I
Once I wondered if God was real
Or like some say
Whether He was the myopic creativity
Of uncivilized minds, of primitive machinations
Unsophisticated in the ways of scientific inquiry

Please, save me from the self-righteous,
The battering of your hypocritical eyes

As if you’ve never asked this same question before
Before Sunday-school etiquette
Called your inquiry an iniquity;
A loudspeaker for the propaganda of hell.

II
We have heard with our ears, O God;
Our fathers have told us the work You did in their days,
In the days of old.

But where is He who brought them
Through the sea with the shepherds of His flock?
Where is the One who set His Holy Spirit among them,
Where are all His wonders?

I was ashamed to ask the king
For soldiers and horsemen
To protect us from enemies on the road,
For we had told the king,
The gracious hand of our God
Is on everyone who looks to him,

And unless I see the nail marks in His hands,
And put my finger where the nails have been,
And put my hand into His side,
I will never believe it.

III
Even if I didn’t believe
God’s love would not drop a degree
On heaven’s barometer

How dare we glamour our ragged ignorance
As the holy shawls of religious piety

Can the omniscient be afraid of questions
Truth is not afraid to be a specimen
Even if the slide is doubt
In the telescope of faith

So why have we made questions a blasphemy
Like an unwritten 12th commandment
Chiselled into the skull of the bigotry of religion.

We may ignore these questions,
But they do not go away
Gnawing at our conscience
Like soldier ants biting tender places.

God may not condescend to our challenge;
Fire falling from the sky
But if the truth is indeed what we seek,
We will find Him

IV
Maybe with God we ought to be gluttons
Eating and excavating
Evidence of the divine
Even if not all expeditions
End in discovery

Finding God is like hiking
It is supposed to be safe
Sometimes the same stone that held another
Gives away under your feet
Sometimes you gas out in doubt

V
Finding God
Is understanding why a powerful man
Would do nothing about his son’s bad grades
Not because he does not care
But because the son must learn that
Being born into affluence
Is not an escape from consequences

I have not come to indoctrinate you
In the ideologies of organised religion
I will not bother entering into an argument of teaching

What I do have to offer
Is a reality;
That if you want to Find God,
He will show up

Selah

Editor’s note: This poem is the Questions representative from Under the Influence (First Edition, 2026).