Jack Pelham

Cutting to the chase: Not all the ancient Hebrews believed that the literal stars in the sky were literally gods.

One really nasty habit some people have is that even as they hold the Bible to be inspired, they throw the Bible authors and speakers under the bus on some topics as ignorant ancients, stubbornly assuming that those people were wrong about this or that without giving them a fair hearing. For example, I cannot count how many times I have been told that the ancients believed that the literal stars we all see in the sky were literally gods or angels. But this has never set well with me—the idea that the Bible authors/speakers were simply wrong about things that are written into the record as fact. Indeed, if somebody’s in error, why couldn’t it be us? Shouldn’t we exhaust that possibility before we assume that they were wrong?

I think a lot about what kind of people we are, and about what tends to go wrong in our lives. It’s complicated business in one way, yet in another, it may be fairly simple.

Our lives are set into this real world, without us asking to be put here. And while we’re here, we learn (to some degree) and we make lots of choices (good and bad). And we draw lots of conclusions about what the world is like and what our role in it should be. The following ten items are things that many seem not to learn to love very much while they are here. And I cannot help but to believe that the world would be a much better place if more people did love these things more:

When we tell ourselves that “God is in charge”, we would do well to process the question,
“In charge of what?” I’m no expert, but while it may well be that God is somehow in charge of everything in some ultimate sense, it does not appear that he is directly in charge of a great many of the things that concern us here on Earth. For example, he doesn’t seem to be in direct control the thermostat in my apartment—or of my diet—or of the hours at which my neighbor comes and goes. Could he be? Sure. But he doesn’t seem to be operating in that way.

And these things are fairly common-sensical. But even so, much of our religious culture and even our own self-talk can blur the lines, so that we end up believing some fuzzy version of the idea that we humans don’t really have charge over ourselves after all. That’s a very dangerous idea, and right on its heels comes the idea that we are not, then, accountable for ourselves.

God is in charge of whatever he chooses to do, and we are in charge of us. And unless there’s been a change in this since the First Century, we will give account for ourselves to God:

For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.

2 Corinthians 5:10

Though surely he could at any time
Stop to reconsider how it was
Only the “dry land” that
God called “Earth”,
He will never
Ever do it
Even if he should
Live a thousand years,
But will go to his grave being
Certain that the story simply must be
About the whole of what we call Planet Earth.

Take note of that man
Who longs for an audience
Before he has a message to give.

He is not in it for truth, but for show.
And he will resort to flattery to fill the seats,
Corrupting the very audience he claims to edify.

Evangelism has become the idol
Of much of the modern “church”
As they shove Jesus out the door
To make more room for new members.

Surely, the empty box still lies around here somewhere,
Wherever it was that it fell on that great day that
He tore it open and snatched from it that
Brand new mind he had been given—
And that he has used voraciously
Ever since—even while wishing
He had either another, or
More time for this one.

Still in the box and
Right where he set it on
The day God gave it to him
Lies a mind with which he could
Do many things if only he were willing

To be sure, God will deal with the wicked human.
He will most certainly pay the full price
For every one of his sins against humanity.

But this doesn’t help the living, does it?

Watch him when he discovers
That he could do better
And you will learn a great deal
About what kind of man he is.