What a curious glory,

A baffling kind of love,

That pulls our eyes from beauty

And turns them up above;

In what strange morality

— And to what foggy ends —

Are we to love our enemies

While hating kin and friends;

What an odd philosophy,

What bizarre point of view,

To bless the blind and credulous

And call presumption “true;”

What a precarious notion,

What an unlikely guess,

That the kingdom is invisible

And this world value-less;

What a sad psychology

That looks on human kind,

Ignores all strength and virtue,

But smallest fault will find;

What unhappy Utopia

What grim ideal of loss,

To raise the holy martyr

And love the hanging cross;

And what a strange presumption

To say with certainty

That in moral perfection

This God we all can see;

A God who curses fig trees,

Tortures Job for show and tell,

Creates us sick with sin, and then

Commands us to be well;

A God who tells the father

To kill his only son,

Then carries out this evil law,

And called the Loving one;

This strange God strains my conscience,

His ways are not my own,

His nature is not natural,

He lives not in my bone;

For love of good and wisdom,

Of children and of wife,

Spare me your strange God’s teachings

Of the glories after life.