05-25-2024, 05:38 PM
Into the Wilderness
As a bulwark against damnation,
the preacher made himself the strictest
of the strict interpreters
of precious texts, so to convince God
of his impeccable faith; but men
who hedge their faith are men who feign.
When his reckoning came, God discerned
his subterfuge, so dispatched him to
the bare and broken plain — without
a tongue or name — to wander with
the ever unrepentant Cain.
☙
I have a childhood friend who is so devoutly Christian that he believes I am going to Hell (for a variety of reasons) and that his parents went to Hell (for not being devout enough). As a minister he has made a reputation for himself as a literal interpreter of the Bible, and it finally occurred to me that he is afraid that HE may end up in Hell if he isn't God's most ardent believer, and so I wrote this poem to express what I think are the doubts he has about his own faith but isn't facing.
As a bulwark against damnation,
the preacher made himself the strictest
of the strict interpreters
of precious texts, so to convince God
of his impeccable faith; but men
who hedge their faith are men who feign.
When his reckoning came, God discerned
his subterfuge, so dispatched him to
the bare and broken plain — without
a tongue or name — to wander with
the ever unrepentant Cain.
☙
I have a childhood friend who is so devoutly Christian that he believes I am going to Hell (for a variety of reasons) and that his parents went to Hell (for not being devout enough). As a minister he has made a reputation for himself as a literal interpreter of the Bible, and it finally occurred to me that he is afraid that HE may end up in Hell if he isn't God's most ardent believer, and so I wrote this poem to express what I think are the doubts he has about his own faith but isn't facing.