Tuesday, July 29, 2014

The Evolution of a Sin

What is sin exactly? How is it defined? Does sin morph, or is it static with time? Surely, anyone who has studied any amount of religious history, can see that sin changes with each generation. 

Can religious masses be expected to understand a generally accepted rule book, delineating every little detail of life, telling them what is wrong and what is not right? After all, most of religious theology, especially Christianity, the religion I am most familiar with, deals with what man, throughout history, has done wrong, and what can be done about it.

When I was a young lad, I used to drink water - a lot! I would go into the bathroom, cup my hand under the faucet, fill it with water, and bring it to my mouth, repeatedly. I loved the taste of Minneapolis water. It was sweet, with a hint of lemon and lime. 

Then, my Mama found religion. Religion was an Artesian well. Once a fortnight, we would drive our old van forty minutes to the well, fill scores of gallon glass bottles up under the flowing metal pipe, then drive them back home.

Mama made it a rule that we were no longer allowed to drink city water. Artesian well water was blessed by the gods. It was healthy. Checked for all sorts of chemicals every four years or something.

Drinking city water was now a sin.

My sinful nature took over, as it was wont to do. I was a descendant of Adam. I had no choice but to want to sin. So I drank city water. I couldn't stand the crap from the well unless it was so ice cold, you could barely taste the flavor. Kind of like how you have to drink Coors Lite, hoping, beyond hope, that you swallow it before any sensation remotely resembling the taste of piss-water, becomes recognizable by the receptors in your brain.

A year later, I was convicted of my sins. I went to a seminar where the guru, Billy Boy G. (Gothard) told us all to think of two sins we wanted to confess to our Mamas and then remove from our lives. So we could be good smelling to the gods, or something. The two sins I picked were drinking city water and picking my nose and eating it. In other words, within one evening in front of that black-haired, lying bastard, I removed my only hope of street survival.

From that moment on, I never picked my nose and ate it again. I did, on the other hand, drink city water, here and there. I told you...I was a descendant of Adam. I had a sin nature. What the hell was I supposed to do? Be perfect? Oh yeah...like I was Jesus. Sure, HE never picked his nose and ate it and always drank Artesian well water. But dammit! That's because he probably turned his bloody snot into loaves and Swedish fishies, and his Artesian water into delectable Italian wine. I didn't have those powers. That man had it easy.

And so, sin was what I was made to feel guilty about, then established in my life what I needed to do about eradicating it, then constantly focusing on not partaking in it, so I could feel right and proper when taking communion the next Sunday, needing to dig deeper to find other sins I could create, starting the cycle all over again.

I'm thirsty. The tap is calling.

1 comment: