Parable

“In a small village in Mexico there was a Catholic priest, middle-aged and well-loved, admired by all the people in the town. One day he woke up to find that he had lost the faith, and no longer believed in what he had dedicated his life to. But he knew the village could not afford to replace him, and continued to lead and counsel them religiously for the remainder of his natural life. No one ever suspected that his teachings were not heartfelt.”

The person who told me that story was trying to encourage me to have a “fling” with a girl I would only be in contact with for that week and then never again. It was, he told me, the allegorical example of “justifiable hypocricy”—there was that little scrap of dishonesty at the center, but everyone involved was happy and got what they wanted, so why not?

I wasn’t convinced, then. The shallow reason (which I quickly provided him) was that the girl in question was insipid, not the type one imagines having a fling with.

The deeper reason was that unlike the priest in the story, I would have no reprieve of death at the end of my deception. I would have to go on with that knowledge, and it felt like it would be a burden. I opted instead to disappoint the girl but retain my honesty.

Sometimes, though, I wonder.

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