My Brother’s Keeper
In 2022, I made friends with a tradcath. I met him in a summer class on political theory, and after our first class, we got into a long discussion about all sorts of things. Eventually he found out about my numogrammatic interests and tracked down my online presence. He thought it was really neat, because he was a big fan of occultism, and so we had plenty to talk about. And honestly, I really liked the months we kept in touch, even though our respective politics were absolutely nuts in each other's eyes. I respected his intellectual humility, I respected his love for liturgical logic, and I respected how he liked to make friends quite different from himself. He was, and I imagine still is, a cool guy. I hope we talk again.
But my occasion for writing about him here is a comment he made to me once, about why he uses transgender people's pronouns despite being, well, a tradcath. What he told me was that, by the doctrine of his religion, to use trans people's pronouns was a lie, and therefore spiritually damaging. But he felt it was right for him to damage his own soul rather than harming his friends. I felt very ambivalent about this statement when he told it to me. To claim that just using a pronoun is soul-damaging is what his church would teach, but of course, it's an offensive and difficult thing to hear. But I also knew it was a view that came out of genuine love for specific trans people, specific friends of his. It wasn't disconnected.
So I've been thinking about it, for a year and a half now. And slowly, very slowly, it's come to strike me as a genuinely remarkable case of solidarity. I listened to a lecture by the Archbishop Rowan Williams recently, in which he talked about why an ethics of solidarity is preferable to an ethics of goodness. To be good means, on some level, to keep oneself pure, to put away that which would corrupt one's goodness. Goodness as an end in itself is an ethics of separation. Solidarity, by contrast, is an ethics of love, one which implicates itself with all people and therefore earnestly hopes for all people. Solidarity associates with people who are impure, who are on some level not good, and so risks becoming involved with their sin. But by becoming involved, it becomes possible to hope for a salvation which is not individual but in common, which applies both to them and to oneself. Hans Urns von Balthasar would argue this is the only condition in which one can really hope for oneself: when one hopes for all people, one can include oneself.
What my friend had chosen to do was to prioritize love over goodness. Christians always talk about love, and when this talk seems to lack credibility, I think it is because of a clear lack of solidarity. If you love someone, you have to know them: you have to take account of who they are, what they desire, where they're at, and what they need. And these are not answers you can know in advance, but rather pertain at all moments to particulars. The model of this loving is, of course, the love of God, which sustains every being in all its particulars and knows the contents of every heart, not by stereotype but by intimacy and implication. God is closer to ourselves than we are to ourselves, and so loves us always in a manner which draws near rather than looking from afar. This proximity is precisely what opens God to the problem of evil, because if God is so close to us, we ask how God can possibly not bear responsibility for the horrors and tragedies of this world. No theoretical answer to this question works, and all that can be said is that, if God is to become so involved as to be darkened by the concerns of this world, it must be in some way to labour for our sakes. Human love, when it is genuine, must be just so. When we love someone and draw close to them, we become responsible for them, for that evil which befalls them and that evil which they do, whether imagined or real. And our recourse can only be that though indifference to this other would keep us purer and avoid our being held to account, we nevertheless cannot recoil, because we are there not because we are called to do evil, but to strugglingly eke out a salvation we might be able to share.
I do not think my use of female pronouns is a sin on my part. I do not think it is a lie, taking into account the various facts about me. But if it is, and the manner in which it is a sin is revealed to me, I will have to testify before the judgement seat to this sin of mine, and I will have to beg forgiveness. If that is the case, I will do it. As a matter of policy, I do not dispute with God, and so that which I learn is a sin I must repent of. But what my friend had done, in essence, was to say, if you are there repenting, you will not be there alone. Nor will you be there repenting alongside other trans people only, or along other people who believe what you believe only. If on the day of judgement you repent, you will be there with me, and we will repent of that sin together. He has taken what is individual and made it collective, not due to affinity, but out of a love which registers harm done to another as more serious than harm done to oneself. He has chosen to share my lot with me, for better or for worse.
St. James writes in his epistle, quoting the Douay-Rheims (which was the preference of my friend in English), "Religion clean and undefiled before God and the Father, is this: to visit the fatherless and widows in their tribulation: and to keep one's self unspotted from this world" (James 1:27). In engaging in what he believed to be sin, was my friend not allowing himself to be spotted by the world? I would strongly desire to clear him from that charge. The sin of this world, which is fallen, is one that makes it impossible to grow in one's love. One becomes addicted to sin, and hardens one's heart for one's own benefit, and seeks to do evil. We all do. "But the fruit of the Spirit is, charity, joy, peace, patience, benignity, goodness, longanimity, mildness, faith, modesty, continency, chastity. Against such there is no law" (Galatians 5:22–23). Against charity, which is love, there is no law, and so to become addicted to love is not the sin of this world; yet one always must love what is in the world, and so associate with worldly creatures. We become involved, we associate with sinners and risk involvement in their sin. Yet nevertheless, against love there is no law, and if sin touches us in the course of love, God is not hard-hearted against us. "But before all things have a constant mutual charity among yourselves: for charity covereth a multitude of sins" (1 Peter 4:8).
