Start from scratch

Chapter 33 - Cat & Barbie Part 2: AKA, The Tree

Disclaimer: The show Victorious, its characters and other associated copyrights are property of someone else and not me.

Start from scratch

Chapter 33 - Cat & Barbie Part 2: AKA, The Tree

Barbie's Pov

As Cat completely broke down, I took a step back and collected my thoughts. I had gone way over the edge, to the point I was preaching myself. It was very strange. I had left that life, that mindset, all of that behind years ago and for the most part had forgotten it. But it just came back with a vengeance.

We were at a delicate point and I need to retain control of the situation. I also needed to stay on the attack.

Kneeling down in front of her, I softened my voice and dropped my Alabama Accent. "Cat, faith is like a tool. Kind of like a hammer. You can use a hammer to build a house or a tree fort or maybe a hundred other useful things. But you also use hammer to bash someone's skull in. It's all in how it gets used. You follow me?"

She had stopped wailing but, Cat did nod yes.

"When you enter a church, to some degree you put your faith in their hands. You trust the priest, rabbi or whomever stands in front of the congregation to properly guide you to be a better Christian or whatnot. But that same priest or rabbi or minister can misuse your faith. In Boston there was priest named Geoghan, he used his position as a member of the clergy to gain access to youth he molested. People trusted him, trusted that he as man of God would do the right thing. He misused their trust; he abused their faith. Jim Jones did the same thing, he took those people's faith and used it against them. Both Geoghan and Jones were demented, sick people, we put our clergy on pedestals sometimes. We start to view them in the same light as we do God or Jesus. But unlike God or Jesus, these men and women are all too human. They are subject to the same human weaknesses that everyone has been, the have the same faults, the same desires, same weaknesses. You've put Reverend Mike on a pedestal; that can and has been some cases, be a very fatal mistake. As evidenced by the pictures on the floor in front of you."

"He's a good person! He has to be! He speaks the word of God!" Cat cried back in a shaky and very uncertain voice.

"If he's a good man, then why does he teach you to hate. Why does he tell you to not speak with your family? Why does he tell you to hate the government? Why does he tell you that people not in the church can be trusted? Remember the good book - Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself: I am the LORD. That's Leviticus 19:18. And to me that verse has the most important word in the bible and that's love. If you boil Jesus's message down to a single word, it's love. Love thyself, love thy family, love thy neighbor. Don't even forget the message of the good Samaritan, that guy had the crap beaten out of him and who helped him, did the priest who came along, help him?"

I looked to Cat for the answer and she said in a soft voice. "No, he walked by."

"Did the Levite help him?"

"No, he also walked by."

"Who helped the man who had been beaten, robbed and left to die by bandits?"

"The Samaritan did."

"Yes, and they were considered the enemy, but this man, this enemy who knew not the beaten man, helped him. Saw him not as an enemy, but a brother. Tell me honestly Cat, if I, a lesbian were beaten and left to die on the sidewalk and Reverend Mike came by, would he help me?"