Why?

Why?

Why continue to believe

when we live in a world

where science now explains

so much of the world

to us?

Why believe 

when we live in a world

where literature explains

how so many beliefs

came from the need

to fill in

what science couldn't?

Why believe

when it seems

as if it can only be

a story,

maybe even

a very good one,

the greatest story ever told,

as has been said,

when so much dispute

in two thousand years

has bee introduced

into how that story

came into being?

Even Paul,

our missionary,

came late to the table

and never met Christ,

and the Jews

are still the Jews,

and they refuse

to this day,

to reach the same conclusions,

and the record,

they say,

even outside Christian texts,

was tampered with,

is unreliable,

and so much

is so easy to ridicule,

now,

and we have our reason

and we are ever on a quest

to better ourselves,

and this means

old things

must be cast away,

a beach ball in an ocean

who failed a friend

just by floating away...

Too many parallels,

too many coincidences,

it's all just made up, right?

Except.

Except.

Even putting aside the martyrs,

because there will always be zealots

willing to do anything,

the Christians never went away,

and all they wanted

was to see the world around them

get better.

They were inspired

by a man,

by men and women

who believed in him,

and sold his story

based on incredible things,

and all that snowballed

for centuries

and there were disagreements

and the world as we know it

came into being,

and while we argue now

it was all a mistake

we wouldn't be here

if it hadn't been made,

the whole world would be different,

and the people who say this is a mistake

would be calling the world they would have

a mistake, too,

because that world would be Roman,

or some other empire,

and what will have been lost

is a world

where it's possible

to believe

in the best of all possible worlds

(with apologies to Candide, who didn't believe),

an argument made by people

who followed a man

who preached a message

about a kingdom

that is not of this world

but through which

we might see it

every day,

in all of us,

if we look,

if we don't spend all our time

looking at the worst 

but rather at the best,

even if it's just potential,

and it's always potential,

it will always be potential,

and it's not about what happens next,

something you win

as if it's a game

something you can fake

and cheat at,

feel good about,

because it's not about feeling good

because sometimes it really does hurt

to do the right thing,

and this is something

too too few of us

want to understand,

let alone are capable of,

and yet the story goes

that's how it began,

for God so loved the world...