Jack Pelham

You wouldn’t know it by what you see in the churches today, but the original religion of God was to be one of deep and careful consideration—as a way of life! Consider this list of example passages from the Bible, and as you read and begin to get a little mind-weary from it, ask yourself whether you are in a high state of mental fitness for having the sort of high-output mindset in your religion that God desires. And ask yourself whether you are willing to live such a life!

Proverbs 4:26 Give careful thought to the paths for your feet and be steadfast in all your ways.

“Go up and down the streets of Jerusalem, look around and consider, search through her squares. If you can find but one person who deals honestly and seeks the truth, I will forgive this city.”

Jeremiah 5:1. NIV

How could it ever have gotten that bad—and in God’s own city? And if it happened there, could it not happen also in a church, that corruption takes hold and no one is honest?

As I ponder the difficulties of translating the Bible documents from their original languages, two particular ones come to mind:

1. Rendering a passage whose meaning in the original language is unclear or ambiguous. And,
2. Rendering a passage whose meaning in the original language is undesirable.

In the first, you have to render it somehow; you can’t just leave it blank. And how unsettling that must be!

The man himself sins
But blames it on Satan
Or on the pressures he’s facing
Or on his bad mood or his fatigue
Or on the difficult behavior of those around him
Or on the bad circumstances of the day
Or on the abuses from his childhood.

The ambitious sort who does not love the truth or the people, wants things like money and power and prestige. And for this, he needs customers, whom he attempts to gain by way of offering goods or services of value. And if he should find his way into the business of religion or politics, he will likely have to pick a camp large enough to suit his needs, and convince them that he holds value for them.

Some people are so desperate
To get what they want
That they are even willing
To resort to the truth on occasion.

It will happen sometime that life throws you
The surprisingest struggle, unlike your normal trials.
It will blindside you with its difficulty and perplex you
With the severity of the moods it casts upon you—
Even to the point where you begin to wonder
How much longer you can endure it.

First it tried to kill him in the slaughter of the innocents.
And though that failed, things were tolerable for a time—
Until he started preaching and doing mighty works
That proved he was really something.

Some get so busy with loving
That they never take the time
To make sure they have got it just right
And are doing it as Jesus would have done.

Life’s big events happen on one timeline
And the reckoning of them on another—
The latter being often the more important,
For I do believe we were put here
Both to learn and to decide.