Replying to an Atheist

Over Christmas I was asked by an atheist why there were so many awful human beings in the world, if God made man in His Image. This poem is my reply:

Why, if in God’s Image we be made,

Is evil done, and perpetually replayed?

Why do we not to His Image remain true,

And every vicious sin instead we do pursue?

The answer is given by our inmost heart:

Have I made myself a work of art?

Does the freedom in my origin divine

My comportment and my conduct properly define?

Or have I denied my origin celestial,

By falling into desires detestable?

Have I not within myself the tendency to wickedness,

The ransom of my own unfaithfulness?

So before asking the question, whence evil?

And peering through the mists of time primeval,

Look not at any other, instead probe deep within:

You’ll see there, and not in God, the source of every shame and sin.

The ego ignores every sacred sign,

Which shows the beauty of God’s design,

The Spirit sees nothing but love and light,

It sees through worldly veils with wise insight,

So to the fragmentary ego all is bleak,

Life itself appears as some kind of freak,

The Sovereign Good, a pathetic dream,

Life Hereafter, a childish scheme:

“Fulfill your dreams here and now,

Unto no God prostrate or bow”,

Through this ugly lens there is no ultimacy,

Except bitter desperation and suicidal lunacy,

No creative life-force, no benefic principle,

The ego’s convictions alone appear invincible.

But when unto the Spirit we do return,

The terrifying nightmares of egotism we effortlessly spurn,

We are awake, we truly live, we breathe a sigh of deep relief,

And drink with thanks from fountains of wisdom and sound belief,

Delusion and confusion give way to blissful certainty,

That every single phenomenon of happiness and beauty,

Affords a wondrous sign, miraculous proof,

Of the irresistible magnetism of Absolute Truth,

Illuminating the entire realm of relativity,

Which now sheds the illusion of separativity,

Instead it beckons unto liberating Unity,

The world is seen in the Light of its Reality,

Illuminated by the rays of breathtaking Infinity,

We humbly submit to the glory of All-Possibility,

Whence flow oceanic waves of ecstatic creativity,

Each wave resounding with absolute clarity,

Conveying a message of indubitable veracity,

Revealing that what defines the very nature of ultimate Reality,

Is no concept of Truth or abstract Divinity,

But the fulgurating Essence of Life-bestowing Beauty.

All this within thine own Spirit can be discovered,

If from the pathetic convulsions of thine ego thou hast recovered,

And can look a little deeper into thine own heart,

And grasp thereby thyself, what thou truly art:

A ray of sun in a sky of blue,

Singing “Beauty is the splendour of the True”.

~.The Green Knight.~