About The Book

And how weird was that? You see, we were always told three things in the Catholic church. One: God is everywhere. Okay, can accept that. Two: God is Omnipotent. Okay, that’s a little harder to get. First as children understanding what the word ‘omnipotent’ meant was the big hurdle. ‘Knows everything’. Which tied in with number Three: God is watching you. Then he already knew! If you got caught doing something you shouldn’t, what was the problem? If he already knew, then according to them, ‘He’/’She (just to keep everyone onside) would put a black mark against your name in the book of judgement. According to the mother superior at one of her schoolyard admonishments, “The ‘book’ that really mattered”. Don’t even try as a child to understand that concept. Now I had the big book of nursery rhymes as a child and it was pretty big. It was fairly hard to even lift off the shelf when I was little. So, for a child to think of how big the book of judgement must be? It would have to be a pretty huge book.

If you think of all the bad people who would get marks, for a start. How many marks they would take? And then, if you applied that to the local church (Even the good people were bad sometimes). Then add in the town, then to the province/state and then, the entire country? And that was just our country. And New Zealand (where we were raised) was a little country according to the world map. Can you image, just how ‘ginormous a book such as the book of judgment must be? And where did God get the paper? How many trees were chopped down to make that book? You would need a whole planet just to grow the trees. And another curious thought I had when I was going to school and the book of Judgment was brought up? I mentioned it would have to be able to take refills. That did not go don very well with the nuns. Almost as badly as my asking if God had to write JMJ (Jesus, Mary and Joseph) in the top right corner of every page like we did.

But it seems many of the priest, nuns (particularly with swinging admonishments - and not the ‘hip’ 1960’s kind of swinging), as well as our parents and often strangers (particularly the nosey ‘church widows’). All of them seemed to be trying to ensure we would not get black marks against our names in the book of judgement. But where was the scale to work out how serious a black mark was? Okay, we Catholics had the ‘Ten Commandments’ (as mentioned before. They were meant to be the big ones. You were going to Hell if you broke one of those. But even the commandments are inconsistent. From not coveting your neighbours wife, if you do, a black mark? Nope, that’s a big one, straight to Hell. Not honouring your Mother or Father. Yep. Straight to Hell for that one too. Let’s be honest. That commandment had to be written by a parent? Maybe for this blog I’m already down at one of the lower levels of Hell (if I believed in religion or Dante’s Inferno)

(Continued Tomorrow)