Praise God from whom
All blessings flow.
When bullets are flying,
He is a no-show.
When an earthquake
Is shaking,
A day off
He’s taking.
When a hurricane
Is roaring
He says,
“That’s so boring.”
When hate radio triggers
A dangerous loon
He says, “I can do nothing
To stop those buffoons.
“I can’t make them shut up
Because of free will.
They must have the freedom
To spew out their swill.
“And if a few children
Are killed in a rampage,
To quote some half-human,
That’s collateral damage.
“Now, as for the innocents
Drowned in a flood,
It’s really their free will
That’s the source of the mud.
“They shouldn’t have lived there.
They should have just moved.
With nonsensical logic
Is my innocence proved.”
“But you could have stopped it!
You control even the seasons!”
“Oh? And just who are you
To question God’s reasons?
“God loves all his creatures,
The feathered and finned.
So when people suffer,
Well, maybe they sinned.
“And here is the best part,
My favorite by far:
No death is my doing,
But all escapes are.
“If disaster kills millions,
No prob for God’s fandom.
‘It’s awful, it’s tragic,
But, ya know, it’s just random.’
“But if someone alive
From the carnage should crawl,
‘That’s all the proof needed
That God loves us all!’
“When human skill and human pluck
Preserve a life against all odds,
My fandom sob and raise their hands
And say the credit is all God’s.
“So here, at the end,
Is the name of the game:
I get the credit
And you get the blame.”
10 comments:
Oh, my! You have nailed it, David. Can't tell you how physically ill I become when someone spouts that drivel. Like the Hudson River plane landing, which prompted a drawing of god's hands holding up the aircraft (sorry, Sully, no creds for you), and yet when I asked about the later crash in Rochester that killed all aboard and wondered where god's hands were then, the not surprising response was--We're not to question god's ways! One can only shake one's head in the presence of such misguided certainty. Anyway, I am printing this poem for future reference. And thanks!
An Oregon DUer.
Thanks!
Now I think I need to add a verse. That aspect always angers me, too: when a life is saved thanks to human courage and skill, but God gets the credit instead.
Maybe I'll do that, once I recharge the doggerel battery in my brain.
So it's God's fault? I understand the frustration of the human experience of suffering, death and destruction. But, it is just as narrow-minded to expect God to save all and to curtail suffering on earth as it is to believe in an all-knowing, all-seeing, completely omniscient God who created all.
And remember, it is we humans in our worship of God who give credit and place blame. Your witty comments are more accurately describing the frail and all-to-human followers of God than God himself. It is the man who survives the mining accident that praises God for his escape and the athlete who praises God for her victory. It is humankind's way of being humble: to credit a being that is higher than we.
But to blame God for inaction on the part of innocents is to mock his pre-eminence. I understand this creative criticism is founded in care and concern for those involved,and a personal frustration but it is insensitive to the faith that those involved (and their family and friends) have in the God you have mocked.
It's not God's fault because God doesn't exist. I'm mocking people who have made up this Skydaddy critter and then indulge in absurd intellectual convolutions so that they can believe he exists, is all good, all powerful, and all loving, all at the same time.
I'm an atheist. Religion is bunk.
Can you have a heart attack from laughing?
Though I have one critique.
After the frist Stanze, I wanted that poem to follow the rhythym and rhyme to follow "Prasie God from whom all Blessing Flow," a sort of Gospel music from the skeptic. But that woul dhave taken too much time.
And I'm still laughing.
I'm not a good enough doggerel poet for that. I can do a few lines to a certain rhythm, but I always wander astray quickly.
As English Lit Barbie would say, "Rhyming is hard!"
By the way, my Dec. 7 post started out to the rhythm of The Ballad of the Green Berets, by coincidence, but I couldn't stick with that, either.
If catching the ball,
With a minute to go,
Is all thanks to Jesus,
Then what of Brett Favre?
The ball he'd have dropped
If not for God's aid.
As always, all credit
To God must be paid.
If people will keep on
Posting comments in verse,
My responses will surely
Just keep getting worse.
Hah!
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