GOD’S WORD

GOD’S WORD


God did make all sorts of plants
And fish and fowl, man and beast.
To make all men similar,
Could have been his thought the least.

Each face looks so different:
Blue, green eyes; black, white hair;
Bodies short, tall; thin, heavy;
Skin black, brown, pale and fair.

God’s creation they are all,
About this there is no doubt.
Yet often it’s about Him
All men keep fighting about.

“That you are His only true
Children”, this they have been taught,
He made man in His image
But two men resemble not.

Which version of God is true?
And, which, in fact, is a fake?
Which the last and real Book?
What were the words that He spake?

Jews say, the Hebrew Bible;
New Testament, say Christians.
For Muslims only Holy
Quran has His true lessons.

God does not approve only
Of one Book or of one sect;
Yet, Religions of the Book
Often forget this one fact:

“Omnipotent, omniscient,
The God is omnipresent.
He can’t His children, from harm,
Too selectively prevent.”

In one country, freezing snow;
In the other, desert heat.
They fight for what was the word
That the God himself did speak!



• Written in abcb, 7-7-7-7 format
• Posted as item 750376; replaced by entry no. 335618 in book War Poetry, "WAR POETRY--award winner" ; posted as the present on 29 December 2007.


MC Gupta
13 September 2003



NOTE: This poem tries to bring out the relation between religion and the current war against terrorism.
SAMUEL P. HUNTINGTON, the Eaton Professor of the Science of Government and Director of the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University, published in 1993 in the summer issue of “Foreign Affairs” an article titled CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS, which was the product of the Olin Institute's project on "The Changing Security Environment and American National Interests." He was foreign policy aide to President Clinton. Huntigton later wrote a book bearing the same title.

In essence, the clash of civilizations boils down to clash of religions. Huntigton makes some serious and forceful arguments in his book, such as:

1. Modernization does not mean Westernization.
2. Western-style capitalistic democracy is not necessarily the best and many other "civilizations" continue to thrive under radically different social models. These civilizations frequently feel deeply offended and physically threatened by the notion that they will one day all be Western-style democracies.

CONCLUSION [Mine]--One needs to seriously consider as to what extent the desire of the Western powers to thrust their concepts of modernization and capitalist democracy down the throats of people on the opposite side of the globe is responsible for the spread of terrorism and the anti-West attitude of the terrorists—all this happening in the matrix of different religious beliefs and practices.