My friend desired to hurt himself rather than to hurt his friends. There is precedent for this preference. Paul says of Israel, "For I wished myself to be an anathema from Christ, for my brethren, who are my kinsmen according to the flesh" (Romans 9:3), preferring his own damnation to that of his brethren. Moses says of the same nation, "And returning to the Lord, he said: I beseech thee: this people hath sinned a heinous sin, and they have made to themselves gods of gold: either forgive them this trespass, or if thou do not, strike me out of the book that thou hast written" (Exodus 32:31–32). If God will not forgive Israel, Moses offers his own striking-out as a punishment for their sakes. And of course, there is that example which admits of no greater: "Him, who knew no sin, he hath made sin for us, that we might be made the justice of God in him" (2 Corinthians 5:21). In every case, the party involved does not distance themself from the sin of the other, but dives into it and takes on its burden, that the sinner might be clean. Of course, neither Paul nor Moses nor Jesus are themselves involved in the sin for which they beg forgiveness. Yet at least in the case of Moses, his engagement with the faithlessness of Israel does in the end lead to his own sin and his own punishment. There is not, for us imperfect mortals, an implication or a solidarity which does not risk sharing the sin of the other. But I believe it is exactly for those cases that Peter gives his dispensation: if genuine love takes on the risk of sin, it covers sin all the more.
The more I think about it, the more it moves me. Because it is not something simple or trivial for a person convinced that something is hurting them, not physically but spiritually, to go on with it out of priority for love. Because you come in a loving spirit, you come not to hurt me but to do your best to do good, and so you would walk with me to a judgement you could have eschewed. "Bear ye one another's burdens; and so you shall fulfil the law of Christ" (Galatians 6:2). Here is my burden which you did not have to bear, and look, you have borne it with me. What a law is Christ's! What a fascinating law. I sometimes feel I really cannot plumb its depths.
And yet, it is not a matter of sinner and saint either. And my friend did not seem to think it was. At times my friend felt I was, despite not being one, a better Christian for certain works I did—and he said so. It cannot be one-sided. For if my friend has been willing to bear my burden, should I not be willing to bear his? On the day of judgement, would I prefer to be lauded for what I have achieved over him, while he repents for his failings? Better that his sin should be counted as mine as well, that we might repent together, and be reconciled together. Better, in fact, to be in solidarity with all of humankind, and in loving all, and accepting the responsibility of keeping all in the right way, wash one's hands of nothing except in the moment of repentence. "And Pilate seeing that he prevailed nothing, but that rather a tumult was made; taking water washed his hands before the people, saying: I am innocent of the blood of this just man; look you to it" (Matthew 27:24). Here is exactly what we cannot say. For Pilate could not, by washing his hands, expiate for himself the crime done by his neighbour. Pilate had attempted to prevent the crime of his neighbours, and had failed, and so had shared in their sin. Better, then, to have accepted that sin, that his repentence may be their repentence, and their forgiveness his forgiveness! Better to have loved those sinners and sought their good, though he may share in their judgement for the good he failed to bring about, than to wash his hands of them and be judged alone.
Perhaps God will turn out to despise those people who say, "Hate the sinner, love the sin," to queer people. I believe it is possible, just as it is possible that saying that would turn out to be right. If that is the case, and my friend is judged, I am hereby officially praying of God: though I have never said so, try me for that saying as well. If that is insufficient love, try me for my complicity with it, in loving and defending my friend who has said so to me. Try me with him, and try me with everyone like him, and I will repent with them. And for any sin he himself has known himself to commit during the time of our friendship, I am complicit—therefore try me. "All things therefore whatsoever you would that men should do to you, do you also to them. For this is the law and the prophets" (Matthew 7:12). If the tables were turned, I know he would do the same for me.
Therefore let us stand alongside one another, for what we have done in trying not to hurt each other, for having tried to love each other as siblings instead of enemies. I know that, "As it is written: There is not any man just" (Romans 3:10). Let me not pretend to be good! But in Christ's law I have my salvation, and that law is to love one another, even to be sin for one another, and to be condemned in the other's place. Here is my offer to all of humankind, and my promise, over against the words of Cain: I will bear whatever sin I have to bear, rather than wash my hands of you.