The Beard returns... allegedly...

And so it came to pass that the semi-retired Beard found that not working meant that he actually had less time to digress than he had before... which shows more than anything how easy his job at the Co-op was... but redundancy has now followed up on its heinous threats to the Beard and Mrs Beard and both are now at the vague and tenuous mercies of the temp agencies... which is nice...

And to be honest, the lovely Mrs Beard is indeed loving her new found freedom, looking forward to furthering her already more-advanced-than-the-Beard education at Doncaster University, where she is entering into one of the caring professions... meanwhile a variety of jobs has been taken up, including one which ocasionally featured free beer... which was a bonus...

The Beard on the other hand found that after losing a job delivering furniture, he has found some small amount of work writing... which readers of this blog will find strange indeed... on top of this, he has had a complete change in career, and has spent much of the last six weeks... delivering furniture... but I digress...

Temp work seems to be the thing of the future, which may be no bad thing... especially for those employers who can't be bothered to pay for permanent staff... but hey ho, as the saying goes... of course, doing temporary driving work gives lots of time for thought and listening to the old wireless, or the new radio, whichever is fitted....and recently on the Jeremy Vine show, there was a piece about a poor organist who was beaten to death on Christmas eve...

What struck the Beard about the whole thing were two things... first, that the man's wife is being criticised for forgiving the men responsible, which is, after all, what any Christian should do... after all, does the Bible not state that defying God is the biggest sin of all, and did not the Christian God issue instructions to forgive? It reminds me of a parable that my Curate once told me, and I repeat here...

Two men went up to Jesus, asking for forgiveness for their sins... the first man was weeping, and told Jesus that he had murdered a man... the second looked horrified at this, and said "at least I'm not as bad as he is! I've sinned several times, hundreds to be honest, but they were only little sins..." Jesus told them each to go and get rocks that symbolised their sins.. the murderer returned with a rock almost as big as himself... the other man with a bag of small stones... "Excellent," said Jesus... "Now, forgiveness follows repentance, and repentance is putting back your sin... so go back, and put each rock back EXACTLY where you found it..."

Now the point our Curate was making was that to God a sin is a sin...and that many small sins are harder to forgive than one big sin... I took it to say that God had no sense of proportion.. after all, according to the Bible, repentance is everything... so a person who steals a pencil, then never even feels bad about it is damned... whereas a multiple murderer who truly repents will be saved...

So the organist's wife is on the right track...she is obeying her God, and more power to her.. if more so-called Christian behaved in such a way, maybe the world would be a better place... maybe... also, forgiveness can be cathartic... by forgiving these men, she is telling them that what they did is not going to ruin her life, that she is not going to allow them to have power over her... she is, in essence showing all and sundry taht she is a better person than they are.. which reminds me of something i overheard a Christian friend of mine say about a man who had attacked her... she was being asked, "What if he sits in prison, turns to God, and begs for forgiveness?" To he rcredit, she said "If he finds God in prison, that will be great.. if he doesn't, fair enough... but either way, if he wants to come to my church, I'll make sure everyone welcomes him..." And there are very few like that among the church goers I know...

The other thing that struck me was that everyone seemed to think that the attackers had no reason to attack the organist... when it is obvious to me that they did... I think people are just reluctant to admit what that reason was...

Nobody does anything without having some reason for doing it... if anyone says otherwise, you are reducing people to automata, unthinking machines who cannot therefore be blamed for their actions... these men, and thousands of others, had what they thought at the time was a very valid reason for beating a man to death... they thought about it, weighed the upside against the downside, then deliberately chose to do it... not to rob him, not because he had harmed them, but because they thought it would be fun... they thought, as they left the party they had attended, that the perfect way to finish the evening was to find someone and enjoy the act of beating him to death... and unless we admit that this was their reason, and that they found this to be a valid reason for their actions, we will never be able to stamp out behaviour such as this... why they thought it would be enjoyable, I have no idea.. but they did... and there are many out there who enjoy causing harm... battered spouses are not battered because they've done something wrong, they are battered because the person doing the battering enjoys it... and to make that choice, to choose to hurt someone else because you think you'll enjoy it, is possibly the most evil thing there is... it is a persons way of saying that they are more important than you, that you are there for their convenience, that you do not matter as much as their enjoyment of life... it is the supreme act of selfishness, and it is, in the truest sense of the word, evil.. but it is not senseless, it is not motiveless, and it is not without reason...

But the hour grows early, and I grow disgruntled... and, knowing that this is now not the place for humour, I shall put none down.. but I will say, all your choices are your own, and hopefully one day, we will all learn to make the right ones... but until that day, Wisebeard salutes you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!