Jack Pelham

When he wrote proverbs, not only did he
Have the form down quite nicely,
But he never held back as others might
When finding it difficult to put a finger
On the actual truth of a matter.

The story can feed the active mind,
Whether heard or read—
And whether it really happened or not.

This is an interesting question that’s not very well addressed in the Bible. I don’t intend to expound on the question here, but merely to mention those passages in the various writings that might seem to address this question. As of today, 21 May 2023, I know of three passages that seem to apply. Here they are:

It may burst your bubble to come too near
To this prickly truth I’m about to tell you, friend,
But I am under no obligation to become
A conspirator in your self-deceit.

It had been the simplest of commands—
You can eat all this, but not that.

He has no food,
And yet he is not hungry,
For he has learned to live
Without feeding his mind.

Somewhere on the journey to mastery,
One starts to realize that even though
He doesn’t know everything yet, so much of
What he sees in this world can be fixed—
And that he knows how to fix some of it.

Funny how we can learn so very much
About the nature of things
While ignoring so very much
About the nature of us!

When the man will not be a good man—
It makes the good wife’s life a living hell.

My intent with this post is to write a short and useful generalization of how I see Christianity today as a largely-compromised version of the original religion, as taught and demonstrated by Jesus and his apostles in the First Century. To be useful as I envision, it needs to stay short–yet if it stays short, it must make use of generalizations that aren’t true of every single believer. I hope that you can forgive this as you read, realizing that you or someone you know may well be an exception to the general observations here. Indeed, I hope you are!