The Christian shopkeeper, that rare thing hardly anymore observed

From a confin'd, well-manag'd store,

You both employ and feed the poor.

 

-- Edmund Waller

The law is light and life, but Paul the Apostle thought it only a light . . . on sin

Mosaic of Christ before Pilate, Basilica of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna, early sixth century. Pilate washes his hands in a bowl held by a figure on the right. "I find no fault in this man".

 

 

All the commandments which I command thee this day shall ye observe to do, that ye may live, and multiply, and go in and possess the land which the LORD sware unto your fathers.

 

-- Deuteronomy 8:1

 

In that I command thee this day to love the LORD thy God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commandments and his statutes and his judgments, that thou mayest live and multiply: and the LORD thy God shall bless thee in the land whither thou goest to possess it.  

-- Deuteronomy 30:16

 

He taught me also, and said unto me, Let thine heart retain my words: keep my commandments, and live.

 

-- Proverbs 4:4

 

For the commandment is a lamp; and the law is light; and reproofs of instruction are the way of life:

 

-- Proverbs 6:23

 

Keep my commandments and live;

 

-- Proverbs 7:2

 

The law of the wise is a fountain of life, to depart from the snares of death. 

 

-- Proverbs 13:14

He that keepeth the commandment keepeth his own soul;

-- Proverbs 19:16

 

And he said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God: but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.  

-- Matthew 19:17

If there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law.

 

-- Galatians 3:21

 

I had not known sin, but by the law ... For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.  And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death. For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me. 

 

-- Romans 7:7, 9ff.

Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.

 

-- Revelation 22:14

The wise man doesn't just die like the fool, he is also forgotten like the fool

 

For the wise, like the fool, will not be long remembered; the days have already come when both have been forgotten. Like the fool, the wise too must die! 

-- Ecclesiastes 2:16

The world has progressed so much from primitive times that evidence of racism is scarcely detectable anymore

 

Too late to get smart

 

They take up a book in their declining years, and grow very hopeful scholars by that time they are threescore.

-- Joseph Addison

George Weigel thinks the resurrection of Jesus made possible "the individual" in the West when it was really the example of Jesus

Rebels like Paul and Luther would be unthinkable without that example.

Catholics used to understand this. It is amusing that Weigel argues like a Protestant fixated on the resurrection instead of on the life and teaching of Jesus.

Who Invented the Individual? 

George Weigel, First Things

Before Christianity, immortality was a family concept: One lived on in one’s family. The Resurrection of Jesus and the promise of a “resurrection like his” (Rom. 6:5) changed all that, as the individual human being became the locus of immortality—and thus the bearer of a unique, personal, “individual” dignity. 

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None of that would have been even thinkable were it not for the example of the supreme individuality of the forerunner as the "true man", whose vertical faith relation to God superceded [sic!] the social dimension and made it irrelevant:

 

And [the Pharisees] sent out unto him their disciples with the Herodians, saying, Master, we know that thou art true, and teachest the way of God in truth, neither carest thou for any man: for thou regardest not the person of men.

 

-- Matthew 22:16

This aloofness of Jesus, if we may call it that, is one of the things which marks out the unique individual qua individual so characteristic of the figures we name "religious founders". For good or for ill, it is that attitude which triumphed in the West and has been democratized to an extreme degree, in large measure due to Protestantism. Positively it has evolved into what we call "leadership". Negatively it is what is known as "a Messiah complex".

The example of Jesus is not unalloyed.

Christian financial guru Dave Ramsey appeals to the invisible hand of capitalism like the Pharisees appealed to the tradition of the elders

Dave Ramsey, quoted here:

If I raise my rent to be market rent, that does not make me a bad Christian. I did not displace that person out of that house if they can no longer afford it. The marketplace did. The economy did. The ratio of the income that they earn to their housing expense displaced them. I didn’t cause any of that. And so you are not displacing them. You are taking too much credit for what is going on …

 

 

 

 

 

"Not my problem" is man's perennial problem:

But you say it is all right for people to say to their parents, 'Sorry, I can't help you. For I have vowed to give to God what I would have given to you.' In this way, you let them disregard their needy parents. And so you cancel the word of God in order to hand down your own tradition.

-- Mark 7:11ff.

That time when Red Forman had his very own Road to Dumbasscus moment

 

Martin Luther would tell Andre Henry to reach up with his hands and touch his ears, and feel that they are the long, furry ears of an ass

 

 

Deconstruction is a Valid Christian Practice. Ask Martin Luther

Andre Henry, RNS

"You said all we needed to do was believe"

 

I never knew you; depart from me, you evildoers.

-- Matthew 7:23

The way of the many is identitarian collectivism, a primitive instinct of herd-following

 Like brute beasts we travel with the herd, and are never so solicitous for the rightness of the way, as for the number or figure of our company.

 

-- John Rogers (1679-1729)

The common louse, a gift from God

I look on the instinct of this noisome and troublesome creature, the louse, of searching out foul and nasty clothes to harbour and breed in, as an effect of divine providence, designed to deter men and women from sluttishness and sordidness, and to provoke them to cleanliness and neatness.

-- John Ray (1627-1705)

The folly of men and angels

Seeing God found folly in his angels, men's judgments, which inhabit these houses of clay, cannot be without their mistakings.

-- Walter Raleigh

Mistaken vision

Some have mistaken blocks and posts

For spectres, apparitions, ghosts,

With saucer eyes and horns.

-- Samuel Butler, Hudibras

The tedious new

 Whoever converses much among old books, will be something hard to please among new.

--  William Temple

2022, you gotta walk it by yourself

 

... still walkin'.