Millions beseech daily,

God,

to save us…

From leathery winged, scaly monsters bent upon our destruction.

Please free us (they beg) from the clutches of cloven-hoofed deceivers,

And sulfurous demons whose very existence confirms that evil is

From without.

Creatures,

Created by God to destroy us…

By chasing, catching, tearing, rending, grinding our bones as a sacrifice

To what We call evil.

More likely (it would seem), is that God sits,

transfixed in horror…

At the terror We unleash upon the world and each other

As We…

Rationalizing (like true demons) that evil does not exist and as

We,

Coldly calculate the value of each individual life tortured,

destroyed, abused, and

abandoned.

As if a life could be measured by a ruler and a coin purse.

It is not from without,

not a convenient enemy We can point to,

Not a demon for which We should beg God to save us from,

But rather, the evil We carry inside, the ugliness waiting to escape…

Carefully nurtured and raised in a

Garden of evil, carefully watered by our jealousy, fears, hatred, and bigotry.

So the prayer now takes on a new meaning… lead us not into temptation

But,

Deliver us from ourselves.