A few months ago Lydia playfoot, a 16 yr old girl who was banned by her school for wearing a “purity ring” took her school, Millais School in Horsham in West Sussex, to the High Court. Lydia, a member of the Silver Ring Thing Christian group wears a silver ring engraved with a Biblical reference- “1 Thessalonians 4:34” St. Paul’s Letter to the Thessalonians- as a sign of their belief in abstinence from sex till marriage. She claims that her school breached her human rights by preventing her from wearing the ring, while allowing Muslim and Sikh students to wear headscarfs and religious bangles.


I am in total agreement with Lydia. Why should I not be allowed to wear a piece of goats tail to prove to everyone that I am indeed pure before God and Man. Why should I be forced to even wear a symbol to prove my level or lack of sexual prowess.

The answer is pretty simple, if you think about it. It is what the world expects and the world, being a hypocrite that it is, takes offence when I take what it expects and makes some symbol out of it.

I have every right to dress, speak, rant and spit about what ever I wish to just like everybody else and yet for some odd reason, when a Christian takes another route to self expression, people are up in arms.

Not more than a year ago, for example, it became a fad to wear wrist bands that carried specific messages like “Arsenal forever”, ‘Peace”, “Unity”, “Tranquility”, “Club Silk” and “Celtel Africa Challenge”. The fad was so powerful that the Christian community did not escape it, they had bands reading “W.W.J.D” (What Would Jesus Do), “F.R.O.G”(Fully Rely On God), “D.O.G” (Depend on God) and “P.U.S.H” (Pray Until Something Happens) and these soon became the boldest form of expressing belief, encouraging oneself in times of dire need and identifying with people of the same belief system.

Why, I then ask, cant it happen the other way round. Why is it more acceptable for Christians to express themselves the same way everyone else does by just twisting a phrase and it is acceptable than for the same Christian to start their own drive?

When I start my campaign to carry a piece of goat tail, I’m sure everyone will harangue me starting with my barber to my banker to animal rights activists. I will be called to little corridor meetings to explain why I could not have picked a user-friendlier symbol. And more importantly, I will be questioned on why I need to express myself anyway.

And in reply to these questions, my persecutors will very conveniently forget about my freedom of expression and belief. They will conveniently forget that local artists and whichever hawker can land on one, carry’s and sells those fly swatters, very similar to my proposed piece of goat tail.

Are they put out of business? No.
Are they questioned? No

But I will be because I dared to be different; I dared to express my faith my way.

If anything, I should be applauded for instituting something “African” into our belief system instead of taking on very western expressions like the chastity belt, the purity ring and so on.

But again, this will conveniently be forgotten because it is different.

An expression of faith is at best that, just an expression. It is a basic human right to express oneself and to get your thoughts on a matter across. It is entirely up to the individual to believe and adopt. No one forces you to believe in what you believe in, that is a personal decision.