St Paul gives the answer on how to respond situations such as Ashers cake case

As the sad tale of the Ashers cake lingers on and the morality of the proceedings is debated nationwide by those with their own agenda, and the dignified Mr McArthur expresses the view that his Christian principles have been undermined, it begs the question as to why he was in court in the first place.

No doubt as a Christian Mr McArthur is familiar with St Paul’s catalogue of ‘unpardonables’ to the early church at Corinth and will see that human nature has not changed very much.

Fourteen out of the first fifteen Roman Emperors practiced homosexuality, and even such a great man as Socrates was gay.

Plato’s dialogue ‘The Symposium’ said to be one of the greatest works of love in the world has homosexuality as its subject.

Following his list of ‘unpardonables’ came Paul’s shout of triumph, ‘and such were some of you’.

Paul seizing the great essential principle, to go to law at all and especially to go to law with a brother is to fall far below the Christian stance of behaviour. A Christian does not order his dealings with others by the desire of recompense and the principles of crude justice.

He orders them by the spirit of love and the spirit of love will insist that he lives at peace with his brother.

When Mr McArthur complains about his Christian values being undermined Paul gives him the answer to that as well.

“How,” he demands “can anyone follow the paradoxical cause of looking for justice in the presence of the unjust?”

Wilson Burgess, Londonderry