this may be a guy thing… but i’m not convinced [it’s just more underworld with the ladyfolks but maybe there will be a brave one or two to confirm? hmm?] but it goes a little something like this…
when i fart it is cool. when you fart it is gross or creepy.
when i pick my nose it is cool. when you pick your nose it is disgusting and gross.
now i can’t claim to have a particularly higher grade or haute couture brand of gas or snot… i mean i’d like to think that, but i’m pretty sure it’s the garden variety type… so there has to be something else going on here… and i suspect it is a matter if contextual perspective.
because it is me, i am okay with it…
which is very similar to sin… my sin not so bad, yours pretty gross, disgusting and unacceptable…
i imagine as long as i view life like that i will see myself as better than you.
i will see my sin as less needing attention and dealing with and speaking out and walking away from.
i will think yours hurts me a lot more than mine hurts you.
and probly a bunch more, but that’s enough to work at for starters.
practically it plays out differently because i can just make sure i am all alone when i engage in fart and snot and be able to be okay with it because it is mine…
my sin however, is a complex entanglement of private and public, internal and external, obvious and creatively subtle and i suspect is never solely mine.
that is all.
I totally agree with you about the “my farts don’t smell as bad as yours do”. It’s the same action (sin), but it seems more familiar when we do it, so it doesn’t seem (or smell) as bad. Recently started sharing a flat with a friend of mine and this kinda struck home while I was reading it (the whole your farting is gross and mine isn’t).
[…] i can say what i want to say. and while this may feel more noble than the previous one [after all, we tend to think our brokenness always smells sweeter than our neighbors] what i am subtly suggesting is that “what i have to say is more important than what you have […]