I still have the program from the last service I attended Folded, in a coat I don't wear anymore I was seventeen the first time I thought Something in here is lying to me I was thirty-one when I decided I was right That's fourteen years of felling like I was swallowing glass and calling it communion Packed the pew and paid the price and prayed the prescribed way Performed the proper penance while the pastor got his payday Passed the plate, passed the point of asking what it cost Passed the age where they could tell me that my doubt was just a loss I memorized the manual before I read between the lines Before I found the footnotes full of who they'd left behind Before the doctrine dropped its mask and wore the damage plain Before the hands I'd called on God in had a ledger with my name They said the sickness was the distance I had put between us Said the doubt was just the devil and the devil was the weakness Said surrender was the cure and I surrendered and I tried Said I wasn't trying hard enough the morning that I knew That the trying was the damage and the damage all came through Something died and I picked up the pieces off the floor Looked at what I'd given and what any of it was for And it wasn't God I lost in there, let me make that clear It was the thing they built on top of God That finally disappeared I didn't lose my faith, I lost their version I didn't lose the fire, I lost the church it burned in What's underneath when all of that is gone I know what it's like To love a lie completely I know what it's like To build your whole life kneeling I know what it's like When the thing you called your god Turns out to be a fraud A god damn fraud I know what it's like To measure life in borrowed breath I know what it's like To call obedience life and death I know what it's like When the thing you called your god Turns out to be a fraud A god damn fraud I know what it's like Something older than the scripture, older than the name they gave it Something in the static underneath the sermon they were saving Felt it in the fracture, felt it in the fall from grace Felt it in the silence after leaving that had weight Not the God they sold subscriptions to, not heaven by invoice Something in the marrow of the morning, something without voice Something in the matter before matter learned to move Something that was present in the parking lot at noon When I stood there in the asphalt, eat'n, and finally understood That the thing they kept describing wasn't anything like good That the fear they called devotion and the shame they called a sign Were a wall built to keep me from the thing that's actually divine And the thing that's actually divine don't need my kneecaps on the floor Don't need my guilt gift-wrapped and tithed and handed through a door It was in me before the building and it'll outlast every steeple It don't live in the institution, it lives inside the people I didn't lose my faith, I lost their version I didn't lose the fire, I lost the church it burned in What's underneath when all of that is gone I know what it's like To love a lie completely I know what it's like To build your whole life kneeling I know what it's like When the thing you called your god Turns out to be a fraud A god damn fraud I know what it's like To measure life in borrowed breath I know what it's like To call obedience life and death I know what it's like When the thing you called your god Turns out to be a fraud A god damn damn fraud I know what it's like I know what it's like I know what it's like I know what it's like I know what it's like I know what it's like I know what it's like I still have that program Sometimes I take it out And think about it Not because I miss it Because I need to remember what it felt like to be that wrong about something I loved that much And then I put it back And I step right up because I know what it's like Yeah I know what it's like To love a lie completely I know what it's like To build your whole life kneeling I know what it's like when the thing you called your god Turns out to be a fraud Turns out to be a fraud I know what it's like to Measure life in borrowed breath I know what it's like To call obedience life and death I know what it's like When the thing you called your god Turns out to be a god damn fraud
