Re: Letter by Gary Dean, Dec. 7.
We are privileged to live in a society that allows people like Gary to freely express his opinion about Ness Lake Bible Camp's policy changes with regards to the LGBTQ complaints about their standards.
I think it's also interesting that he is able to express his declaration "that he is Christian" even though making that declaration says he holds different convictions from those who are not of the same beliefs.
We live in a world that encourages those of us who have different convictions and lifestyles to exercise tolerance of one another, even though Gary appears not to accept NLBC's conviction or policy changes.
A word of caution - freedom of opinion might not always be tolerated, if we continue to use our freedom to condemn people or organizations with different standards than our own.
Forcing governments to enforce our bias leads to "governments of tyranny" to eventually enforce their opinions of tolerance on the very people that gave up personal freedoms to government enforcement.
Recently, a teacher, who expressed his opinion on a sensitive issue, has been fired - deprived of his livelihood.
It's questionable how a school board can make an arbitrary decision to deprive its students the use of a beautiful facility (NLBC) when most (or at least 50 per cent) of its students would love to take advantage of this facility.
It seems like "cutting off your nose to spite your face."
Without declaring myself of any particular bias (like Gary has), I would recommend that we let our public library define what a "Christian" is, by providing readable information on what a Christian is. One of the tenets of most religions is the desire to know about "life after death." It's quite generally accepted that most people prefer heaven to the alternative. One of the books in the library that talks about heaven states that "except a man be born again, he cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven."
Does God, or whoever is in charge of heaven have the right to make that rule or policy?
Ed Olichny
Prince George
