Anything that strengthens love is good

"Let our differences then be simply cultural and local, not cosmic nor eternal". Outside my house when I lived in Kolkata, eastern India, I would see the annual self-flagellation of Muslim men on the street opposite the school gate.

Some simply beat their breasts with their fists, and I discovered it's ok the first couple of times, but then it gets sore and sorer. And they keep doing it. I admired them.

A little bit of reflection, and I recognised that such major religions as I know all have a thing towards penance – fasting, pilgrimages to difficult places, abstention from usual food and drink favourites, wearing of penitential clothes, things to do with hair, and special prayers.

For many the whole year was a time of recurring penances with different intentions. Christians were not prominent in this respect, though Lent was a time prescribed for it. I felt a bit guilty, being a Christian myself.

Whether my eventual conclusions about it were, are, valid I am not sure, but this is what I now think. I think it is good and it is, well, if not bad, not very healthy in other ways.

What's good about it is, the practitioner feels good about her/himself for doing it, for having done it. Others praise her/him, and that's good.

The performer feels that her/his relationship with God, however named, is enriched. Others, religious leaders especially, will endorse this idea. All good.

On the side, the practitioner is learning and practising self-control, self-discipline, and may very well be doing her/his body a big favour.

The social dimension is of course very important, doing penance that everyone else is sharing is a very bonding experience, and anything that strengthens love is good.

However, I am uncomfortable with it as a practise.

It seems to me to be a relic of a time when gods and goddesses, and then kings and queens, had to be appeased and the offender to perform some difficult task, or be tortured for some time, for causing royalty such displeasure. School children still suffer it in many countries.

An extension is that many undertake it voluntarily even today as somehow making up for some breach of propriety. And then the offended party is somehow divine, no less. We're back to gods and goddesses.

Bonding with my co-religionists

So, the offence has a special name, sin. Society demands restitution, in some form. One is penance.

Where I get uncomfortable is the rationale. My making myself uncomfortable consoles an offended deity.

Indeed, I am one who by simply being a human being constantly offends the deity. I am defined by being such an offender, more commonly known as a sinner.

Culpable and consequently in line for punishment. And the deity's representatives, by virtue of their being such, are empowered to impose and/or administer the punishment.

What's more, failure to obey puts one in line for further punishment, and if persisted in, in line for eternal and more terrible punishment still. So there! Do what we tell you!

Now as it happens I do a few little things 'for Lent', ie, I choose to eat less or do some petty 'penance' in the weeks before Christmas. And with close Muslim and Hindu friends I talk about all this.

When I was younger it used to be smoking or beer or such. We're all on pretty much the same page.

It seems to me to be an exercise in self discipline, like rising promptly when that cock crows or whatever.

I somehow need to be aware that I can make choices against my feelings. Where I balk is when someone says I must. Thou shalt.

Bringing the deity into it is, as I see it, serious defamation of character. Such god as I subscribe to, no doubt as obscure as anyone else's, is certainly not of penitential orientation.

It is petty, irrational, insulting, ridiculous.

Some other day I might dwell more on this, but for now I am just saying let's all do our various penances, but only as choices towards healthy self discipline, and then as a bonding with my co-religionists, which is what religion is ultimately about: mutual bonding, not condemned criminals.

Let our differences then be simply cultural and local, not cosmic nor eternal. Let's be adult, sane, human.

Brendan MacCarthaigh is a Christian Brother from Dublin working in India for over 50 years,
mostly in Value Education with senior classes and teachers.