Serial Painters

     Wouldn’t it be terrible if we were all on display? If we were all forced to compete in a never-ending contest and we had no say in what was being judged about us? Wouldn’t it be terrible if there were an impossibly high standard to reach, a picture of perfection, even if no one had control over meeting this standard? If we were hated and demeaned every time we failed to reach this standard?

     Wouldn’t it be terrible if the judge were an artist, and every time he judged, he took his brush and painted us a picture of how awful we look, comparing us to the standard of perfection, highlighting our supposed flaws, and exaggerating them like a caricature? If the artist gave us the picture he had painted, told us to pin it to our chests like a derogatory sign? If we had to carry this sign with us wherever we went, and every time we looked in the mirror, instead of our faces, we just saw the hideously cruel painting? Wouldn’t it be terrible?

     Wouldn’t it be horrible if the painter began targeting children? If he took his brush and smeared gaudy strokes on his canvas, until he had fabricated an image of humiliation for the child to wear? Wouldn’t it be horrible if other children stapled the image to the child’s chest, ensuring it never fell away, mocking his every awkward step, ungainly appearance, unsightly birthmark? If they attacked and sneered at his shortness and physical weakness, or laughed at her late-blossoming womanhood? If they kicked down the smaller and weaker, with every kick adding a stroke or smear to the dirty, ugly painting? Wouldn’t it be horrible?

     Wouldn’t it be ghastly if the painter went after young women? If he dipped his cruel brush into his horrid ink, and streaked up his punishing canvas an image of ugliness for the young woman to wear? Wouldn’t it be ghastly if the painter told her she was fat, awkward, and ugly? If he communicated through his twisted masterpiece complete disgust and revulsion at her inability to match the image of perfection, and how perfectly worthless she was for it? What if she started believing it? Wouldn’t it be ghastly if other women grabbed their own brushes too? If they drew attention away from their own terrible canvases by smearing mud and hate on the loathsome paintings of others? Wouldn’t it be ghastly if they laughed and mocked and hated, with each sneer and jibe adding an ugly array of bruise-like blotches to the young woman’s mauled and mangled painting? What if she couldn’t see her beauty? What if when she looked in the mirror, the painting hid her loveliness? If she forgot who she truly was because of whom she was afraid of being? If she was afraid of being herself, because the painter told her that only the ones that match the Perfect Canvas are beautiful? If she believed his lies, what then? Would it not be ghastly?

     Wouldn’t it be evil if the painter directed his venom toward emotional men? If he sloshed some paint across the canvas, streaking and smearing with furious hatred, manufacturing an image of weakness? Wouldn’t it be evil if he told sensitive men that they were not truly men if they shed any tears? That experiencing emotional pain was detrimental to becoming a man, and showing emotion earned a “man up!” Wouldn’t it be evil if these emotional men were forced to wear a canvas, a sign that said “I am not a man”? If, in the shadow of their canvases, they accepted the lie that they were weak, childish, and pathetic, wouldn’t it be evil?

     Wouldn’t it be terrible if we recognized the truth? If we understood that we are the painters, we are the serial killers of society. If our words were our hateful paintings, and our tongues the diabolical brushes? If our standards of bravery, beauty, and manliness were just a Perfect Canvas, and our judgmental comparisons were our smears of permanent hatred? Wouldn’t it be evil if our society was homicidal? If children destroyed each other, young women destroyed each other, and grown men destroyed each other? If our words caused men, women, and children to look in the mirror with loathing and see only our evil pictures of something they are not? Wouldn’t it be terrible, ghastly, and evil if these things were real, if they were true, and if you and I were serial killing painters of hatred?

No it would not be.

For it already is. 

Freedom is Slavery

     Freedom, like many other topics, does not rest in the physical alone, but rather it is also richly alive in the emotional, mental, and spiritual aspects of our person. These aspects shape our view of the word, and greatly change its meaning depending on our focus; if we are referring to the emotional aspect, freedom could mean, for example, being able to love whom we will. On the other hand, if we are referring to intellectual freedom, it could conceivably mean we have simply arrived at a state of inner mental peace. Though everyone has a different idea of what the word “freedom” means, they are often mistakenly thinking of the opposite, especially in the case of physical and spiritual freedom.

     Freedom is not free. To establish liberty from any sort of oppression requires liberation – a typically lethal emancipation, quite often through the death of those who desire it the most and fight for it the hardest. The price of freedom is often paid for in human lives, and consumers of freedom do not generally appreciate the sacrifice that has been made to ensure that it yet lives. Freedom does not mean that everything is free, but rather that there is recognition and payment of the enormous and costly price.

