The Lingering Burden of a Missionary

The Lingering Burden of a Missionary

My son sent me this in an email last week.

___________________

Happy Man

I was a very happy person. My wonderful girlfriend and I had been
dating for over a year, and so we decided to get married. There was
only one little thing bothering me. It was her beautiful younger
sister. My prospective sister-in-law was twenty-two, wore very
tight miniskirts, and generally was bra-less.

She would regularly bend down when she was near me, and I always got
more than a pleasant view of her private parts. It had to be
deliberate. She never did it when she was near anyone else. One
day her little sister called and asked me to come over to check the
wedding invitations. She was alone when I arrived, and she
whispered to me that she had feelings and desires for me that she
couldn't overcome. She told me that she wanted to make love to me
just once before I got married and committed my life to her sister.

Well, I was in total shock, and couldn't say a word. She said, "I'm
going upstairs to my bedroom, and if you want one last wild fling,
just come up and get me." I was stunned and frozen in shock as I
watched her go up the stairs. When she reached the top she pulled
off her panties and threw them down the stairs at me.

I stood there for a moment, then turned and made a beeline straight
to the front door. I opened the door, and headed straight towards
my car. Lo and behold, my entire future family was standing
outside, all clapping! With tears in his eyes, my father-in-law
hugged me and said, "We are very happy that you have passed our
little test. We couldn't ask for a better man for our
daughter. "Welcome to the family".

And the moral of this story is:


Always keep your condoms in the car.

______________________

This morning on our walk downtown Trudi, my wife, said she had told this to a group of friends she had lunch with. She said they all had a good laugh. I was surprised she thought it was a joke. Then she explained to me that the guy was going out to get a condom from his car, not leaving in commendable rectitude.

In my exaggerated concern with the morality of every action I was incensed by the idea of this test of loyalty. I was condemning the family and completely missed the whole idea of the joke.

It is just such an exaggerated idea of morality that keeps getting me all worked up about all sorts of actions that would be better approached with measured reason.

Americans, along with most other nations, have an exaggerated sense of self rigorousness. We hold our political leaders to a much higher standard of personal morality than we hold ourselves while ignoring the true evil of their greed and hubris and obsession with power. Maybe if I would just walk out to the car every time I am faced with the temptation of following my propensity of ranting I would be spared the opprobrium of over indulgence. But then I wouldn’t be a missionary any longer.