Brave Ole World

Day Bidet #96

July 31, 2023July 30, 2023 by WFTD, posted in Day Bidet

She’s running out the door:

MacDonald: “The refusal to look up to God as our Father is the one central wrong in the whole human affair; the inability, the one central misery: whatever serves to clear any difficulty from the way of the recognition of the Father, will more or less undermine every difficulty in life.”
“Queer theorist who has spoken out strongly against pedophilia. Who is no one? Not a single one. Because the entire thing is based on transgressing.”
“One brother shared that he can’t look at himself in the mirror, his shame is so great. Seeing himself is painful.”
Three years ago on Brave Ole World.
“Pursuing ‘church revitalization’ suggests we believe the popular expressions of church are effective and relevant, only needing more energy or improved quality… while in fact the problem is the paradigm itself.”
Very good list. (Related.)
Micah 4.3: “And he shall iudge among many people, and rebuke strong nations afarre off, and they shall beate their swords into plowshares, and their speares into pruning hookes: nation shall not lift vp a sword against nation, neither shall they learne warre any more.”

Clown World (language warning). Clown World (very much related). Clown World. Demon World.

“Who Wrote 2 Thessalonians?”

“The best a man can get.”

“None of these books and documents have survived.”

Collections of Affinity Groups

July 27, 2023July 26, 2023 by WFTD, posted in Culture, faith, History

Churches … include narrower and narrower bands of people. When I was a kid in a town of a few hundred, the town doctor, the farmers, the factory workers, and the grocer all came to my father’s church. They didn’t have much choice. It meant that the doctor knew when the widow’s kids were sick and didn’t worry much about her paying him. And when the doctor’s wife was sick, the widow sent dinner over. … Today people will drive miles to find a church made up of people like them. Churches have become collections of affinity groups, of people of the same class and interests, with few roles to assign other than passing the collection plate. How then can church give us a meaningful role, a sense of purpose, an ethic? How then do we reflect light out to the world?
John Alexander, Being Church: Reflections on How to Live as the People of God

Day Bidet #95

July 24, 2023July 23, 2023 by WFTD, posted in Day Bidet

I think it’s strange you never knew:

“Give praise.” (Related.)
Jason Engwer: “[T]he average American spends roughly five hours a day on what the Department of Labor calls leisure and sports and roughly five minutes a day on what’s classified as religious and spiritual activities.”
“[W]e can identify the very location of the party where Salome danced.”
Beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful. Metal.
John Alexander: “[T]oday’s secular ideas on equality and cultural diversity are impractical precisely because they lack the cross of Christ. … [O]ur world longs for unity. … But Paul … teaches that such unity comes onto to the people of God and only through the cross. … [T]he purpose of the church … is to love one another across our diversity so the world can believe. … [T]he task of the church is loving one another—not for our own sakes but for the sake of the world. … We must become so thoroughly the church that we together develop new values that begin to leave behind the values of the world.”
“It is not architect but arsonist.”
Three years ago on Brave Ole World.

Donald Davidson: “[I]t can hardly be said that the Southern liberals have any ancestors in the South. Their intellectual pedigree, so far as it is American, must be traced out on the northern side of the Potomac. They will discover their family portraits among the New England humanitarians.”

Caleb the Kenizzite or Caleb the Israelite?

“Spear shall be shaken, shield be splintered, / a sword-day, a red day, ere the sun rises!”

Hebrews 1.13-14: “But to which of the Angels said hee at any time, Sit on my right hand, vntill I make thine enemies thy footstoole? Are they not all ministring spirits, sent foorth to minister for them, who shall be heires of saluation?”

Day Bidet #94

July 17, 2023July 16, 2023 by WFTD, posted in Day Bidet

Du mußt dein Leben ändern:

Augustine: “The turbulent have to be corrected, the faint-hearted cheered up, the weak supported; the gospel’s opponents need to be refuted, its insidious enemies guarded against; the unlearned need to be taught, the indolent stirred up, the argumentative checked; the proud must be put in their place, the desperate set on their feet, those engaged in quarrels reconciled; the needy have to be helped, the oppressed to be liberated, the good to be given your backing, the bad to be tolerated; all must be loved.”
Moloch worshipers are the new Moloch worshipers. (Related—seems bad. Related. Related: “Puppies are winning, and babies are losing.” Related—at least she’s honest.)
“What makes a ‘lukewarm’ Christian isn’t a lack of effort or investment. What makes a ‘lukewarm’ Christians is a lack of humility.”
“All of them knew in their bones the special value, the character, and habitus of the old agrarian order which they chose to salute and recommend as an example to their own generation.”
Mind-bending stuff here.
Three years ago on Brave Ole World.
Jonah 4.11: “And should not I spare Nineueh that great citie, wherein are more then sixscore thousand persons, that cannot discerne betweene their right hand and their left hand, and also much cattell?”

