Jack Pelham

He wants to feel good about himself.

He wants others to feel good about him,
Which helps him to feel good about himself.

I struggle to understand the scriptures.

I can’t tell you that I struggle enough, mind you, but I struggle.

I have spent countless hours (though God will know the count), reading and pondering and discussing them. And surely, I have written and rewritten many thousands of pages, trying to make sense of the Bible, and of its various parts. I’ve written about things like:

He will tell you,
Just as certainly as he tells himself,
That he has set out on a righteous quest of principle
To right the wrongs that plague us all.
And he sets his sights on politics
Or religion―or perhaps on both.

They whom He did not appoint
Appoint themselves His representatives―
Or have their churches do it for them,
Which makes it seem all the more official.

I’m not sure they’re much interested in
Having as their King anyone other than
The baby Jesus, of whom they can readily
Make what they will in that quaint manger.

Is the man’s religion what the man thinks it is,
Or does God have a say in the matter?

He cannot see the difference between
“Thus sayeth the Lord” and
“Thus do I interpret the Lord’s sayings”.

It seems to me that God (and at least some of the prophets who wrote the scriptures) may have had a way of categorizing humans based on the humility they had adopted. It seems to me at present that there may have been three basic categorizations―three “camps”, into which they were divided. Let me introduce the three camps, and then I’ll show you where I find them in scripture.

I. Camp Mocker

The first camp is filled with this who are so averse to humility under God that they scoff at the very idea of it. They are the mockers.

Something Jesus said,
When speaking in print
Through The (imperfect) Preacher,
And going by the name, Wisdom―

It holds a key many have missed―

It’s a pretty good sign that somebody is not listening when they are not influenced by the presentation of fact and logic they obviously had not previously considered. They may go through the motions of responding, but that doesn’t mean they’ve done the mindwork of reflecting on the new information.

Far more people will respond than will really listen first.