Odds and Ends

Spiritual Poems

92 Comments

As most of you are aware, I dabble a bit in poetry from time to time so when I see a fundy church website with a Spiritual Poems section, I can’t help but check it out.

What I found there was…well, it was certainly unique.

Then I watched their promotional video for School of Fundamental Truths and suddenly all became clear. There’s no author attributed to the poetry but I’m going to guess that the pastor wrote these poems himself.

92 thoughts on “Spiritual Poems”

  2. Oh my… I hear these terms at my church, and we use the Bible (although it’s the ESV). We are missing the interesting meanings and pronunciations (“incited about” and “Christologly”, for example), as well as staring at graphics on the pastor’s laptop (we prefer to project them on the wall or look at our own laptops, iPads or phones).

    But, some points for making an attempt to enter the 21st century! Buzz Lightyear would be proud!

  3. Gee,, everyone else must be asleep or have better things to do than I have right now (I am returning to my salt mine…).

    1. Or maybe it’s because getting first isn’t a big deal? Or at least, it shouldn’t be. It’s actually quite annoying IMO.

        1. Fun is fun…many of us don’t get enough of it. If it’s bug you, don’t read those posts!

          The couple of times I have had a “first” it has given a little boost and smile to my day.

        4. I hear that the butt cushions in heaven are lovely, stuffed with genuine angel feathers!

          The butt cushion is just something we firsties aspire to.

        5. Linn, you heard wrong. The non-existent cushions are filled with butt dust.

          I’m sure you’re scratching your head over this. You know, as in the line saying we are “all but dust”.

          Blame Natalie for this, as I had nothing to do with it.

        6. I am going to continue with my fantasy of genuine angel wing stuffing.

          I need a reason for why I try so hard to be first!

  4. Makes me feel like Shakespeare. That line that has the word blouse rhyming with spouse doesn’t work for me. I pronounce it blouze, never mind, none of it works for me. Eternity just around the bin? I cringed for him as I read it.

    1. ‘Blouze’? As in rhymes with ‘booze’? Or with ‘plows’?

      And I thought trying to understand Britcoms was hard. Now I have to work on Canadian, too?

      2. I think she was saying she pronounces blouse with a z sound (as in plows) versus an s sound (as in mouse).

    3. MiriamD, maybe the “eternity just around the bin” line works if you compare your current life to a dumpster.

    1. Change the “a” to an “e” and you’ll get Vegan Baptist Church. That might get their attention@

      1. I never heard of a Baptist vegan. They have big pot luck dinners with ham, fried chicken, collards cooked with ham hocks, etc.

        Our younger daughter and her husband and two daughters are Quaker vegetarians, though.

        1. Yankee baptists have potlucks featuring a lot of pasta. I’m guessing because it’s relatively cheap. I’ve never seen a Yankee baptist potluck featuring collard greens. Ham, yes — no hocks, no greens.

        2. Believe it or not I’m a vegetarian and attend a Baptist church, but it’s not a fundy Baptist church. Wimmin there wear britches and even have leadership roles. I was a vegan for a while, felt great, very hard to stick to.

    4. I’ll be wearing my towel over my head if anyone needs me. Big Gary, this may be worse than the Vogons.

  7. Too bad there’s no “submit your own” link on the poem page – we could have some fun!

      1. Oh it’s that guy – apparently he likes Donald Trump – because he’s so virtuous..

        1. Yeah and read down his page a bit to where someone comments on one of his posts about being “born homophobic”….

  9. Am I the only one who hears the rather disturbing sound of Shakespeare, Wordworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Byron, and all the other great poets simultaniously turning in their graves?

    1. Could be but I rather think they are just struggling to ignore the whole thing.

    1. And that is some almost exquisitely bad poetry. Jack Schapp would be jealous.

    2. Yes it did! We were not allowed to use the word “fool” growing up because of this verse.

      1. Leave it to fundies to focus on the word and not the spirit behind it

  12. Ah the beauty of language & comparison/simile:

    “But fools is just a bunch of fools”…

    1. And it’s always a great idea to mix singular & plural wrecklessly when implying everyone else is a fools. 🙂

        1. And wouldn’t “wrecklessly” imply this “poem” wasn’t a wreck? 😉

    3. Hmmm, that sounds like Ebonics. Point that out to them and they’d have a collective stroke.

    4. It’s like the parody poems the rude mechanics who put on the play within the play recite.

  15. He’s going to do it the “old fashioned” way! He doesn’t have any education, he can’t use big words or think big thoughts, so he is going to use his puny mind to communicate Spiritual “Truths”.

  16. Was the poem “Fools” written by a child in the church preschool?
    If so, it isn’t bad for a first effort.
    If not … see “Vogon poetry” above.

