Sermon of the Day: Lying and Taking Bribes is Bad

Last Friday’s sermon was another twofer.  The topic of the first informal message was lying and the topic of the ritual sermon was bribery.

The preacher started by lamenting the fact that lying is all too common in the community and gave a couple examples of what he had in mind.

First, he described a situation where someone borrows money from a friend and then keeps saying that he’ll pay the money back very soon even though that’s highly unlikely.  The preacher said it would be much better for the man to be honest with his friend and say that he’s having a tough time and will pay the money back as soon as he can rather than making empty promises.

Second, he mentioned that it was sinful for a parent to promise a reward to his or her child for getting good grades in school but not to follow through.  I thought that was an interesting example, partly because it might be a stretch to call that lying, and partly because Turkish parents often get blamed for not doing enough to encourage their children to study and take an interest in school.

The ritual sermon was on bribery, and I found a copy of the sermon on the website of the Turkish Directorate of Religious Affairs (if you go to this website and click on the TV icon at the top, you can watch a video of the sermon being delivered at the central mosque in Ankara).  Just like last week, the imam reached back into the archives and pulled out a sermon written in Ankara.

No surprises in this one.  Bribing is very bad, a social disease that can lead to the spread of injustice and the destruction of entire nations.  Moreover, giving and taking bribes is a sin that can earn you a spot in hell.  Not something you want to mess around with.

Do As I Say, Not As I Do?

A funny thing happened about an hour after Friday prayers were over.  I was heading back to my apartment from lunch when I ran into the imam and another DITIB employee walking outside the mosque.  I accepted the offer to stop in a cafe for something to drink, and when our tea and coffee came to the table, the imam noticed that the cafe owner, an older woman I often chat with when picking up a sandwich on my way to work, had put two tea bags in his cup instead of one.  He asked her if she meant to do that, and she said yes and gave some off-the-cuff explanation.

The other DITIB employee suggested that she was probably trying to get on his good side, and the imam somewhat jokingly agreed that it was possible.

At which point I had to ask him, “Um, so does that mean you’re taking a bribe?”

The imam has a really good sense of humor, so I knew I wasn’t going to tick him off by asking.  He seemed more surprised that I connected the sermon with the incident, maybe because he didn’t notice that I was at the mosque earlier.  So he laughed, but he also saw the connection.

“Hmm, right, bribery…but I didn’t ask for this.”

True, and what should he have done?  Dump it out and ask for another tea with only one tea bag?  In my 5-year archive of Turkish sermons, there’s hardly any subject that gets talked about more than the sin of wastefulness.  If you stick around this blog long enough, I’m sure you’ll see me write about it.