Discrimination is wrong, whatever the form it takes.
Discrimination is only a surface issue related to a deeper issue that God cares about; the issue of justice.
The recent furore in the Cayman Islands over the visit of a gay/lesbian cruise is but one reflection of the issues of discrimination and the deeper issue of justice that continues to plague societies.
I support the Government’s policy of non-discrimination if only because I cannot disassociate the issue of discrimination from the issue of justice because God cares about justice.
Whereas I do not support, condone, believe in or wish to justify a homosexual life style, I cannot equally support, condone or justify discrimination because there is an issue of justice involved that I feel deeply about.
I therefore have to make the hard call of holding a position about something that I disagree with while not discriminating against people and the right they have to travel, visit, or conduct business.
I will trust the infinite wisdom of God, a wisdom that I cannot fully comprehend on this side of life, to attend to the correcting of evil and wrong in God’s time.
However this does not discharge my obligation or the churches to speak to evil in all its forms.
I am deeply concerned about the issue of discrimination not only because of the issue of justice involved, but also because my nationality, my ethnicity, my race exposes me to what discrimination can do.
I live in a world where the wealth of many nations has been built on that kind of discrimination.
Additionally my children are growing up in a world where increasingly the ugliness of racial discrimination is rearing its head.
In God’s eyes, the injustice perpetrated by discrimination, whatever the kind, is wrong.
If the church in Cayman is to take seriously the challenging of evil without the element of discrimination, it should not stop at the issue of homosexuality.
The church should equally challenge the issues of working conditions, living conditions and the issues of the wages of construction workers, domestic workers and others here in Cayman. Maybe the church should provide a safe place for people to tell their stories (and there are many stories to tell) without fear of recrimination and so work to right the wrongs.
The abuse of workers with respect to living conditions and wages is an evil no less in God’s eyes than any other, it is an issue of justice and God cares about justice.
However, let us not be surprised if we find that the perpetrators in some of these cases sit in our pews.
Additionally the church could challenge the basis of some of the wealth that passes through these islands, facilitated by the banking industry. It is wealth that invariably all who live here in some way benefit from but it is made, in many instances, off the backs of workers who live and work in subhuman conditions.
It is made at the expense of people, children included, working 14 – 16 hours per day and earning less than US$20 per week. This too, is an evil that exists in this world; an injustice that God invites us to speak to.
Here again we may find a challenge in that addressing this evil could affect the bottom line and the comforts that we all enjoy, some more than others.
Are we in the church really ready to challenge evil in all its forms, or to challenge injustice wherever it exists, or do we choose to be selective?
I end where I started; discrimination is a form of injustice and God does not support injustice.
We in the church have to make the hard call, the hard call that says ‘we declare very clearly what we believe to be wrong, but we will not support discrimination’.
This requires a special dose of wisdom, which we must endeavour to ask Gods grace to enable.
We cannot be holy and righteous in some things only and leave others that come closer to home untouched. ‘Let justice roll down like a river and righteousness like a never failing stream’ Amos 5: 24.
Rev. Randolph S. Turner
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