I don't usually cry over celebrities passing, but I admit to a bit of a mist with Dolly Parton's passing.
I am seeing a lot of people posting things about how conservative grandparents and their queer grand children are united in mourning, and how much Dolly truly loved people. Everyone from churches to Playboy are singing her praises, from tradwives to drag queens.
She is being upheld as a champion of the downtrodden, royalty among the rhinestones, a sexual revolutionary but also somehow uniquely modest, a model Christian and model America and yet revered by the leftists.
Even atheists would say she is in heaven and even Christians who could count her sins would say the same. Wherever she is is in the hands of God Himself.
It made me think, though, Dolly really did love her neighbor. She may not have fully backed their choices in life, but she saw the human before anything else. Did she love perfectly? Did she maybe support and enable things contrary to Scripture? Yes. But she loved and acted on that love with grace, dignity, and a gentle positivity and southern charm that shut down even her biggest critics. Somehow I wonder if that is worth more in the eyes of God than calling herself a drag queen or posing for Playboy.
I recall my first confession where my penance was to read and reflect on 1 Corinthians 13 because the Holy Spirit gave my priest the wisdom to recognize that I am methodical. A big part of my evangelical upbringing was to behave myself. So, I could do all the Christian things, but I packed love. In fact, I was taught to be wary of, afraid of avoidant of other people. There was very much an us vs them mentality and we were obviously on the winning side. Having any sort of compassion or attempt at understanding someone was seen as supporting and enabling their sins. The "loving" thing to do was bash them about the head with the Bible and try to scare the hell out of them.
And, yes, I think the other side gets it wrong by assuming Christian love is supposed to mean being ok with whatever the hedonists think is morally acceptable that day, but I also wonder if Dolly's way wasn't so very wrong in that she just simply loved and left that door open.
