Jack Pelham

I saw this meme posted on Facebook and what follows is my response.

The meme seems to presuppose that people are either 100% real or 100% fake, when in actuality, we are a mixed bag—maybe 100% real about this, but not about that.

Before the kettle whistles,
Disturbing everyone in the house,
He lets out whispers
That a keen attendant may hear―
And spare everyone the interruption.

He had gotten to where he was
By putting out of his mind so far
That stupidest of presuppositions―
That he had more or less arrived already
At where he needed to be.

I don’t mean to be salty about it, but
It is difficult to explain what took me twenty years
Of study, contemplation, and debate to understand―
Such that it is impossible for you to dismiss it
In your twenty seconds of noticing that it disagrees
With what you already believe.

Just because you can walk up to Jesus
Doesn’t mean you can long stand with him eye to eye.

Just because you present yourself at church
Doesn’t mean you’ve got what it takes
To be invited at length into his eternal home.

Why do some rush to fix
Something so great as country,
Being yet unwilling to fix even themselves?

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.