     Physical freedom does not mean everyone can do as he or she pleases, because freedom requires a balance. To remove restrictions on society would upset the balance, until eventually freedom would belong to only the most powerful or resourceful people. If one man’s freedom interferes with another man’s, it is no longer freedom, but rather it is oppression; it is the beginning of a terrible struggle for ever-changing power which is never wholly attainable.

     Freedom is not safety. Freedom is not feeling comfortable and stable; indeed, those feelings are only indications of a false reality, for the world is neither comfortable nor stable. Rather, freedom is acknowledging the instability of reality, and making prudent preparation for an unstable future; indeed, the moment we cherish our safety above all else is the moment we lose our freedom. If we want to surround ourselves with walls, we must remember this: walls do not simply keep evil out, but they also keep the innocent in; when we allow or give another entity the job of protecting us, we also give that entity our liberty, for we have surrendered to them our power. The balance is skewed, and freedom is destroyed. To allow an almighty hand to surround us is to admit our complete trust and utter slavery in that being or power.

     At a physical level, freedom is hard to achieve, and harder to hold onto, for when we have been pampered and spoiled by the pleasure freedom affords us, we forget the cost and are pacified into a false sense of security. We are so coddled by our safety and comfort that we would give up our freedoms to maintain that sense of well-being, not understanding that as soon as we lose our freedoms, we will not have the power to retain our former luxuries, and will be at the mercy of whoever is providing our security. In desiring the comfort of safety, we would trade the freedoms that bring us that comfort in the first place, and in the process we lose both.

     Physical freedom is quite different than spiritual freedom, but the former aids us in understanding the latter. Indeed, without physicality, we would never arrive at a proper understanding of any spiritual concepts, for we are physically-oriented beings with an inherent spiritual ignorance. Therefore, it is unsurprising when we see physical reflections of spirituality in many facets of our lives, including the concept of freedom.

     Spiritual freedom is similar to physical freedom in that it is not free: it comes with a monumental price. The greatest difference being perhaps that the price has already been paid, and we are expected to make use of this great sacrifice, lest it be in vain.

     Spiritual freedom is challenging in demand, but fulfilling in reward. It demands the complete abstinence of immorality in order to find a unity with a Just God, all the while recognizing the inability of sinful humans to achieve a complete abstinence. Spiritual freedom is irrationally fulfilling, because it is a reward of absolute excellence granted to those who could never deserve it, only attainable due to the incalculable sacrifice on the part of the reward-Giver. It is beautiful madness, conceived by the Creator of the World – a type of magnificent madness that we refer to as “Love.” Spiritual freedom is the reward given to the dirtiest, ugliest, poorest, evilest, and most unworthy, by means of a sacrifice made by The Most High, whose only reward is the appreciation of the aforementioned who could never fully appreciate it. It is unfair, illogical, irrational, unreasonable, and perfectly, wonderfully free for We the Filthy who were/are so evil we required the Great Sacrifice to take place.

     The most illogical and unreasonable in this situation, however, is not the God who made such an incalculable sacrifice for the incredibly undeserving, but rather it is the undeserving who does not accept the free reward that comes as a result. This is perhaps the epitome of irrationality, and it defeats any arguments against God’s aptitude to govern the World, for we have only proven by discarding unearned, everlasting, priceless gold that we are far more intellectually inept than any other being, especially the Creator of the Universe.

     Perhaps the most complex aspect of freedom of any sort is that we must refer to it in an abstract and relative manner, for absolute freedom paradoxically does not truly exist. To become free entirely of one entity requires servitude to another: to maintain civil freedoms, one must become subject to the laws, otherwise all rights would dissolve. In a similar manner, to become spiritually free of sin and our fleshy selves, we must become slaves or servants to God, Who then grants us liberation. We must choose, therefore, which bondage is more eternally beneficial, and which is more detrimental in the end; we must choose which freedom is closest to the unattainable absolute, and which freedom contradicts itself the least.

     But we do have a choice, and perhaps this is freedom: to choose our own masters, to choose our enslavers, to decide to whom we give our chains and to whom we refuse ownership. Perhaps true freedom is just choice slavery. 

Our Friendship

Once beside the forest river

On a gloomy night

There walked a pretty princess

Her face was fine and bright

Her lips were lush and red

Her dress was fringed in lace

But her beauty was not glad

For her tears slid down her face

Her eyes shone brightest blue

Her skin was scarred and marked

But her battle was more within

Inside her soul was dark

A warrior along the way

Saw her from afar

His heart leapt and started 

For he thought she was a star

He thought she was an angel

He looked through her outer stress

He didn't know "An angel?" 

