Jack Pelham

I do not believe that
A thousand preachers
Having set out to use the Bible
To change this ailing world
Could extract from its pages
Even a tenth of the treasure
That can be extracted by
One man listening
Intently to what it says
Simply because he wants
To understand his Master.

The motive for reading affects
The message received.

If you ask the world whether
It loves lies or hates them
It will want to know first
Just which lie you’re asking about.

NOTE TO THE READER: I was picked on in school, not so much for who I was, but for who my Dad was! Hence, the “surrogate” in the title.

I certainly don’t want to overstate it, but I was bullied somewhat during my middle school and high school years (in the late 70s and early 80s). And while bullying is not all that unusual an injustice to suffer, mine was at least a little bit off the beaten path because of the particular circumstances. Now that I’m in my late 50s and interested in how I’ve turned out as I have (so far, that is, as I’m not done turning out yet!)—and as I’m quite interested in what I can do from here on out to improve myself—it seemed worthy to spend some time thinking through what happened in those early years.

1. The powerful effect of a good-example parent on a child who’s willing to learn it.
2. The powerful effect of the bad-example parent on a child who’s willing to learn it.
3. The powerful effect of the unwillingness of a child to follow the parent’s example—whether good or bad.

To me—
The one who
Actually lives it—
My life is not about
The color of my skin.

How intriguing
Then that to you
The mere spectator
It it about nothing but!

It does not appear that there is any limit to the ways in which we may misunderstand the Bible—whether in the number of misunderstandings or in the degree to which we misunderstand. Like humans themselves, human responses to the texts are all over the place, sometimes varying wildly, even on certain topics which carry a considerable consensus otherwise.

And I doubt that anyone this side of Heaven can account for the whole of this phenomenon. But I can tell you this much, for it is obvious: We would likely do much better if we were trying to understand what the authors of the Bible meant, rather than simply asking the ever-popular question, “What does this mean to me?“

Some will swear that loves’ the thing
Yet they will define it as they will
Excluding whatever doesn’t fancy them
To include under the banner of love.

Quite obviously, when you limit the field length for the incoming message, you are excluding messages that will not fit in the prescribed space. This means you’re probably assuming
that any good message would fit in the box and any that won’t fit must be bad.

But this is all kinds of wrong.

Surely, God himself could tell you more good things than would fit in your little box. And you could argue that, for obvious reasons, you aren’t expecting God to be submitting an answer. But it seems you aren’t expecting that anyone else could have any wisdom that might exceed the limits of your box.

I suppose you could fill an ocean
With the things I don’t know.

And I should explain that
I say I suppose because
I don’t know that for a fact
But I confess it seems at least
A reasonable stab at
The aggregate volume of
The things I don’t know—
When attempting
To be unbiased in response to
My general experience in this world
And my study of philosophy and cognitive science—
Except that I must further confess
For the record that I realize that an ocean
May indeed be too small a basin
To hold the things I don’t know.

It’s impressive the array of items that certain men
Can produce on demand from another orifice
While deliberating as to whether the words
“I don’t know” should be permitted
To escape their lips.