Frankly the concept of sin should have been “left alone” – actually flung into the garbage heap of history along with the religion that was its greatest vehicle – long ago. As it is I do not believe that it is being left alone at all; rather, judging by the fact that the Vatican could issue a whole new list shows how much it is being rejuvenated (to say nothing about the growing fundamentalism that has taken hold of US society and politics)

Of course some bible-waving Imixers are going to recoil at what I say; they always have. It is a testimony to the thoroughness of mental enslavement through Western/Arabic culture MANIFESTED through religious ideas that, in this so-called age of information, we as Caribbean people have done very little research and deconstruction of many religious beliefs that were imposed upon us. Of course the same goes for certain cultural, economic and political assumptions we hold here.

Now me eh want to sound like I on some superior high horse like dat eh, cause I mihself, in spite of rejecting a lot of these beliefs over the years was still jolted as I was researching material for my book recently. Looking at ancient matricentric cultures and cultures that worshipped the concept of a Divine Mother, one of the first things that became apparent was their lack of a concept of sin. To be more preceise, their lack of any elaboration of sin and the idea that mankind is inherently sinful. There is no concept at all of an original sin and piecing together arguments advanced by scholars like Cheikh Anta Diop, Gerda Lerner, Wendell Watters, Barbara G Walker, Marimba Ani and Marilyn French, I realised that this notion of sinfulness in Christian philosophy has very little to do with any god. Rather, it has more to do with a deeply pessimistic and fatalistic ideology that began among patriarchal pre-Christian European tribes in response to the extremely harsh climatic conditions that was their reality many thousands of years ago.

In other words, it is believed, and it is a belief that I share, that this notion of sin is tied into very primitive ideas of what I call the ethic of worthlessness and self-contempt. The hostile wintry climate of ancient Eurasia that saw very little food anywhere, an ever present threat from rival tribes and predatory animals, made every day a literal fight for survival. This led to a collective introspection that was steeped in self-contempt, lack of sentimental attachment to most things and simply became their view of the world around them. This pessimistic view evolved into the solitary, suffering, wandering heroic figure in Greek, Jewish and Christian literature and became the influence for the tragic theme in Greek literature and the valuated ideal of suffering and sinfulness (in constant need of redemption and atonement) in Judaism and Xianity.

Even more serious for us in the Caribbean is the way this concept has been manipulated to maintain passive conformity among exploited persons during enslavement, colonialism and now post-colonialism. But like ah did say, nobody eh discussing nothing, we only unthinkingly accepting and regurgitating certain things like they is foregone conclusions. It eh have no serious culture of reading and critical thinking in the Caribbean (I often feel Trinidad is the worst example of this) and especially when it come to religion. Nothing eh change over the years, only faces and the level of sophistication of religious exploitation. So I’m sorry but my response to the latest list of “sins” is pretty much the same for the old one: Pope/pastor/bishop-whatever, go f**k yuhself.

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