Was such an accurate guess

He didn't see her tears

But he saw her beautiful feet

He followed her from a distance

Both desperate and afraid to meet

He noticed in the distance

There lurked an angry beast

A mad monster with mangy fur

Hunting for a midnight feast

The warrior unclasped his sword

And though she didn't see him

The warrior decided then

That he would slay her demon

He stalked the angry beast

The hunter became the hunted

The princess, unaware of this

Turned and the trail was shunted

The monster charged his prey

The princess screamed in fear

As her very worst nightmare

From her dreams had reappeared

The prince then charged the monster

Berating his lack of speed

He knew that he would die inside

If the monster caused her to bleed

The prince slashed his sword

He parried and he thrust

The monster seemed most elusive

And slipped through his fingers like dust

It was as if the prince's sword

Was trying vanquish water

For the monster would not die

And then the cruel beast got her!

The mad prince grabbed the monster

And threw him into the river

But the monster would not leave

Though his image seemed to quiver

"Die, thou mangy scum!" He yelled

The princess grabbed his arm

"Hush, my Prince," she whispered

"Don't do him any harm."

The prince was most confused

"But the monster mustn't harm thee"

The princess smiled sadly

"His quarry was not me"

The prince looked back in the river

In the monster's direction

But the only thing he saw in there

Was his own perplexed reflection

He gasped and dropped his sword

He fell down on his knees

The wind mirrored his howling 

As it whispered through the trees

"I'm just an angry monster

"I'm nothing but a beast!"

But the princess took his hands

And pointing to the west and east

She looked him in the eyes

"My hands are spread wide and true

"The distance from the east to west

"Is less than I love you"

Tears rolled down the monster's cheeks

As he looked in the princess's eyes

She grabbed his face in her slender hands

"You've been believing lies

"They want you to be weak

"So they tell you to be tough

"They trade their only source of love

"Pretending muscle's enough.

"But it's not okay to hurt

"And feel like you can't cry

"It's not okay to want a hug

"And have people question why

"It's not okay to be so fearless

"And yet terribly afraid

"I'm so disgusted and depressed

"At the lies society's made.

"You ARE a man, dear Monster

"I don't care if you bite

"I don't care about your tears

"For you care about doing right."

The princess then fell silent

The monster was in awe

The princess had shown the monster love

And no one even saw

The princess saved his life

Because she actually cared

She loved selflessly a beast

When no other human dared

I'm here to pen this story

Because the princess is so brave

And please know this story's true

For I'm the man she saved.

Happy Birthday to my very best friend; thank you so much for all you've done for me. I love you! 

Hospital of Hate

If truthful words were Felbatol  

That helps prevent a seizure

Honesty is presently

Still the best procedure

So unclothe the judgment of your mind

Enter the mental ward while you’re sane

Not the floor for the senseless patient

But the hospital in your brain

Facts are often more vivid to you

When you’re walking down these halls

And it’s easier to believe the danger

With the nail-marks on the walls

On the first floor you find a man

Who peers through the windowpane

The door to his room is rusty and heavy

And padlocked and held by bloody chains

The man is not insane at all

But the hospital fears his anger

They correct what is abnormal

Based on confusion instead of danger

But what is it that mankind fears?

Is it not simply the unknown?

If they cannot wrap their minds around it

You’re evil if you’re not a clone.

Fear of nonexistent evil

This will lead to hate

The man in the ward is subject to testing

And dies on experimental plates

Across the hall is another man

The Doctor hates the coward

For the man is misinterpreted

And then by the ward, devoured

The Doctor doesn’t help him

He diagnoses in haste

The cowardly are sickening

So the Doctor cleans up the waste

The hospital is full of these

The ward is run in fear

The men that fill the rooms and bags

Are killed for shedding tears

Mercilessly the Doctor kills

The hospital suppresses hope

Illegally the victims slain

Lucky are those who find a rope

Before the Doctor finds them

And experiments on their forms

The hospital wherein we walk

Is a graveyard called a “dorm”

Understand the distinction

As we snap out of this dream

The haunted halls of the twisted Doctor

Are more real than they likely seem

Keep the judgment from your mind

As I continue this rhetorical mixture

Instead of acrylics, I used the likeness

Of a mental ward to paint this picture

But do not be disillusioned

Those nails that scratched the walls

Are still quite real, though in reality

It’s human souls that are being mauled

On the one hand you find a man

Who shakes his fists in the rain

The door to his room is the nighttime air

And people’s happiness is his bane

This veteran is not insane at all

But the world still fears his anger

They avoid him because he is abnormal

Based on confusion instead of danger

But what is it that mankind fears?

