Last night I had a disturbing dream. My father and I were in our car stopped at a traffic light. We were in a town or a city. There were red brick buildings several stories high all around, but the place seemed deserted. There were no other people around or cars on the road. My father was the one driving. And then all of a sudden a man appeared out of nowhere. He stuck his head through my father’s window, put a gun to his head and demanded money. My father calmly claimed he had no money. When the man called him a liar, my father asked me to look to see if there was any money in the glove compartment. When I opened it, my father asked me to give him the small writing pad and pen that was inside. I did, and my father wrote down a name: Richard R. Wright. As he wrote the name, my father calmly said, “You are Richard R. Wright.” The man with the gun insisted that wasn’t his name. My father replied, “Yes, it is.” And then he asked me, “Gary, do you know Richard R. Wright?” That’s when the man with the gun shot my father in the top of his head and killed him instantly.
I was shocked and horrified. I wasn’t afraid for my own life because at that moment I didn’t care any more. But it seems the man with the gun thought better of shooting me and ran away. As I sat there not knowing exactly what to do and hoping help would arrive shortly, I became angry, very angry. I blamed those who call themselves Christian and use their religion, the religion of love, to spread hate and division. I thought of how they make people feel desperate, alone and afraid. I thought of how they often show no mercy. I thought of how they are often unyielding, how they insist that they are absolutely right about everything and how they don’t want to hear anyone else’s point of view. I thought of how they gang up on people and justify each other’s aggression and hostility and make many of us feel like trapped animals in an unforgiving and uncaring world.
Then I woke up feeling rather sad.
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