Modesty Forbids

As with Christian charity and its persistent non-application to infidels, blasphemers, shirkers and Christians of the wrong denomination, Christian humility has always been a conditonal sort of business. Even so prodigal a fount of hypocrisy as the Church of England demonstrably finds it difficult to maintain a modest façade while preaching faith in an omnipotent deity who takes a personal interest in preparing one for eternal life and who conveniently happens to share one's more uncharitable opinions about women and gays. Nevertheless, councillors in the Cornish town of St Austell have been surprised to receive an epistle from local church leaders claiming to know the mind of God. The pretext for this particular orgasm was a piece of public art, a thirty-seven-foot ceramic totem pole pinned in place by a plastic sword; the source of the holy men's indignation is its title, intended to celebrate that Earth which the God of Genesis supposedly thought rather good. However, the Earth's designation as a female risks hinting to the Deity that His attentions may not be required: a position which is "offensive to God" and which will presumably be credited with whatever plagues, floods, poverty and other manifestations of divine benevolence should happen to smite the town of St Austell, the county of Cornwall, the nation of England and Creation at large over the next few decades. One of the town councillors responded with a quotation from St Paul, who was humble enough to claim no more for his faction than possession of the mind of Christ. Whether this citing of Scripture for the devil's purpose has had any calming effect remains as yet unclear.