I’ve been thinking a lot about Omar Mateen over the past few weeks.
I tend to do that every time there is a mass shooting: I think about the shooter. Of course I grieve for the lives lost, but I am always drawn to those figures who are instantly vilified after these events: Dylan Roof, Wade Michael Page, Adam Lanza – names that become household names, repeated endlessly by news media along with the words “disturbed,” “mentally ill,” “radical,” “extreme,” or in the case of our latest shooter, “terrorist,” since his religious background happened to be Muslim – but whatever labels are thrown at them, we always seem to leave “human being” off the list. Even as the media tracks down their relatives, friends and neighbors trying to paint a picture of who this person was, somehow they still use terms that separate “us” from “them,” that reduce a person to a monster.
But something in the picture of Omar Mateen that has emerged over the past several weeks has humanized him to me considerably: the speculation that he might have not been completely straight. Numerous people at Pulse, the gay nightclub where he shot and killed nearly 50 people and wounded more than 50 more, have come forward to say they had seen Mateen at the club on numerous occasions before, and some also said they had interacted with him on gay dating websites.
So far, FBI has said they have found no evidence that Mateen was having relationships with men in their investigation of his electronic communications, but the speculation continues. If Omar Mateen found himself attracted to men and if he found this impossible to reconcile with the teachings of his religious tradition, then perhaps it was out of a conflicted struggle with self that he opened fire on the patrons at Pulse that night. We already know about the high rates of suicide among gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender youth, but now we have a possible example of how the internalized self-hatred that so many LGBT people feel as a result of society’s condemnation of them can put others in danger as well.
We may never know whether or not Omar Mateen was gay, or bisexual, or questioning his sexual identity. In some ways, that’s none of our business – what was no doubt a very personal struggle for him has suddenly been laid open for the public to pick apart. But I find it extremely relevant in our context as a religious community, because whether or not these allegations are true, the story of someone struggling with same-sex attraction and feeling rejected or condemned by their religious scriptures, tradition, leaders, and community is true for countless people. Whether or not this is Omar Mateen’s story, it is someone’s story. And this event has put the dangers of religious condemnation of same-sex attraction in a national spotlight.
In the Episcopal Church, we have come further than many on acceptance of same-sex couples and the gifts their relationships bring to us in the church. And I know I am likely preaching to the choir here at St. Cuthbert’s, but we all know that there are many churches and many other religious communities out there who continue to condemn same-sex attraction as unnatural and sinful. The same day of the shootings, a pastor here in California preached to his congregation that “as Christians, we should not mourn the death of 50 sodomites.” Pastor Roger Jimenez of the Verity Baptist Church in Sacramento told his congregation that the biblical response to Orlando would be to affirm that those killed “got what they deserved,” because according to the Bible, “the sin they performed was worthy of death.”
Despite the ways in which religion and scripture have been discounted by many people in our society, they remain powerful influences over the lives of millions of people. Far from being outdated and irrelevant, the interpretation of scripture can be a matter of life and death! The book of Hebrews says “the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword,” (Hebrews 4:12), and unfortunately that sword can be dangerous! It can be used both for good and for evil, as a tool to defend against injustice or as a weapon to break down and destroy.
Our passage from Galatians today contains elements that have been used as weapons in our history. The dichotomy that Paul sets up between “the flesh” and “the Spirit” in this passage and in many of his other writings has influenced Christianity negatively with regards to our understanding of sexuality for centuries. Paul holds up celibacy as a model, saying one should marry only if one can’t “control oneself” in terms of satisfying one’s sexual urges, and talks about everything that is “of the flesh” as being against God’s will. “Do not gratify the desires of the flesh,” Paul says in Galatians 5:16, and interpreters have often read the phrase “desires of the flesh” as a code word for “sexual desires.”
But here’s where interpretation is so very important, and where we can see how important close study of the texts can be. The Greek word for flesh, sarx, is most literally translated, “flesh” or “body,” but it can also be used to mean “human nature,” and a nuanced understanding of this usage completely changes the meaning of this passage. The online concordance I often use to look up Hebrew or Greek words for a more complete understanding of their meaning said that when sarx is used negatively in the Bible, as in “don’t gratify the desires of the flesh,” it’s talking about that human nature that leads us to think we don’t need God, that we can make all our decision and do everything on our own, apart from God (which, if you recall, was the original human sin in the Garden of Eden).
