Gee, Good Thing God Tells Us What To Think…


My pastor tells me “God says this!
We dare not disagree!
His word, as seen in scripture, is
Enough for you and me.”

God’s views on marriage, taxes, war—
It’s quite a lengthy list—
We’d have to work it out ourselves
If God did not exist.

My pastor says he learned these things
Through study, prayer, and search;
He’s right, though his conclusions seem
Confined to just his church:

The other churches in our town
Say God says different stuff—
They disagree—are works required?
Or is belief enough?

One church says God wants “man and wife”;
One woman and one man
Another welcomes everyone
(God tells them that they can)

Each says they speak for God, of course,
In fact, they quite insist.
We’d have to work it out ourselves
If God did not exist.

The church downtown says one thing, but
The East Side church says no
The West Side church and South Side church
Say they’re the place to go

There’s this church, and there’s that church
And there’s seven more in town
And they disagree on what God thinks—
His will can’t be nailed down

My pastor tells me “God says this
My neighbors say he’s wrong
My relatives have different views
But mostly get along

For every view their God supports
A thousand are dismissed…
We’d have to work it our ourselves
If God did not exist.

Context, over at Good As You.

Comments

  1. navigator says

    Reminds me of a story where a man went to see his god. The people in his city were claiming all sorts of contradictory beliefs from the same god, so he went to ask god what was the truth. When he got there, he found out god had died a long time ago because he couldn’t reconcile all the conflicting beliefs that his followers had forced upon him through their prayers.

  2. The Lorax says

    There’s an xkcd comic about two people having a strongly defended opinion on an insignificant topic, if only they were forced to live with that topic every day of their lives.

    I wonder if religion actually started as just a collection of fairy tales, but because there wasn’t much else to do, people started debating which fairy tale was better. After a few generations, no one remembered why they were arguing; they just knew that they had to defend their beliefs.

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