“[A]fter a full body MRI revealed the extent of the disease, the gay couple who were paying her to carry their child used legal threats to pressure her into terminating the pregnancy.”

Interesting (though I’m not fully convinced). Also very interesting (and this time I think I am convinced).

“Let’s pause for a moment and appreciate the fact that the most famous novel on propaganda will be rewritten to conform to modern propaganda.”

John Alexander: “Did you ever wonder why we have so few good movies? … It’s partly that there’s a mystery to art that interferes with its being created for money, but it’s mostly that sin dumbs us down and blinds us. … Our culture is losing the idea that free choice holds together the promise and the tragedy; so our movies and literature get less and less satisfactory.” (Related. Related.)

Day Bidet #93

July 10, 2023July 10, 2023 by WFTD, posted in Day Bidet

There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places:

MacDonald: “I believe that there is nothing good for me or for any man but God, and more and more of God, and that alone through knowing Christ can we come nigh to him.”
“[T]he supposed racism of whites is the keystone of the Left project in America, because endless wailing about it … is a never-ending trump card with which to demand more supposed emancipation, but the chief form of that emancipation is the transfer of wealth from productive whites to unproductive non-whites (and parasitic white email-class elites).” (Language warning.)
Amos 9.2: “Though they digge into hell, thence shall mine hand take them: though they clime vp to heauen, thence will I bring them downe.”
“Progress.” “Progress.” “Progress”—ponder this chart! (Related—surreal to watch CNN mention the shooting last week but not ID the shooter. Also very much related: “What things do we make it easy to do as a city, as a country? What things do we make it hard to do?” Also related!)
“It appears … that Israel was not always able to maintain control over some of the cities that were defeated, for several of them are noted as the headquarters of various rulers who oppressed the Israelites during the period of the Judges (e.g., Jerusalem, Gezer, Taanach, Dor, Megiddo, and Hazor; see Judges 1-4).”
Carnivore success story: “After two weeks on the carnivore diet, Jacie reports that her persistent, intrusive, and repetitive thoughts began to ‘shrink.'” Carnivore success story: “After about 3 months my joint pain ceased.” Carnivore success story: “Well, can you at least allow me to try this diet to treat my MS as opposed to taking this four or five thousand dollar a month medicine?” Carnivore success story. Carnivore success story. Carnivore success story. Carnivore success story. Carnivore success story. Carnivore success story. (Related. Related—the future of cattle feed is here! Related.)
“Jesus actually lived, He actually died, and He actually rose. And I have to deal with that. I can’t just push that aside and say, ‘Oh, it’s a myth.’ No, these are real events.”

Not a bad introduction.

“[I]nterlocking frames are what is meant by mezuzot in the description of Solomon’s Temple.”

“[P]roblems of credibility in science were practically solved through the codes and conventions of genteel conduct: trust, civility, honor, and integrity.”

“Who Wrote to Colossians?”

Could Anything Be Less Scientific

July 4, 2023July 2, 2023 by WFTD, posted in History, politics, worldview

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights …” Could it be honestly maintained that to submit, scrupulously and sincerely, to such ‘self-evident’ truths amounts to anything other than an act of religious re-confirmation or conversion? Or denied that, in these words, reason and evidence are explicitly set aside, to make room for principles of faith? Could anything be less scientific than such a declaration, or more indifferent to the criteria of genuinely universal reasoning? How could anybody who was not already a believer be expected to consent to such assumptions?
Nick Land

Thankfully, as Fitzhugh observes, “[a]ll the bombastic absurdity in our Declaration of Independence about the inalienable rights of man, had about as much to do with the [Revolution of ’76] as would a sermon or oration on the teething of a child or the kittening of a cat.”

Happy Fourth!

