We only watch quality TV at our place and so, were saddened at the concluding of the series, ‘Im a celebrity get me out of here’.
We became involved in the lives of the celebrities and especially enjoyed the interplay between hosts, Julia Morris and Chris Brown.
In one episode, celebrity Shane Warne had an African spider placed in the palm of his hand for 30 seconds. Shane explained that he suffered from arachnophobia and this was the hardest thing he had had to do in his life.
He paced up and down in anticipation, he sweated, convulsed, wept, his eyes developed a steely glaze and afterwards he spent hours alone recovering from his ordeal.
I was shocked, I had never seen the expression of a real phobia before.
And yet, I am accused of being phobic. I believe the Australian Government should have done all in its power to ensure that the sale of Van Diemen’s land dairy in Tasmania resulted in its passing into Australian hands. So I am accused of being xenophobic.
I believe that God, our creator, says same sex marriage and homosexual practice is sinful rebelliousness, involving an unacceptable ‘exchange’ of natural relations for unnatural ones.
So I am accused of being homophobic.
And yet I display none of Shane’s symptoms, I don’t sweat, convulse or weep in fear at the thought of foreigners or homosexuals.
I am not motivated by hatred but by reasoned love, surely, in view of the looming food crisis on this planet, if other Governments recognise the need for food security why shouldn’t our own?
If God mercifully reveals his mind to us, and as our Creator, reminds us that he is also our judge and we must all appear before him, then to remind people of this fact is not hateful but reasoned love.
God is good, he knows us best and does not tell us things to curb our happiness, he is no killjoy!
He reveals his standards to us because he knows that our conformity to those standards are in our best interest.
Sin is always destructive of our humanity, God defines sin, human legalisation does not change sin, it is still sin. God’s judgement is looming and he offers himself now as a Saviour, a shepherd King and he urges us all to flee to him to know eternal security and life in all its fullness as He intends it to be lived.
And so, I now realise that to be labelled phobic, tells me more about those applying the label than those so labelled.
The labellers are living in an intellectual vacuum, they are not responding in a respectful way, with reasoned persuasive arguments, they are simply trying, by applying the label, to shut down and silence reasoned discussion and debate.
They are being reasonophobic or Christophobic, but enough with labels, we don’t want to join them in the vacuum.
We have too much respect for the Creator God, too much love for our fellow human beings and too much gratitude for the Anzac forces who sacrificed to win our freedom, to be shut down and silenced by the irrational application of the label.
I wish you well.
David Cook.