Des Downunder On Sundays

By Des Rutherford, Adelaide, Australia- Getting Better on Sundays

It sometimes seems that we can all relax, take the day off, go to the recreation of our choice without feeling guilty. There is so much to do on days like this where the sun is shining, the bees and the birds are having a flocking good time, when we humans are chasing rainbows, then suddenly the clouds drifting overhead rapidly gather into a dark and foreboding sky.

Lightning and thunder herald the storm, gathering not in a tea pot, or a coffee cup, but in the available minds of those who think they should rain upon the lives of others with instructions on how to live.

It's Sunday, and I suppose it is traditionally the day when some people tell other people how they should live throughout the week. Why would any sane life-form, aware of itself and all the attendant experiences of being alive, have to be told by someone else how they should live their lives?

You want the truth? Can you handle the truth? You sure?

The real question is not why we have to be told how to live, but, “Why do some people have a need to tell other people how to live their lives?”

Strangely enough, the answer is because they had a wonderful mother and father, who raised them in a respectful family environment, rewarding them when they did as they were told, and with gentle correction explain to them when they fell short of perfection.

What, I hear you ask is “perfection?” Good question, fortunately Sundays are full of answers to such questions. Sundays offer the opportunity to allure people to learn about perfection, to look at the gathering storm clouds above, and reach up and part them, pushing them away so the sun can shine through to reveal our sins.

Sins? What sins? Don't you worry about that, Sundays are for learning about sins too. The family will help kids understand what everyone considers to be a sin, and then, though they may not be perfect, they will learn we are all sinister. They will at least know what a sin is so they can avoid the sin and that will make them perfect, except that thinking you are perfect is also a sin.

So, we will soon see that it is a sin to think you are better than others, unless you don't sin, but you can't claim you are perfect because you haven't sinned, because that also would be a sin. You have to sin before you can be perfect, but as you are always a sinner you can't be perfect. However you can think you are more perfect than others who don't know they sin, or who sincerely enjoy sinning.

What are sins? Another good question. The short answer is that sins are what keep you from being perfect. The long answer depends on what others tell you are sins.

We are, however, interested in what makes people tell other people how to live, and thus avoid sins. Right? Of course we need to know what sins are, so we ask mother and father, and hope we get an answer we can understand.

Mother, and father, if he is awake, will tell us about sins by looking them up in a book.

In the book are the Ten most popular ways to not sin, plus other things you are not to do which are said to be abominations, and there are things to do which, if not done, might also be sins, except that gets confusing for adults, let alone kids.

The easiest way to tell people how to live their lives is just to stop them from thinking about anything other than what is written in the book. The difficulty is working out what is currently allowed to be a sin which can be punished under the Law of the Land, and what is a sin we can safely ignore, assuming the Law of the Land itself is not a sin.

Unfortunately, floundering Mommas and Fathers might not quite be able to relate to the difference between the laws of the state and the laws in their book. They demand obedience from their kids who might otherwise question their parents' interpretation of said book, or worse, might question the authority of the book itself.

This can lead to disruption in the family, leaving the parents in the aforementioned state of having to gently reprove their children, and if that doesn't work, they can then belt the living daylights out of the kids when they didn't do as they were told.

If the kids respond positively and submit to the parental demands, they will have learned that to stop sinning, you get violent. This is a great lesson, often learned on any day of the week, and one which can inspire the children to be confident in the way they help other kids at school to cope with life, usually by berating them and trying to impose their parents' methods. They violently bully these kids into thinking that they are sinners, or some kind of abominations that are the cause of all the gathering storms.

On the otherhand, with a little bit of luck, some heathen hedonist schoolmate, whose pagan parents are free-thinking lovers of life, may make the sun shine, liberating the mind of the bully to accept diversity, relax, take the day off, go to the recreation of their choice without feeling guilty about who they are; in the realisation that sin is a state of mind, nothing more than a concept enforced on them by primitively superstitious religious zealots, stuck in the belief that marriage is only between a man and a woman for the purpose of controlling their spouse, and everyone else; of extending a cultural dark age into humanity's future.

I'd rather tell people to love each other, than impose conditions on whom they should love, and if that upsets Zealots on Sundays then we can shout (lovingly)

“Things are getting better!”