Jack Pelham

If you want to understand
What a human soul is really like,
Then step back and observe
How it manages its beliefs.

I have seen the camps adopt a truth
The others reject, and still
Bring ruin upon themselves,
Either by way of not embracing it fully,
Or of not letting go of some other thing
They have yet got wrong.

Some are so full of themselves
And of the culture of the camp
That they could read the whole Bible,
Stem to stern, and never perceive
That the camp and God have
Different ideas about what is evil.

Others perceive it somewhat,
In glimpses now and then, but will not
Come out from them and be separate,
Finding the staying preferable
To any wholesale reform, and
Hoping it is not unforgivable.

But others still have managed
To slip the bonds of camp,
To discover all the better
For themselves what God thinks—
Where there are no guards to quash
Such investigation, and no one
To please but God alone.

And having found the truths
The camp obscures,
Why would they ever go back,
Except to preach an unwelcome truth,
Or to try to escape it once again?

The reason the camps keep the truth
At arm’s length is that
Is that it pleases them neither
To please God, nor to admit
That they do not.

Woe to those who call evil good
    and good evil,
who put darkness for light
    and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet
    and sweet for bitter!

Isaiah 5:20. NIV.

The one presumes to be a member of the organization
Without doing what the members
Are all supposed to do.

And you’re not supposed to notice—
Not supposed to call them out on it.
And when you do, here comes the other.

INTERVIEWER: “So, Freddy, you had 84 years to live down on the Earth. What did you spend your time doing?”

FREDDY: “Oh, it was great! I spent most of my time defending the status quo and encouraging people to feel positive about how things were.”

Why will a people languish
While regarding as holy a text
They will not take to heart?—
A text they will neither study
Nor implement as it deserves?—
A text they will not learn themselves,
Even as they insist that others should do?

What is this brain, this living machine,
Ever striving to make sense of things,
Even when working unsupervised?

And who is this idiot that has charge of it—
Morally stupid beyond what he is
Willing to admit, and clueless as to
The great value of well-regulated
Good sense and reliable reason?

Let us all suppose that he should
Someday take a notion to become
The better steward of this treasure,
And put it at last to better use.

She’s all but lost—
This idea that won’t die,
But won’t live, either—

This Great Experiment
On whether the people
Could rule themselves
Coming down to the question
Of whether they would rule themselves—
That is, whether they were willing.

NOTE: Here are the words to a section of a choral suite I’ve been working on. It’s about an episode from my distant family history—a tortured soul who tortured others. She died circa 1915, and from her came some who loved and some who hated.

The Creeping

Hers, the suffering soul
Passed it on, don’t you know,
As do so many souls
Who break the Golden Rule.

When you give the man a Bible to take home and read,
And he comes back, having found no particular hope
In the message of repentance and obedience,
But only in the glorious message of eternal life,
He has shown you that he does not believe
In the real Jesus, but in a fake one more to his liking.