This usage of sarx, according to that concordance, refers to
“making decisions (actions) according to self – i.e. done apart from faith (independent from God's inworking). Thus, what is "of the flesh (carnal)" is by definition displeasing to the Lord – even things that seem "respectable!" In short, flesh generally relates to unaided human effort, i.e. decisions (actions) that originate from self or are empowered by self. This is carnal ("of the flesh") and proceeds out of the untouched (unchanged) part of us – i.e. what is not transformed by God.”
At Bible study on Wednesday night, Fr. John Rawlinson noted that in his translation of Galatians 5 from the Jerusalem Bible, the word translated as “the flesh” in the New Revised Standard Version, which we use in our lectionary readings and which is printed in your bulletins and you just heard read a few minutes ago is translated as “self-indulgence.” This passage sounds very different in that translation. Instead of:
“Live by the Spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you want.” (Galatians 5:16-17, NRSV)
We have this:
“Let me put it like this: if you are guided by the Spirit you will be in no danger of yielding to self-indulgence, since self-indulgence is the opposite of the Spirit, the Spirit is totally against such a thing, and it is precisely because the two are so opposed that you do not always carry out your good intentions.” (Galatians 5:16-17, Jerusalem Bible)
To me, this makes so much more sense with everything else I know about the message of scripture. Self-indulgence is the issue, not “fleshly desires.” I like how the concordance made the point that even things that seem “respectable” can be considered “of the flesh” if we understand the meaning in this way. So, the “desires of the flesh” that we are commanded not to gratify could be something as acceptable as accumulating wealth – something that is certainly “respectable” and praised in our society, yet if done solely for self-gain, is condemned by the scriptures. The key is not so much the action as the intention behind the action. Just as the scriptures can be used for good or ill, so can any action. Yes, sexual desires can lead to sin, but they are not inherently sinful any more so than the instinct for self-preservation, which keeps us alive but also leads us to do things that benefit ourselves at the expense of others.
But unfortunately, many people who read the scriptures – of the Christian faith and of other religions – never delve this deeply into the meaning of the text. They read something in translation from another language and take it as God’s word from on high, without even knowing whether that translation even fully conveys the meaning of the original text, or without fully understanding the historical context in which it was written. Thus “do not gratify the desires of the flesh,” a relevant warning about the dangers of self-indulgence, can become one of many passages used as a weapon to condemn and ostracize people who express themselves sexually in a way that makes some people uncomfortable.
Pastor Jimenez in Sacramento based his remarks about the shooting in Orlando on his understanding of the scriptures. He talked about what “the Bible says” about homosexuality and used that to undergird some incredibly harsh words. In his sermon, he said to his congregation:
"Are you sad that 50 pedophiles were killed today?" Um no. I think that’s great. I think that helps society. I think Orlando, Florida, is a little safer tonight. The tragedy is that more of them didn’t die. The tragedy is I’m kind of upset he didn’t finish the job — because these people are predators. They are abusers. I wish the government would round them all up, put them up against a firing wall, put the firing squad in front of them and blow their brains out."
After a social media firestorm of backlash against his remarks after they were posted on YouTube, Pastor Jimenez continued to defend his position when interviewed by news media. He said to reporters,
"As far as the Bible is concerned, they crossed a line. The sin they performed is worthy of death. I realize our society doesn't take that, but that's what the Bible says. If someone does something that's worthy of death and they end up dying, I'm not gonna mourn them."
Although I’m not familiar enough with the Qur’an, the scriptures of Islam, to quote equivalent passages in that tradition, I imagine Omar Mateen might have read similar passages that were used as weapons in his tradition that led him to think that somehow shooting and killing as many gay people as possible was more acceptable to God than embracing his own attraction to men. But ironically, his actions in killing people were more "of the flesh" than it would have been for him to have a faithful, committed relationship with another man, had he been single and available to do so.
