Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Catholic and Enjoying It!

Home
Catholic
“The Exodus” by Dave Barnhart

“The Exodus” by Dave Barnhart

Last updated on: May 8, 2017 at 2:32 pm by Mark Shea

“The Exodus” by Dave Barnhart 2017-05-08T14:32:14-07:00 Mark Shea

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

The Exodus

I have seen your religion, and I hate it.

I have heard your doctrine, and I loathe it.

Take away your empty praise songs,

your vacuous worshiptainment.

Your mouth is full of religious words,

but your proverbs are salted manure.

“The sick deserve to be sick.

The poor deserve to be poor.

The rich deserve to be rich.

The imprisoned deserve to be imprisoned.”

Because you never saw him sick, or poor, or in prison.

“If he had followed police instructions,

if he had minded the company he keeps,

he would not have been killed,”

You say in the hearing

of a man hanging on a cross

between two thieves.

“People who live good lives

do not have pre-existing conditions,” you say,

carving these words over the hospital door:

“Who sinned, this man or his parents,

that he was born blind?”

“It is the church’s job, not the government’s,”

say you fat sheep,

defending your fat shepherds,

shoving and butting with shoulders and horns,

while you foul the water,

grass,

and air,

and scatter the hungry sheep.

You watch the melting glaciers and say to the waves of the sea,

“this far shall you come, and no farther,”

as if your will could change the weather,

as if your will could be done in the heavens as it is on this earth,

as if you could drill the sky the way you drill the soil.

In your telling,

in the story of the starving of the five thousand,

there are not twelve baskets collected of left-over food;

In your story, God’s abundance becomes scarcity,

and the crowds devour each other.

“Send them into the villages to buy food,”

and let the Invisible Hand’s miracle of the free market sort them out,

the worthy from the unworthy,

while you eat the two fish and five pieces of bread

volunteered by a child.

These ungrateful poor,

the welfare queens

with their anchor babies,

stop before your disciples’ raised palms;

they hear you say,

“The Master cannot be bothered to bless your children.”

You see Hannah drunk,

and you jail her for fetal endangerment.

Like Haman, you hide behind the skirts of the king;

you make laws and pay bribes

that allow vigilante violence

and private discrimination

against those you hate,

sheltering underneath plausible deniability.

“It’s not a Muslim ban,” you say one day.

“It’s about religious liberty,” you say another.

This Bible you wave, this word you claim,

it is sharper than any two-edged sword.

You wield it poorly; it slices you on the backstroke.
You know neither the scriptures nor the power of God.

You tie up heavy yokes for others

whose burdens you do not bear,

but you will not lift a finger to help them.

To some you say, “Do not marry, but burn.”

You lock them out of the kingdom of God.

You cross sea and land for your missionary work,

and teach others to be as hateful as you.

Your kingdom is not the public park of Zechariah,

where children play in the streets

and old men and women lean on their canes for very age.

It is not the land where every fearless household

has its own vine and fig tree,

their own means of production and shade for their rest.

It is not the land where everyone has a home.

Your kingdom is the one with gates,

where homeless beggars have their sores licked by dogs,

where people who have the audacity to grow old

pay a premium for their insolence.

Like Ahab, you covet all the vines, all the fig trees,

letting your domain stretch as far as your eye can see,

adding house to house and field to field

until, in your gentrified land

there is room for no one but you and yours.

Like Pharaoh, you call those who refuse you “Lazy, lazy.”

You build walls, and walls, and walls, and walls,

and you stuff your ears to the sound of protest songs

that will shake those walls down.

I have seen your christ, and he is my antichrist.

He is the herald of a violent god,

a god of fertility but not fruitfulness,

a god of embryos but not emancipation, pro-birth and anti-life,

a god of war and retribution but not of justice,

a god of order but not of peace,

a god of might but not of mercy,

a god of marriage but not of love,

a god of sex but not of pleasure,

a god of platitudes but not of wisdom,

a god of work but not of sabbath,

a god who demands sacrifice from the poor but luxury and reward for Pharaoh.

Your religion is the religion of pyramids pointed heavenwards,

towers built to reach the heavens.

Supported by their flat base, built by slave labor,

they are stable monuments to wealth and death.

You fill their secret rooms with gold so that

in the afterlife,

you may cross to paradise

on the backs of the oppressed,

and live in forgetful pleasure for eternity.

Your gilded gospel is rusty ruin.

You are why the ancient Hebrews

seldom talked about an afterlife,

weary as they were of working

for Egypt’s dead heaven.

Your idols and your religion

are why those slaves left the yoke of heaven,

the land of binding,

for a wide wilderness,

for a nameless, faceless God

who told them they—even they—

were made in God’s image.

You are why your churches are empty

of those who love and believe in freedom.

You are why the Gentiles blaspheme the name of God.

You are the reason for the Exodus.

And if you pursue, may God throw you into the sea.

And the horse you rode in on.

References:

Amos 5:21-24

Luke 14:34-35

Matthew 25:31-46

Luke 23:33

John 9:1-12

Ezekiel 34

Job 38:11

Matthew 13:14-21

Matthew 19:13-15

1 Samuel 1:12-20

Esther 3:8-11

Hebrews 4:12

Matthew 22:9

Matthew 23:13-26

1 Corinthians 7:9

Zechariah 8:4

Micah 4:4

Isaiah 65:21-25

Luke 16:19-31

1 Kings 21

Isaiah 5:8

Exodus 5:17

Joshua 6

Genesis 11:1-9

Exodus 15:21

Uncategorized

Poetry

Previous Post

May 8, 2017

My friend Kaiser Johnson gets interviewed...

Next Post

May 9, 2017 We are the "No" to heartless policies

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Uncategorized

Select a Month May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 September 2006 June 2006 July 2005 April 2005 May 2002 April 2002 0000

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz