Today I would like to talk about religion as a force of stopping certain people from doing bad things. As I mentioned in my previous post, I grew up in Montenegro and things there tend to work differently from here. Some orthodox priests take their jobs to save souls very seriously. Perhaps little bit too seriously.
In a small area in northern part of Montenegro, on the Serbian border, there is a place called “Crna reka”(black river) where sinners can go to get rid of their sins by being spanked with a shovel in the butt. The most common people who decide to go there are people with drug or alcohol problems. For them, it represents the last hope of salvation and acceptance in heaven. After confession with a priest, they go to a special room where the priest takes a garden shovel and hits them very hard as many times as sins they’ve committed.
This is an example of understanding Christianity in a physical way rather than intellectual. The act of committing a sin is countered by equally physical act.
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