Jack Pelham

I don’t suppose that in a hundred years of trying,
I could ever calculate the total investment
That mankind has sunk into believing
That God must not have really meant
All the things that he said.

To say thank you, for some, is obligatory. And in the culture of some, it’s mandatory.
For some, it’s a hassle, and for others, a vain tradition. And for some, it’s an afterthought, at best—if it’s even a thought at all. And there are those, of course, who are simply not thankful, even when they probably should be.

When the yard man leaves half the back yard unmowed, and refuses to come finish the job when it’s brought to his attention, what does forgiveness look like? Does it mean having him back in two weeks for another service?

If so, is this what you do?

Sugar lies,
Swearing it can satisfy,
When it cannot.

And we,
Believing the lie,
Eat more and more
In pursuit of the dream,
Until we are sick from it—
Perhaps in the near term,
But certainly in the long.

It is curious, o man,
That you endeavor
To love like Jesus,
But not
To think like Jesus.

As I discussed briefly in my last post, I think that God wants wholehearted devotion from us. But an equally-important question is what do we want from God?

I think that most of us can certainly related to wanting to feel better—physically, perhaps, but certainly emotionally. So much of what we can observe in the churches today is aimed at helping people feel better emotionally. People want their sadness relieved, and their anxiety. They want the common suffering of uncertainty replaced with a feeling of confidence. They want to feel inspired and intrigued. They want the boredom to be replaced with amazement. They want to feel like they belong. They want their guilt to go away. They want to stop feeling lonely and to start feeling loved and taken care of.

Whether one thinks it is strong enough or not, there is among the churches a substantial interest in converting new souls to the Christian faith/religion/way-of-life. But just how much of the soul are we to convert? Are we to convert them in minimal ways only, such as to believing merely that God exists, and yet taking nothing else in the scriptures to heart? Or are we to convert them simply to adding the go-to-church habit into their weekly routine, with no other changes in their lives than that? These would be minimal changes, of course, and far from a “total makeover”, as we might call it.

These may be some of the low expectations that are common to the churches, but what does God expect from the convert?

If you’re trying to improve yourself
Because you want to be a good person,
You’ll definitely learn humility along the way.

If you’re doing it to impress anyone—
Yourself included—
You probably won’t.

You promised to change,
But you didn’t.

Not really.

And over time
It has become painfully obvious,
As I have dared to see the truth,
That you never really wanted
The change itself, for its own value;
You only wanted to talk me
Into sticking around.

I might like to discuss Bible doctrine
With the guy who brings it up,
But more often than not,
He’s got it engineered into a fortress
That protects some faction or other,
And it turns out that it’s the faction
That’s his real treasure,
And not the truth of the matter.