https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/21121059/20250718-094219.m4a

Listen to the author read his poem.

Before I became a Christian, I believed that everything in the universe existed by chance. It was an explanation accepted by pretty much everyone around me in secular Britain, and I never even questioned it. That explanation—I now see—is staggeringly implausible. It can be rebutted with empirical evidence, logic, and philosophy. But another way to push back against it is through poetry.

Spoken word poetry, in case it’s new to you, is geared toward dramatic performance. The cadences and rhymes are best suited to vocal delivery. There’s nothing wrong with silently reading the printed version of a spoken word poem, but it comes alive and roars when performed at an open mic night, a poetry slam, a talent show, or a high school revue. You can listen to my reading, above. And just remember, if you choose to perform this poem, to give all the glory to Chance.

Praise Be to Chance!

A Satirical Spoken Word Poem

“Chance alone is at the source of every innovation, of all creation.” – Nobel Prize winner Jacques Monod

Part I: The Sun

Praise be to Chance!
You sparked a campfire in the darkness
and set the earth upon its axis,
turning, daily, like a round hog on a spit.
Each segment gets warmed by the fire;
each segment is made habitable.
You solved a problem
you didn’t know you had.

You set the distance between sun and earth.
Any closer, and we’d boil in our juice;
further apart, we’d be pillars of ice.
Bravo, Chance!
You attained precision
without supervision.

Thanks to you, Chance,
plants pull energy from the sun above
like trains powered by overhead cables.
Think how much we owe to this
lucky photosynthesis,
which fills barns with crops
and gardens with flowers!
Food and beauty—
two birds hit with one stone
launched aimlessly by Chance
in your spinning dance.

Part II: Water

Be praised, Chance,
for hydrogen and oxygen;
icicles, rivers, and steam—
gifts of your mindless experiments.

No water, no life:
Maintaining effort by hydration
cooling skin through perspiration;
holding blood cells in suspension;
bringing nutrients in solution;
flushing toxins by excretion.

If water had followed the usual rules—
denser when solid, freezing from the bottom up—
no sea life would survive cold climates.
But you made water its own shelter,
shielding the creatures beneath.

Then, for kicks, you went still further,
making each snowflake unique in its form—
unceasing infinitesimal beauty;
an avalanche of artworks.
Hats off to happenstance—
The fluky flakes of Chance.

Part III: Soil

Just like teachers fixing workstations
for children in their kindergartens,
with colored paper, glue, and crayons,
you, Chance, prepped planting areas
for farmers and backyard gardeners.

You brought together sand, clay, silt;
air, water, minerals, and living organisms,
producing, when mingled, clods of earth
primed for the plough to cut and churn.
Those who dig with no thought of soil’s origins
ignore one of Chance’s finest inventions.

If you weren’t heartless, Chance,
we’d have to call you kind,
for throwing this cloak of soil
over the surface of the globe.
What life would be possible if we had to roam
to the ends of the earth for one patch of good loam?

Part IV: Conclusion

Praise be to Chance!
Let it never be said that you lack the ability,
or that luck heaped on luck can’t be true—it’s too fishy.

The roulette wheel spun, and its ball
by Chance found the right place to fall.
The wheel turned again, and its ball
just happened to know where to fall.
Then again the wheel swirled, and its ball
somehow knew where it should fall.
Casinos wouldn’t think it possible.
They’d watch the footage,
check for weights or magnets
and throw you out with a “Don’t come back.”
But it suits us well to live on your winnings;
we prefer not to ask suspicious questions.

Better to think Chance made all things haphazardly—
stitching them, blindly, into their harmony—
than to give thanks to God for his loving artistry.
Better to think Chance holds all things together,
than to glorify God both now and forever.