The TOO CHARITABLE, GENEROUS, ( REPENTENT SINNER ) SYNDROME,

This syndrome is much more common than we imagine. It's where the person has some suppressed, hidden memory of guilt so strong from his own past (and this could even, hypothetically be in a past lifetime, another incarnation,)  that in current life, they tend to cut people way too much slack, be too generous. They give of themselves almost religiously. They are penitent sinners in fact.

Christian values try to tell us that no amount of charitability and generosity is too much. I'm not so sure. Recently a used book vendor online didn't notice my emailed order of 7 books on a FRIDAY just before a weekend. By Monday she got to it. She told me she was so repentent that she hadn't noted my letter Friday that she was sending me the books for free.

I immediately wrote her back and said you have unresolved childhodo guilt issues. I'll pay for the books, let's talk.

I told her of an old Dr. Pat Allen rule which I observe scruputlously in my life....now when it's too late. It is this: that a good man GIVES and a good woman takes!

There's a wonderful novel by prize-winner LEON URIS called QBVII about a Nazi doctor who did terrible crimes in the concentration camps. Once out of Germany, he goes to London and becomes a charity doctor.
The man gives every hour of his day to the poor, taking no money. Expiation, no doubt about it. A Hollywood screenwriter writes up his story, indicts him and the doctor sues him. Now we see the life of the writer, mistresses, alcohol, sin, cheating on his wife, a real loser. The novelist sitting in judgement was worse than the Nazi is the novel's point. I think.. I only saw the Mini Series made of it which caused a stir as the screenwriter had found that theme in the novel. In the furor it turned out Leon Uris had not made the writer a bigamist. The screenwriter who adapted Uris' novel was a bigamist himself.  So that the subtext of the Mini-Series became 'sin is ok as long as the sin is  not murder.'

But that's when I learned about too scrupulous, guilty conscience ex cheats. Now I wonder why I didn't take the vendor's offer of free books. What am I guilty about?

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