wind ridden snow slides smoothly

breasts the white crested hill side

slithers exhausted to rest

my hand in warm glove shivers

“Every Man Is Guilty Of The Good He Did Not Do.”  It’s the topic for this Sunday’s sermon at a church I passed on the way to get my car serviced.  I was really happy when I realized that all the women in that congregation were free of guilt.  Then I wondered if, given the fact that all the men were already guilty, there was much incentive for them to do good.  It could be that the men in the congregation are actually more free to do less good.  I mean I have certainly given up trying to continue a post-holiday diet once I step on the scales on Monday morning of week two and find that I regained the three pounds I lost during week one of my new diet.  (Ok, I admit I am just giving myself permission in advance of the holiday binge not to get too excited, too expectant about the forthcoming 2009 post-holiday diet.)

Let’s stop that line of reasoning.  It seems rather arcane and convoluted.

I bet the church pastor will really advocate trying harder to do good.  If I were he, I would use the parable of the Good Samaritan as the Bible reading for the service.  I imagine that the pastor will point out, quite accurately, that we go through our daily lives and are often oblivious of good that we could do.  So we should try harder to be more aware of opportunities to do good.  And of course, we should do the good we become aware of.  Or else we men will become even more guilt ridden.  Perhaps to give the women in the congregation something to think about because they are not guilt ridden nor doing-good conflicted, the pastor might encourage them to teach their sons to be more aware of do-good opportunities.  That way they could help the next generation of men postpone their inevitable guilt for at least a little while longer – say into their mid-teen years.

Let’s stop that line of reasoning.  It’s rather arcane and convoluted.

The message here is pretty simple.  It’s about being guilty.  Guilt is to religion as Velcro is to clothing manufacturers.  Velcro binds your shoe sides together and has the added benefit that you never have to learn to tie a bow knot.  Guilt binds the devout to sin.  If one is not being good, then one gets stuck with sin.  Of course the danger underlying it all is that the sin-ridden guilty will not be pure enough to enter heaven and will spend eternity in hell.  If one skips the do-gooding attempts and simply does evil, then one is bound to suffer in hell anyway.    In Christianity – maybe just to make the game of life more challenging – all humans are born guilty of original sin.  So we men have to work like the devil to clean up our lives and become worthy of heaven.  And that brings us full circle back to the topic of the next Sunday’s sermon, being guilty of the good we men haven’t done.  This definitely seems pretty convoluted to me.

Personally, I don’t see the need for sin and guilt.  Original sin is just unnecessary overkill.  Getting through the day is challenging enough.  Where is it written that we cannot make choices unless they are based on fear of sinning? 

Suppose, for example, that I am driving behind a school bus and see the yellow warning lights begin to flash on the bus.  I know that means the bus is going to stop soon.  Kids will get out of the bus to go to their homes.  So I will have to stop and wait for the children to get safely out of the street before I drive onward.  I also know that I could perhaps get around the bus before it slows to a complete stop and switches on the red lights as it disgorges the school children.  However, I might not make it the around bus before an exiting child steps right in front of my speeding automobile.  Which is the wiser decision?

I think that is a big enough problem and a weighty enough outcome.  I can handle that OK.  (By the way, in this multiple-choice scenario, I am going for solution A: to stop the car and wait until the kids are off the bus safely and the bus turns off its lights.  Rationale?  My car does not have very good pick up so the likelihood that I could get around the bus before the kids can race in front of my car is minimal.  And, well, they are kids.  They know without any doubt that they are invulnerable.  It will be many years before they fully understand human frailty.)

But do I also need to worry about committing a sin – let’s be accurate here, adding another sin onto the rapidly growing load of original and acquired sin I am already carrying?  Can’t I just make a simple wise decision?  I really don’t feel the need of guilt in this decision making process.  I don’t need to spend extra time puzzling through whether it would be a big or small sin if I made an unwise decision.  I just need to hit the brakes, let the kids get on with their lives, and get on to wherever I was driving.

That’s simple and direct enough.  Not too arcane; not too convoluted.