TESTING FOR HEAVEN

For all my life I’ve been told
Exactly what beliefs I must hold:
Jesus Christ as my personal savior
To alter my mind, temper my behavior,
Save my immortal soul from fires of hell,
And rest with God for the eternal spell,
Enjoying heaven’s most glorious light,
With departed friends left and right.

To gain this, join the church, I heard.
Preacher spouts, “Bible is God’s Word.”
What proof? The Bible! —  These logic rules
Were made for imbeciles and other fools!
The preacher’s not bad, he’s been told
The same silly memes to join the fold,
By someone earlier told the same
By someone earlier joining the game . . .
For generations they’ve passed it on,
Etcetera, etcetera, and on it’s gone.

Come on folks! This BS I ain’t buyin’—
The personal God thing’s just not flyin’.
But it’s their story and they’re stickin’ to it,
Regardless of inconsistencies thru and thru it,
Which make no sense standing alone —
Taken together, there’s little meat, no bone:

For God, all knowing, powerful, beneficent,
Created world where innocent lives’re spent
Satisfying needs of hierarchical food chain,
With babies devoured, their lives in vain,
Eaten alive while draining gore,
Just another meal for a carnivore,
Little ones sick or disabled are born,
To live in pain, die tattered and torn.
Animal babies these disasters face,
And it often happens to the human race.
Could cite examples even more unjust
From a loving God they believe and trust
To watch over, keep them safe each day
Protect their lives and fortunes — no way!

No. Independent actions by the billions
By individuals and species by the millions
Surviving by any means at hand —
Sustaining life not plotted and planned,
By going to extremes just to stay alive —
This is the life-force from which we derive.
 

Competition morphs a species,
And leaves family tree in pieces,
Develops others or drops from view —
Depends on advantages, many or few.
Some survive, don’t go extinct,
Others are short-lived, quite succinct,
Some get by on good odds and luck,
Others extend through will and pluck.
For evolution’s purposes they only stay
Until offspring grow, maybe find new way
To easier survive life’s rigor and pain
Fitter than their parents, in the main.

Individuals each compete for life,
If they win, the prize: continued strife,
With outcome of success no guarantee
More competition there will surely be,
Until death brings struggle to an end,
Despite all efforts this system to mend.

Falsehood on untruth as truth they defile,
Their revulsion, revisions, schemes of denial,
All vain attempts mortality to allay
Merely subtract our humanity away.

Competition for life is the real God force,
And in fact nothing’s personal, of course.
Contemporary angels or personal God
Are delusions, large-scale and flawed —
And a luxury that’s been earned and won,
Only thru what past competitors’ve done.
They, in truth, were our angels on guard —
In distant past their life was quite hard, 
For it is they who brought us to the top,
Up the food chain with virtually no stop —
Bestowed a time when we don’t look back
Expecting vicious fanged, clawed attack,
Bequeathed environment for living our lives,
To satisfy in safety our competitive drives.

That luxury is something you’d never know,
If chain’s upper end you were still below,
For when you slide lower on that chain
Than a carnivore or step in front of a train,
Or anger large animals when no cover’s there,
And between you and death is thin clear air,
Your angel will leave you alone to fend
And by yourself your escape to attend,
We’ve known all along it’s just sheer luck
Or clued in fightin’, and that’s pure pluck.

You’ve not been eaten by a tiger, ever?
Is your guardian angel a bit too clever?
Do tigers live where you work and play?
Do they come hunting for you day by day?
Many good Hindus, their God always looking,
Ended in a tiger’s grasp, their goose a-cooking.
Tigers eat other folk of a religious bent,
When their luck is out or pluck’s been spent —
Moslems, Christians — Catholics too,
All’ve been known to make tiger doo!
Their loving God, with all knowledge and powers,
In their time of need, ignores them and glowers.

Forget religion's flawed instruction, word and letter,
They mean well, but truly should know better.
Accept the accumulated knowledge of man
As your personal God, and compete if you can,
Enough to contribute, or be happy at least,
To enjoy its fruits and revel in its rich feast,
For when you die, from competition you’ll rest
That’s your heaven, you’ve passed the test.