False Gods

False Gods

The questions they asked

were not questions at all.

They were tripwires,

designed to catch us in our own thoughts,

to see if our faith was true.

Not faith in Christ—

faith in the bylaws,

the bylaws that sprouted unwritten,

that we pretended not to notice

growing from the cracks in the floor.

We could pass the tests,

but never rest—

always the nagging sense

that we’d missed a step,

that faith had become a ladder

we were too tired to climb.

False gods are like that—

demanding endless proof,

fueled by fear instead of love.

We looked around at our

marble halls of certainty,

and saw them for what they were—

houses of cards,

shuddering in the breeze.