The Wind Blows Freely

In the days before the prevalence of air-conditioning, we depended on fans to keep cool. I remember the small, oscillating one sitting atop the dresser in my childhood bedroom often seemed confused turning its head first this way then that—as if it couldn’t decide which way the wind blows.

On those hot mid-summer evenings in mid-Michigan, when nothing moved and everything felt as dead as the grass in the front yard, I would place a bowl of ice cubes in front of the fan hoping to sense something of coolness on my skin. Being a sensitive child this should have been easy, but the denseness of some nights made feeling anything impossible.

Even back then, I had a concern for energy consumption and the impact running a fan through the night would have on my single-mother’s electric bill. So, as a rule, I would allow myself to use the fan for only a few minutes with the aim of shutting it off right before I fell asleep. On the hottest nights, though, I couldn’t sleep and the silent fan sat by taunting me to get up and again set its head a turning.

But I couldn’t.

So I suffered for hours in a room with no air movement, sweating my sheets through.

During my freshman year of college, I visited an Assemblies of God church nearby the Christian school I attended. Prior to that experience, I had never witnessed people speaking in tongues. During the service, a person uttered something in a language I couldn’t understand and then another stood up and gave an interpretation. How strange, I thought, even in church we can’t just say what we mean. In my tradition, the Bible said everything that needed saying and we simply had to live into it. Why then this new word in a different tongue?

After the church service, I stood in the buffet line back at the college cafeteria and I mused some of my concerns about the tongue-speaking experience to a classmate. Her response: Andy, could you allow the Holy Spirit to work in ways you can’t imagine—even inexplicable ways?

No, I couldn’t.

It was too costly to keep the air moving through the night. The job of the Christian was simply to bear the heat—to be obedient to the law even if it means sweating to death.

Today, when I offer my view on same-sex relationships, many people see me as an oscillating fan blowing hot air in every direction. If the Bible provides clear teaching on this matter, what more must one do than live into it—stew through the night until done? My response: could you allow the Holy Spirit to work in ways you can’t imagine—even inexplicable ways?

In Christianity, faith is not equivalent to a series of truth claims we hold. The more tightly we grasp them does not make us more faithful people. Instead, faith is found in relationship. The more tightly we grasp God through a personal and corporate relationship, the more faithful we become. Jesus said he is the way, the truth, and the life. If we stay connected to Jesus, we live into all truth.

Of course, this doesn’t mean we don’t get things wrong. Only that, when we do get things wrong, we can find forgiveness and try again because our relationship with Jesus does not break due to our sin and error.

This, in my estimation, is life in the Spirit. Not a disregard for law, but a living into the law through relationship with One who moves this way and that based on what’s best for the Kingdom and the worship of the King.

Our lives look different from each others. We each have to listen as best as we can for God’s voice (through scripture, church, sacraments, leaders, friends), and follow as faithfully as possible finding forgiveness along the way by staying in relationship and keeping an open heart.

What this means for any one person’s choice to live into a gay relationship or not, I could not say. No one answers to me and the Holy Spirit’s guidance is, so often, like the wind moving inexplicably—but always to the heart of God.

For my part in this matter, I am less concerned what direction a person moves and more that they do so in fullness of faith with God and in sincere honesty with themselves and others. And, even if their honesty turns out to be folly in the end, trusting that Jesus will see them through to fullness of life with him in his body for all eternity.

A few years ago, a friend with an electrical engineering background informed me that small fans like the one I had in my childhood bedroom actually require very little energy and cost pennies to run. Since learning this, I have begun using the fan in my adult bedroom every night—even in winter.

Now, I can’t fall asleep without hearing the soft hum of my fan nearby. The constant gentle whir has become part of me, moving me this way and that through the night and even into the day. I can’t perceive my exact trajectory per se, but I know the wind that carries me.

My eyes are stained glass windows, femurs ivory columns, my ribs rows of pews for the faithful undulating with each breath, carried out into the world by a wind that’s always been blowing. ~ AJ Saur