I’m sitting in the press box high above the Special General Conference for the United Methodist Church focused on the subject of human sexuality. 

Petitions are being made, and motions are being offered, to plans that will either double down on the denomination’s current language regarding the LGBTQIA population, or change it.

One of the delegates this morning rose to speak at the microphone and offered a speech advocating for a delay in address the “Traditional Plan” in favor of spending more time with a plan that attempts to unify the denomination rather than divide it.

In response another delegate rose and offered his own speech that amounted to: “Can’t we all just get along? What happened to being nice? We need to focus on the traditional plan and not listen to people who would so disrupt our proceedings.”

Eventually the motion was called to a vote and the Traditional Plan was not delayed, and as of 10:30am local time it is still the matter at hand.

To be clear: being nice and being a Christian are not the same thing.

Jesus wasn’t killed for being too nice.

The Messiah whom we worship and adore was known for his willingness to call out the powers and principalities, who turned the tables over in the temple, and who was eventually murdered out of fear that he might lead a revolution that would turn the world upside down.

The Special General Conference is focused on the words we use that describe how we are organized as a church, but those words are not just words on a page. And, in this particular circumstance, those words reflect actual human beings.

In the New Testament, when the earliest Christians gathered together to discern what it would mean to be the church, they engaged in fierce debates. Some of my favorite stories are about how the church fathers nearly came to blows with one another over doctrinal disputes.

When the gospel is at stake we can’t limit ourselves to being “nice.”

Because all of the sides of this debate already think they’re being nice, as they define it. The traditionalists think it’s nice to save homosexuals from the fires of hell by preventing them from being ordained or getting married in a United Methodist Church. The progressives think they’re being nice by opening up the church to a new vision of what it means to be the body of Christ by ordaining and marrying those involved in same sex relationships. Even the members of the Westboro Baptist church (who are currently picketing outside the arena when the General Conference is taking place) thinking they’re being nice while shouting and spitting at people as they walk by.

Our overwhelming concern for niceness has become oppressive because it prevents us from doing the difficult, hard, and frankly Christian work of muddying through the waters of whatever this is together. 

Because, the truth of the matter, is that while we all think we’re being nice (regardless of our spot on the spectrum) none of us really are. We’re stopping our ears from hearing the other, whomever they may be. We’re puffing ourselves up with self-righteousness without remembering, or even considering, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for the ungodly, for us.