As I’ve reflected on what might have been Omar Mateen’s internal dilemma with great sadness and compassion, an interesting parallel from the early 20th century French novel, The Phantom of the Opera, later made in to a stage musical, came to mind. Born with a horribly disfigured face, “the Phantom,” as he is called since he lives a reclusive life where no one sees him, is ostracized by society and winds up living in a lair underneath the Paris Opera House, where he terrorizes people through constant violence, including murders, in an attempt to exert control over the workings of the opera house. One could use all of the words we use to describe mass shooters to describe him: disturbed, tortured, radical, extreme, mentally ill, terrorist. He falls in love with a young soprano named Christine, who he mentors from behind the walls of her dressing room, never revealing his face. She knows him as her strange “Angel of Music.” When his true form is finally revealed to Christine, he is convinced that it is his physical deformity that prevents her from loving him. At the very end of the play, after wreaking havoc on the opera, killing the star behind the scenes so he can walk on and play Christine’s love interest, and then whisking her off to his lair, Christine has had enough. She yells at him:
"Have you gorged yourself at last in your lust for blood?
Am I now to be prey to your lust for flesh?"
(Notice the use of “flesh” to connote sexual desire here – that biblical expression continues to influence art!)
He responds,
"That fate which condems me to wallow in blood
Has also denied me the joys of the flesh
This face, the infection which poisons our love….
This face, which earned a mother’s fear and loathing
A mask, my first unfeeling scrap of clothing…
Pity comes too late! Turn around and face your fate!
An eternity of THIS before your eyes…"
He rips of his mask and thrusts his deformed face in front of hers.
But she responds,
"This haunted face holds no horror for me now
It’s in your soul that the true distortion lies."
The tragedy in the Phantom’s story is that he was so obsessed with something he thought was wrong with him, so fixated on something that society told him was wrong with him, that he turned into the monster he thought he was. And maybe, just maybe, this is what happened to Omar Mateen as well.
In a moment of tenderness earlier in the play, after Christine first removes his mask against his will and gets a glimpse of his face, after throwing a tantrum and cursing her, the Phantom crumbles to the stage and quietly begins singing a much softer, gentler tune…
“Fear can turn to love
You’ll learn to see to find the man behind the monster
This repulsive carcass who seems a beast but secretly
Dreams of beauty
Secretly, secretly…”
At the very end of the play, when the Phantom holds Christine’s fiancé hostage, demanding that she choose to marry the Phantom instead or else he will kill her finance, she does something that changes the entire course of action. As the Phantom yells menacingly at her and her fiancé struggles in the noose the Phantom has placed around his neck, she suddenly goes into a pensive moment that recalls the tenderness of that earlier moment when she first removed his mask. She says, half to the Phantom and half to herself,
“Pitiful creature of darkness,
What kind of life have you known?
God give me courage to show you
You are not alone!”
And then she kisses him. She chooses to respond to terrorism and violence and threats with love. She sees the man behind the monster, as he’d said she could. She acknowledges him as a human being and touches him with the caress of a lover.
And this gesture of love transforms the Phantom. He lets Christine and her fiancé go free, and then disappears, never to be heard from again, never to terrorize the opera house again.
I believe it is the role of religion to help us see “the man behind the monster,” but too often religion has been in the business of telling people they are monsters rather than reminding them they are beloved children of God.
A song by the contemporary Christian artist Brandon Heath muses on all ways we miss seeing that the people we pass by in society every day who are hurting or wounded in some way. In the song, Heath prays for God to allow him to see the world as God sees it. He sings,
"Give me your eyes for just one second
Give me your eyes so I can see,
Everything that I keep missing,
Give your love for humanity.
Give me your arms for the broken-hearted
The ones that are far beyond my reach.
Give me Your heart for the ones forgotten.
Give me Your eyes so I can see."
I call this seeing with “kingdom eyes.” Seeing as God sees, not as the world sees. Seeing the man behind the monster. Seeing a human being where the world sees “a terrorist.” To those who would agree with Pastor Jimenez’s views, I say, THIS is the truly Christian response to Orlando, and to any other mass shooting. To truly see the broken-hearted, to see the ones forgotten, to see everything that we miss in our superficial view of the world. To mourn with the victims and to show love to the ones society tells us are monsters, to pray that “God would give us courage to show them they are not alone.”
Who knows? Had Omar Mateen been part of a community where he felt safe to question his sexuality, if he’d had any hope that his questioning would have been met with compassion and love rather than condemnation, maybe he never would have walked into that nightclub with that gun that fateful night. While we can’t change the past, I can only pray that Omar Mateen finally found some peace when he met his maker. And I imagine that he most likely discovered that those 49 souls he assumed were abhorrent and sinful were there to welcome him with open arms into the fellowship of the saints when he arrived later that same evening.
