Jack Pelham

For most, Christianity is an inherited religion, replete with assumptions that are rarely put to the test. Among them are frequently things like these:

1. The contents of the Bible are all settled as per God’s wishes, and are accurately translated.
2. Any ancient extrabiblical works should be handled with great care, if handled at all.
3. We are now living, more or less, in the same spiritual context as were those in New Testament times.
4. God is still running the church as he did in New Testament times.
5. My church is probably the best one.
6. The Holy Spirit helps us internally to understand the Bible correctly. If we were wrong about something, God would have told us.
7. The preacher is God’s chosen leader, and God gives him/her the words to preach to us.

Perhaps these assumptions are good ones. Or perhaps they are bad ones. But a people who do not vet them for themselves are apt never to know whether they are good or bad.

QUESTION: Did God mean for us to do our own thinking and investigating, or are we just supposed to blindly accept the way things are framed for us at church?

If you were all-in,
There’s no telling
What we could do.

There’s no telling
What we could solve
And what we could overcome
Together.

I told him he wasn’t listening.
And he ignored that, too.

By a stroke of undeserved luck,
I knew a very nice lady
Who had known this man—
At whom we all wonder
For how he made such good use
Of the mind God gave him.

The student loans that are getting so much attention at present were never legal in the first place. Under our Constitution, the United States Congress never has had authority to initiate such a program. Had the people of the United States nipped it in the bud, it wouldn’t be biting them on the heinie right now.

It’s been 21 years now since it happened. Have you paid enough attention yet to figure out that the official 9/11 Commission explanation is bogus? And have you paid enough attention to figure out that one of the most popular alternate explanations is also bogus? Or have you long-since given up on investigating it?

And if you’re one of the millions who doesn’t believe the official government report, are you actively pushing for criminal prosecution? Or have you long-since given up on justice?

The one child has learned to
Explore what is new,
While the other cowers from it.

The first learns to manage risk,
And the second, to be ruled by it.

Suppose you had to actually
Use the mind God gave you
In order to understand God—
Just like you have to use
The legs he gave you
In order to stand.

We manage to see much, though not all,
Of the harm others do to us.
Yet we see much less of the harm
That we do to others.

And this raises the question
Of what we want to see.

The blind may manage to see some blurry value
In someday going to heaven to be with Jesus,
But none of them can see value in learning
To act and think like him right now.