Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things. (New International Version, 4:8)
Another translation is:
Finally brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.
Here the Christian is being asked to meditate on the true, the noble or honourable, the just, the pure, the lovely, the gracious and the excellent or virtuous.
Is it bad that I think that the older translations such as KJV are one of the best ones out there?
ReplyDeleteThe King James Version often reads the best.
ReplyDeleteI was particularly interested in this verse because it doesn't fit well with the dissolving kind of Christianity that you sometimes find today - the kind of Christianity in which the only consideration is the extent to which you dissolve your own being in order to identify with the other.
Paul emphasises in this verse that there are virtues to inspire us, to cultivate within ourselves and to measure ourselves by. It matters that we are connected to these things, oriented to them.
So it's not enough to say "Well, I dissolved myself, therefore I'm a good Christian." There's a more positive focus in Paul's verse, one in which individual character matters.
You're right that besides being sound advice to the Christian, this also represents a direct challenge to liberal Christianity.
ReplyDeleteOver the summer, I had the chance to lead a Bible study with a visiting, liberal youth group to our church. For one devotional, I referred to this Scripture and asked the youth group what looked noble or good about women in combat, or same sex couples or anti-white smear campaigns. My point was that Christians should have nothing to do with these liberal campaigns on aesthetic grounds alone.
Not surprisingly, they rejected the argument. There's nothing any more "noble", you see, about men in uniform either. Racism is ugly, therefore anti-racism campaigns are justifiably ugly too, and so on (they were silent on homosexuality). They just refused to assign any meaning to the physical ugliness of liberal causes and ideals. The body, to these people, didn't matter, and every good person is supposed to know that.
There wasn't much I could say.
"Racism is ugly, therefore anti-racism campaigns are justifiably ugly too..."
ReplyDeleteRacial pride is good though, as long as it's non-White, as Mark pointed out.
"Racism" is code for "White". "Anti-racism" is code for anti-White-ism.
Encouraging non-White immigration into all White countries and only White countries, and marking Whites for racial shaming while encouraging other races to have racial pride, is a final solution to the White problem. It's genocidal. It's ugly because genocide is ugly.
I try not to tell Christians their religion, but I'm baffled. How did Christianity get from its starting point to where it is?
ReplyDeleteAccording to the Bible (In the NRSV / CE anyway) Jesus said: "Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit..."
How do you get from baptizing nations to conniving at the destruction of an entire race, and thus all the nations of that race? To make a disciple of, to baptize, to undermine, to destroy, isn't that a contradiction?
(I used to think that Christianity was poison from a racial and national point of view inherently. Quite the contrary, according to Matthew, but from the contemporary practice and rhetoric of Christian churches, you would never guess that Jesus said that.)
Paul said: "...whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things."
How do you get from such a (small-c) catholic cultivation of the excellent just because it is excellent to tearing down personal and national self-respect and to embracing ugly aesthetics as a means to ugly ends?
You ask great questions, Daybreaker. I'm sure you've heard various answers batted around here and elsewhere. At the end of the day, though, I think that Cambria Will Not Yield probably has the most cogent answer to the question: Whites, Christians and all, quit worshiping Christ and started worshiping Reason and intellectual abstractions. Finding abstractions too dry and mechanical, they looked again for a living, breathing god among men.
ReplyDeleteNow, and this is my own add-on to this theory, Whites came up with, basically, two options: the Conquering Winner and the Suffering Loser.
The Conquering Winner (Aryan-Hero worshiping Nazis and Producer-Hero worshiping Randians/Libertarians) mimics Christ's victory over the grave and his majesty. For some reason I haven't figured out yet, Anglo-Whites haven't bought into this cult as much. It was more of a Germanic substitute, and well, we all know how that ended.
The Suffering Loser (Black-Sacrificial Lamb worshiping Liberals and Worker-Sacrificial Lamb worshiping Marxists) mimics Christ's suffering for our sins and his forgiveness which guarantees our salvation. This, of course, is the cult of choice among most Whites nowadays.
I think it's interesting that, although each modern cult mimics some part of Christ, none can mimic all of Christ. There's only one Christ. When the Suffering cult mimics only His suffering, its followers end up looking like losers and dragging themselves down in the process. When the Conquering cult mimics only His dominance, its followers end up looking like arrogant bullies and painting a giant target on their own backs.
There's only one Christ. Only One who can combine the humility required of the scapegoat and the dominance required of the King. There's only one so vast, and that's God Incarnate. I think our grand project to replace Him has led to a kind of cosmic overload of our racial systems, so to speak. We're in way over our heads, and yeah, we're just about fried.
The new international version is flawed as this pdf shows:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.pcacep.org/downloads/CBMW.pdf
Feminists have ruined it.