All too frequently we are told by the news media of terrible atrocities committed by fanatics who claim to be doing the will of God: mass murders, suicide bombings, beheadings, and other obscene acts. Such activities can never be the will of God, who is loving Father to all mankind. How can such zealots be so totally blind to His will?
This poem is my ‘blast against the monstrous regiment of fanatics’.
Those who kill others in the name of God
Stand on the very rim of Hell’s cauldron.
They, and those who pull their strings,
Are far, far away from God’s kingdom.
They shout loudly for the Light, yet
Are blinded by the sear of their hate.
For there is no dark in God’s makeup:
Can they be so heedless to their fate?
They rightly see an eternal prospect,
Positing this life as mere preparation,
But dumbly ignore the narrow gate,
And thereby risk their very salvation.
When they pull that damnable trigger,
To quench another’s god-given span,
Can they really believe it’s a holy act,
To snuff out the life of a brother man?
So brainwashed are they, that suicide,
That final, definitive, conscious deed,
Is seen by them as the very portal
To endless pleasure and unbridled greed.
Unholy warriors of a vicious, vengeful god,
Where love is weakness in his sight,
And pity for outsiders doesn’t figure:
No holds barred in this ‘sacred’ fight.
As Saul persecuted early Christians,
So zealous to serve his almighty God,
That he didn’t see their extermination
As wrong, their death as somehow odd.
Fanatical zeal is never in God’s style:
Humility, the mark of His true disciple.
We can never see the full picture, and
Must ever be open to a discerning scruple.
The living, loving Father God has no part
In this tawdry, nasty, earth-based fight.
Base politics of greed and jealous rage:
A merciless creed where only might is right.
To love your own kind even unto death,
Is to miss the point of love’s inclusion:
Love all mankind, even your enemies.
Any other ‘religion’ is rank delusion.