God is Great!

"God is great!"
Even the skeptic, even the stalwart cynic
Can raise this banner over all the roofs of the world
As they watch the procession of history,
And see how Evil is shunned, despised and driven out howling,
And though it may return for a time,
Gloating and monstrous,
Murdering and raping bingefully,
Still men rise up against it and it is routed.

We are too modest at times, too vain in others
When asking what God is.
We are vain when we say God is a Divine Man,
A celestial greybeard, stern father who lays down the law
And metes out justice through miracles.
We are too modest when we overlook
That justice is done through us,
That we are wise from centuries of experience and grow wiser still.
We are ignorant when we deny
That Good and Evil spring from the same waters.

Some creeds are wiser than others:
Those that say God is faceless, nameless,
Those that talk of a Way and the One,
Those that talk of the unity of spirit and substance,
Those that do not attribute to the Prime-Mover
Petty jealousies, powerlust, joy, longing,
No, not even anger.
I think these are closer to the truth of the matter.
Closer is to the heart of matters is the man who says:
"God is everything and everything is God."
Closer still is the man who says:
"God is Truth."
Truly, I believe the man who says:
"There is no Creator, but there is an Order which could be called divine."

But as I watch the smoke and battles of the world,
Taking note of the Hitlers and Stalins destroyed,
Entombed in monuments of scorn for all to come,
And I see the death of thousands of innocents
Bringing down the wrath of the world upon the would-be
Destroyers of civilization,
I weigh this against the injustices in the world,
And I am comforted.
There is indeed a power at work,
And we may be very proud of it and rejoice.
Let all faiths proclaim its greatness today,
Though we might understand it differently.
For the hardened skeptic, too, there is cause
For celebration.

The wicked and the spiteful cannot prevail forever.
Men of faith and unbelievers alike know
The wages of Evil are suffering and death.
Sometimes the blow is delivered by the just,
Sometimes by the not-so-just,
But in the end, perhaps it doesn't matter
Because the principle lives and acts,
And will so long as the universe is home to Man.
The Good is not separate from the True;
What is righteous is a reflection and a consequence
Of what is real.