Day Bidet #92

July 3, 2023July 2, 2023 by WFTD, posted in Day Bidet

It’s all now you see:

“Enchantment is the recovery of the world.” (Related. Related: “Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.” Related! Related: “Light, movement, and color. Smells and sound. Standing, kneeling, and dancing. Singing, praying, and preaching. Gathering, listening, and sending. Washing, embracing, touching. Making, re-making, and repairing. Celebrating, commemorating, remembering.”)
Homeschool your kids (and defund the public schools). (Related. Related. Related.)
“If an angel, seeming to come from heaven, told him that God had let him off, that he did not require so much of him as that, but would be content with less … the child of God would at once recognize, woven with the angel’s starry brilliancy, the flicker of the flames of hell, and would say to the shining one, ‘Get thee behind me, Satan.'”
Nietzsche: “History belongs, above all, to the active and powerful man, the man who fights one great battle, who needs the exemplary men, teachers, and comforters and cannot find them among his contemporary companions.”
“This is another testament to the extensive trade and cultural ties that existed between Israel under King Solomon and the Kingdom of Sheba.” (Related.)
Correct. (Related. Related—horrifying.) Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Absolutely correct. (Related. Related—satire? You decide! Related—lol.) Correct.
Amos 5.23-24: “Take thou away from mee the noise of thy songs: for I will not heare the melodie of thy violes. But let iudgement run downe as waters, and righteousnesse as a mightie streame.”

Clown World. Clown World (“Congratulations!”). Clown World. (Related: Demon World.) Demon World. (And yet there’s still so much to love about it.)

“John the Baptist was not a bruised reed. But maybe Herod was.”

“After that, they was thick as thieves.” (Related.)

“The pressure upon rich Christians to maintain their wealth was intense.”

Day Bidet #91

June 26, 2023June 26, 2023 by WFTD, posted in Day Bidet

God save the Queen:

“[I]t’s the unending song of myself that I’ve come in here to get a break from.” (Related.)
Thread. Thread—an excellent idea. (Related: “La beauté est un droit.”) Thread (language warning). Thread.
“[C]ommunion is the reality of the union of the flesh of Christ with the flesh of the Church—it is the mystical union of Christ and the Church in the Spirit.”
Nature pwns nurture. The social and political implications are far-reaching. (And fifty-year-old white guys with experience pwn “inspirational” twenty-five-year-olds without it. The social and political implications are, yet again, far-reaching.)
“The leaders of the people literally choose a thief in place of the Good Shepherd.”
Vive la France.(Related: “Abolish White Supremacy.”)
MacDonald: “Never wait for fitter time or place to talk to him. To wait till thou go to church, or to thy closet, is to make him wait. He will listen as thou walkest in the lane or the crowded street, on the common or in the place of shining concourse.”

“Did you know that the anti-nuke turn in the enviro movement was accompanied by generous funding from oil and coal companies to the movement? Iiiiiinnteresting.”

“This newly rediscovered inscription is dated to around 1400 B.C.E.—about 200 years earlier than the Merneptah Stele.” (Related. Related: “Given Jezebel’s religious fervor in the Bible, one would expect to find evidence of Baal worship at Sidon. Some extraordinary discoveries from recent excavations have allowed us to partially reconstruct Sidonian religion during the Bronze and Iron Ages—showing that Baal worship at the site had deep roots.” Related. Related. Related.)

“He will be moderately missed.”

Joel 2.29: “And also vpon the seruants, and vpon the handmaids in those dayes will I powre out my Spirit.”

More Blessed in the Pains of Hell

June 23, 2023June 16, 2023 by WFTD, posted in Apologetics, faith, Literature

St Paul would be wretched before the throne of God, if he thought there was one man beyond the pale of his mercy, and that as much for God’s glory as for the man’s sake. And what shall we say of the man Christ Jesus? Who, that loves his brother, would not, upheld by the love of Christ, and with a dim hope that in the far-off time there might be some help for him, arise from the company of the blessed, and walk down into the dismal regions of despair, to sit with the last, the only unredeemed, the Judas of his race, and be himself more blessed in the pains of hell, than in the glories of heaven? Who, in the midst of the golden harps and the white wings, knowing that one of his kind, one miserable brother in the old-world-time when men were taught to love their neighbour as themselves, was howling unheeded far below in the vaults of the creation, who, I say, would not feel that he must arise, that he had no choice, that, awful as it was, he must gird his loins, and go down into the smoke and the darkness and the fire, travelling the weary and fearful road into the far country to find his brother?—who, I mean, that had the mind of Christ, that had the love of the Father?
George MacDonald, “Love Thy Neighbour”