Holy cow, how in the world do I even start with this one? This one is a tricky one. I'm not quite sure where I want to start with this one. There's a lot of tricky things to this one. Tricky, tricky, tricky. This one is all about morals, rights and wrongs, and trying to understand how you rationalize the small things that can build up to big things.
Considering that this is only the second in the series to this whole thing, I'm calling this one in and pushing it off on someone else and using a story of someone I know instead of myself.
The Miracle of Forgiveness
I served a full time mission in Sweden for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. For those that have never had this crazy experience, you have to understand that every missionary has a book of rules that they're expected to follow. The little white book stays in our pockets, and for two years it rules our lives.
It says wake up at 6:30 and exercise for a half hour - so if you sleep in and don't exercise, you're a sinner.
It says take a half hour lunch break - you take too long, you're sinning.
Your hair cut, the amount of time you sleep, the amount of time you study every day, who you can be with, what activities you can and can't do, and everything else in your life is regulated. Follow the rules, and you're a successful missionary even if everything else is falling in around you. You screw up, don't follow the rules, and you run the risk of getting sent home early and everyone at home knowing that you didn't do what was expected from you.
Every morning one missionary studies for almost three hours. One hour by themselves, one hour with their companion (the guy that they teach with and they have to be with at all times), and then a final hour full of studying nothing but the language that you're learning. The only down side to this is to think that every day you're putting in three hours of studying, and in a place like Sweden where you're not teaching anyone, you can't study whatever you're going to teach that day, you can just read whatever you want. The bad part about this is that you run out of books that you're allowed to read really, really fast.
On my mission I read the entire 'mission library' as a whole two times. There are some books in it (like the Bible) that I read cover to cover a few more times than just two. This gets boring fast, reading the same books, so some missionaries break the rules and get books that are 'good' books from the church, but aren't part of the missionary library.
Elder Wise (for two years you're referred to by Elder (or Sister for the ladies) and your last name, to this day I don't know what Elder Wise's first name is) was one of those people that decided to break the rule, and he read The Miracle of Forgiveness. The book is a heavy book, it pretty much levels out everything that you could possible do to sin, everything from sins to commission to sins of omission. From murder to lying about what you did during your day or not following the rules (like the mission).
The thing about this book is that even for the most well adjusted person, for the most saint like person you can find, it still rattles you making you obviously aware of everything wrong that you are doing sort of like when you have no clean clothes in the morning when you're getting ready and you wear a dirty pair of pants and you're so self aware of the small smudge on the knee that you're sure that everyone thinks that you were practically rolling in the mud before leaving the house that morning. The goal of the book is to say that even though that we're screwed and we make mistakes that there's a miracle of forgiveness that can get you past the mistakes that you're making, but most people get so depressed while reading that they don't make it to the happy ending to get them out of the depression, like Elder Wise.
Elder Wise was a well adjusted missionary. He wasn't over the top attached to the rules like some were, but he wasn't entirely flippant about them. It was, what most would consider, a healthy balance of understanding why the rules were there and living the spirit, rather than the letter of the law, but then he read the book.
In a period of only a few weeks, that book sent Elder Wise over the edge into paranoia and OCD. Now, those words get thrown around a lot in the world around us, and most people don't understand just what it means because there's so many fake versions of it. Somehow in the world that we live in the term OCD has become that you get slightly irked if there's a pattern of tile on the floor that doesn't repeat perfectly. Sadly, this wasn't the self diagnosed versions of those, something in that book snapped Elder Wise and broke him.
The after effects of that book scarred him. Because he was so worried about sins of omission where he thought that he could be sinning if he wasn't understood properly, or if he didn't make something clear. You'd ask him if he wanted to go out and grab a kebab wrap, and he'd say yes, and then follow it up with a half a dozen extra times of, "When I said yes, you understood that to mean that I said yes and I would like to go eat kebab with you, right?"
"Yes, Elder Wise."
"So, you understand that we're going to eat at tre kronor, right?"
"Yes, Elder Wise."
"And we're going to leave in a few minutes to get it, right? The kebab that is."
You wanted to think it was funny, that he was playing around, that he wasn't suddenly paranoid about the world around him, but then you'd catch him doing something a little too weird. He'd put away a book, and it had to be in just the right spot, and he'd check that spot at least four or five times just to make sure that it was still in the right spot. When we stood up to go get kebab he'd push in his chair, and then check the chair, check the book, check the chair, check the book, check the light switch (which he turned off) then back to the chair, book, light on, light off, and one last chair check.
The rules became gospel to him, and I really mean gospel. Wake up at 6:30? Yes, every single day, no questions asked. Lunch for a half hour? Of course. Stay even a minute too long during lunch or dinner? Absolutely not, because his goal was to be as perfect as possible, to live a life without sin, and it ruined him.
It debilitated him.
Trying to live without the small sins turned him from a functioning, funny, well adjusted teenager into a man who was paralyzed in fear. It's a great goal to leave sin from your life, even the small ones, but sooner or later you have to realize that in some ways those small sins keep you sane. So yes, I'm not perfect, but I've seen a person strive for perfection and it ruined him.
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