Jack Pelham

Anyone with two eyes
And a heart
Can see
That some souls
Are in crucial need of help.

But it takes two eyes
And a heart
And some experience at it
To see that all souls
Are in crucial need of helping.

“I used to think that people can change,” he told me, “but now I’m pretty sure that people can’t change.”

“So, you’ve changed, then?” I asked, with my eyebrows raised.

“Yep,” he said, not realizing the discovery.

What if someone actually knew
What you are going through?

And what if they understood
And cared
And shared your pain
And were personally invested
In your well-being?

I suppose there are many things
The soul needs to thrive.
And whether I have discovered yet
The half of them, I could not say.

But I have got this one thing, at least,
Figured out pretty well.
And I want you to listen.

No one among us has got
All our puzzle pieces in place,
Such that we are complete people
And lacking in nothing.

There is simply not time for it all.

The truest hearts
Are the ones most likely
To discover that the real authority
Rests in the Word,
And not in the Church.

The others never quite seem
To figure this out.

In this beautiful/ugly world,
Where it’s so hard
To get the full attention
Of any crowd,
The big surprise for most
About Christianity
Is that there are indeed
A yoke to be worn,
A burden to be carried,
And a Master to be pleased.

And how do the people
Respond to all this?

Here’s what I see.

I suppose there’s not one among us all
Who would not be surprised
At a million things in Heaven—
Should we ever be so blessed
As to be invited to live there.

And having learned something
Of your inner battle, friend,
I wonder whether the biggest surprise for you
Might be the great peace in the hearts
Of the citizens there—

NOTE: This article was originally published on 14 November, and was substantially added to on 20 November. It is also being recorded very soon on my Rethinking the Bible podcast. Here’s a link: https://rethinkingthebible.com/2022/11/21/episode-45-is-divorce-the-only-thing-that-god-hates/

Let’s talk about divorce.

First of all, I need to point out that our culture tends to be pretty sloppy in our understandings of Bible doctrines. While the Bible has over 1,100 pages of information, we tend to draw on tiny segments of it when developing our beliefs, ignoring the full body of information and deferring to a one-liner passage here and there. And to be even more specific, it’s not the one-liner so much as our interpretation of that one-liner that’s the problem. That is to say, there are many Bible passages that could reasonably taken in more than one way. But when do we ever roll up our sleeves to consider all the reasonable interpretations of a verse before deciding that we know what the author or speaker meant to convey?

The cowboy, full of himself,
Approaches the pretty filly
Whom he has never met.
And seeing her wedding band,
He propositions her,
“So, just how married are you?”

And she answers thus: