8/7/2019 Jornal response #1 - Salvation - Haroldo Albuquerque Filho

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Haroldo Albuquerque Filho February 4, 2011

ENC 1101 Prof. Flores

“Salvation”

Journal Response # 1

 

I really liked reading Salvation, by Langston Hughes. He shows how the beliefs from his

family, relatives and church goers may shape your feelings and the way you believe in things. As

he said, his church had a special meeting for children to bring the young lambs to the fold. You

see, they are the ones that decide the moment young children need to start believing in God. The

children have no saying on this. You can feel that they were “forced”, in a way, to accept Jesus.

This reminds me a lot about when I was a child. I grew up in a very small town in the

northeastern part of Brazil. At that time, everybody had to be Catholic. There was no way that

anyone could even have the audacity of belonging to another religion or even worse, not

believing in god. In my case, specially, I had no way out. My uncle was a priest and my

grandmother always dreamed of me becoming a priest. I remember those old ladies coming

through our front door who had just come from church, with a white and blue dress – that’s how

they all would dress because of the Virgin Mary - and a beautiful veil covering their heads. “It is

about time that Haroldo start taking church lessons”, I remember this very short and skinny old

lady saying to my grandmother when I was about ten years old. My grandmother, by the way,

was a very tough lady. Everybody was afraid of her in a way. She was very demanding.

Everybody had to obey her orders. This actually makes me remember of how scared I was of her.

Well, they put me in church lessons. I had to memorize all those prayers and hymns and could

never doubt or question anything the teacher would tell me. I had to follow and believe

everything I was told to. Even if I did not believe everything, I had to pretend that I did. Just like

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the author when his preacher asked, “won’t you come, won’t you come to Jesus? Young Lambs,

won’t you come?” and the children were supposed to see Jesus at this time but they weren’t.

Many of the kids then went to the preacher but they could not see Jesus. They were just afraid of 

letting everybody know that they could not see Him. This got to a point that only the author and

this other kid were the ones left. They were still waiting to see Jesus but they could not. Westley,

the other kid, finally got tired of sitting there for so long that decided to get up and be “saved”.

And so he did. At this point the author was left there in front of everybody alone. The place was

really hot. It was late. The whole congregation was saying, “Langston, why don’t you come?

Come to be saved! Come to Jesus!” The author then had to lie and pretend he saw Jesus and run

to the preacher’s arms. In my case, about the same thing happened. I finished the church lessons.

I was afraid to let everybody know that I didn’t care about all of that and that I just wanted to be

with my friends and play. Now the author ended up not believing in Jesus after all that happened.

He was told that he would feel Jesus, see Him and feel saved. Because nothing really happened

that way, he never acquired faith. In my case, though, the older I got, the more religious I

became. I question a lot about what happens in the world. All that hunger in poor nations,

earthquakes in countries like Haiti where hundreds of thousands died because of the quake and

of disease. You would think, “Why does God allow all of this to happen?” I ask myself questions

about believing or not in God all the time but I end up being a believer. Maybe I am a believer 

because God really exists. Or maybe I believe because, just like with the author and the other 

kids, I am afraid to admit that I don’t.