Editor:
Re: Blessed to have all it represents, Oct. 17 letters.
The students of Mr. Fryer’s class at White Rock Elementary have much to be proud of for their letter in support of the rainbow crosswalk. Good for you!
It warms my heart and is especially welcome at a time when Christian churches have formed the West Coast Christian Accord to oppose the directive that all schools include sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) in their anti-bullying policies and codes of conduct.
To bolster their opposition to SOGI-123, the accord lists 14 articles that “provide a biblical statement on the supremacy of Christ, the authority of scripture, salvation, marriage, sexual orientation and gender identity.”
I Googled it. It was like I had fallen into an Allah rant without the bloodshed. We are each entitled to our beliefs, but when anyone uses the Bible, God and Jesus to keep fear in place, I am compelled to defend all three.
The Bible was written by human beings. Need I say more? While in many ways lovingly inspirational, its flagrant contradictions can hardly be taken as accurately historical, much less as “the word of God” in every instance. When will we stop using it as a whip to drive home our own biases?
Growing up in the United Church, I was taught that God gave us free will. It is our sovereign right. To claim that this self-same Deity would then act contrary to its own directive by laying down rules regarding gender identity (or anything else) makes no sense. Either we have free will, or we don’t. To have it means to choose what we think works for us and then choose different if it doesn’t. The Creator is both male and female, and yet neither. Sexuality is fluid, as is life. Are we made in God’s image, or not? We can’t have it both ways.
As for Jesus, we can’t even get his name right. To accept unchallenged the censored story of his life and mission is to do him a great disservice. He was so much more. To call him Messiah and then ignore his greatest free will message of inclusion and brotherly love is sacrilege. For WCAA parents who don’t want their children taught transgenderism to invoke his name in support of their cause is to have no understanding of him at all.
All truth passes through three phases: first, it is ridiculed; second, it is violently opposed; third, it is accepted as self-evident. Are we there yet?
With kids like those in Mr. Fryer’s class who are often wiser than the chaos around them, we may get there sooner than we think. Out of the mouth of babes. I thank God for them.
Maureen Kerr, Surrey