
What kind of story might return people to their wild—to what they knew of love before they were trained to fear one another?
What kind of story might inspire people to revolt against and live beyond the religiously dominated hierarchical machine that was killing them?
Here was their idea:
Let’s rethink the stories we’ve been telling about God. Let’s dare to imagine that God is less like the powerful men who run the world. Let’s imagine God is actually like the person those rulers just killed. Let’s imagine that God is a vulnerable baby, born to a poor single mother, among the group most despised by the religious and political elite. He was the least of these back then. They pointed to him. God is in him, they said.
* * *
Had these wise storytellers lived in modern America, they might point to a poor, black transgender woman or an asylum-seeking toddler alone in a detainment center and say: God is in this one.
This one—the one on the outermost ring of the rankings we’ve made up about who matters. This one—the one farthest from whom we have centered.
This one is made of our same flesh, blood, and spirit.
When we hurt her, we hurt our own kin.
This one is One of us.
This one is Us.
So let us protect her. Let us bring her gifts and kneel in front of her. Let us fight for her and her family to have every good thing we want for ourselves and our families. Let us love this one as we love ourselves.
The point of this story was never that This One is more God than the rest. The point is that if we can find good in those we’ve been trained to see as bad, if we can find worth in those we’ve been conditioned to see as worthless, if we can find ourselves in those we’ve been indoctrinated to see as other, then we become unable to hurt them. When we stop hurting them, we stop hurting ourselves. When we stop hurting ourselves, we begin to heal.
* * *
The Jesus idea is that justice casts the widest net possible so that every last one of us is inside. Then there are no others—there is only Us. Inside one net we are free from our cages of fear and hate and, instead, bound to one another. The revolutionary idea that every last one of us is both held and free: That is our salvation.
Glennon, you refer to God as “she”—why do you believe that God’s a female?”
I don’t. I think it’s ridiculous to think of God as anything that could possibly be gendered. But as long as the expression of God as female is unimaginable to many while the expression of God as male feels perfectly acceptable—and as long as women continue to be undervalued and abused and controlled here on Earth—I’ll keep using it.
I received an email recently from an old acquaintance at that church I left.
It said, “Can I ask you something? I know that you and Abby love each other so much. It’s really something. At the same time, I still believe that gayness is wrong. I want to be able to love you unconditionally—but I’d have to abandon my beliefs. What am I supposed to do with this…God conflict?”
I felt for her. She was saying “I want to be free to love you, but I’m caged by my beliefs.”
I wrote this back:
First of all, thank you for knowing that you have a choice to make. Thank you for not landing on: I love you, but…We know that Love has no buts. If you want to change me, you do not love me. If you feel warm toward me but also believe I’m going to burn in hell, you do not love me. If you wish me well but vote