Is it not simply the unknown?

The veteran is treated like a dog

Too poor and dirty to be thrown a bone

Fear of nonexistent evil

This will lead to hate

The veteran is nameless and forgotten

And dies in pain by a subway gate

On the other hand is another man

Society hates the “coward”

The man is “too emotional”

Then by the world, devoured

Society doesn’t want him

It judges him in haste

The mark of manhood is not feeling

If you do, you are a waste

Society is full of these

The world is run in fear

These men that fill the body-bags

Are killed for shedding tears

Mercilessly society slays

The world suppresses hope

Unconsciously the victims slain

Lucky are they who find a rope

Before society burns them

And to their pain shows mirth

Society in which we live

Is just a graveyard we call “Earth.”

Y.O.L.O.?

You say “You only live once”

You don’t understand just how true

Is this phrase on your lips as you waste It All

Look what society’s done to you!

You don’t understand the ramifications

Or the consequences that this brings

So the life that you “live” is now wasted

You live in cesspits and say you’re a king

Those whom you love? Forgotten

Those you call “friends”? Forsaken

Those whom you wanted to guard with your life?

Because of your apathy – taken.

You say “You only live once”

But so do your dearest friends.

So why not instead of downing the vodka

Thank God for the blessings before they end?

You never know what will happen

And won’t if you can’t even see

You don’t know how many chances you get

So tell them you love them before they must leave

Show them you care or forget it

You only live once and then you die

Those whom you label your “loved ones”

Better feel it before it’s “Goodbye”

You say “You only live once”

And then you prove that it doesn’t matter

You get the option of living or dying

And then you fixate on the latter

You have the choice to act like you care

About more than your material wealth

You have the choice to say “I love you”

More than you love yourself

So if you only live once

And if your friends do too

Maybe stop wasting the time you have

In the name of this poor excuse

You say “You only live once”

But don’t act like you truly care

You live like your life is a video game

And you have countless more lives to spare

Lovely friends are roses

Death is winter decay

Flowers wither and so do friends

Is “I love you” THAT hard to say?

Are we not just cowardly actors?

We hide behind masks from our tears

We can’t stand the thought of perpetual death

So we live in perpetual fear

You say “You only live once”

And then existence is voided

But there is something called eternity

And it cannot be avoided

But bad days and decisions transpire

Even the earth is attacked by comets

A fool goes back to his misery

Like a dog goes back to his vomit

If you have so little time left

Why do you let your thoughts wander?

If you only have one life to live

Tell me why it’s already squandered

You say “You only live once”

Prep time for eternity: never

Foolish! Compared to the days you will spend

Time for the future: forever

I cannot change your ways

I can’t always make you see

Doing whatever you want - binding

Having a Purpose - you’re free

You only live once, then its forever

Don’t waste your time focused on hate

You aren’t the only one who’s going to die

Tell people you love them before it’s too late.

The Unhappy Philosophy of Happiness

 I hate happiness. It is an animal. It blocks pain but only temporarily. The terrible thing about happiness is that it lies to us. It fills us with emotions contrary to what we know to be true. “Good” things happen, you feel happy. Things that make you happy are then treated with idolization, and there is no need to teach us to pursue what makes us happy. We automatically seek after these things that give us pleasure. This is the worst part about happiness. It is addictive. And this addiction drives us to pursue happiness at whatever cost. Happiness becomes our god, and we kill anything that gets between us.

Some people know that they cannot feel happy if they truly know what is going on around them. The world is not really a happy place, so people decide to not think about it. They adopt the slogan “ignorance is bliss,” and choose not to think about anything more stressful than the present. The sad thing about blissful ignorance is that it eventually catches up to you. No matter how fervently you try to dismiss reality, it is still there, and it is always armed to the teeth and ready to devour those who treat the Lion that it is like a lamb. Their life of whatever they call “happiness” is destroyed in a moment of terrible truth.

Some people think they are always happy, because they have chosen to put up walls that protect them from pain. They do not let hurt in, and they call themselves happy because they do not really feel sad. The truth is, they do not really feel anything. These people are not happy. They are perhaps out of everyone the most starved of happiness, for their walls that block pain also block love and affection, therefore any happiness they experience is just shallow vapor that manages to infiltrate their walls. The tiny bit of happiness that is felt goes unnoticed, for if you do not experience pain, you cannot appreciate its opposite.

