I was thinking this morning about how people say the Bible has been altered and tweaked and how now there is confusion about meaning and intent.
I wrote this little story this morning with that in mind, thinking about how it is human nature to utilize slippery slopes and lame excuses to our moral detriment.
I am particularly pleased to share this because I feel that it is a valuable, thought-provoking tool for everyone, whether one has a religious faith or not, because it addresses the moral issue of following spirit of the law as opposed to letter of the law.
It Wouldn’t Be Fair!-A Kafleen the Donkey Allegory
“DO EAT THE BOSTON CREAM PIE IN THE FRIJ!”
said the note on the refrigerator when they returned home from school.
They gathered round it and stared at the obvious handwriting of their
father. They were hungry, foraging for snacks, and that pie beckoned
like a lusciously-dressed siren.
“DOOOO EAT THE BOSTON CREAM PIE,” Evelyn repeated in a
chant-like tone, her nose close to the note, eyes crossed, bugged out, as though scrutinizing closely.
They sniggered wildly.
Obviously, they knew deep down, father had somehow accidentally
omitted the “NOT” in his haste-perhaps to go to the grocery store?-as there was not much in the refrigerator.
The exquisitely made-with-mother-love pie beckoned sweetly.
“Frij,” snickered Adam. “What’s a frij? Makes no sense!”
“Sounds obscene, even,” Another added.
They tittered nervously, staring at the pie. Its chocolaty goodness
seemed almost to vibrate.
“There’s one in the REFRIGERATOR,” one of them said. IT must be a
DIFFERENT pie,”
and,
“Couldn’t hurt to sniff it…”
The BC pie was carried to the counter. Their noses and eyes scrutinized it closely.
Tittering, commenting and questioning snarkily, they circled the pie like hyenas.
“It DOES demand that we eat it!”, the Other said. “And we SHOULD
be obedient children!” (nervous twitters again) “How FAIR would it be if we were punished for following the instructions?” (hands on hips, huge
innocent eyes punctuated this line of logic)
After a period of similar justifications, they soon found themselves picking at the pie.
They weren’t really eating it. Just …testing it. Why, if something brushed against it in the refrigerator, or fell on it, accidentally, the same marks
could have been made.
“Hell,” said one, “might as well have a SLICE now.”
They were almost finished with their innocent law-abiding deed, the pie
plate empty, their stomachs full, when their father suddenly appeared in the kitchen, groceries in hand, the smell of their favorite take-out dinner
food guilty pricking at their full stomachs and empty consciences.
Their smeared, chocolate faces stared in horror, frozen, mid-bite, at his furious, shocked, hurt, and disbelieving face.
Scalding, hot shame now ran through their bodies. Not a single voice
dared look in that face and smartily cry, “But you told us to do it!” Deep
inside their guilt swam boiling through their veins.
There was hell to pay.