    1. Please don’t insult preschool children! Their first efforts would be much better than this drivel.

  17. In that video did he say that he wouldn’t use any made up or imaginated words?

    1. He sure did! I don’t know if that’s regional English, a spinoff from King Jimmy, or just poor usage (I tend toward the latter).

  18. He abhors terms like eschatology? Ummm, ok? Eschatos-Logy from the Greek means the study of last things. I thought Fundies were infatuated with that stuff.
    Sometimes it’s possible to be so uninformed that you actually parody yourself. Thankfully we have the Internet’s so we can watch it as it happens.

  19. This unpoetic wreck makes me squirm and be a little embarrassed for him.

  20. This preecher’s poetry brought back an old memory from Bob Jones.

    There was an artist series when neither my roommate nor I had a date. During the performance, he wrote a poem. It began, “Oft have I foofed into the air/And caught a smell/’Twas lingering there…

    Shakespeare plays brought out his creative side.

    1. More fan fiction BJg:

      And pleasant this to me did seem, and right/
      As if a dream on some midsummer’s night/
      But others cried, “Alas! alack! what beast/
      On us hath this miasmic cloud unleash’d?

      1. Retorted I, as eyeballs melted,
        “Forsooth! ‘Twas one of ye that dealt it.”

    2. I wonder if my former fundy CEO was in that particular play, BJg! Now that would be a hoot!

      B.R.1

  21. On their home page, I watched their whole slide show. They look like nice people. I only hope their pastor is kind-hearted.
    I’m not making any endorsement here but people are at where they are at. If you are going to be IFB you might as well have a warm church family, a kind pastor, and plenty of potlucks.

    1. My experience over a few decades and multiple fundy outposts, and I’d venture to say it’s similar for many people on SFL, is that fundy leaders are warm and wonderful until you’re no longer useful to them (you run out of money or you’re too busy working three jobs to participate in “ministry”).

      1. Sounds right. And, of course, with IFB, “nice” is a relative term. How many pastors are full of condemnation for others in their pulpits and influences while being “nice” to the people in their church?

        1. I’ve seen plenty of times where the MOG has bashed the congregation. That generally happened on Sunday and Wednesday nights, when the faithful were there and it was less likely that visitors were present.

          One Wednesday night I was in the nursery. There was a building project going on and MOG was flipping out on the people over something. I don’t know that he ever apologized publicly for treating them like that.

          Two people came up to me later and told me about what happened. They were hurt by it I said to take it up with him. I’m pretty sure they didn’t because of his authority.

          Unfortunately, because MOG are seldom challenged they seldom change and the cycle continues. People who leave are labeled backsliders or weak in the faith. It certainly is never because leadership is lacking love and compassion. /sarcasm off

    2. You’re probably right. While we need to heal from the garbage we were fed in various IFB churches, we should guard against gratuitous bashing. It started that way with the Jews in Germany in the 1930’s. It’s easy to marginalize people we don’t want to be like. And while we are pretty friendly on this blog there are others in other venues who are hostile and judgmental, no need for that. Besides, any place with great potlocks can’t be all bad. Still I probably wouldn’t attend there ‘cuz I wear britches and like good grammar and jazz.

      2. Kool Aid isn’t all bad either, but I wouldn’t want to use that for my primary thirst-quenching needs.

        I’m not going to use fundamentalism to satisfy any need or desire because the poison will outweigh the good.

    3. I thought that once but now I see the hook under the warm church family and the potluck dinners. I know people are where they are but there are places that are not safe to be.

    4. Of course there are warm congregations and kind pastors in the IBF. All people are multi-faceted and are rarely as two-dimensional as their stereotypes. With most of them you can pick out great anecdotes to stand alongside the bad.

      On looking back after almost a decade of being out of the movement, though, I feel like one of the biggest problems with the IBF is how narrowly they’ve defined who is in and who is out. Every aspect of faith and practice is spelled out in detail, and if you don’t agree you are at best not pleasing God, and at worst not even a Christian.

      So yes, there’s warmth and kindness, but only if you toe the line and check every box correctly. If you dare to question the status quo the kindness goes away.

  22. The poetry reminded me of Indigo and Fezzik. I prefer those two they are more entertaining:D

  23. Just to clarify, this guy is writing verse, not poetry. Verse has rhyme and meter, but is not hard to write because rhyme and meter are really all you need. Helen Steiner Rice is a famous Christian verse-writer. Gerard Manley Hopkins is a famous Christian poet.

  24. Seems to me the writer of this poem forgot about John 3.16, and forgets their own past. At one time, all believers were deniers of God.

  25. Fool–a word that can be used as a noun or as a verb and is easy to make rhymes with…..hey lets write a poem using the word fool!

  26. Anyone else hear Kip reading his wedding poem to LaShawnda when you read this poem?

  27. “If you ain’t first, you’re last.” Ricky Bobby

    Kinda the same concept….Except the one above made more sense.

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