Belief Equality..........

This one is a tough one to try and write out and even reason with people.  Especially when these people fight for equal rights, yet reject other people’s rights at the same time.  These people who I’ve come to call liberals.  Yes a liberal will fight for rights of others and rights for themselves even if it limits rights of a select few.  So when I use the term liberals throughout the rest of this blog – I’m referring to this definition of a liberal and not what most people use it as.

You see – liberals are so very easy to call people who disagree with their beliefs “bigots” – yet they do not try and understand why a person has such a belief, nor asks what they believe.  Simply because they disagree with them – they’re clearly deemed a “bigot”.  Isn’t there a saying that goes it takes one to know one?  Simply because one disagrees with your belief, and you’re not willing to hear them – does it not make you a “bigot” as well?

Or how about – you pointing the finger, yet three fingers are pointing right back at you.

Let’s talk about marriage equality for a moment.  Or for that matter, let’s talk about marriage period.  I’ve talked to some people I’d consider good friends over the years.  Some of them gay/homosexual, some of them atheist, and some of them a mix of the two(gay/homosexual and atheist).  What’s interesting about this – is the one thing I generally hear from them is “why would anyone want to get married?  It’s a religious thing.”

Ok – so marriage is a religious thing they say.  So – why are politics getting involved in a religious matter?

I’m a huge fan of separation of Church and State.  So – yes, I’m a Christian.  Why does one need to go to the state to get a license to get married?  Well everyone – it’s pretty clear.  It’s all about money.  You have to pay to go get the license.

So the bigger question is this:  If there was no recognition from the State that you are actually married, would you still want to go and get married?  What benefit would it have?

You see, I don’t want to go to the State and ask for a marriage license.  I simply want to go to a minister/pastor and ask him to simply marry me in an open area.  I want this marriage to be accepted in the eyes of God.  I could care less about whether the State approves or accepts this marriage.

So you see – if you eliminate the State from the subject of marriage, it solves a lot of problems that people always bring up.

People always point the finger at Christianity about marriage, saying they’re against same-sex marriage.  The issue is, for a millennia and even longer – marriage has been defined as a union between a man and a woman.  This isn’t only with Christianity, in fact Christianity is founded on Judaism, and this was a Jewish thing.  Now Jews and Christians aren’t the only ones with this meaning – but even Muslims have this same belief.

See how it was worded – marriage has been defined as a UNION between a man and a woman.

If the separation of Church and State were to become 100% real – maybe the State could offer ceremonies called “Unions” – while the religious establishments can continue to do what they’ve always done and continue to marry people without the need to seek approval from the state.

This IMO(in my opinion) would provide everything everyone is looking to do.  It would respect the religious establishments.  Let’s keep in mind I never mentioned religions like Mormons or others where they accept polygamy. 

Everyone is rooting and happy that the marriage equality thing has happened – but it still doesn’t accept polygamy.  While many people may feel polygamy is a whole other situation – people have those beliefs.  So, if a religious person is supposed to accept another one’s belief that it is acceptable to have same-sex marriages.  Should the person who accepts same-sex marriages not accept that others have a belief that polygamy is accepted within marriages?

May sound like 2 very different things – but in the end it’s simply accepting one’s beliefs.  So if we’re going to start accepting one’s beliefs – then we should be accepting everyone’s beliefs and not just one group of people’s beliefs – but all groups of people’s beliefs. 

You see – I accept that everyone has different beliefs.  I accept the fact that we do, while I may disagree with certain beliefs – I do my best that it doesn’t change how I act towards the person nor how I feel about them.  I do my best to treat everyone with the same amount of respect as the next person.  Love your neighbour as yourself, right?

If I have the right to believe something, another person has the right to believe something else.  Now it’s great to debate this in a healthy discussion, but it should be done in a way to better understand the other person, rather than calling them a “bigot” – because little do you know how complex the reason or reasons are for why a person believes what they do.

This blog, is only beginning to scratch at the surface as for how I believe about marriage-equality, which we can then start to call belief-equality.

Cheers Uncle Wayne!

Wow – who would’ve thought?!

Exactly one week ago – the real Tom Green aka my uncle Tom lost his battle with cancer.  Here it is a week later, and my great uncle, my mom’s uncle Wayne lost his life after a double bypass that seemed to have worked for a short time, but in the end his heart was too weak to make it through a 24 hour period after surgery.

You know – it’s interesting, as many may or may not know – we’ve been doing many renovations at the cottage, and this isn’t the first renovation or redo at the cottage.  When the cottage was initially bought back in the mid 80s, it wasn’t insulated among many other things.  What’s interesting is while we were working on this renovation – we had asked Tommy who insulated the floor with him down in the tight crawl space – and much to our surprise it was Wayne.

So here we are with these two people gone from our lives here forever.

Now – anyone who knew Wayne will say he was a kind hearted soul.  If he had a beer in his hand – you can be sure if you didn’t – he was definitely offering and more than willing to get one for you, and if you weren’t drinking beer he was getting you something else.

