Dear Phantom 6 - Over-Privileged

Dear Temple,

Why are you making it sound as if I’m under-privileged just because I didn’t get as much attention once my brothers were born?  I’m not under-privileged.  The problem is that I’m over-privileged!  My dad says by global standards, if you get to eat every day, it means you’re rich.  I don’t just have a house to live in, safe water to drink, and three meals a day, but I even live in a country where everyone gets education and medical care for free.

So I’ve had more good things than I deserve, and I’m going to be punished for it.  Jesus says, ‘Woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort.  Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will hunger.’  In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, it doesn’t say the rich man goes to hell for not helping Lazarus, just that he goes to hell for having already had all his good things.

I don’t know why Christians are supposed to say thank you before meals, when we’re going to go to hell for having food to eat.  By arranging for me to be born into a family where I had enough to eat, God was saying He had already arranged for me to go to hell, no matter what I do. 

I think God is evil to set things up like this.  But when I said that once to my mum, she was shocked.  She said that when God had given me so many good things, it was appallingly ungrateful of me to spit in His face and say I thought He must be evil.  I don’t know why we have to be grateful to God for giving us things that He is going to punish us for having been given.  But I know I’m a bad person for not being grateful, and it’s probably because I’m spoilt and over-privileged that I think like this.

In primary school – the one I went to from when I was six to when I was eight – we had to sing ‘Little Boxes on the Hillside’ in Assembly.  As far as I could make out, it was saying, ‘If you’re middle-class and you live in a boring mass-produced house, it means you’re a boring mass-produced person with no mind or soul of your own, and if you work hard in school and go to university and get a job that means you can help other people, like being a teacher or a doctor, it means you’re a pathetic sell-out.’ 

I didn’t understand why teachers wanted us to sing songs like that, if they think that is what school does.  I don’t know why they become teachers, if that’s what they think.

Another one we had to sing in Assembly was ‘Streets of London’.  So while ‘Little Boxes on the Hillside’ told us, ‘If you go to school, it means you’re trapped in a box and there’s no hope for you,’ ‘Streets of London’ told us, ‘But you’re not allowed to complain about feeling sad and lonely, because there are lots of people who are worse off than you, people who literally sleep in boxes, so just shut up!’ 

It doesn’t seem fair, but I suppose that’s because I’m over-privileged.  I don’t really matter, because being middle-class means I’m not a real person anyway.  Sometimes people at school call me ‘Lady Muck’, which I don’t understand because I wash and I use deodorant, but I suppose they say it because my voice sounds posh.

My mum says I shouldn’t let myself get trapped by what the secular Left thinks about money and class.  But it isn’t just what the secular Left thinks.  It’s what Jesus thinks as well, except that he wants to send us to hell instead of just chopping our heads off.

Yours,

Phantom of the Library