You naughty little vicar

I am pretty cheesed off with a member of the clergy. For ages, I've been trying to get this said person, who lived next to me, to do something about the sodding great tree in one corner of his garden, which has begun to spread in front of my house. My last communication on this was with his wife, who assured me that "Oh yes, we'll get something done about that." It now emerges that the something done about the situation was to move away. Within three days of her promising action, they had buggered off.

I've always said this vicar looked shifty, he always seemed to be sloping around as if he had got something else on his mind rather than the Wrath of God. When he was conducting the wedding of a friend of one of my daughters, he coughed, sending a gobbet of sputum on to the floor of the church just in front of the happy couple. The vicar dealt with this by treading on the offending mucus. Yuck, dirty boy!

I could write tons on religion, religious faith, belief, God, gods, the unknown and so on, but just harking back to the shifty vicar, he has made me wonder how many members of the clergy really believe in God. I suppose what I mean is do they believe in God the way I think they ought to believe in God, which is not necessarily to say that I believe in God - I've got much more wishy-washy beliefs than that. Ultimately my feelings on religion are that it's fine if you can keep it to yourself and it doesn't make you want to go around converting people at gun or sword-point or with a huge pyre in the background to encourage them to sign up. But I also wonder how religions can have much validity if everyone considers their set of beliefs to be THE one to follow. I don't want to get too comparative, but if every faith says "Yes, we're the ones" doesn't that mean all the others aren't the ones, which means they can't all be right and might even mean that none of them are right.

Anyway, back to the shifty vicar and his, in my view, equally shifty wife, I'm sure as a signed up man of God he shouldn't go around dissembling and pissing off the neighbours. Isn't that in the Ten Commandments? And if it isn't, shouldn't it be?

Of course, if before leaving the shifty vicar set in motion whatever needed to be done to deal with the tree, then to some extent I take back what I've said. But I still think that thing about not pissing off your neighbours ought to be in the Ten Commandments.