Round robins - the final winner...

...came from cousin J, a relative by marriage. Not because it is entertaining or even mildly amusing, but because it has made me SO angry.

J is a Christian, a kind of preacher, a minister, a man who reckons he has a direct line to a God who will answer his every request. J's family are all well and flourishing, because the Lord looks after them. J did have a yacht (funds provided by the Lord), and now that he's had to sell it, guess what? The Lord has provided him with a nice little bolthole in the form of a flat overlooking a harbour Yes. That's right. The Lord has given J a flat (I assume J had to pay for it himself with the funds from the yacht, but the yacht was provided by the Lord). So. People are starving, lonely, grieving, in terrible pain, suffering awful tragedies. Millions died in the Holocaust. But the Lord has time for a spot of flat-hunting.

Now, I am a Christian. Not a very good one. In fact, not at all a good one. I gossip, and I'm lazy, and I lost my virginity years before I was married, and was delighted to do so. In fact, I've been quite a Bad Girl in my time. So I'm not in the same league as J. But I don't expect God to provide me with yachts and flats, or even to protect me from disaster. I just hope he'll help me cope with whatever life happens to throw at me. I have frequent huge doubts (I don't think J ever has even one tiny one), and I am quite quite sure that that serpent never spoke to Eve in the Garden of Eden, and that a man in a boat, with only seven helpers, never managed to pack all those animals onto it to avoid the flood, and that no-one ever escaped unharmed from the belly of a whale (these are all held to be God's own truth by people like J).

So. J is the winner. Because of the staggering conceit of his awful, smug Round Robin.

Phew. I feel much better now.

PS If anyone is offended by this rant (and I know there are some very nice fundamentalist Christians), then I apologise. But as this is my blog (and of course you are very welcome to visit it), I feel that it is a place where I can express my own personal feelings. Please feel free to disagree.