Sunday, October 13, 2019

Psychopannychia




My sentence is for peace
Yet theirs is for open war: of wiles
Drink in my answers
A shelter of worthless lies and half truths
Trailing down my catabaptist gutters
Eating away bellies of insanity like a cancer
Or feast your eyes instead on their spread of metaphysical absurdities
Polluted by oversimplification and arbitrariness 
Repellant to sound reason and beautiful taste
Masquerading as the most terrifying tradition of the One
Thrice holy, omnipotent, and boundlessly good
Toward those sketched from all eternity
Glorious, supreme, and boundlessly cruel
Toward all those enlightened sociopaths 
With their appendage of the trinity in hand
And sacred tradition placarded across phylacteries 
Selectively following a democracy of the dead
Alongside peer reviewed pressure of tenured tracks 
Comfortably acquiescing to the dictates of infernalists and sacrificialists
One, holy, catholic and apostolic creed is all 
They need or want in common
Go and disciple all nations
They all insist
Baptize them into our quadrinity
Some demur
The kosmos must commune with our version of Divinity
They all genuflect 
Some kind of apostolic succession must be retained 
Our paperback version of sacerdotalism must be preserved
Just don’t call it that
Instead, call it giving obsequium religiosum
But don’t say it to them in Latin
That’ll send the wrong signal
And the gnostics might gain the advantage 
Slide it into our confession as an explanation of our creed
Heaven forbid they win the war
Heterodoxy and heresy must be brought to ruin 
Arians, Marcionites, Pelagians, and Catholics galore
All need the essential good of our glorious gospel 
That our benevolent and omnipotent Deity Has destined them
To everlasting splendor or unending torture
Those on the right will receive life unto ages of ages
Those on the left, unending punishment
For few, eternal life
For many, eternal destruction 
The wording of the Fourth person is abundantly clear
As it is tragically ironic 
And ironically tragic 
Eternal life or eternal judgment
So say we all
Eternal life or eternal fire 
So say we all
Eternal life for those who seek for immortality
Death for those seeking selfish hostility and rivalry
Disobeying the real while obeying injustice instead
So say we all
To the former, eternal honor and glory are distributed 
The latter are cast away from God’s presence and the glory of his might
Consciously tormented forever
So say we all
So fear not those who can kill the body but not the soul
Fear the One who can destroy both body and soul in Gehenna
In the Resurrection from the dead-ones
God will give us all bodies so that we cannot die or be destroyed
If our lord says it
We must believe it 
And that settles it
So say we all
What more shall I say?
For time would fail me to tell of Jephthah and the prophets
Who were commended through their faith 
What matters now is knowing the standard set before us
Let’s not challenge it enough
To lose our jobs
Or credibility
Among the masses
Scholars agree 
There once was a time 
When the Deity dwelt among them
So they jotted down their collective encounter 
With this monstrosity 
Schools of scribes and redactors had their reasons 
For sculpting what remained of vellum and parchment
Professors and Pastors have their reasons too
They will provide the much needed apodoses if we agree with their protases
Anomalous constructions are everywhere throughout the pericope 
Adding admirable grist to the mill of any narrator
Desiring to craft a story capable of more than one meaning 
But their cleaning and scraping and gluing and standardizing is just 
Another adventure in missing the point
The sacrificialists suffer the same as infernalists in this way
An alleged unbroken succession of interpretation
The scribal traditions we train for today are as reliable 
As the plain meaning we regurgitate
So we are taught to believe 
So say we all
The Olah is a sacrifice that is wholly consumed by fire
That’s what it means 
That’s why we translate it as a whole burnt offering
That’s what our lord teaches us
So say we all
Our lexicons make no allowance for purely figurative usage 
Beyond the bounds of the book
An ascension to the holy mountain is not an option
The meaning is obvious
So say we all
Deflecting attention away 
From the narrative arc of the judges 
Its unique emphasis with immediate predecessors and successors 
With numerous progeny 
Yet he had more than a favorite
He had only one child and heir to a dynasty 
That’s why the vow mattered so much
All successors and predecessors are tempted with dynastic aspirations
We are not told this explicitly
Or are we? 
We cannot believe that 
Or can we? 
All such temptation was removed by God 
We can only believe what the text plainly means
So say we all
The end result is the same anyway
Some think she was to die unmarried and childless 
Others think she was to die unmarried and childless 
The timing of the death is what varies
One occurs over the course of time 
After a full life is lived without child
The other occurs in just two months
So that a full life cannot be lived with child
The lawfulness of the vow matters too
Can one vow to murder another or offer human sacrifice
Yet expect God to not hold him accountable?
We shouldn’t ask such questions 
Let’s pony up to the real horror of the story 
This righteous man was confused
He made a vow and was supposed to stick with it 
The same infernalist demanding Deity would certainly hold him to it
So say we all
Let’s not try to paint a prettier picture of the man than what he really was
So say we all
A sinner and unsophisticated rustic
In need of grace 
In need of that great Sermon on the Mount
To keep him from taking an oath at all
So say we all
Yet he made a vow and must keep it
Or else 
The most high God would ...
The text doesn’t say
But he certainly believed God would have 
So say we all
All primitives of that generation thought as much 
So say we all
Even Jesus said don’t vow at all
Because if you do you must keep it no matter what
So say we all
Let your yes be yes and your no be no
Anything more comes from the evil one
So say we all
Forget about the plague that broke out after Mesha sacrificed his firstborn
So say we all
If our lord said it
We must believe it 
And that settles it
So say we all
But what about those who felt a need to save her from being murdered? 
What about the Torah forbidding human sacrifice?
Aren't such vows invalid according to Leviticus?
Silence, Catabaptist
It was legal in Jephthah’s time
So say we all
Plus he was likely unaware of such Torah 
So say we all
Like the Ammonites who regularly practiced human sacrifice
If surrounding elohim required it
So did Israel’s Elohim
So say we all
But no one attempted to save the child 
As with Saul’s rash vow and action toward Jonathan
I said silence
That’s beside the point 
So say we all
What about their celebration of the Deity’s victories? 
So say none at all
This is no celebration
This is an annual event of mourning
The fact is clear enough 
A literal sacrifice was commemorated 
The human sacrifice was extraordinary 
So say we all
Artemis would only grant a favorable wind 
If the prophet’s word was kept
So say we all
The vow was made
Therefore the most beautiful thing must be summoned
So say we all
To eternal death, then judgement
So say we all
To unending, conscious, bodily agonies in the Lake
So say we all
But such was not the case for the only child on Moriah
Narrated in reverse 
Offered up as an Olah
There the sacrifice was required
There the father prepared to obey 
There the extraordinary faith was demonstrated 
There the lamb was provided in his place
There the Deity vowed to provide countless descendants 
Therefore Jephthah is the real phenomenon
So say we all
Like Abram
The true disciple of Deity
Like Abram
Waging war on His behalf 
Like Abram
Calling upon Him to judge between Israel and the nations
Like Abram
And the Spirit of YHWH came upon Jephthah
And he passed through Gilead and Manasseh
And he passed through Gilead of Mizpah
And from Gilead of Mizpah he passed through Ammon
And he—Jephthah—made a vow to YHWH
But Jephthah was a complete buffoon
So say we all
A man like the surrounding fools of goyim 
So say we all
He shouldn’t have made that vow
So say we all
Oh the tragedy and irony of each generation
Preferring the advice of Moloch over Belial
Swallowed up and lost
In the wide womb of uncreated Night











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