ANOTHER WORD FOR TODAY – INTOLERANT

How strange is that? Yesterday, I write a piece about the interpretation of the word – Tolerant – and just as I have published my blog, some news hits social media about the so-called Nashville Pact. And the fact that one of the political leaders in The Netherlands has signed. What is it all about?

Well, to keep it brief as I suspect many of you are actually following the news, this is a pact signed by many people across the world, based purely on belief. Nothing wrong with that you may think? But this was something so incredibly biased and wrong and made a lot of people feel as if we are stepping back into the previous century.

So my word that comes up today is: INTOLERANT

Literal meaning is: not tolerant of views, beliefs or behaviour that differ from one’s own!

So yesterday I offered the thought out that the word Tolerant means that we are almost afraid to speak out anymore and here comes its counterpart Intolerant.

So what was all the fuss about?

The Nashville pact is a document drawn up by Christian people about the do’s and don’ts of their beliefs. One of the things that social media went absolutely ballistic about yesterday was the mention that same sex unison (marriage, partnership, friendship, relationship) is in the eyes of God – distasteful or soiled.

Now The Netherlands on that score is one of the most ‘tolerant’ countries in the world. Meaning that the Dutch believe that people have the right to do what they want. This may sound in total contradiction about the things I wrote about yesterday, but in the mass of this hysteria and literally thousands of prominent people having their say on social media channels and on national TV, here is quite a statement!

So my question this morning before I get on with some other work is: who thinks that they have the right in this troubled world to compare themselves to God? That they speak as one voice representing God? (Irrespective of your own personal beliefs, I am using the context God as The Creator).

When surfing around Internet for some background information I came across something interesting:

One of the most prominent people in the USA (Nashville, Tennessee, one of the southern states, as you all know) is a lesbian priest and one of the biggest well-known TV preachers.

She signed the pact, treaty or document (what is in a name?)

This document originated in 2017. It is a strong supposedly Christian document in which people are against any form of same sex unison. One of the prominent leaders here in The Netherlands (Kees van de Staaij) signed too, declaring that he considered that homosexuality is a sin and unclean (soiled) and here we have another new word cropping up ‘transgenderism’. (A state or condition in which a person’s identity does not confirm unambiguously to conventional ideas of male and female).

This document was launched at an Evangelical Congress in Nashville. The driving force behind this was the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW). An organization that speaks about ‘complementarity’ (a relationship or situation, which two or more different things improve or emphasize each other’s qualities) an institution for more than 30 years!

In simple words it says: that man and women each have a different role in life given to them by God, both in the Church and in the family. The man is the leader and there is no place for women as leaders in the church. Er … excuse me, wasn’t one of the people who was so in the forefront on this pact a lesbian, leading preacher? Or have I missed something here?

We are supposed to be moving forwards into a new year, 2019, 19 years since the Millennium and nearly into 2020 … and it feels like about 1820 to be honest. What is the matter with everyone and the outcry yesterday confirms that people are actually not going to tolerate such, well for want of a better word, unchristian thoughts.

Tell me who on this planet really thinks that they can speak for the creator?

Answer: No one. Yes beliefs are perfectly all right and I have no judgment whatsoever on this subject. I believe that each and every one of us has the right to think and be, what we want. To walk our own paths, irrespective of what other’s think or say. But I do not agree that some people think they have the right to spout their beliefs on what I consider to be a ‘fragile group’ of people who actually dare to be vulnerable and speak their truth. The only important word as far as they are concerned is Love. Didn’t Jesus say: ‘love thy neighbour’, irrespective of anything? 

My grandfather was a lay-preacher in the Zionist church in Cheshire. So I have grown up and learnt at an early age in these circles, but he was an open unbiased man who judged no one. I must have taken on this opinion at a very early age.

To my mind this Nashville pact (treaty, document, call it what you like) is something that belongs in that amazing, round shaped filing cabinet, called the wastepaper bin.

Control, Alt, Delete.

And just before I go, Kees van de Staaij was on one of the most popular talk shows on TV last night saying … perhaps he should not have signed! Honestly, make your mind up please!

One comment I read on social media, I think it was Instagram, was that someone wrote: ‘Imagine being married to a man like that’!

Exactly.