Written in Stone

I planned to continue my series on how we understand our environment but my mind kept returning to Pilate's words, "what I have written I have written." Here, he was referring to the prophetic mockery uttered by Jesus’ detractors. They said the words but they didn’t want them posted above our Lord for all to see. Why?
My mind was also drawn to two other instances. First, God wrote His Ten Commandments on stone tablets and second, Jesus, when the Scribes and Pharisees brought the adulteress to accuse her before Him, bent down and wrote in the dust. Why do we write things down at all?
    We write things down to preserve them and to share them. I’m sure most of my readers have played the game Telephone where a group of people line up and whisper a phrase into the ear of the person beside them, then that person passes it on to the next person and so on. Once the last person receives the message, they repeat what they heard out loud and the first person announces the original phrase. The more people in the group the more distorted the phrase becomes. Oral transmissions are highly unreliable. Even between even two people, messages are often misunderstood. Obviously, if a phrase is written down and passed from person to person, it remains as written.
    It is common to refer to some things as written in stone. The point there is not that the writing remains for many ages but that the idea the writing represents will not change. The Ten Commandments remain as valid today as they were 3300 years ago. Jesus wrote in the dust because He meant that message only for the people who were present at that time. We don’t know what He wrote but the people around Him understood and acted accordingly. The people reading Pilate’s plaque knew that their words, when taken outside the context of their jeering, had a meaning they didn't want to convey.
    George Orwell foresaw over seventy years ago that people would use language to obscure their ideas rather than elucidate them.
​     Those in favour of abortion never say they are pro-abortion, they call themselves pro-choice. How is it pro-choice when just one of the three people involved has all the choice? The child and the father have no choice, they must suffer the consequences of the mother's choice.
​     Those who support euthanasia will never call it killing. They will use terms such as dignity in dying or the Canadian government’s MAID (Medical Assistance In Dying). They claim falsely that one’s death falls within their right to autonomy. Life is God's to give and take.
    People in a same-sex relationship who desire the same social recognition and legal protections afforded marriage claim they are being denied marriage. They are not being denied, they are choosing not to have a hetero-sexual relationship. Many of them claim those who retain the definition used for thousands of years are hateful and homophobic. I know many people who believe that marriage must be between one man and one woman until death does them part, but I don't know anyone who hates homosexuals.
​     People who believe that sex is a psychological rather than biological reality call counselling that helps one accept their biological sex conversion therapy. Legislation before the Canadian government actually claims to clarify that hormonal therapy and plastic surgery meant to convert the patient’s appearance to that of the other sex "is not conversion therapy". How so?

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