Pharisees Poem by John Allen Richter

Recently there has been a 'Challenge' on social media wherein one douses himself with a cold bucket full of ice water and then posts the video of it on Facebook. The premise is that it is to raise funds or awareness for some medical cause that I can't remember. So the awareness part obviously didn't work.

And then I thought of those people of other nations who might never have seen a bucket's worth of clean water in their entire lives, and I wonder what they might feel if they saw us dumping it out so freely. If our goal was to simply goad our surpluses over them then perhaps we could just video tape our waste as we flush it down the toilet with clean water and send those videos to these poor, unfortunate people.

I think the people who do these things don't really think about the great advantages they have in this life - nor do they often think of those not so blessed. And the 'cause' is only a ruse anyway. What they are really doing is making a large spectacle out of their relationships, like the self proclaimed holy Pharisees who made grand public gestures of greeting themselves while ignoring all others - uncaring of how it made others feel. Christ hated them. What does it take to make Christ hate someone? I mean that's a pretty tall order. I think it takes indifference to any others. I hope my poem highlights that...... Thank you for stopping by.