Angels

“Goodnight, I’ll see you in the morning,” said the young woman as she kissed her younger brother goodnight.

“God bless you,” the young boy replied. ‘Such big sentiments for such a little boy,’ the girl mused.

“You too, baby, you too.”

She closed the door and closed her eyes as she silently pondered what her brother had said. It was a sweet, innocent gesture; a comment said out of habit and years of meticulous religious training, and despite its simplicity, it had the girl near tears. Could her brother’s sentiment mean anything at all to her if she did not believe in God?

She didn’t know exactly when she had given up on faith. It seemed to have happened gradually. As her doubts and troubles mounted, her faith diminished and was replaced with cynicism and emptiness. She surrounded herself with logic, and deemed faith illogical. She scowled at churchgoers and their determination to save her soul. She called them crazy. She loathed the mission they claimed to have.

What was it about religion that made people feel entitled to righteousness? What magical prayer excused hypocrisy and immorality so long as the offender repented? Where was it written in that sacred book that those who followed its commands were to be saved, and all others were wrong in everything? What about religion made people feel that they were better than those unenlightened?

She was an honest person. She trusted and valued truth above all else. Knowing how unique and opinionated every single person was in their own way, she refused to accept that anyone could possibly believe every single thing that any one religion taught. She saw it as misrepresentation of one’s morals, and she wished for the world to see her for her own ideas and opinions, not those of some temple or another. To say you were Catholic implied that you followed your church’s belief’s, and people rarely presented themselves as “Catholic but supports equality between homo and heterosexual couples.”

She believed that religion bred ignorance. Once one is blinded by the promises and security that faith offers, they lose touch with logic and reason. Suddenly, ‘because that is what God wants’ is a valid answer, even though one single God has no place in modern society, not with so many religions and non-religions represented by the world’s population. It was simply illogical, and she hated illogical.

She hated that her brother, so young and so innocent, had been introduced to religion so early in life. It gave him no chance to see things another way. He would soon be one of many in the mindless mass of God-obsessed citizens of the world, and he still knew so little about the world. He had no grasp on eternity or evil; he was far too young and uncorrupted to understand such extremes. And yet, he had complete faith in this entity, this God, that he had no proof of and no logical explanation for.

She sighed as she flipped off the lights, one by one on her way to bed. Before she went to sleep, she said a quick prayer, not for her own health or well being, but for that of the world, for the mindless masses. Let them find what they are looking for. For the ones like her; those who were lost and needed guidance in this strange world. And for her brother; let him not be disappointed by his faith in God’s divine power as she had.

And when she drifted off to sleep, she dreamed of angels. She watched them fly and smile, their cherubic faces shining with joy, and she watched them fly away, suddenly as distant as the hope that they gave to the world.

End

**This one is a tiny bit autobiographical, but let me make myself very clear: I believe in God, just not in religion. I know its twisted, but that's just me.