Salvation Reader's Response

“Salvation” by Langston Hughes is a narrative telling the readers about his experience as a 12 year old in church being “saved” from sin by Jesus just like his aunt and others were. His aunt said to Langston, “When you were saved you saw a light.” He believed what his aunt had said since she had been already saved. Langston remembered what his aunt told him when he was at his Auntie Reed’s church sitting on the mourner’s bench during the children’s meeting, “to bring the young lambs to the fold.” I think that Langston didn’t really understand what his aunt was telling him. In paragraph five, after most of the children got up to be saved by Jesus, Langston was still sitting in the church on the mourner’s bench saying, “Still I kept waiting to see Jesus.” He believed that he was supposed to physically see Jesus with his own eyes before he could go to the altar and be saved. What Langston didn’t understand is that “seeing” Jesus was not supposed to be physical but was supposed to be him mentally creating his own image of Jesus and from there believing in him spiritually. I think Langston is trying to tell us that we’ve all lost some faith in our religion when finding out what we believed in couldn’t actually be seen with our own eyes. In paragraph eleven, Langston cried and said, “I hadn’t seen Jesus, and that now I didn’t believe there was a Jesus anymore.” I was also disappointed and upset when I was told by my parents that God and Jesus couldn’t be seen physically. I thought to myself, “Why would I believe in someone or something that I cannot see, and if I can’t see it, it doesn’t exist.” I didn’t believe in any religion for a while until I understood that what I wanted to believe in had to be seen in my mind. After creating the image of God and Jesus in my head I started believing in them more and more as time passed by.
I don’t agree that the people at the church should have pressured Langston or any of the other children into believing in a religion. Even