Jack Pelham

It can take quite some time to learn how to work the Bible puzzle—and for many of us, one of the first steps seems to be coming to the realization that it is, indeed, a puzzle at all! I remember taking offense when I heard a certain author call it that sometime in the early 2000s. My view of it at the time went something like this:

• We’ve been “given everything we need” in the Bible, so it’s all in there.
• If we were just faithful and diligent, it would all make perfect sense. It’s very “clear”.
• The Spirit helps us understand it, so what’s to puzzle over? (The way I understand it, therefore, must be pretty close to being right.)

Some of the sheep say
That the greatest thing
A sheep can do is
To graze.

Always be prepared
For the fools to protest
That your wrestling them free
From the muck of stupidity
Is not love.

This is such a tough principle to navigate! How much should we “stand our ground”, and how much should we simply let people be the people they are, even if it steps on our toes?

I think this is one of the greatest philosophical questions we face as humans, and how we face it says a great deal about what kind of people we are. (And I don’t think I understand it all myself—just that it’s of huge importance.)

The market desperately wants
Us to consider it a friend
While it continues to
Consider us suckers.

It will never have its fill
Of its artifice and scheme
Which is, at the very best
One of wanton neglect.

While there are indeed some contrasts between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant, it is a grave mistake of hermeneutics to assume that they will differ at every point of doctrine. I do believe that they have much more in common than many have been taught to believe. And many will assume a difference before ever checking for similarity.

How curious that a man
Can be willing to do a thing
And yet not be willing to be it—
That he will commit to it outwardly
And even for impressive periods of time
And yet not love it with all his inner being—
And live on for years divided about it in his spirit!

We will take the empty young man
Who knows nothing and has no wisdom
And we will fill him up
To bursting with pompousness
With the vacuous ideas
That since we have put him up front
That must mean that he is
Knowledgeable and wise after all
And that God himself has ordained it.