Jack Pelham

The details of the Bible are sometimes sketchy
Regarding what, exactly, happened—and why—
And what, exactly, those ancient people believed and taught.

It seems to me that
There is a certain threshold of effort
Beyond which it is simply necessary
For a human to push himself
If he is to please God in this life.

And to my amazement,
I see many exert themselves
Nigh on that much in the pretense
That there is not.

Who keeps a garden but for one season—
Its bounty to be harvested,
And its rows never
To be walked
Again?

It is not easy to do well
In a world that does not want to.

Among the things that
God invests into the man
Are the copious powers
To care, to imagine,
To believe, to learn,
And to love as he sees fit.

You do not really know the man
Until you know what he knows.

This is a profile of three Christians and their views about who decided what should be the Bible. These profiles are based on my own observations about people, though they are not designed to mimic any particular persons. And I didn’t design this post to be exhaustive, but to be useful. That is to say that there may well be other views than what I have listed here, but these are certainly sufficient to get you thinking about what people think, and why they might think it. As you’ll see, I have much more to say about the second Christian than about the first or third.

If all those people out there who are
Teaching the Bible wrong
Are damnable heretics,
Then what does that make me when I
Get something about the Bible wrong?

Is it just a simple error from innocent
Ignorance or miscalculation on my part,
Where on theirs, it’s a signal of wanton wickedness?

And what if they, twisted as they are,
Should condemn me for getting something wrong,
Thinking that I am evil,
Rather than simply mistaken?

That, too, would be condemnable,
Wouldn’t it?

We all sin in many ways—
In thought, action, and will.
And I don’t see any case among us
Where somebody couldn’t try harder
To get things right when it comes to
Interpreting and teaching the Bible.

So maybe we could dial it back
A notch or two when it comes to
Branding others as “heretics”—
Especially by way of tests that
We could not pass ourselves.

I’m not saying there’s no such thing
As a heretic anymore, but really,
I think that oftentimes the main motive for
Branding someone this way
Is merely to dehumanize them as a member
Of some other camp than our own—
Even if we say it’s for the purpose of
Protecting our own camp from false teachings—
As if we weren’t already in error
In several ways ourselves.

Calling someone else a heretic
Does not prove that I am not one myself.

It might as well be endless, this body of work left by the ancient Hebrews—now exploded by numerous translations—each done by those who assumed too often that they understood what they were reading—who may have thought it certain that they were serving by passing it along to us as it was intended by its authors.