at the pub

Rob says: "As far as I can see, the problem with a lot of religions is this: it's like in that film, Dogma, where the guy says that some religions mourn their faith and other religions celebrate it. The way I see it, most religions have figured out that God is up here-"

He waves his hand at about chest level.

"-And human beings are all the way down here."

He slaps his hand on the table.

"Now. The difference is that some religions see it as oh, dude, what a drag, we're all the way down here and God's all the way up there and we can never measure up to his greatness...shit... Other religions see it as well hang on, we may be all the way down here but there's this guy all the way up there who's on our side and wants to look after us. SWEET!"

Then there's some beer on his part and some cider on my part and we continue.

I say: "The way I see it is that yeah, human beings are probably inherently evil. We're basically inherently a bit rubbish and the point of our existence is to get past that, to become less rubbish. In theory, as society has progressed, we've become less and less rubbish. We're slowly learning not to shit on each other and we've got stuff like charities and the welfare state and Make Poverty History...we're learning to combat our inherent shiteness."

Then we both say: "So that's the point of it then, to be less rubbish. The whole point of life is to go against the part of us that is selfish and me-me-me and try and improve upon what we started with. Like animals. All animals have that self-preservation instinct, the unconscious desire to stay alive as long as possible. That's what makes humans different. We have the choice to go against that instinct and choose to preserve each other instead."

And Rob says something that makes me think: "That's basically what everyone is trying to do. Every religion, every moral code and belief system has been about this - trying to get upwards. Religions are trying to get closer to God. He's up there and we've all kinds of different ladders and shit and we're all trying to shimmy up to reach him. Going against human shiteness is part of that, it's trying to get up there, trying to get somewhere better."

About then, I remember being told that sin is as simple as not doing the right thing. If you could have chosen a more righteous course, you should have, and that's as complicated as it gets. Doing anything that drives you away from God is a sin. Putting anything before God is a sin.

Anything that sends you shimmying the wrong way down that ladder. Anything that pushes someone else down theirs. That's what we're not supposed to do. And I'm like, yeah, that makes sense. There's no such thing as good or bad Christians, just obedient ones. Thanks for that, Rachel.