Pious Neglect

I'm getting pretty tired of piety. Far, far too often folks uses their damn beliefs and faith to shine up their very special own person while leaving the rest of the world to go to shit.

This morning for instance, well, it's a Sunday. The Chaplain, good Lutheran that he is, has gone off to church to shake hands with the big officers and the big officers' wives. The Chaplain's Assistant, God fearing Catholic, he rounded up a van and took seven or eight Papists over to early Mass. Niether one of them's back yet, and it's not clear whether or not either one of those Christ-carriers are coming back today.

So good for them, living their beliefs even under the stress and hussel and bussell of a military deployment. But oh wait, dear reader, dear friend, what's this? I've got several hundred other soldiers who would like to go to church, get some worship, all that fun stuff, but no arrangements have been made. No vans have been scheduled, no Chaplain's come down here with his ridiculous little communion kit, no fucking Moody Bible College educated E-3 is setting up his little Bible study. Oh no.

For the sake of their piety, the Chaplain and the Assistant are off ignoring the needs of the great mass of nobodies in this unit, all the lower enlisted kids whose dreams are rarely greater than the purchase of a new Xbox game or the consumption of a cheap beer. Now, these kids are not glamorous or beautiful, or always terribly interesting, I guess, to a great Chaplain out there chasing the big W Wisdom and doing the big W Work of God, but dear reader, these kids do their jobs. They take care of their responsibilities, even here on Sunday morning. The whole damnable unit rides on their job-doing backs, and how do they get repaid on a fine Sunday morning?

They get repaid with the Chaplain's pious evasion of his job. They repaid by being informed if not by word, at least by action, that no matter how hard they work, they are still not worthy of the attention of the Chaplain, that no matter how hard they work, the Chaplain's individual need to go to church somehow outweighs their collective never for contact with the divine.

And they remember.

Comments

[Irene M.]

What a jerk. I hope Karma comes back and bites him in the ass.