Jack Pelham

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.

Never in a thousand years would Billy tell you
That he thinks there’s any person in this world
Who is always right about everything.

Yet when it comes to people being mad at Billy,
Never in a thousand years will he think
That they could ever be wrong about that!

There are some things in the Bible that a great many churchers refuse to believe. Among them is this:

The LORD tests the righteous and the wicked, And His soul hates one who loves violence.

Psalm 11:5. NASB.

They are so conditioned that “God loves everybody” that they simply have to ignore passages like this―or worse, write them off as the unenlightened Old-Covenant ramblings of people who lived before Jesus came, and just didn’t know any better about what God is really like.

Scalpel in hand, the surgeon presumes
To exact from the body of human Reality
Only those parts she likes the best―
As if Unity and Goodwill and Pleasantness
Might be of some use, resected and laid out
In a stainless steel dish.

How long can she live with the liar
Without ever adopting one of
His blameshifting lies into
Her own self-view―
Fouling her own
Being with his
Soul-ruining
Falsehood?

If having been wronged
Gives one a moral excuse
To mistreat others,
Then shouldn’t one’s every offense
Rightly provide his victims the same excuse?