CHRISTIAN CHARITY! (poem)

CHRISTIAN CHARITY!

“The Poor Have Good News Preached To Them”. Luke 7:22

(The BBC reported that a churchwarden asked

a policeman to remove a sleeping homeless

man in case he frightened churchgoers!) (1)

“‘Ello! ‘Ello! you can’t kip ‘ere,

This is the ‘ouse of God;

So let’s be ‘aving you right now,

You filthy, ‘omeless sod”!

Thus spoke one of the boys in blue,

The Force’s jobsworth plod.

The Church exists for just form’s sake,

For those folk who pretend;

That Christian love and sympathy,

Are their life’s only end,

But who’ve one eye on Heaven’s door,

And their means to ascend.

One has to be respectable,

And seen to pay one’s dues;

That’s why the gentry sit on high,

In all the private pews,

With wooden benches for the poor,

Not bums to swig down booze.

The high-born take priority,

In the old Heaven game;

With lower orders destined for,

Eternal fire and shame,

Along with vagrants who have spurned,

The good Messiah’s name.

So derelicts need not return,

They simply won’t get in;

The Church is only predisposed,

To squeaky-clean type sin,

Thus tramps fall short of entering,

The sanctuary within.

The Church exists to just insure,

Its flock from fiery fates;

And so ensure the afterlife,

Of those with pious traits,

The homeless go to hell before,

They reach the Pearly Gates!

(1) Since the above, a US Mormon Bishop, 

disguised as a vagrant, was told to leave

the church building by the congregation.

© Richard Layton