We are liars
Your Way is not our wide road
Believing a lie
The flames of hate are fanned
Our words and lives do not match
We claim The Truth and worship idolatry
Wearing dazzling crosses
While refusing to carry Christ’s
Your Way is not the world’s way
You became nothing
To save us from ourselves
Believing our nothing is now something
We expect Our Father to serve us
Entitled?
Of course
Our hypocrisy knows no bounds
Quoting a Bible that we do not read
Sowing lies and discord
Not tending to truth’s seed
Admiring God but not following Jesus
Worshipping man’s strength and power
Avoiding weakness and poverty
Hoarding the gifts God has given
Reciting verses against the fool
While forgetting the fool is me
With our very own words
We pronounce judgment
On our own heads
Unwittingly weighing ourselves
In Omniscience’s balance
Being found wanting
Revealing that we are still dead
What is holy about our temple?
Is it not a visible place of gluttony?
We break all the commandments
In a single thought, word or deed
Our bodies testify against us
Yet, we are blind
That our daily lives
And our most basic actions
Break every commandment
We drag our enemy to the threshing floor
Not even aware that we’re the guilty one
Who among us can cast a stone?
What sinner can rightly judge another sinner?
Drunk and deluded by self-righteousness
Binging on all the world offers us
Curating our own doctrines of morality
Consequently, we forget our places
And our very purpose
Wallowing in ignorance
We open our mouths to speak
And we start wars to pull out splinters
We murder our enemies believing we’re prolife
We murder our bodies with food and drink
We murder our minds with trivial nonsense
We murder our hearts with selfishness
We murder The Spirit with points of application
We murder The Truth with our interpretation
We feed on vomit and champion health
We use The One who emptied himself
To justify our idolatry and wealth
We do not contradict the world
We contradict The Way, The Truth and The Life
Bowing down to the same gods
Wanting the same pleasures
Demanding our kingdoms come
And our wills be done
Expecting God to serves us
Wanting money to give us a name
Voting for the economy
Refusing nakedness
Scoffing at poverty
We are the white washed tombs
We honor You with our lips
But not with our lives
Not with our bodies or hearts
Not with our spirits or minds
Everything we do mocks
The God-Man
Our necks are stiff
Our faces proud
We are the crowd
And now the doctrine of man
Has sunk so low
That the mob
Represents God
We are delusional.
Our words mean nothing
Dare we keep speaking
When all we say convicts us
Of believing a lie
Have we not been warned
That every word that is uttered
Will require an accounting
Perhaps, it best we learn to hold our tongue
Instead of letting words out
By our lives we are known
By our love we are not
Do we really want what’s fair?
When we have been given mercy and grace?
And our debts that are far worse
Than our neighbor’s have been forgiven
Do we not fear the Lord?
Where is our wisdom?
God does not hear the prayers
Because we do not repent of our Iniquities
Our mocking separates us from God
Dare we shut our ears to the cry of the poor?
Dare we scream justice and refuse mercy?
Dare we refuse to confess our own sins
Dare we not know the depth of our own transgressions?
Help us God
To Stop eating the bread of wickedness
To Stop drinking the wine of violence
To Stop uttering crooked speech
To Remember
That Truth is not truth if it is not lived
Help us to Imitate The Way
And Obey his commands
To Love God with all my heart mind, soul and strength, and Love my neighbor as myself.
The Bible
James 3- 5
CHAPTER THREE 1Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, knowing that we shall receive a greater judgment. 2For we all falter in numerous ways. If anyone does not falter in speech, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle his whole body. 3And, when we insert bridles into the mouths of horses to make them comply with us, we also direct their whole body. 4And look at how ships, which are so enormous and which are driven by powerful winds, are directed wherever the pilot’s impulse determines by a tiny rudder; 5So also the tongue is a small bodily member, yet it boasts of great things. See how immense a forest so tiny a fire ignites. 6And the tongue is a fire, iniquity’s cosmos, defiling the whole body, and setting aflame the wheel of generation, and being itself set aflame by Hinnom’s Vale. 7For every nature—both of beasts and of birds, both of reptiles and of creatures of the sea—is being tamed, and has been tamed, by human nature, 8But from among human beings there is no one able to tame the tongue: a restless evil full of lethal venom. 9With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings who have been born according to God’s likeness; 10Out of the same mouth comes blessing and curse. It is not fitting, my brothers, that these things happen thus. 11Does the fountain issue forth from the same spout as both sweet and bitter? 12Can a fig tree produce olives, my brothers, or a vine figs? Neither can what is salty produce sweet water. 13Who among you is wise and knowledgeable? Let him display his works by comely conduct in wisdom’s gentleness. 14But, if you harbor bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, do not boast and speak falsely against the truth. 15This is not the wisdom that descends from above, but is earthly, natural, daemoniacal; 16For where there are jealousy and selfish ambition, there is disorder and every squalid deed. 17But the wisdom from above is first of all pure, then peaceable, reasonable, accommodating, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial, unfeigned. 18And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace.
