Into their Lazarus mouths they pop
God like round peppermint lozenges,
and with their resurrected teeth
grind them small,
roll the bits with their tongues,
flooding them with saliva and
the exhalations of digestion.
Then they amble forth
to perform the work for which
they have anointed themselves
and each other,
breathing the judgment of an angry God strongly
into the nostrils of others.

We can hear them at a distance,
from close enough can detect the stench
of self-righteousness.
And a wary eye can detect them in our midst,
with coats that show glossy fronts,
but on their backs,
hidden from their view
and from ours
unless we trouble ourselves to look,
reveal scraps and patches
like bandages over festering sores.

We may protest, draw back in distaste,
alarmed to have God thrust upon us
smelling so pungently of mint
and the charnel house,
but they are relentless in pursuit
of fleeing souls.
They paralyze us with their certainty
that God lives in their mouths.

For myself, I think the God has filed
His change of address:
He resides
not in the mouth, but in the heart.

Some time ago, I had a very brief e-mail exchange with Archbishop Chaput, arising from my having read a letter he had written to the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/22/opinion/22chaput.html?th = Faith and Patriotism ). I unfortunately did not keep a copy of the article, and I note that this link takes one now only to an abstract, though the full article can be viewed for a price. I give here my e-mail to the Archbishop and his very gracious response - after all, a disputant who ends with blessing me is certainly showing the right stuff by almost any standard of morality.

My e-mail:

Sir:

I am myself what I describe as an "apprentice Christian", not Catholic but Greek Orthodox. I'm 70, and still trying to get it right.

Do you seriously believe that all morality and ethics are based in religion? If that were truly the case, then we would have to concede that earliest man and later pagans derived their ethics and morality (and there would have been no survival and no society without them) from the religion of their time, from their multitudinous gods -- god of thunder, god of rain, goddess of crops, etc., etc. That would seem not very flattering to "our" God nor supportive of your point.

I think you are wrong, dead wrong. I believe that morality and ethics emerge primarily from experience: what works to facilitate harmony and communal well-being and peaceful co-existence (or at least minimizes violence) and what does not. It is a trial and error process which required thousands of years. If God is at all, He is whether or not a single person believes in Him. If people find ways to do good works on the basis of motives derived in other ways (including "enlightened self-interest"), you may choose to believe it is God working on them in "mysterious ways". If that's comfortable for you, fine. Obviously, even with the added "benefit" of the "rules" whose authorship we ascribe to God, we aren't doing a terrific job.

I am happy for you that your faith provides light and purpose and guidance. I would do nothing to disturb that even if it were possible. My faith does as much for me, also, and not a day passes in which I am not grateful for that. But I think it IS necessary to realize that the crutch on which you and I lean may not, in fact, provide the underpinnings for everyone. How God views that is for Him to decide.

In short, Sir, the separation of church and state is not axiomatically and inevitably the separation of ethics/morality and state. I think God is not yet so desperate for followers that He needs conscripts. We can have an ethical and moral society and government without religion, yours, mine, or anyone else's.

Sincerely,
/s/

and the Archbishop's response:

Thank you for your e-mail. I am an apprentice Christian too, and that's after 60 years of baptism and 34 years of ordination. Thank you for your reflections.

I do not believe that all morality and ethics are based on religion, but to forbid religious people from bringing their moral considerations into the marketplace does lead to the kind of undermining of morality I spoke about. I don't think we really have a difference.

Blessings on your life and your relationship with the Greek Orthodox Church.

Sincerely yours in Christ,
+cjc

I don't mean to imply (and certainly do not believe) that all "errors" are those of the Catholic Church. It seems to me that human behavior has managed to defy, corrupt, and confuse all religions and their various denominations about equally, though in different ways. Among them, those religions and denominations have helped to produce some amazingly good people -- though the pagans of antiquity have done so, as well. But I believe there are still a good many of the "self-anointed, self-appointed" among us, and that they have done some terribly selective reading/quoting of the Bible in order to justify their positions. They demonstrate a certainty regarding their ability to read God's mind that I don't share. I have doubts at least as great regarding my own ability to do so, but I attempt to diminish the ill-effects of my errors by not proselytizing. Answering questions is not my area of expertise; I limit myself to raising them. The Church of the Apologetic Apprentice Christian has only me for a member, and I find sometimes that I have difficulty tending even that soul, let alone presuming to marshal anyone else's.

In general, I am suspicious of quotations from the Old Testament to justify positions. The entire thrust of the New Testament - and it, presumably, is the basis for Christianity (we'd otherwise all still be practicing some form of Judaism, I suspect) - seems to be loving and caring for one's neighbor, even if one doesn't much care for him. I've been on the receiving end of much of that loving care, by the way, and remain ever grateful for it - certainly on most occasions I cannot claim to have deserved it. So I puzzle over some people's conviction that they know the real skinny as they castigate their neighbors for failure to live up to their standards.

The story of Lot, for example, suggests that God has a grading system we'll never understand. Lot married his half-sister - admittedly, at a time when that seems not to have been considered incestuous -- urged her to use her charms to elicit favorable treatment from rulers of the lands to which he traveled, violated the social law of hospitality (though he did offer the assembled drunken horde his daughters, which certainly seems not much of an improvement over Agamemnon offering Iphigenia for favorable winds for his voyage to Troy), and ultimately permitted himself to be made drunk and seduced by his daughters with whom he fathered children after the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Notwithstanding all that, which would certainly have given him a D in deportment by today's avowed standards, God chose to reward him and allow him to prosper. Go figure... I personally find myself sufficiently puzzled that I'm perfectly willing to take solace in the good old "judge not" invitation. Frankly, I wouldn't want God's job.

'Nough of that. After all, if God is, He is what He is. My conjectures will make no difference. If He isn't, well, I've been deluded. However, it's been a nice delusion for the past 71 years, and I think I'll stick with it a bit longer.