Sometimes, I just have to look at someone and ask them....was that comment honestly necessary?

Making fun of the Apostolic Church which I, myself, attend, and half the people in the room. I just have to look at that one person who's talking and shake my head. Does he not realize that when people talk about something that you've known for your whole life, talk about it like they know all about it, talk smack about it while every AC 8th grader in the room sits tight-lipped waiting for a new topic, it stings worse than any physical pain ever could? I just have to shake my head, and restrain myself from getting up and biting their face off. Was that HONESTLY, REALLY, ESSENTIAL to your conversation today? To tear apart not one but the 500 people that attend the AC church in my town and the thousands all across the country, when you really know jack squat about anything related to the church?

When we're watching a movie about the Holocaust, and I think that the reality of the awful, awful, indescribable verbal and physical abuse and starvation these people went through is actually maybe sinking into some hard heads, I have to shake my head as I realize I'm wrong. While I might be mature enough to handle it, some people laugh as an elderly woman steals bread from Anne Frank in the concentration camp. Some people laugh as they see how ugly the girls look, honestly, like boys. But HONESTLY, the stealing of the bread. When you are starving to death, I think everyone else's well being, except if they're your family or friend, comes in at a distant second. Sure, we'd all like to believe we'd share what little food we had with the eighty year old women beating us up for it. But really, would we? If we know that's the only thing we're going to get in days? And then some people laugh about it. It makes me gag. And how the girls look like guys in the camps. I don't think that's up very high on their list of priorities, when they're being starved and beaten to death. Of course they don't look good, they're dying. And some people have such a lack of empathy, such a lack of the ability to put themselves in someone else's shoes, is amazing to me. And it again, makes me gag.

And then, I just get done visiting a school where I meet some absolutely amazing mentally handicapped kids with the most amazing ability to make me smile and give me a completely different outlook on life in an hour. And I come back to school and a few hours later people are calling each other retards if they do something stupid, or saying 'thats retarted' if they get a demerit. Sure, it slips out once in awhile, and sure, most people aren't directly trying to call mentally retarted people stupid. But when you replace the word stupid with retarted, you're calling millions of people with mental handicaps stupid by using their condition as another word for stupid. These amazing kids are NOT stupid, and you have a really low supply of empathy if you think so.

And of course, we're all guilty of this one. Complaining. I'm no saint, and I'm not claiming to be one with this article. But after I just get done going to a presentation or thinking about the 98% of the world that DON'T have computers, I feel guilty for wanting an iPod touch, or being jealous that someone got a better phone. Really? When some people are starving to death, when the number of orphans in this world mulitplies the population of Los Angeles by dozens and, hand and hand, all the orphans in the world could fit around the circumfurence of the earth twice, im complaining about an ugly phone. Why? Why are we as Americans so uncontent, while kids in Haiti get a loaf of bread and smile like they just received a million dollars?

So really, next time you say retarted, or laugh at some AC joke, or think about how disgusting the concentration camps were and snicker, or complain that your phone is a piece of crap, please think back to this article and in turn, think about something else. Because while sometimes these thoughts slip out, none of them are necessary.