To the Trolls

"Don't feed the trolls," I told the other admin for my church's Facebook page. The trolls do not want to talk. The trolls just want to yell at someone. Trolls are always angry, it seems. The ones who email via the church website don't provide email addresses so we can contact them. Neither do they put return addresses on the regular mail they send. Trolls just troll.

The crappy part is, we'd often like conversations with the trolls. My congregation has this crazy idea that Jesus really did welcome everyone and calls us to do the same. Even if we're not too sure we'd like hanging out with the trolls, we believe Jesus calls us to hang out with the trolls.

I could tell you so many interesting things about communication from the trolls, but here's my favorite and the most often occurring version, "You(r church) need(s) to read X." X is always a Bible verse or set of Bible verses. Always. Verses from Romans and Leviticus are favorites for our trolls, who are usually upset about us welcoming LGBT people.

And here is my response to the trolls: what makes you think we haven't?

What makes you think we haven't read the holy writings of our tradition? Really? Do you think we skipped that?

It might be easier if we did, actually. If we skipped reading the Bible, we wouldn't know the texts support slavery, no mental acrobatics needed. If we skipped reading the Bible, we wouldn't be more than a little freaked out by all the violence. I mean, have you read Judges? If we skipped reading the Bible, we could pretend one man, one woman madly in love with each other is an accurate definition of biblical marriage.

We read the Bible, and we wrestle with what to do with the violence, the slavery, the sexism, and all the other weirdness of these writings handed down to us from worlds far different than ours. We read the Bible, from beginning to end, and go back to wrestle more. In fact, those of us who have had proof texts shouted at us to name our sin are often the ones who can quote chapter and verse. Trust me, this lady preacher knows all about "Let your women keep silent."

We've read it and we're still Christian. We're still Christian because there is Truth beyond all the things that give us pause. That Truth speaks to us, calls us to this place, and breathes abundant life into us. We're Christian because despite those verses you so want us to read, this faith has taught us to love more fully and deeply than we ever thought possible. It's almost like it's a miracle of the Spirit or something.

We live in the hope that God's reign is taking over at this very moment and that, somehow, we are participating in that reign. In that hope, we bury our dead and welcome our babies. In that hope, we give food to people whose bodies are hungry and share in the worries of those whose souls are hungry. In that hope, we see life instead of death, joy instead of sorrow, abundance instead of scarcity. In that hope, we look at the violence, the slavery, the sexism, the hate, the things in our world that are the most terrifying and the most horrible and we cry out, "God will redeem this."

That is our faith, dear trolls. And trust me, we've read that verse you mentioned.