Some Christians and other believers may find the language of this poem difficult, even objectionable, but it is written from the standpoint of the honest sceptic. If we are to reach out in sincerity, then we believers need to try and see where our fellow men and women are – what are their real feelings about God and His church?
Just supposing there is a God,
He’s gotta be some lousy sod.
Voyeuristic, always distant,
Not surprising we’re resistant?
Perceived as sitting on the fence,
Any wonder we take offence?
Suffers from His PR agent:
Religion – hardly heaven-sent…
Doting parent, Abba Father?
Rather more like – absent partner.
Real presence is the lynchpin,
That underlies all human kin;
Spending time with one another,
Makes each man for man a brother.
Then mister God you’ve lost the plot,
And your Good News is not so hot.
Speak up God and plead your cause;
Oh I forgot – you’re stuck on pause.
You big, strong, immutable thing;
We pray, we cry, we die, nothing…
Nothing, nothing, nothing, and then:
Nothing, nothing, NOTHING. Amen.
Never heeding human yearning,
This deity’s not for turning.
And what about this Jesus bloke?
Who lived to die – some kind of joke?
We run a mile from death’s dark grip;
He upped and booked his final trip.
Not illness, not the dreaded C;
Fit and young, he embraced the tree.
Died a nasty, criminal death;
Abandoned at his dying breath.
If he’d had your mighty power,
He could’ve made the Romans cower.
Could’ve kicked some butt, no prob!
Brought fire and brimstone on the mob.
Christ almighty? Christ my eye – he
Blew his chance to set men free;
Obsessed with pious charity;
Fixated on eternity.
Why oh God do you treat us so?
Did you enflesh, only to go?
If you care as they say you do,
Give us a sign to prove you’re true.
Believing goes against the grain,
Church-going’s a blessed pain.
You’ve set the bar way too high,
“Be you perfect” – why even try?
Flesh and blood – you made us so.
Emotional, our passions flow.
Disembodied spirits we’re not,
Two thousand years – have you forgot?
Shackled by our wounded past,
We limp along, often aghast.
The future’s not ours to see;
C’est sera: our mortality.
This then the crux of the matter:
Our hopes / plans you seem to shatter.
Between us both exists a chasm;
And your ways we never fathom.
You look beyond our humdrum days;
Our tiny dramas never faze;
You hold the cosmos in your hand;
Our whole world, a grain of sand.