One of the joys of life is holding hands with the one you love. It isn’t sexual (not that there’s anything wrong with that…) and it isn’t a "big deal" but there is something very wonderful about slipping your hand into a hand that has been there for you for a long, long time. It has slowly dawned on me that Kami and I are that "cute old couple" that we used to point out when we were first married. Coming up on our 30th wedding anniversary this next June, I find that I still think of the first time I slipped my hand into hers. She looked down at our hands and so did I. I said, "Nice fit" and she smiled.

She still does.

We like to hold hands but it isn’t always easy. We used to have to break loose to chase a kid, but those days are over. Sometimes I have to move her ring around because it is digging into me and sometimes it is just too hot to hold hands. Sometimes I need to be doing something else with my hand, like carrying packages or lifting something. Sometimes we come to a post and have to decide whether to swing left or right and go single file or break and meet again on the other side. This hand holding stuff can get complicated! 

I don’t want to take this blog into the weeds now and try to manufacture some Big Theological Point but I do have something else to say about holding hands. Can we hold hands with someone we disagree with? Sure! Kami and I are not always in agreement about everything (where two people agree about everything, one of them is unnecessary), but I reach for her hand or she reaches for mine anyway.

Our church gets kicked around a bit on a few websites because we hold hands with churches outside our religious tribe from time to time. I have a rule of thumb about that: I think we can join with other religious tribes if we are both doing what Jesus said he came here to do in Luke 4:18,19. When we do our part at Grace Centers of Hope, South Oakland Shelter, Cass Park, or God’s Helping Hands we often find ourselves holding hands, standing cheek to jowl with people who don’t worship like us and whose doctrine we would find lacking in this or that particular. 

I believe it is entirely acceptable to hold their hand as we join forces to preach good news to the poor, bring freedom to captives, recovery of sight to the blind, release the oppressed, and proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor (in other words, "Peace on earth, good will toward man.") I have no problem bringing in someone from a strange (to me) faith if they have information I can’t get somewhere else. It might be Charles Campbell or Lauren Winner (both of whom have spoken here by our invitation) bringing us lessons on spirituality, faith, or bringing an Old Testament story to life or it might be a person from the far right or left of our fellowship who has special information that we need to have. Bring them on!

But there are times I won’t hold hands with them. When asked if I would bring us in on an area wide evangelistic outreach, I demurred. Why? We would have been the only ones (to my knowledge) who believed that baptism was essential. It is hard to hold hands with someone when they won’t go where you’re going! If the hungry need to be fed, I will happily work with the Unitarians to feed them… but I won’t put on a seminar on Scripture, the nature of Christ, etc. with them as co-teachers. I will serve on a question and answer panel with ministers from other faiths and I will absolutely treat them with dignity and respect as I do so… but I will not change my answers to curry favor with them.

Sometimes my staff thinks we can hold hands with another church and I disagree. I am not entirely consistent about the "why" and that bothers me. I know what I believe and I think that doctrine matters… but which doctrines are important enough to cause us to keep our hands at our sides? 

Hand holding is a real art. And deciding when it is appropriate to hold hands seems to be a little more complicated than I first thought.