The rainbow symbolizes national and/or racial diversity in Christianity. Jiukai is pretty much the Gothic equivalent of Greek νίκα ‘prevail’, except it may be optative rather than imperative.
I have noticed an effort by Catholics, or perhaps Abrahamians, to try to have fellow Christians unite under their banner to try to reclaim the Rainbow from the HBTQ+ movement. There is also an effort from media that are loosely connected with Catholicism (alt-media) to strengthen the association of the rainbow flags to sexual diversity and gay-pride. I must say I hesitate to join a team which tries to score in both goals.
As a plan B, they insist a pride- rainbow flag must have 7 colours, as 7 is a symbol of completeness and since there are traditions assigning seven colours to rainbows.
Seven colours is a decent number if the rainbow is meant to represent the spectrum of nations living in a particular country or region. Five might be even better as we would all wish to have a less mixed mankind, wouldn’t we? As a song played a lot on French radio a decade ago put it: “j’aime mieux ce monde polychrome” — I prefer this multi-colour world (Des Hommes Pareils by Francis Cabrel). Obviously, keeping the world polychrome requires people to (mostly) marry within their nation, or otherwise everybody will come to have gray or brown eyes, brown skin, black hair, and the amount of herd behaviour and torture in society will become absolutely crushing when everybody thinks alike. Or, in other words, my interpretation of his lyric is: we are already similar enough that we should have no difficulty loving each other. If there is a lack of love between humans, it is not because of our differences.
If we make a rainbow flag for the whole of mankind, how many colours should it have? There were 12 gem-stones in the High priest Aaron’s breast plate, so my guess is such a flag should have ca 12 colours.
Would you hesitate to think that people had more eye colours in the past and that some races have gone extinct? Were I wrong to include both violet and purple? Apparently, there are still some individuals left with purple or violet eyes. Please be kind to them!
I am a Sri Lankan. Born to a Tamil couple. But because of the civil war and the cast system of Sri Lanka my parents were not married and the situation forced me to study Sinhalese and become a Sinhalese. It didn’t affect me when i was a kid but when i grew up and started work, that’s when it’s started to affect me. People treated me as a Tamil because of my surname but I didn’t know the language or the culture and i didn’t have the opportunity to learn them. So I am niether Tamil nor Sinhalese because I don’t belong in any category. I didn’t have any friends. Coudn’t find a partner because of ethnicity confusion and I decided to find a partner elsewhere that is nor Sinhalese or Tamil. I am dark in skin colour and a Christian and i wasn’t attending a church so they were another reason for rejections. And Love???????? Rainbows and promises we can only rely on God. And be Thankful.