Jack Pelham

I am not afraid to study the Bible—nor to know what it means. I’m not afraid to ask the hard questions. I’m not afraid to ponder it, to talk about it, or to look into it. I’m not afraid to read the extrabiblical works from the same culture that produced the Bible. I’m not afraid to read the writings from other ancient cultures, either. I’m not afraid to ask about how we’re so sure the Bible’s Table of Contents includes and excludes exactly what God would want it to include and to exclude.

To me, these are everyday considerations, while to others, they are extremely upsetting, and are probably prompted by none other than Satan himself. I can’t get enough of it, and they can’t get too little of it. And what a difference of philosophy that is!

Many think that the love of Jesus is quite a big deal. And they’re right, of course.
But it’s a bigger deal than they realize, and not as easily grasped as they suppose.

Am I responsible before God for knowing all the things in the Bible that they won’t teach at church?

He mistakes his own talking for thinking,
His believing for knowing,
His assuming for understanding,
And his silence for listening.

And he is content with his own self-view,
And has no interest in getting these right.

They are taught to make their religion
The priority in their lives,
But not to make Jesus
The priority of their religion.

He sees a glimpse of God who discovers
That wrongdoing is still wrong when it is
Done to someone other than himself or his friends.

Your amazing self can notice a thing in this world and:

1. be interested/curious about it.
2. examine it.
3. study it.
4. wonder about it.
5. develop hypotheses about it.
6. test those hypotheses.
7. compare it with known facts.
8. reflect on it.
9. discuss it with others.
10. draw some tentative conclusions about it.
11. test those conclusions against fact and logic, keeping some and rejecting others.
12. stay on the lookout for new information on the topic, just in case you’ve misunderstood .
13. embrace/believe the conclusions that seem worthy.
14. make moral/philosophical judgments about the matter (if it is that sort of matter).
15. overturn previous beliefs based on the new information.
16. develop emotional associations with the subject.
17. teach your conclusions to others, guiding them through all these steps.

Meanwhile, your same amazing self can also:

1. decide on the value of the thing, good or bad, without doing any of the due diligence items on the first list above.
2. default to assumptions/hearsay/traditions/consensus about the thing, neglecting your own investigation.
3. mistake the thing for something else.
4. think you already understand the thing well when you do not.
5. not notice the thing.
6. be distracted from the thing.
7. find the thing unimportant, as it regards your priorities.
8. let yourself off the hook by saying you’ll have to examine it later.
9. find the thing unimportant, as examination of things does not fit with your current mood.
10. reject or accept the thing summarily because of preexisting emotional associations with the thing itself.
11. reject or accept the thing summarily because of preexisting emotional associations with certain people or institutions who are related with the thing.
12. reject or accept the thing summarily because it is old.
13. reject or accept the thing summarily because it is new.
14. look for other excuses for summarily deciding about the thing.
15. make a show (to yourself or to others) of examining the thing, when you’ve actually decided on its value already.
16. lie/exaggerate to yourself about the thing.
17. lie/exaggerate to others about the thing.
18. teach your conclusions to others, but without revealing the steps you took to reach those conclusions.

The same mind can treat one matter with high honesty, rationality, and responsibility, and another quite differently! It’s somewhat like the way we might treat the various people who come to our houses or call us on the phone—some being welcome (and for different reasons), and some being not welcome at all.

But have you ever assumed the worst about a visitor or caller, only to discover later that they had value to you after all? That’s the amazing thing about us that I wanted to point out in this post. We can really get some things right, but we are amazingly capable of misjudging things, too. And it seems to be quite up to us—how careful we are with how we judge things.

The more I think about it, the more impressed I am with how much power we were given over our own lives. And it’s quite analogous to the power of the automobile, which we’d much rather see in the hands of a mature, kind, sober and responsible person than in the hands of someone else!

So much of the outcome seems to be based on the quality of the judgments we make about things!

Let us suppose that someone were to figure out how to train Silverback Gorillas to play football. And let us suppose that the gorillas were very good at it—especially, say, at the lineman positions—and outperformed their human counterparts at these positions consistently by 20%. And let us suppose that activists were to take up the cause of equal rights for gorillas, and that rich benefactors were to sponsor lawsuits on behalf of these rights, and that the media were to take up the cause to convince the public about how fair and just this is, and how it’s about time that a society became so enlightened as to break down the traditional barriers in this way.

I used to belong to The One True Church, but as good as that may sound, it was actually better than that. The One True Church was its informal name, the formal one being The One and Only True Church. Yes, we were that good!

(Regarding narcissist impostors and the church, respectively)

I’m going to tell you a thing
That you may not like at first,
But which you can surely accept
If you are willing both to look
And to admit what you see.

And after that, I’m going to ask you
Some questions that you may
Wish ever after I had not asked,
For they are troubling beyond
What many will endure.