Image: Public domain
By Christopher Norris
All religions are equally sublime to the ignorant, useful to the politician, and ridiculous to the philosopher. To such heights of evil are men driven by religion.
- Lucretius, On the Nature of Things1
O yes, I’ve done the holy bit,
‘Religion 101’, R.E,
‘Talking About God’, ‘Bible as Lit’,
‘Main Issues in Theology’,
And all that stuff they still see fit
To shovel down our throats so we,
Once through with it, think holy writ
A goody-bag of suck-it-and-see
Faith-options – handy bits of kit
For shopaholic types like me
Who might just fancy the odd hit
Of help-yourself divinity.
Marx put a lukewarm case for it:
‘Don’t mock religion which may be
(Until they read my work and quit)
The people’s favoured opiate spree’.
Time was I thought that quite legit –
Search round to find your cup of tea,
If necessary counterfeit
Belief, declare full feelingly
What they’d have you believe, and sit
Well loose to ‘faith’ if you agree:
Better a two-faced hypocrite
Than Savonarola with the key
To heavenly bliss or fiery pit
By God’s (more like his own) decree.
2
What harm? I thought: to each their share
Of crazy notions, cloud-cuckoo
Ideas of heaven got up to pair
With Bruegel’s hell, and every screw-
Ball way to say ‘doubt if you dare:
Absurdity’s what makes them true,
Our doctrines, so you’d best despair
Of argument, remember who
Now has the whip-hand, and take care
You kiss the credal rod’. But chew
It over and you’ll see, it’s their
God-sponsored willingness to do
Their worst, not scruple to prepare
Fresh genocides and never rue
The human cost that makes me swear
I’ll have no child of mine pursue
Those studies that, all unaware,
They’ll likely think a harmless brew
Of tall tales and exotic fare
With not a thought of how some crew
Of blood-crazed zealots might declare
The entire Middle East their due
Since scripture proved their droit de guerre
And they, God’s chosen people, knew –
Like Hitler’s Volk – that all was fair
In hate and war since Joshua slew
Men, women, children, babies – ‘spare
No living thing’, the word came through.
3
Not for me now, that college steer
On world religions or, let’s say,
The monotheistic ones that rear
Their Moloch heads whenever they,
The victim-tribes of yesteryear,
Acquire a homeland, get to play
The role of some great power’s wazir,
And then, like Israel, throw away
Their heritage to reappear
As would-be Joshuas and betray
The principles once held so dear
By other Jews, the Bund, or they
Who kept that dual allegiance clear:
Stay Jewish, but for God’s sake stay
Humane, stay socialist, and fear
The Zionist creed whose monstrous sway
Has so defiled the Israeli sphere
Of discourse as to bring, each day,
Fresh threats and massacres that veer
Yet closer to the hell-on-earth they pray
God grant them, or the jackboot jeer
That marks off predator from prey.
And Trump? My friends, don’t waste a tear
When he goes the self-destined way
Of all who’d seek to bend our ear
With Judeo-Christian calls to slay
Some new Amalekites who sneer
At their primeval God, or pay
No homage as the last frontier
Goes down and naught but mortal clay
Survives to tell the bombardier
His writ no longer runs once they,
The victims, teach us to revere
The living flesh his God would flay.
