A recent sermon brought the Niemöller poem below to mind. It’s a famous poem the initially pro-Nazi pastor wrote while in Hitler’s Germany at the start of the last century.

More and more it seems like the world actively opposes our basic right to stand strongly for the things we believe. Today everything must have a fluidity, a malleability, must be subjective to be accepted. Gender for instance, is no longer Male or Female, “It can be anything” or “It’s how I feel today”, sexuality is up for debate, objectification is ok as long as it’s women doing it to other women, adultery is fine as long as our partners are in agreement (for what is a threesome if not consensual adultery?), murder is justifiable so long as the young black man is perceived to have reached into his pocket for…Skittles. The list goes on. Right under our noses, everything is changing…and we dare not say anything because now, having an opinion of your own on anything grates the righteous justice of the left wingers. All of a sudden, people who have been oppressed for years for things such as a different sexuality forget how hurtful it is to meet people who refuse to allow them express themselves, to just be.

Today’s America will arrest a pastor who refuses to wed two gay people, despite the fact that the pastor’s church welcomes gay people, loves and honours them despite their differences in opinion. Yet the pastor is forced to follow convictions he does not believe…as though he does not have a right, an entitlement to his own opinion. I am a black woman. There are people that hate women and hate black women even more. There are laws to protect me from being killed just for being who I am. Yet people might choose to not associate with me by virtue of my skin colour and gender. Do you see me walking into a KKK meeting and insisting on running for a position? No, because that’s not my problem. For every narrow-minded bigot, there are millions of people who respect, honour and adore women AND black women especially. There are millions who don’t really care either way. So why would I be pressed, why would I be insistent that those with their own opinion are not allowed to express it because they are different from mine? Our world thrives only because of its heterogeneity, without idiots you’d never be able to appreciate the geniuses. The same way, you need sadness to truly appreciate joy.

I’m an advocate for respecting and honouring people no matter who they are, after all which sin is the greatest and who determines which is the worst? It’s not for us to decide. What IS for us to decide is what we stand for and as long as we are able to respect and love others despite the differing opinion, we should be allowed to hold on to our own beliefs and principles which define us. To insist on otherwise is unfair and if anyone should understand this, it should be the groups who have for years been marginalised and sidelined for their own beliefs.

Christians are in the days when we are most called upon to take a stand and by this I mean treating people with the utmost fairness, love and respect just like Jesus did…while not compromising on our beliefs. Take a leaf out of Jesus’ book, I mean you could love or hate Him but you could never be indifferent about Him. That’s the word, ‘indifferent’. Most of us Christians today are indifferent. Indifferent about the world, indifferent about beliefs, indifferent about what’s really happening around us. We think often, “Well, it’s not my problem.” Well, whose problem is it?

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak out for me.
-Martin Niemöller