A World Without Rules
I would not like to live in a world without cathedrals.
I need their beauty and grandeur against the dirty colors of military uniforms.
I love the powerful words of the Bible.
I need the force of its poetry.
I need it against the decay of language and the dictatorship of worthless slogans.
But there is another world I do not wish to live in.
A world in which independent thinking is disparaged, and the finest things we can experience denounced as sin.
A world in which our love is demanded by tyrants, oppressors and assassin.
And most absurdly, people are exhorted from the pulpit to forgive these creatures and even to love them.
It is for this reason we cannot just put the Bible aside.
We have to throw it away completely.
For it speaks only of vain holier-than-thou.
In his omnipresent, the Lord observes us day and night.
He takes note of our acts and thoughts.
But what is a man without secrets?
Without thoughts and wishes that he, and he alone, knows?
Does the Lord our God not consider he’s stealing our soul with his unbridled curiosity, a soul that should be immortal?
But who would in all seriousness want to be immortal?
How boring to know that what happens today, this month, this year, does not matter?
Nothing would count.
No one here knows what it would be like to live eternally.
And it’s a blessing we never will.
One thing I can assure you, it would be hell, this endless paradise of immortality.
It is death and only death, that gives each moment beauty and horror.
Only through death is time living thing.
Why does the Lord not noticed?
Why does He threaten us with a… endlessness that can only be unbearably desolate?
I would not want to live in a world without cathedrals.
I need the luster of their windows, their cool stillness, their imperious silence.
I need the holiness of words, the grandeur of great poetry.
But just as much I need the freedom to rebel against everything that is cruel in this world.
For the one is nothing without the other.
And no one may force me to choose.
Based on the novel
“Night Train to Lisbon”
by Pascal Mercier
A World Without Rules
I would not like to live in a world without cathedrals.
I need their beauty and grandeur against the dirty colors of military uniforms.
I love the powerful words of the Bible.
I need the force of its poetry.
I need it against the decay of language and the dictatorship of worthless slogans.
But there is another world I do not wish to live in.
A world in which independent thinking is disparaged, and the finest things we can experience denounced as sin.
A world in which our love is demanded by tyrants, oppressors and assassin.
And most absurdly, people are exhorted from the pulpit to forgive these creatures and even to love them.
It is for this reason we cannot just put the Bible aside.
We have to throw it away completely.
For it speaks only of vain holier-than-thou.
In his omnipresent, the Lord observes us day and night.
He takes note of our acts and thoughts.
But what is a man without secrets?
Without thoughts and wishes that he, and he alone, knows?
Does the Lord our God not consider he’s stealing our soul with his unbridled curiosity, a soul that should be immortal?
But who would in all seriousness want to be immortal?
How boring to know that what happens today, this month, this year, does not matter?
Nothing would count.
No one here knows what it would be like to live eternally.
And it’s a blessing we never will.
One thing I can assure you, it would be hell, this endless paradise of immortality.
It is death and only death, that gives each moment beauty and horror.
Only through death is time living thing.
Why does the Lord not noticed?
Why does He threaten us with a… endlessness that can only be unbearably desolate?
I would not want to live in a world without cathedrals.
I need the luster of their windows, their cool stillness, their imperious silence.
I need the holiness of words, the grandeur of great poetry.
But just as much I need the freedom to rebel against everything that is cruel in this world.
For the one is nothing without the other.
And no one may force me to choose.
Based on the novel
“Night Train to Lisbon”
by Pascal Mercier