CHAPTER FOUR 1Where do the conflicts and where do the battles among you come from? Is it not from there—from the pleasures waging war in your bodily members? 2You desire and you do not have; you murder and covet and you are unable to obtain; you fight and wage war; you do not have because you do not ask; 3You ask and do not receive because you ask in an evil fashion, so that you might spend on your own pleasures. 4You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the cosmos is enmity with God? Whoever therefore resolves to be a friend of the cosmos is rendered an enemy of God. 5Or do you think it in vain that the scripture says, “The spirit that has dwelt within us yearns to the point of envy”? 6But he gives greater grace. Hence it says, “God opposes the arrogant but gives grace to the humble.” 7Therefore, be subordinate to God, but oppose the Slanderer and he will flee from you. 8Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-souled men. 9Be distressed and mourn and weep; let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to dejection. 10Be humbled before the Lord and he will lift you up. 11Do not speak against one another, brothers. Whoever speaks against a brother or judges a brother speaks against Law and judges Law; if you judge Law, you are not a doer of Law, but a judge. 12There is one Lawgiver and judge, he who has power to save and destroy. But who are you who judge your neighbor? 13Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we shall journey into this city, and spend a year there, and engage in commerce, and make a profit”: 14You who do not know what your life will be like on the morrow—for you are a vapor, appearing for a short while and then vanishing—15You should instead say, “If the Lord will it, we shall both live and also do . . .” this or that. 16But now, in your pretentiousness, you boast; all such boasting is wicked. 17Therefore, when someone knows to do the good and does not do it, it is sin for him.
CHAPTER FIVE 1Come now, you who are rich, weep, howling out at the miseries that are coming for you: 2Your riches have spoiled and your garments have become moth-eaten; 3Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will serve as testimony against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have kept treasure in the last days. 4Look: The wages of the workers who have reaped your lands, which have been unfairly held back by you, clamor aloud, and the outcries of those who have reaped have entered the ears of the Lord Sabaoth. 5You lived on the earth in dainty luxury and self-indulgence. You have gorged your hearts on a day of slaughter. 6You have condemned—have murdered—the upright man; he does not oppose you. 7So, brothers, be long-suffering until the arrival of the Lord. Look: The farmer awaits the precious fruit of the earth, remaining patient over it until it receives the early and the late rains.h 8You be patient too, strengthen your hearts, for the Lord’s arrival has drawn near. 9Do not murmur against one another, brothers, so that you might not be judged—look: The judge is standing before the doors! 10Brothers, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord for an example of suffering evil and of patience. 11Look: We consider those who persevere blissful. You have heard of Job’s endurance and you have seen the ending that came from the Lord—that the Lord is lavishly compassionate and merciful. 12But before all else, my brothers, do not swear—neither by the heaven nor by the earth nor by any other object of oaths; rather let your “Yes” be “Yes” and your “No” be “No,” so that you may not fall under judgment. 13Is anyone among you suffering evil? Let him pray. Is anyone of good cheer? Let him sing psalms. 14Is anyone among you ill? Let him summon the elders of the assembly, and let them pray over him, having anointed him with oil in the name of the Lord. 15And the prayer of faith will save the one who is ailing, and the Lord will raise him up, and if he should be someone who has committed sins it will be forgiven him. 16Therefore fully acknowledge your sins to one another, and pray on one another’s behalf, so that you might be healed. An upright man’s petition, when it is put into effect, is very powerful. 17Elijah was a man, with feelings like ours, and he prayed a prayer that it might not rain, and no rain fell upon the earth for three years and six months; 18And again he prayed, and the sky gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit. 19My brothers, if anyone among you should stray from the truth, and anyone should turn him back, 20Be aware that the one who turns a sinner back from the error of his way will save his soul from death and will cover over a multitude of sins.
DeeAnn Dean 