I need not your calf of gold, o Israel.
Do not give me your towering statue
King Nebuchadnezzar,
In all its ninety feet of golden self-glory.
Keep your graven images to yourself;
I have what I want!
Self-sufficient in my mind,
Keeping my idea of God firmly planted
On the altar of worship,
I care not about your idols
…nor, it seems, about Truth.
For you see, rather than being made
In the image of God,
I have created god in my image.
You may have your idol worship,
But I have something even better–
Idle worship.
Oh yes, I can sing with the best of them;
Confident in my righteousness,
I’ll belt out the praise songs
With hands raised high and
A hallelujah on my lips,
And all the while unforgiveness hardens
My stone cold heart.
You may do service to your petty gods,
But I have something even sweeter–
Lip service to mine.
Oh how I do love the Lord, I cry!
Thanks be to God for not making me
Like those awful sinners on the other side
Of these church doors!
I go to Bible study twice a week
And tithe every Sunday.
It is a beautiful faith I have created
Isn’t it?
Yes, beautiful like a snow-white mausoleum;
So pristine and ornate from a distance,
But inside only the bones of the dead reside.
You may follow your false spirituality,
But I am something even more pious–
A spiritual fake.
In me there is no room for the holy religion
Of James, brother of Jesus:
Loving orphans and widows
While freeing myself from the pollution
Of self-love.
So while the orphans cry alone
And the widows die alone,
The hungry sit at their empty dinner tables
And the sick on their lonely beds.
The strangers stay strange–alien, even–
And the poor get poorer.
Now here I sit, on the left of the Son of Man,
Surrounding myself with all these goats.
“Depart from me, I never knew you.”
