When I was at school in Bangor, Northern Ireland, the Scripture Union used to have a notice board with details of upcoming events and motivational words of Scripture. Bang in the center one week, there was a poster of a table divided into two columns, labelled “good” and “bad.” In the “bad” list were the words pop music, discos, and, inexplicably, coffee shops. I think the poster was meant to be ironic, but I failed to see the humor in it, because sadly it reflected many of the notions of the time. As a young person, so many things were off-limits, and what was right or wrong seemed to change on a monthly basis. What constituted being a good Christian seemed so difficult as to be almost impossible and just everything seemed like a sin. I couldn’t bear to follow such a prescriptive list of rules: I didn’t want to feel like a bad person; as though I was failing ALL the time, and in the end, I gave up on religion completely for a few years.
Thankfully, I have now adopted a much more liberal approach to theology, and what is much more likely to keep me awake at night is the damage my generation and the one before it, have wreaked upon the environment. I constantly wonder how I can make my life choices more carbon neutral, and this is a minefield. Driving is bad, flying is worse. Eating fish is bad but meat is a disaster, and of course, our dependence on plastic is catastrophic. In the immortal words of Candi Staton, sometimes it makes me want to “throw my hands up in the air,” because it is all so exhausting. Frankly, unless I want to take my family to live off-grid, live on home grown vegetables, and make all our clothes from old pillow-cases, then once again, I feel like I am failing.
But maybe we don’t have to go to such extremes. Perhaps what the world needs is more imperfect environmentalists, making small changes every day; and more imperfect people of faith, finding a way to navigate through life in a way that brings comfort to themselves and others, instead of guilt-inducing dread. Nobody can get it right all the time, so what we need is more compassion; more acceptance. If we spend our lives feeling bad about ourselves, we limit our potential and our possibilities, and that in my opinion, and to quote the Pet Shop Boys, “is a sin.”
Helen McClements is a mother, writer and teacher from Belfast. She can often be heard on BBC Radio where she shares her musings on 'Thought for the Day'. In contrast to this, she writes a blog called www.Sourweeblog.com, where she unleashes her frustrations at juggling parenthood with work and the vagaries of life.
