YOU CAN’T BE SERIOUS Guilty as hell, my Lord

Features » You Cannot Be Serious!

Bernie Comaskey / 2011-01-21 10:04:55

I have good news and I have bad news. The good news is that you can forget about your money problems and it doesn’t matter a damn if you pay your mortgage or not.

The bad news is that the world is going to end this year: This is according to Allison Warden, the spokesman for a religious organisation in North Carolina - which apparently knows about these things. You may wish to write these dates down: The world will disintegrate on 21st October, but keep the 21st May free as well, because this is to be Judgement Day. These are Miss Warden’s own words: “It says there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. I imagine it will be quite devastating.” Janey Mac … devastation would appear to be in order alright.

Do you ever wonder as to how you will fare out on Judgement Day? This will be the day when “The Lord descends from the heavens” and calls us all to account. This column cannot recite all of the Old Testament … any of it, in fact; if we get a line right we are delighted, but if memory has any merit at all; this is the day when the sheep will be separated from the goats and the wheat from the chaff. This will be pretty serious stuff, folks, and it’s all about you. There will be no hiding place this time.

The Day of Judgement will be bigger than the Mahon Tribunal or the Nuremburg Trials. The public galleries will be full of people waiting there to see their enemies and anyone they do not like finally have all their dirty linen aired in public and get what is coming to them. But then, the blood will drain from faces, lips will quiver and hands will shake, when the realisation dawns that everyone there is listed to appear. Our names will be called by the Angel Gabriel, or whoever is acting court clerk on the day. Family, neighbours and friends will find out what we are really like – exactly what went on inside every head. Everything we ever did, said, thought, didn’t do, or wrote in a column, will come back to haunt us. Our school catechism left us in no doubt with regard to the seriousness of being placed on the left hand side. For such wretches, the opening words of the closing statement, “Depart from me ye cursed”, are enough to put the fear of God into any soul – albeit, it is by then a bit late in the day: just before the parting of the chaff from the wheat. Now, are you getting nervous, dear readers?

Personally, I am still Ok with the format – apart from the fact that, as “Bottler” says, “Yiz will all be lookin’ at me”, after my long list of misdemeanours are made public. I don’t wish to add to my significant list with the sin of ‘presumption’, by believing that I am going to the right-hand side on Judgement Day, but quite frankly, I’ll be fit to be tied if I don’t make the cut. Presumption or no presumption, I wager that most of the readers with enough good sense to follow this column will be there on the right-hand side. God is not going to send half the population to hell and enough marks for a pass will see us in.

Because our judge on that day will have an infinite love and understanding of the accused, we shall be judged differently from any court of law on Earth. How will this thing work, I hear you ask? There will be different rules for everybody. This will be the only just and fair hearing that any of us will ever have received. It is impossible to ever get a fair trial in a civil court of law on Earth. Don’t jump to any conclusions until you read on. One of my favourite sayings is; “It is impossible to hate if you know the other man’s story..” Here on Earth, if you come up before, let’s say, a circuit court judge or jury, nobody, other than yourself, knows what is in your head. Even with taking “mitigating circumstances” into account, there is normally a mandatory penalty handed down from the bench. Society needs the law and such penalties for our protection, but it is not ‘fair’ that two totally different people are judged by the same book. The guy born with an address from which he will never be college educated, or find a day’s work - and brought up in an environment where theft and drugs are rife, is sentenced maybe more harshly than the white-collar, greedy con-man who embezzles the life savings of his client. We are told that we reach the “use of reason” at seven years of age – so get on with it from there: But we are all born with different strengths and weaknesses and if we are to be judged fairly, should not our crimes be measured in proportion to that weakness – or rather what efforts we make to combat our unsavoury leanings? An alcoholic who steals a bottle of whiskey is different from a well-heeled woman in a supermarket, who drops the bottle into her hand-bag, for the “buzz” the theft will give her. The teenager reared on nothing but abuse is not as responsible for an assault, as is the rich bully who didn’t like the sound of his first “no”.

The final Day of Judgement will take all contributory factors into account; because how much of our free will is really free, and how much of what we do is inherited through human genetics? Don’t you sometimes see the same weakness in all the siblings of the same family? And why should we be surprised at this when clearly, physical features and outstanding abilities are also bred in families?

The truth of what each of us is is a mix of traits we inherited, environmentally influenced and a fair whack of the good old “luck of the draw.” Our genes start us off, but ultimately our experiences lead us to decide how far we want to go with such impulses, or where we want to stop along the way. It is on how we fight the bad impulses that we will ultimately be judged. Experts on DNA and genetics are now able to isolate genes which can tell whether we are likely to be alcoholic, violent, a sex maniac, or even fat. If a civil court of law in Ireland was to be fair, would it not take account of the ‘bad’ genes, before handing down a fair and balanced judgement?

This is why I am not too afraid of this Judgement Day – apart from the embarrassment of all the rest of you knowing about my peccadilloes … and “yiz all lookin’ at me”!

Don’t Forget

You will make a mistake if you judge a man by his opinion of himself.