The nave of the church is a simple but ethereal looking room that is big enough to hold a couple hundred people. There are simple wooden benches, ten feet long, arranged in rows through the room, with one aisle down the center. The benches face the pulpit. Along the side walls of the room there are beautiful stained glass windows depicting Biblical imagery.
Nave, Inside Church
person
preacher
I am a preacher who does not believe in the deity. I once did, before I saw how corrupt and decadent my church is. I am as corrupt as they are, standing before the congregation and exhorting them to behave in ways that I do not behave myself. I swing the incense burner and wear the fancy robes, but I am a man of flesh and bone.
The church is decadent and I am a fraud. I travel here every day to attend service. I feel at peace, usually. Hearing the preacher is a fraud is... unsettling. Well, we're really working on faith alone aren't we?  What proof do we have that any god exists? God must exist or else what purpose do we have? I will pray, that I may be saved from damnation. Well - look at this church.  The bishops takes the poor alms to buy himself another golden ring.  The confessions the cardinal hears are exclusively with ladies of the night, and their confessions never end until morning.  This is a corrupt organization, and I refuse to cover up for them anymore. The poor get poorer and the rich get richer, it seems this is the way of the world, not the way of God. Is there hope for any of us, if the church itself is corrupted? What can we do? What can we do?  I don't take pleasure in the alternative.  A meaningless existence with no hope of salvation - eternal nothingness where everything we do will one day become forgotten, and our worldly actions reduced to an absence of meaning. Can we find hope in each other? Should we form a new church, a pure church? Is such a thing possible? We could begin anew. Surely not all churches are corrupt. Though I wonder if I could even make it to a different church. My horse gets tired enough coming here. But what would be worship if there are no gods?  Goodness?  But that is a construct of man!  There is no evil or good in this world, only chaos.  We are all blind actors on a stage that leads to decomposition and death. So, then, is what they do truly so bad, if we are all merely on our way to the ground? I dismay and lose hope that there is purpose at all, if the church is corrupt and we have nothing left but death awaiting us. Might as well end it all now shouldn't we?  If there's no such thing as sin, and if life has no meaning, why prolong our suffering on this cruel chaotic husk of a world? Either that or live only for pleasure. In which case, I am not so sure that the corrupt church is wrong. For what harm is there in gold rings and false confessions if all we have to hope for is a grave?