In my experiences in the first seventeen years of my life, show that the cultural perception of God and Hell in Berkshire county come and go with necessity. The economic system of capitalism makes it hard to go through life without sinning. To make money or capital you must make sacrifices to be successful. One often forgotten sin, which for many businessmen could be their downfall, is to not be baptized. This sin causes you to be trapped in Limbo for all eternity and not be able to get into Heaven. "As soon as Dante's strength returns, the Poets begin to cross the FIRST CIRCLE. Here they find the VIRTUOUS PAGANS. They were born without the light of Christ's revolution, and therefore, they cannot come into the light of God, but they are not tormented. Their only pain is that they have no hope."(Alighieri, 49) Many companies have been under the spotlight in our time such as Enron for financial fraud. This is most certainly a sin, since the sixth commandment the Catholic interpretation of the Ten Commandments states; "thou shalt not steal."(Jesus-is-Lord).
As the societal need to sin has come and gone it has allowed other sin, to take place under the name of God, which is completely absurd. For example in the sixteenth century heretics were burned at the stake in the name of God, but their souls would have already had a place in Hell after they died. What I am wondering is, if the people forced themselves to sin in the name of God to rid themselves of a certain heretic, would the two sins, the one of the heretic and that of the people who burned him at the stake, cancel each other out? If we still had the restriction of the norm of society believing in sin then the advancement of our culture and technology would have been so hindered that we would not have achieved our present state. Personally I cannot be sure of this, but it seems like the Holy Grail, as well as being a great movie, was just an excuse to explore and conquer the Middle East.
