The Church never ceases to amaze many of us on what it sees as right and wrong. However, its recent quarrel with a telecommunications company about an artist’s depiction, of what he sees as the country’s cultural norms, on a telephone directory is particularly interesting. People dancing and having what they consider a good time apparently is not good taste with “acceptable morals”.

You know, the Church has the Bible that it tries to impose on the rest of us as the best guide to acceptable social morals. However, many of us would find some of the things in that book to be much worse than what is on the cover of that “disturbing” telephone directory cover.

The Bible is replete with what many today would find disturbing. Remember how the Church teaches our little children that the “good” God tried to force his faithful servant Abraham to sacrifice his son to him or how he tolerated Abraham’s cousin, Lot, in his desire to throw out his virgin daughters to that angry mob in Sodom and Gomorrah so that they could have their way with them?

Of course, one cannot forget how our children have always been taught that God, in his infinite mercies, zapped some children to a crisp with lightning, all because they, in their childish pranks, called one of God’s prophets “baldy”. Then there are those many cases, where generations of our children, have been taught how God, in his endless wisdom, cleansed the promised land of all “heathen”, by exterminating all men, women, children and even animals.

How about the baby Jesus, who is supposed to be the saviour of the world? For 2,000 years, children have been told how God took advantage of a young girl, perhaps by knowing her, in the biblical sense, who was no more than 14 or 15 years of age, to send his “only begotten son” to save the rest of us?

And what about his crucifixion? Generations of people have been brainwashed into believing that seeing a near-naked man nailed to a cross, with blood and other bodily fluids running all over the place, with people weeping, like crying is going out of style, as the best example of good morality. Indeed, the crucifix, with the dead and bloody saviour nailed to it, is Christianity’s most sacred object.

Of course, much of what the Bible has to say must be understood within their proper context, so I am not here supporting or condemning the book’s very odd teachings. However, what I am here saying is that what the artist did with the cover of these telephone directories must also be understood within its proper context.

One point that I would like to make, however, is the strange view of the Church, in that while it is concerned with the ease with which our children can get access to these directories, with their supposedly lewd covers, the Church has no problem with the ease with which our children can get access to any Bible, with accounts and descriptions, some represented in very graphic pictures, of scenes that are lewder and even more disturbing.

I think the church needs to get it priorities in order. Sure, while I must admit that I am no great fan of the drawing on those telephone covers, I really don’t see what the big deal is. Come to think of it, if I had a choice between that telephone cover and the Bible, I think I probably would rather keep my stomach from going sick and stick with the telephone book.

michael_a_dingwall@hotmail.com