I am tired of the word "agenda"...

Particularly when I read it in the context of "gay agenda" or "homosexual agenda", when certain Christians in the media sound the alarm about "The Gay Agenda."

To make a geeky new Battlestar Galactica reference, it's like they think that gays and lesbians are Cylons, Who Have A Plan, An Agenda, who may look like people, but you know what? They're Not Really Human. And these Gaylons are going to come get your children and turn them gay after they destroy the rest of human (Christian) society. That's really how all the hysterical rhetoric sounds. And these Christians wonder why we have Pride parades? How about to keep our sanity and reaffirm our collective sense of humanity?

When I weigh my experiences in the different worlds through which I've moved, and the people I have met and known there, it's the Christians who have been the ones with the Agenda, Who Have A Plan. I, who am a Christ Follower, however imperfect a one, am appalled by the cloak and dagger evangelical espionage techniques I have witnessed. Witnessed, and taken part in when I was younger.

Part of becoming honest is to question your own motives. Why do you do the things you do? What is the spark that propels you to act? What is before the spark, in the darkness, the dry fuel that catches flame? Why do Christians always want to be on fire? On fire for Jesus. Fire is singleminded. It doesn't multitask. It doesn't ask questions. It doesn't consider its actions. It just burns. It consumes. It eats and eats until there's nothing left and then it dies, utterly spent. It leaves nothing but ash, indecipherable and barren. Dead. Martyred. Cleansed in the fire. Holy fire. Tongues of flame.

But consider (unlike fire) this: the Burning Bush. Not exactly fire-like. The Pentecost. Didn't burn people's heads off.

Why do the Christians I hear the most about (scream the loudest?) want to be the Nuclear Fire of Devastation? They never seem to want to be the Considering Flame, the one that burns but is not consumed, that sheds light, that enlightens but does not destroy. I don't have an answer to that. I don't understand it.

However, when I start wearing my geeky new "Gay Cylons for Jesus" t-shirt, I intend to find out. Or at least, I Have A Plan.