What better place to have this thought occur to you than in church, and that’s exactly what happened to me recently. There I was sitting in my zone when my phone buzzed. It was a client who was going through a rough patch and was experiencing deep feelings of anxiety and separation. I was in a catch twenty two situation. Do I answer the message and avoid letting her dip deeper into her sorrow or do I send a quick ‘at mass will get back to you’. I chose the second option and yeah I know… it was the wrong decision, not the place for a glance at my phone, but the lip service I got for it was actually what got my brain working. There, seated beside me was this individual who walked in a good 20 minutes after the service began. She turns to me, aggression and anger all over her face and rudely says ‘is it that important?’ so I meekly say ‘ummmm, yes..’ and then I was told very pointedly to go outside as this was not the place. Agreed, totally my mistake, but the holier than thou attitude?
This is one incident that I was part of but there are currently a large number of individuals out there who fly off the handle at the blink of an eye to show how much of a degenerate you are in the face of religion as compared to them. My belief is and will always be that, religion is subjective to the believer and to be truly in sync with what we believe, we need to live the life we speak about. So why the holier than thou attitude? Again I ask. Could it be because we tend to have an over inflated view of ourselves or are we over compensating for what we lack? Are rituals the backbone of our existence or is being humane the way to a better tomorrow?
I may sound like a broken record here, but this is something we really need to think about!! Our country is going down a very dangerous path. Caste, creed, colour and religion don’t take away the basic freedom that we all have the right to enjoy. Why then is one religion considered to be superior and it’s doctrines to be more significant than those of the others? The sad truth is that we are way too quick to judge. We judge the way others behave, we judge the way they talk, dress, and look; even walk and talk!
This attitude goes slightly beyond religion as well. We come across individuals who float around with an air of supremacy. To the external world their demeanour is sweeter than sweet, or at least that’s what they think they are showing. They pretend to follow the rules and actually find ways to show supremacy through means that are underhanded. They choose their moments and try to always make sure they are at the right place at the opportune time with the ‘yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir’ line quick at hand. The spring in the step that accompanies the ‘I’m the king of the world’ individual seems like a propeller that sets them from one misdeed to the next, all with the goal of showing the world what they are not. But the holier than thou attitude is the icing on the cake, erected mightily like a smoke screen.
Our major issue lies in the judgemental race we have turned out to be. We wake up in the morning judging the birds that chirp, the sun that streams in through our windows, the people driving on the roads, our co-workers, employees and today shockingly even our spouses and children. Each one of us has this high and mighty little devil within us and some of us have forgotten how to tell it to take a walk. We are so invested in our own little bubbles that the world outside it seems futile and unworthy of our time and understanding. Is this the message we want our children to learn? Is arrogance a character we want them to imbibe? We need to let them know that humility and understanding are traits that make for a brighter tomorrow, that tolerance and equality are values that will propel our world forward and that being kind and considerate trump being… ‘Holier than thou’.
