• An exact copy of the poem is below, and shall be explained:

    [Hey there mister Preacher,
    with your robes and your words,
    got a bible in one hand,
    in the other one a bird,

    And you're sitting in the backseat
    of a rusty old Sedan,
    telling me about Religion
    and about God's secret plans.

    And how I'm such a sinner
    And how you're God's favorite child
    And how everything I say will mark
    me as a man, defiled.
    You ask if I believe, and
    tell me that I can't perceive
    what is real and what is fake,
    that I won't ever conceive.

    Really now? You're telling me
    that I am gonna die and see,
    your savior of a God will say
    that I'm a worthless enemy?

    What I believe is my own,
    to myself I keep it known,
    and you have no right to judge me
    based on what I hide and show.

    "Here's the fact of the matter,
    I think we can both agree
    that this argument is pointless
    and you can't, change, me.

    I guess I was born a sinner,
    and I guess I'm born a liar,
    and I guess I'm born a loser
    who won't grow a little higher

    But between us - leave us,
    you can't understand, can't feel us,
    too close-minded to believe us,
    that this life is real to us,
    that we don't have to be believers,
    that we can be good people without being preachers."

    And the irony is,
    in all that 'religion' talk,
    I never once heard what good
    could come of bowing to the cross.

    I only ever heard
    that I was a loser, lost and burned,
    and how he was better than me.
    For a 'preacher', that's absurd!]

    Now, please hear what I have to say, before I get any more hate mail.

    When many read the poem, they must have gotten the wrong idea. I could point fingers at who started the fire, but that wouldn't solve anything.

    I wrote this poem to point out three critical issues in today's society, both of which affect me personally.

    First off is the issue of 'belief.' Many people have spent their whole lives with a one-sided view, and there has been no divided middle ground. "If they don't believe in [insert name here], they must be bad people..." is one of the worst stereotypes to ever hit the world. Look at what it has caused - the Crusades. World War Two. Modern-day religious discrimination.

    In the poem, I address clearly that "You can't understand us... too close-minded to believe us... that we can be good people without being preachers." That should be straightforward enough. No matter what faith, no matter what or whom you believe in, we all have the potential to be good people.

    Second, is the issue of 'heaven.' Another belief of many faiths is that "if you don't believe in [insert name here], you won't go to heaven." And yet, I find it hypocritical that the Catholic Church preaches that God is forgiving, and will always allow any sinner to repent. If he is willing to do so, why wouldn't he save a person who lived a good life, fought for what he believed in, and was generous?

    Picture this scenario. Think of all the religions in the world... and imagine that the catholic "god" isn't the real one, and that the Muslim version of "God" is. Since Catholicism would therefore be a "fake" religion, anyone who worshiped under the banner of Catholicism would go to hell simply because they don't believe in the right god.

    See what I'm saying here?

    And third, is the issue of the "preacher." Many people in today's society have grown lax in their beliefs, believing that they are literally "children of God" and can do no wrong.

    The entire conversation in quotations above was a slightly altered version of a conversation I had with a hyper-religious acquaintance of mine, who chewed me out simply because I don't believe the exact things he did.

    He had a continual argument with me for days about "how I was a bad person, and he was a good person, for believing in god." Shortly afterword, he took money from me, without my consent, under the pretense that he needed it for a "souvenier for my little brother." It turns out that he didn't have any brothers, and he spent all of the money on candy for himself.