Post by pieter on Oct 8, 2019 8:14:39 GMT -7
I am not a supporter of Forum for Democracy nor Geert Wilders PVV, but I think Paul Cliteurs words are excellent. The nature of Freedom, Democracy and Freedom of speech and opinion is that you may have opinions that others don't like, even ideas and opinions that offend others. Being a Christian may offend Muslims, jews and Hindu's because Christians see the absolute truth in Jesus Christ as a Messiah and the son of God and believe in trinity. Their Christian truth is the only truth and way in a RAEL Christians mind, heart and soul. Jews will be offended because Christians reject the Jewish laws, ignore many elements of the Old testamony and reject the Jewish faith. Muslims will be offended because Christians don't see Christ as a prophet as they do and the fact that Christians don't recognize Mohammed as a prophet. Atheists will be offende by the fact that Christians reject their atheism, secular humanism and cold rationalism and Darwinism. In the Netherlands religious persons were insulted for decades by comedians, politicians, journalists, cartoonists, Humanist, Atheists, Agnosticists who ridiculed Christianity, Judaism, Islam and all faith and faiths.
I do believe that if Christianity, the scripturese, the Gospels, Jesus Christ, your church, evangelizing, living in a Christian environment, dedicating your life to Jesus is the most important in your life you should leave the Netherlands, because secularism, atheism and secular materialist culture, ideology, philosophy and secular Humanism is dominant here. You have the bible belt which contains a minority of the Dutch territory, and maybe you have some real christian (Protestant Calvinist and Roman-Catholic) enclaves, Islands or Peninsula, but most cities and towns and modern Urban agglomerations today are bastions of European secularism and atheism today.
Christians and secular atheists live together in peace in this country but have total contrasting views. The Dutch chief rabbi spoke on a multi-confessional meeting in Utrecht on 21 januari 2019. Other non-Jews spoke about their concerns about the growing intolerance and anti-semitism in the Netherlamds where jews don't wear jewish symbols anymore due to the aggression of Muslim migrants and others towards openly religipous jews. The rabbi didn't speak about the anti-semitism, but about his concern about his growing concern about the increasing intolerance of the non-religious secular majority against the religious minority in the Netherlands. The intolerance of Atheists and secular humanists against Christian Dutch Reformed Calvinists, Roman-Catholics, Lutheran people, Evangelical christians, Baptists, Ashkenazi and Sephardic progressive and Orthodox religious jews, Muslims, Hindu's, Bahai people, Zoroastrist people and Sikhs. He really was concerned about that. So, I learned about secular atheist intolerance in my country against religious people in my country.
The multi confessional meeting one year before I attended one.
I was invited by the Muslim woman who stands next to the former Dutch Queen and present princes Beatrix who visited the meeting of 'In Vrijheid verbonden' ('Connected in Freedom') in 2018. I know her and her husband very well in Arnhem. They are somewhere inbetween acquaintances and friends. I have had long discussions with the Muslim couple about history, faith, politics, culture, migration, integration and assimilation or not. These meetings are very important. They are visited by Roman-Catholics, Dutch Reformed christians, Lutherans, Baptists, Methodists, Evangelicals, representatives of the Orthodox Christian churches (Russian and Greek churches), Remonstrants (Arminians), Anabaptists, Seventh Days adventists, Humanists, Agnostic people, Pagans (Old Germanic faith in the Netherlands), Orthodox jews, Progressive jews, Muslims, Duthc Buddhists, Bahai people, representatives of the Hindu community, Zoroastrists, people of the Sufi movement in the Netherlands and representatives of the Sikh community in the Netherlands. It was a honour to be invited to that meeting and I had interesting conversations with a Russian orthodox priest, rabbi's, my Muslim friend, a woman whi is Bahai, and with a Jewish woman who identified herself as progessive (we call that liberal judaism in the Netherlands). I witnessed in myself an interest in the non-christian faiths, because I have more experience with christians and am curious about the Jewish, Muslim, Hindi, Sikh and Bahai faiths. But also other christians faiths like the Orthodox christians. To be honest the overwhelming majoririty of visitors were christian people of various christian churches. I also saw Roman-Catholic clergy walking around over there.
Cheers,
Pieter
