sacrifice is a state of mind

lately people have been making 'sacrifices'. sacrifice meat, sacrifice dota, sacrifice chocolate or whatever. you may have purely good intentions or whatever, but all these sacrifices strike me suspicious. i, for one, am not going to sacrifice anything, because my view of religion is rather 'free' - i don't bind myself to the exact written law, but i have full sense of what is right and what is wrong.

i can sense now that you're thinking, "not sacrificing something for lent is wrong, you dotard."

yeah, maybe. i mean, it is pretty unfair for me not to sacrifice something in repayment for christ's death. but lately, with the last few sacrifice declarations i've seen, it seems that this is slowly becoming a trend.

maybe i'm speaking too soon here, but please spare me my ego. let me refer to the parable of the pharisee and the tax collector. wasn't it that the tax collector who kept quiet and prayed the simple prayer got the favor from God, over the pharisee who was praying as loud and as eloquently as martin luther king, jr.? it might sound cynical to you, but that's sort of what i'm seeing now. one person declares that they're sacrificing whatever (out of sincere expression, probably) and then another person declares their sacrifice, until one by one the pharisees emerge.

maybe i'm thinking way too much outside the box or my method of thinking is just plain warped. maybe it's because i'm not the strictest catholic in the drawer. i believe that sacrifice and abstinence are just a state of mind.

with that, i now let the flames rain, the flak shoot, and the stones thrown.