Happiness is an avaricious god, demanding of our time, and deceiving us when we give it. We desire to be happy, and it becomes our sybaritic lifestyle. We are taught to go after whatever makes us “happy,” but no one tells us that nothing will keep us happy. Fueled by our desperation to find something that will eternally sustain us, we enter a downward spiral but we do not notice, for we are too blinded by our anxiety to find this illusive “happiness” that we were promised. Rationality is lost, for we forget that happiness is a want, and not a need. Because happiness is something that cannot be reached and held on to, the word happiness is simply an impossible idea of delight that we can never really acquire. In short, we make it our god, even though deep down, we know it does not truly exist.

So my philosophy about happiness is that there is none. But there is something called “joy.” The difference between joy and happiness – or the idea of happiness – is that while they both make us feel good, just feeling good is not joy’s ultimate intention. Joy is not a result of an action or situation, but it is a choice no matter the circumstances, which can only be achieved if one has a continual reason to be joyful. The only continual, lasting reason to be joyful is the acknowledgement of Grace given freely to man, the redemptive actions of Jesus Christ, and the new life found only through Him. While joy is an eternal feeling of inward elation, it does not change or waver no matter what other emotions are experienced simultaneously. Because it is something that is based on the unchangeable Love of Christ, it remains even in our most mournful state, and is at the core of each ecstatic roar and every miserable cry of despair. It is the reaction to the overwhelming Love that we drown in, and the understanding of the Hope that we have in Jesus.

  

If I Were an Evil Society

If I were an Evil Society, I would want world domination. I would wield the Media as my weapon, creating and forming an Image of Perfection with one hand, and destroying all those who will not worship it with the other.

If I were an Evil Society, I would whisper in the ears of lawmakers, suggesting that “separation of church and state” actually means that faith in God is unconstitutional. I would teach the common man to be apathetic to his country, until the word “patriotic” meant nothing more than Uncle Sam asking for service .I would then use the rampant apathy to lull the citizens to sleep, while the government traded their freedoms for “safety.” I would make the advocates and lobbyists enamored with all the wrong issues. I would have them focus more on endangered animals than on the millions of enslaved people around the world. I would make the government worry most about saving trees while they advocate killing little children.

If I were an Evil Society, I would invade the home. I would tell parents to ignore their children; that the parents do not need to stay married, and that if everything does not work out, just terminate the relationship. I would tell the children to avoid their parents, and to take the advice of kids their age instead. I would convince teenagers that sex is for fun, and that there is no point waiting for marriage. I would estrange the daughters from their daddies, so that when the boys broke their hearts, their only comfort would be drugs or razorblades or more bad boys, until they either completely broke or they buried themselves deep down inside their despair and traded their reality for a façade of “gladness.”

I would again use the media to teach children that if they did not look like a certain celebrity, they were worthless. This would make the more fortunate children despise and resent the lesser, until they are not only penniless but they are “pointless.” I would attack the pitiful until they are hardened and become like the bullies that once harassed them.

I would take every human being who was different and I would invent derogatory words to describe them. I would target emotional men, and suggest that they were not actually men if they cried. This would fill them with disgust at their inability to hide their emotional pain, and then a self-hatred at their inability to “man up.” I would make men with less emotional sensitivity mock and ridicule the more emotional men to bury them deeper in their depression. I would offer suicide as a way out for these men who could not “actually be men.” I would kill off many thoughtful, caring father-to-be’s this way, ensuring that the home would be protected from fatherly love that children need to flourish. I would target girls and say they are not pretty unless they weigh ninety pounds and wear makeup to hide their faces. I would have them lie to themselves every day – have them tell themselves they are ugly and fat – until they believe it. I will keep them from being a blessing in other people’s lives, for I will have them too concerned about themselves, and how terrible they must appear. By the time someone tells them the truth – that they are beautiful – they will be so caught up in my web of lies that they will not take it to heart. “Ugly” will become their self-made title, until they destroy their bodies trying to be something they are not.  I will target young people, and I will make them laugh and joke about older people, so that when they are given sound advice, they will be too foolish to take it. I would extend childhood this way, by ensuring that the children never learn wisdom from their elders.

If I were an Evil Society, I would attack the mindsets of the masses. Preaching a philosophy that says everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion, I would ensure that this is the only opinion which actually has entitlement. In fear of dangerous questions being raised, I would teach everyone to “tolerate” everyone else until everyone is so afraid of being labeled “intolerant,” that they do not want to raise any objections to other people’s ideas. I would make them accept everything as truth, in so doing destroying the meaning of truth, thereby destroying logic. I would bind them mentally so I could blind them spiritually.

If I were an Evil Society, I would have the media and government wrapped around the unsuspecting people like a noose. I would have countries at war with themselves. I would have states at war with themselves, churches at war with themselves, families at war with themselves.

In other words, if I were an Evil Society, I would just keep on doing what I am already doing.