I saw the sun
It was golden like it always was
It warmed my skin
I went with the wind
I saw children
Riding shiny red bikes
The color of fresh blood
I saw shops
Workers serving bread, sweets, their will to live
All so they can just make ends meet.
I walked into the holy building
People on their feet praising a God I cannot see
A god who watched the world disintegrate at their mighty feet.
I saw the Devil in the church
He wore white
A cross around his neck
He spoke of fear
Lightning bolts
Fire
Hell
In all his holiness I saw the evil in his eyes
I saw an Angel
In a bar
Her skin covered in black lace
Her hair the color of burning orange flames
She kept me safe
From the leering eyes of hungry men
I caught a cab home
And when I got in bed
All I could think about
Was what I saw that day.
By Charis
Meaning: I wrote this poem based on observation.
Many people in society believe in a God, lead their lives based on a book that they deem as holy. In my personal experience there is a level of self righteousness and hypocrisy in fiercely religious groups.
In a lot of these groups they lead by fear, the fear of hell. The fear of going to a place where only monsters live, obeying to the idea of a person who is above them, who has supernatural gifts.
They speak of how someone living in their truth is a ‘sin’, how loving freely is no longer love but an act against a God (out of many Gods I might add) laws and rules.
How this and that is evil.
But what so many people miss out on is that sometimes the real evil is sitting right beside them. In a nursing home, at a school, inside a church. Real monsters never say they are monsters, they take on care giving positions where they can mask their evil.
There are many cases of Sexual abuse and Rape have occurred in these places.
An example of this would be Ted Bundy (not directly related to religion but has the same concept) he worked at a help hotline center all the while murdering women.
The horrific allegations that have been put up against the Catholic Church is an example.
Over 7,000 claims of sexual abuse by church staff, congregation members, volunteers, or the clergy were made to just three insurance companies over a 20-year period (Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 2007). Recently, a study of over 300 alleged child sexual abuse cases in protestant Christian congregations found the
51% of pastors say that Internet pornography is a possible temptation for them.
The church is full of hypocrisy, plain and simple.
I believe that there needs to be a balance creating a repressed society leads to oppression of the people, which then leads to creating an under belly in society where peoples desires are then acted out in the dark and in morbid and disturbing ways.
It always amazes me how people who say that forms of art are witchcraft and devil worshiping are usually the ones who know so much about the devil!!
It's a wide spread belief that if someone follows a religion that they are automatically good person straight off the bat. That is incorrect and in all honesty the most self righteous and mean people I have met have boasted proudly that they are religious.
I am NOT saying that ALL religious people are terrible, if you're a good person you're a good person I am just pointing out the ironies. I was victim to this after attending a catholic school for five years, I have never met such awful people and it is not just those people it is what I read, see and hear online on the news.
Believe in what you want to believe, pray to who and what you want to pray to. But do not enforce your doctrine of other people because you believe your version of the world is more holy than someone else's.
Evil, it's not just the colour red, it's not blood in the music video, it's not a woman kissing a woman, or someone transitioning from one gender to the next. The real evil in the world is pulling at strings to take your focus away from real problems. Poverty, murder, rape and corruption.
To live your life in fear is one thing but to enforce that onto others is unforgivable.