JUST A THOUGHT ON - IF I WERE A MAN, OR, INDEED, WOMAN OF THE CLOTH, HOW WOULD I BE ABLE ...? PART.2

 

...to live with myself, if I were to find, or admit that have misled 'the flock'?  

No, I only had to think of a sinful act, be it of hitting my mother when she subjected me to the whip for some misdemeanour I had committed or  act of kindness I failed demonstrate.  

Or a now considered, innocent act of responding to the fire in my loins, by masturbating. 

As 'God' is said to be capable of seeing and hearing everything, it followed that my thoughts were never private. 

'God' would be privy to all of them and would, on the DJ, use them to condemn me. 

It is probably a testament to the resilience of the majority of innocent and vulnerable souls like me, that, even as a child, as a teenager and now as a man. 

I have not allowed this alien religious takeover of my head, my cogitations, my psychological functions, to take permanent root in my being.

So, how would I really feel is I were a man of the cloth and find out that I have been deceiving my flock? 

Something which might have happened, as there was a time in what now seem to have been a distant past, when I had harboured the aspiration of becoming a Christian missionary.

So easily could I have been faced with this dilemma of which I speak. 

And, it seems to me, that it is really the case that men and women 'of the cloth', of all theistic faiths, are, confronted with this dilemma, if they do give it serious consideration. 

Yes, I do believe, know, even, that these men and women cannot really think that they are not misleading, deliberately deceiving their folks. 

To not believing this to be the case, would be to seriously underestimate their intelligence and/or the ability of us humans to deceive ourselves in order to attempt to validate our beliefs and our vocations. 

I say this, because, it is clearly not the case that the clergy and religious establishments of the various theistic religions are not intelligent men and women. 

With many most likely much more intellectually gifted than I am. So, why would such women and men continue to, this I believe, lie to and deceive the faithful? 

To be continued!