Growing up I had a lot of older friends who got me into a lot of troubles. They introduced me to life on the streets, nightlife like clubs, parties, strip shows, you name it. They even introduced me to relationships before I was even old enough for that and all other bad behaviors teenagers get caught up in. It was fine with them because age was on their side, but I can’t say the same about me.

I must admit though, life on the streets was fun, you get to make your own decisions, you get to feel like a man even though you’re just a boy, nobody tells you anything or force you to do anything you don’t want to. That was fun until this money started to get into our minds. You know what happens when it gets involved, good people turn into bad people, gentlemen to bad boys and good women lose their cool hidden side we appreciate the most. I was starting to change from a good kid my family hoped I’ll become to a restless boy who’s hardly home. I found myself into trouble after another, as a result, I had no choice but to run away from the streets while I still had time to as a free man because today we nicely ask for money, tomorrow we demand it, the next day somebody gets hurt because of it.

Trying to change my ways, cleaning up my acts, the mess I’ve caused I decided to find other ways to live my life. I was told in the house of God there’s salvation. I was promised peace of mind, less worries, but that’s hardly what I found when I got there, because they demanded money more than the street did, more than I could afford.

It really surprised me though because I hoped to find peace of mind in church, hoping to hear less about the money I didn’t have, but they proved me wrong. “You reap what you sow”, those were the exact words they used before the actual scripture was opened which read “give and it shall be given unto you, with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you, Luke 6:38”, “make an offering of ten percent and tithe, Deuteronomy 14:22”

It looked like it was never about maintaining the walls of the church, nor give to the poor when I watched them compete about who gave more money than others.

I may have misunderstood, but they went on for three hours straight talking about this money which is more than the time we spent on the street discussing ways to come up with it. How was I supposed to change if I run away from people who randomly demand ways to make money to people who constantly demand money from you for that long even though the plan was to get the term out of my mind when I came to them. Hoping to find all the excuses to think money was not everything and I can survive without it. How was I supposed to change because it somehow felt like they were pushing me back to the streets?

You know, when I took a decision to go to church, I hoped for wise words to show me the way I was losing on the streets, but I got less of that than the criticism, how I wasn’t doing enough, how much I should have brought to the church but my stingy behavior couldn’t let me. Apparently all the good men and women in the bible suffered the worst but survived, they traveled the route we walk on every day, some were very poor, but I was not sure about the interpretation of their stories because it seemed too critic to swallow if that was motivation according to the man who led the church.

A while ago I used a train for transport, traveling to town and back, to search for a job as it was the cheapest form of transport I could afford, when I started working and just for fun sometimes, especially when I was not in a hurry. In a train, there's a coach for politics, the first spoken language there is politics, nothing else, a coach for smokers, you only appreciate finding a sit there if you’re a heavy smoker because you leave the coach with everything smelling all kinds of smoke that were on the menu for the day. A church coach, its “Hallelujah” from the word go to the finish, surprisingly, you find preachers everywhere even though there's a coach specifically for them, where you find mostly Christians in it.

But you'll go where it's only people who go to church when they decide to, listen to politics when they hear something of their interests but find people who will just shout “hallelujah” when everybody is least expecting. But I've realized, they have one thing in common, they always criticize, whether you are in church coach or find that pastor who chose to be on his own probably because he doesn’t want to be led by others, they all criticize. Its like people do nothing good in life and they never leave money out of their scripts for a day.

In the olden days churches were the only place that welcomes everyone, even the poorest. A place where you get to forget about your problems, how poor you're because you'd leave with a little sugar to make coffee when you get home, a place where you'd leave your lavish life by the door, where everyone was free to express their voices through singing and preaching the word of God, that was before we had worshiping teams. When you didn't know where the next song will come because even behind you, it can just pop up. It was the only place where you were certain to get wise words when you go to, to uplift you when you down, to encourage you to do more when you are in a right state of mind, to help you fix your ways when you seem to be losing it, when you find yourself doing what's against the will of God, but is it still the same?

These days all you hear in church is money this, money that. It's like now everything in life is money, nothing else. People are heartbroken, they need healing, people are going through hard times, they need support, people are trying to make good use of their lives, they need suggestions but all we talk about is money. Power seems to be a thing, everybody seems to have miracles but you wonder, where were these miracles before the Internet became so famous to spread their so called wonderful deeds?

Can we stop for a moment, look all around us, maybe we might realize everything is about money but never about money. We might realize it's about money because we turn to make it about it but the truth is, it’s not. Sometimes just the wise words you pass to someone might be enough to encourage them to make something out of themselves without giving them a dime. Just a helping hand to pull them up might be enough to get them out of their miseries. Just using the scripture to encourage them with less criticism might lift them up.

All the expensive things we put our hearts and souls into are probably the ones that make our lives so difficult because all we do is spend even when we have nothing we just keep spending. When that little money finally arrives we don't notice it because we spent it all before it got to our hands

Let's change our mentality, the way we think, the way we do things, maybe, just maybe we can find reasons to love one another again, we can find reasons to treat each other real good, we can find reasons to love ourselves for who we are, humanity will again find it's valuable meaning among ourselves, will find a way to crawl back into our hearts. We might possibly stop killing our brothers and sisters and this money thing might stop controlling our minds.

Picture by Michael Longmire on Unsplash.com