Writing in Color

I am an Enneagram 9 with a really strong 8 wing. For those of you familiar with the Enneagram personality typing system, the sentence you just read has you thinking, “oh you poor confused and conflicted soul.” For those of you not familiar with the Enneagram, you are probably saying “?”

The Reader’s Digest version is that an Enneagram 9 personality is known as the peacemaker. 9’s hate conflict and will do almost anything to avoid it. An 8 personality, on the other hand, is known as the challenger. Very different personality types, certainly. But a 9 with an 8 wing, while normally averse to conflict, is absolutely a challenger when it comes to issues of justice. And that powerful need for justice can launch a peacemaker straight out of their peacemaker tendencies and into full out challenger mode. Which is way, way out of a 9’s comfort zone and not only doesn’t feel comfortable, but feels very unnatural most of the time. And yet, they can’t help themselves.

The way that manifests in me is that most of the time, I am a peacemaker. I don’t like conflict. I avoid conflict. I just want everyone to be at peace and get along. But on issues that are really important to me and to my family, what I see as justice issues, I care much less about making peace than taking a stand. This results in a struggle at times to know when to keep my mouth shut and keep the peace and when to speak up and say my piece.

I experienced this struggle last night. A friend shared an article on her Facebook page about the Methodist youth at a church in Nebraska who, at the end of their confirmation classes, declined to become members of the church at this time. The youth said that while they loved and supported their congregation, they disagreed with the recent general conference votes on the ban against LGBTQ+ ordination and marriage, and were concerned that their joining the church would be affirming that decision.

After I read the article, I read the comments from some of her Facebook friends. Comments that would break my heart for my gay child to read. But comments that quite honestly would not surprise him to read because he has heard the same or worse.

I wanted so badly to comment on that post. Not in response to their comments but in response to the article. I wanted to say this: “I am so grateful to these young people and others like them for standing up in love for each other in the way that Jesus intended for all of us to do. And I am so grateful for all the kids like this who love and support my son in who God made him to be. Perfect in every way and a precious and beloved child of God.”

But I didn’t post that comment because while I told myself it wasn’t in response to the hurtful comments that I read, I knew that it actually was, and I knew that I was inviting a response back that would likely result in an exchange that would not be God honoring.
 
While trying to talk myself out making the comment, I went back and read the quote I posted Monday night. The one that read like this: “Peacemaking doesn’t mean passivity. It is the act of interrupting injustice without mirroring injustice, the act of disarming evil without destroying the evildoer, the act of finding a third way that is neither fight nor flight but the careful arduous pursuit of reconciliation and justice. It is about a revolution of love that is big enough to set both the oppressed and the oppressors free.”

I read that quote and then I read my comment through that lens and asked if it fit in that description of interrupting injustice without mirroring injustice, of disarming evil without destroying the evildoer.  And I felt like it probably did. But I still didn’t post the comment because while I told myself it wasn’t in response to the hurtful comments that I read, I knew that it actually was. I knew that by making the comment I was doing so as a way of inviting a response, and that my response to that response would likely result in an exchange that would not be God honoring.

So I said nothing. I said nothing because one of the best pieces of advice I have been given, and one of the hardest lessons I am learning right now, is that it isn’t always helpful to speak into ignorance. That in doing so you can sometimes do more harm than good. I know this advice is good. I know this lesson is one I need to learn. But I hate it all the same.

While deciding I wasn’t going to post the comment was the right decision, it didn’t make me feel good, so I was venting about it to a trusted friend. I told her that the hardest thing for me was understanding how people don’t see the damage that they do through their intolerance, and her response was that while she didn’t have the answer to that, she thinks the reason that I am so bothered by it is because “once you see color, you just can’t see black and white anymore.”  I told her how much I liked that and told her, only partially teasing, that I was going to use that as a title for a blog post. That I had already felt like I was going to have to write about this experience, and her comment had just made me realize that I definitely was and that I was going to use what she had said. 

Then she said the one thing that she could have said that would make me feel completely better about not posting the comment I wanted to post. She said, “That’s because that’s your gift! You have to write about it because that’s how you affect people without engaging and telling them they are idiots… you write in color so that it hits some people in a different way.”
 
And I realized how right she was. It’s not about engaging with people who have different opinions and thoughts than you. It’s not about speaking up every time you have the chance, regardless of the consequences. It’s about speaking up in the best way that you can, however you can, whenever you can, in the way that you can that will make a positive difference, and will hit people in a different way. That’s what it is to be faithful. That’s how a revolution of love is started.
 
There are still people who will not hear what you have to say. But maybe you plant a seed. A seed that God waters, and shines sun on, and sometimes dumps a whole lot of fertilizer on, until it grows something beautiful.

And for those of you who disagree with me on this issue, I see you. And I thank you for respecting me enough to not say anything that would hurt me or hurt our friendship, or more importantly, hurt my child. And if you are praying for me because you think I’m wrong, I say thank you because I can use the prayers whatever the motivation for praying them. But I would ask this. Don’t pray that God changes my mind. Pray that God helps me see the truth, and I will pray the same for you. I think that’s a much more faithful prayer. Maybe in the process we can find that third way that we can walk together in peace, toward a revolution of love.