A Poem About Hell

Hopefully not everlasting torment

Torment eternal inflicted on one loved

From the mostly good people, God’s hands have infinite blood

A starker contradiction can scarce be conceived

And despite its attempted reconciliation by a Priest

It’s no surprise its horror leaves the heavenly bereaved

At the fate, the horrible fate, of those they love

Tormented forever, tortured from above

The crazy twisted contortions in the human mind

Are scarcely enough to leave defensible in the eyes

Of the most zealous proponent of torment everlasting

The doctrine of a divine being, an eternity of zapping

“They sinned” cry the zealots — a remark supposedly justificatory

Of everlasting torment; “it’s everlasting glory”

They cry, depraved in the sincerity that they use to imagine

A good god would be glorified not horrified at the everlasting cataclysm

It’s no surprise of course

That they proclaim their god is good

For if they would

Abandon such a claim

Their entire faith would disappear in flame

So to save their crazy views from that cruel slaughter

A scapegoat they put up on offer

There is just one downside to this switch

To hell, it consigns most everyone who’s ever lived

If god as the father

Is the grandest of plotter’s

(And is even a potter, I hear)

As the wisest of the wise

In god’s all-knowing eyes

The plot he’s been plotting is clear

His grand plan

Which we shan’t understand

His all-knowing plotting

Through which we’ve slowly been plodding

Would vaporize any doctrine

Leaving most souls throbbing

In hell

But of course this doctrine by the zealot is quite proudly proclaimed

“Yes, I am not ashamed”

They cry

“I won’t lie”

“You will slowly fry”

“In an eternal flame”

Though God’s mercy is supposedly abound

His loving arms want all the lost to be the found

A loving shepherd supposedly is he

Omnipotent and free

Yet despite that, despite no constraints on his reaching of his goals

He must consign most people to the fiery coals

“It’s a consequence of course of having souls”

“That if you turn from him”

“And decide to sin”

“He’ll give you the misfortune”

“of torment everlasting”

And yet the most curious fact about this cauldron’s brew

Of lies depraved and sadistic, which together you

Must believe if you’re to be a Christian of most stripes

Is that this god who tortures you, and humans of all types

So much “pain” quoting Lewis — a cruel tragic consequence

Of that which was done in the first minuscule percent

Of one’s life — their life, that is to be eternal

Most of which is of course made to be infernal

Is supposed to be a god of love and a god of all that is good

And despite ambiguities in the text, it’s more likely we understood

Correctly a text, constantly misrepresented, and often presented

As hard to parse

“Yet our reading of course could never be a farse”

“It’s far more likely”

“Despite the unsightly”

“Implications and textual complications”

“That most throughout history, strangely distributed by continent, including not most Europeans, but most Asians”

“Truly should be tortured, over and over”

“Till hell freezes over”

They never pause to think, never realize that it would truly be odd

If we were sinners in the hands of an angry god