Jack Pelham

On this Earth,
Your kids will make their choices—
Which is exactly what
God has put them here to do.

It is perhaps the stupidest ploy
Of unruly humans
To pretend that the character of God
Was transformed from
The Old Covenant to the New,
Such that afterward,
He was no longer adamant
About judging man according to
What man does.

The wicked man errs on purpose,
And the simple man from ignorance.

Shall they be rebuked the same?

I’m listening to a podcast discussion in which both sides are pretty clearly sympathetic to a certain mega social media platform and its attempts to regulate free speech in the name of keeping the members from “getting into silos”. The idea of the discussion is that you have to step in and regulate things, or else, the participants in the community will be drawn only to the camps that gather around their own favorite points of view. And so the hunt is on, it seems, for the most effective and efficient ways to do this—apparently, to inject an alternate point of view into discussions on the platform.

And is anything wrong with this?

When they are free,
They will tell you at last
What they think.

And they will have questions.
Lots of questions.

If you call yourself a student of the Bible,
I’m going to want to hear
What you are puzzling to figure out next
And what you’re just dying to know
And where you’re pretty sure you have
Gotten it wrong in the past.

I can ask a question that would bring the religious world to a screeching halt if it were to give it
due consideration. And no, it’s not about whether God exists; it’s about whether he really answers prayer as he is widely assumed (across many religions) to be doing.

Is it really what time we think it is? Are the promises that we Christians cling to in the Bible really as far-reaching as we think they are? And were they really intended for us and for our time?

Even the wicked
Are in favor of righteousness
When it happens to be of benefit to them.
But bind their wicked hands with
The cord of righteousness
And see how they hate it!

One thing about time is that
It does run out.

There comes a day when
The long-assumed good intention
Becomes impossible to carry out—
When adjustments
Can no longer be made—
When remedies can no longer
Be applied—
When important things
Can no longer be said.

He was so sure
That the Holy Spirit
Was leading him in the thing,
Prompting him to act,
Making the scriptures clear
In his mind,
And driving his conviction—
As it had done for the heroes
In Bible times.