UNLESS YOUR INTEREST is to debunk the Bible and therefore the doctrine of Christianity and render churchgoing senseless, some of the sentiments expressed by High Court judge Jacqueline Cornelius in her lecture series come under close scrutiny. Preachers who are quick to take up “fire rage” in the newspapers, cat bite their tongue?
Ancient societies established order among their people (for example, Ten Commandments, Hammurabi Code, Torah, Quran) by virtue of laws. However, as society evolves we seem to be discarding those tried precepts one after another in the name of modernisation without careful thought. The question is, are we going backward or forward? Is challenging the directions of the Bible making our society better or worse? Indeed, is promoting a doctrine of “equality” good or bad, Christian or unChristian? And are we promoting a doctrine of revolutionary women and turning the status quo on its head in a blanket effort to confront “violence against women”?
Whereas the Wild Coot is ill equipped to deal with the subject, he is surprised that the religious fraternity with all its preachers and bishops have not taken the lecture of the good justice to task in defence of the Holy Bible, instead minding poor innocent Peter.
Are we bending over backward in order to define victimisation according to the published lecture? Anecdotal incidents supported by legal cases cannot define the entire society, but rather deal with a particular case. The society is wider than the particular cases quoted. What is the intention of the lecture series? Is it to educate and change attitudes or to inform us about what awaits us if the law is infringed?
The Wild Coot is not a lawyer, and has not the unique brain to see three sides of an argument. The lecture seems to be designed to showcase what is happening in isolated cases and not what is happening worldwide in the majority of either marital or even common law relations. Efforts are made in the lecture to promote the position of the men in a relationship but not to any degree as in the case of women, probably because men take their victimisation in all its forms mainly without complaining out of a sense of . . . shame.
Very soon there will be little to preach about if women “get what they want”, according to the lecture. Perhaps I can refresh the preachers around the churches and kingdom halls of the relevant parts of the Holy Book so that they can mount a campaign against this threat in the legal system to the majority. Genesis 3:16, unto the woman God said: “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow, thou shall bring forth children and thy desire shall be to thy husband and he shall rule over thee.” 1 Peter says: “Likewise ye wives be in subjection to your husband.” No horning. In 1 Corinthians St Paul said: “But I would have you know that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of every woman is the man.” In Ephesians 5:2 St. Paul said: “Wives, submit yourselves to your husband as unto the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church.” In Colossians St Paul stated: “Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husband as it is fit in the Lord.” Finally in 1 Timothy St Paul, formerly Saul of Tarsus, tutored by Gamaliel, implored: “Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection.”
Preachers should therefore get cracking. Do not let the lecture have all of the say. Whereas the lecture was delivered to a limited audience and promulgated in a series with limited space, preachers from the hundreds of pulpits throughout the length and breath of Barbados, with captive audiences, are in a far superior position to counteract what seems to be the desired influence of this lecture.
A man who required anonymity contacted the Wild Coot by email. “Wild Coot, I had to speak harshly to my wife the other night. She immediately called the police who came like lightning. Well, the policeman was a young lad. He listened to the wife who stated that she wanted me out of the house. You know what he turned and said to me? “Dads, I’m sorry, but you have to leave the house (not the bedroom, the house). The new law yuh know.” All that I could take was my computer and a toothbrush. Where was I to go at 10 o’clock in the night? I built that house with my own two hands. She called me a few days later and I came back home. Since then I haven’t said a word to her.”
“Wild Coot, your article is an anachronistic simulacrum.”
• Harry Russell is a banker. Email quijote70@gmail.com