                        

Uncle Wayne was never one for motorized vehicles or tools of any sort.  While he may have never married or had kids of his own – I do know that at different times he looked after just about all his nephews and nieces.  Whether it be buying gifts for them at Christmas, or giving them their first beer(they were all of age of course), or even more simple just playing a game of cards or watching a Sports game on TV – he treated them to the best that he knew and could.

After retiring from Ontario Hydro approximately 15 years ago, he moved back to Pembroke and lived with his brother David and his oldest sister Marie.

While neither David or Marie were his kids or nephews, etc. He did make a claim in the house.  The claim was to be the cook of the house.  Thus finally allowing Marie after years and years of cooking for her sisters, children, etc. was able to receive a break from cooking in the kitchen.

You know – the Bible does teach a few things, but not limited to:

1 – God will write his laws on people’s hearts (Jeremiah 31:33)

2 – To look after widows and orphans (James 1:27)

Whether these are 2 things uncle Wayne ever read or not – it clear that God held up to his promise in Jeremiah 31:33.  Wayne looked after a widows, his oldest sister Marie after moving back home – and while his nephews or nieces may not have been orphans he definitely would look after them if needed.

While everyone may have their different memories of Wayne, we should simply be thankful to have been blessed to have had someone like Wayne in our lives.

For those of you who want Wayne’s Legend to carry on – if there’s one thing he did teach me – was he taught me how to mix Caesars(while I was of age of course).

Cheers uncle Wayne!

The Real Tom Green

I'm not even sure where to start in how I write this out.  This has been a difficult long start to a summer for me.  I started off on a stress leave, which then about 3 weeks into it, my appendix decided that it wanted to get removed(no it didn't burst) - to then find out I have a benign cyst on my adrenal gland, which may be the root cause of a few health problems I have.

Now - generally I write things out about things I've found and noticed, perhaps a life experience for me - but today I'm dedicating this to my uncle:  the real Tom Green.

When someone passes on - it's a period of mourning for those that are left behind.  When the mourners feel that their loved one has passed on prematurely - we generally start asking a whole bunch of questions.  When a loved one passes on prematurely due to cancer it's even more so.

Now - Tommy never really had an easy life.  He lost his dad at a young age, and this in itself would've been difficult.  Now - from that moment, yes he had good moments, but it always seemed that just when he was about to get the next lucky break in his life - BAM - something would go wrong.

All throughout this - he'd move on.  Yes he was blessed to have had a supporting cast around him along the way, and yes this supporting cast did help him move on, and yes the supporting cast does also deserve a round of applause.  The key thing here though is he did move on; he continued on and definitely an applause is also in order for Tom Green.

Perhaps there was something helping Tommy - perhaps he had a passion within him...

Anyone who knew Tommy - knew he was passionate about certain things - to the point that if you didn't believe those things you'd say he sounds crazy or "whacked in the head" - just to throw a few examples:  his talk about aliens or other "conspiracy theories", his talk about natural nutrition, alternative medicine or how the pharmaceutical companies are ripping you off because they want customers and not people to get better; how Big Brother is watching us, etc.

Yes - Tom Green - the Real Tom Green was passionate.  Some will also say compassionate - which while this is true with one of his favourite expressions being "warm hands means a warm heart" - but the purpose here is to also allow everyone to learn something through the word passion.

Everyone has clearly heard of "The Passion of Christ" - whether it be the movie or just the Passion that Jesus had in generally period.  For anyone who's seen the movie - you see the passion in the sense that Jesus is whipped, basically even died before making it to the cross that everyone is so familiar with.

Whether you believe or not - just to understand the psyche behind, Jesus did all that to save His people from the sin that was written in the law.  A sin could only be atoned for through a sacrifice and Jesus became that sacrifice.  All that suffering and pain.  He did it for us

Why do I bring that up?  Well passion - is derived from a greek word:  pathos.  The meaning of pathos is:  suffering, emotion, depraved passion.

In today's day - most people hear the word passion and think a deep love for someone, or a deep love for something.  While this may be true - when you look at the deeper meaning of it all, there is suffering.

The reality that we're getting back to is Tom Green was passionate.  Yes he had a deep love for people, he had a deep love for certain things.  While he did have this, his life did have suffering.

Now, while Tommy did have suffering in his life - yes we can get stuck in feeling how we feel bad for him because we wouldn't want such a thing.  This just shows the strength a person can have, and if we can't handle such a thing - shows how strong Tommy was.

Yes - we can feel bad about Tommy having gone through much suffering - even in his last few weeks after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, there was much pain.  He continued on.  Finally in the early hours of July 10th, he lost his fight with cancer.

As much suffering that Tommy had, I believe that you should now rejoice.  Yes we can say he's no longer in pain, he's no longer suffering - but I see something far more beautiful than that.

If Jesus is the King of kings in heaven - I'm going to ask you to just think about Tommy while reading this Bible verse:

I Peter 4:13 But rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed.