Jack Pelham

You can talk about love all day long,
And how God is love
And how yours is a loving church
And how love is the most important thing,

But if your love isn’t
The same kind of love as God’s,
It’s all a racket
And a scam
And a fraud
And you’re playing only
To those like yourself―
Who are too dull
To want the real thing.

The problems of this world
Are not, as so many believe,
The result of some grand mishap―
Something gone terribly wrong―
With God preparing to swoop down
Any minute now to fix it all
And put it back like it was.

Some dogs bark because they mean it,
And want you dead, or seriously maimed, at least.

But other dogs bark simply because
They think they’re supposed to.

And I’m not so sure I’ve learned entirely
How to tell the difference.

It is an intriguing fact of the Bible that in no place is God on record as having made any sort of introductory or explanatory statement regarding the nature of the underworld. What can be learned about the nature of the place called Sheol or Hades must be pieced together at our own risk from the brief mentions and hints here and there in the writings―including, if we dare, from extrabiblical documents from the same Hebrew culture that produced the Bible.

She does much
Because there are
Many good things
That need doing.

I could not tell you what manner of hearsay
Is most readily believed in this world,
But I can tell you that somewhere high
On the list of candidates should go
The sort of report that says that
This thing or that is not important,
And can as such be rightly
Exempted from examination.

The moral precepts in the Bible are relatively few, while its points of doctrine, and the implications thereof are multitudinous. And the way I see it at this point in my life, we could come close to mastering the former, while we could never master the half of the latter. But instead of going after excellence in morality, so many let that slide, even as they make much ado over their camp’s official doctrines, half-baked as they may be.

There are three particular things I will not suppose, and one that I will.

I dare not suppose I can fully understand from my American home in this “New World” the perspective of those who live in the old country―for whom our one or two handsful of American generations would seem but a cute beginning.

When someone makes an error on Facebook,
He might be a highly-moral-and-intelligent person
Who has simply made an error―
And who will not only gladly thank you
For bringing it to his attention,
But also correct it forthrightly
And avoid making it again―

Some obsess over the future,
In a panic to know what will happen.

And some obsess over the present,
Beside themselves to understand
What’s going on.