Maggie's Farm

Jesus looked at him and loved him. "One thing you lack," he said. "Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me." At this the man's face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth.

Probably no regular international travel itineraries, personal trainers, or Epicurean lifestyle blogging then.

The thing is pride, bd. Posing. Appearances. Self. Place, association, trappings, lifestyle.

When the purported faith is nothing evidently more than a weekly show or cultural event it tends to be questionable, even as Jesus questioned, in point, the rich man to gauge his real interest in the road less traveled. After all, his disciples were all-in with the cause. All in.

Jesus sweated blood and went to his death by torture willingly. Enjoying themselves, modern rightist culturalists are as suspect as leftist SJWs are because they conflate their persons with their effects and have no idea what that thing Jesus did even was. It's beyond their grasp because it's beyond their character, and beyond their character because it's beyond their interest.

The theology of all this goes on forever and we're not going to debate it here in any definitive wisdom. Pursuant it, however, I find the notion that Jesus singled out one guy for some unique lesson to be self-serving. That's not plausible, especially when if one wanted to exempt one's wealth from God's judgement that's probably exactly how they'd proceed: "But God doesn't mean me."

Clearly that's not what happened there - Jesus led a life of abstinence and austerity, and was frequently on about the profound difference between the established classes and the disciple, a man who in each of the twelve cases, was likewise a austere person. That principle continues today. It's not rare but it is entirely consistent. We have monks over here and we have celebrity preachers way over there. We know the difference.

BD has been lifestyle blogging forever, proudly going on about his definitive expertise in everything from luxury travel to food to carnism to destinations to personal trainers and precisely, exactly how to be ripped (in bed) or something, and now, even to how the expert casual voyager enjoys the benefits of privilege in an international setting with the smartest bags and carry-ons.

It's all preening, or at least, is indistinguishable from preening. It's the middle age man's Kardashian gene, constantly on the 'Net with self-oriented content related to how we do things, save for the lack of selfies, thankfully.

Meanwhile there's a distinct lack of reason that tends to cement just how puffy the faithful Sunday lectionary is. I've seen some outrageous assertions at this blog, all aimed at establishing a sense of self, place, and unique culture at the expense of some other faction, target, or community. To read this blog, it seems God loves the quasi-elite soft rightist out enjoying his life while condemning the folks on the other sides of a lot of fences.

It's all over-fences, old money, blue blood Christianity, among the worst kind. And since I know a little about Christianity, and since this is all public and for effect, here's another perspective on it.

Yes, there are plenty of failures of integrity, honesty, principle, and morality to keep us busy making judgements. They are, however, not at all consistently aligned with the values here, in this little space online. This is a crew of like-minded people whose lives and lifestyles count to the point and degree that they've become memberships at the club, their annual fees at the intellectual and cultural yacht basin where the julips and the lobster frame a perspective apparently aimed at maintaining the local status quo from the plebes, and I don't mean just the presumed intellectual inferior.

And it's there where Jesus, if we're going to keep invoking Him each Sunday as our weekly penance, would all but certainly make a distinction, and where while ancient Jewish kingly wealth was what it was - none of you being ancient Jewish kings with, as you'll have to also agree given the context you raise, divine appointments unless you make them yourselves - putting your own effects and your miniature kingdoms and temples out there all the time comes off as faintly pharisaical when it tries to jam itself all together with who makes the best booze, where's the best Italian $500 hotel four weeks year, or how all other surf and turn is inferior to the one you just had in Paris.

I think that Jesus probably doesn't exist and probably never did, and I'm pretty sure he wasn't much of a partisan of any stripe, running a blog with slight leanings toward the vague Republicanism seemingly expected to complete the identity of the place.

Losing everything and finding it the road less traveled you, like Jesus or like Buddha, then choose to remain on all your days is a place of mind and it is ascendant and eternal. Having everything and advertising it and using it to make definitive secular findings on a number of levels is also a state of mind and it is cultural and temporal. Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.

So you definitely believe anyone who aspires to the kingdom of heaven must sell everything they have to achieve it?

Are you asking? I didn't say that or allude to it, and certainly not definitely. I pointed to the austerity and its spiritual nature and I contrasted it with lifestyle and enjoyment for its own Epicurean sake, Epicurus not being Jesus.

We'll agree to disagree then. I believe that anyone who aspires to the kingdom of heaven must master their inner selves.

You don't necessarily disagree, although you'd have to define this mastery you speak of.

They must be able to exercise an impartiality to the material world.

And does that impartiality comport with the detailed, paragraphs-long lifestyling inclination - only vaguely punctuated with the use of unassociated and uncommentaried copy/paste verse - in the context of what may be a fascination with secular or worldly pleasures? That may indicate impartiality of a sort, I suppose, but when I go back to the example of Jesus on a nonstop jet back to the Med for drinks on the fantail, I'm inclined to think less so than more so.

That is difficult enough that most people, myself included, cannot do it with any great degree of success. I also suspect that is what Jesus was driving at with his words to the wealthy man.

Yes, it's a profoundly difficult matrix, although strictly defining it by one example or by not including the literal instruction of austerity and utter faithfulness doesn't inform an answer to what it is or what's expected of us to observe the self-mastery of wordly impartiality, as I think you called it. This is because no man alive can say what constitutes salvation simply because no man alive (or dead) can say what God is and therefore what God intends or wills, if anything at all beyond what hand-written scripture can be claimed to say after the fact.

(This is where I think it's wise not just to divorce from old works-based salvation but too from faith-based salvation when the latter isn't completely silent. The moment faith becomes a test, a rule, a standard, or a vocal means it also becomes a transferable value, which makes it a work, not a faith. Besides, just as none of us really know anything about all of this, we surely can't divine what God sees as the great value of faith that has it making a soul perfect for eternity.)

You seem to me to have taken a very literal meaning from the biblical citation.

Only if you read it that way. (And very is an unnecessary modifier for literal. Not to be pedantic, but in the context. Are you leading there? You had made other assumptions regarding intent that are not in evidence, so...)

But that still doesn't absolve anyone of the responsibility to take the verse in question - and all of them, or they don't warrant the discussion or the original posting - quite seriously. After all the verse tends to call for a go/no-go setting that no Christians - Jesus not being Christian, as you'll recall - can say but yet Jesus saw fit to demand. I tend to think that being the standard bearer for globe-trotting among fancy, cultural traditionalists doesn't exactly illuminate any of these texts. So what's their point?

The Pharisees ... were regarded as hypocrites in the New Testament because they cleaved to a strictly literal interpretation of the Mosaic law and attacked Jesus and his disciples for not doing the same.

Therefore the Pharisees were regarded as hypocrites because they cleaved to a strictly literal interpretation of the Mosaic law's status quo as they weaponized it in their own time, it having no other function therein, and because they made a show of this religious standing against others they deemed less than they.

That more common reading is how I meant the word. And of course that other religious body of the time - the highest, actually - convicted and handed Jesus off for execution by the State. These tend to lend some perspective to Jesus's sayings. Those sayings were kinda serious, serious enough to get Him killed.

In that context, pointing out that the citation under discussion may well be prescriptive rather than universal hardly seems pharisaical. But if that's the way you see it, then...

(I admit to using it to imply a question about that other sin, which is taking the Lord's name in vain. I hope to not take the Lord's name in vain - to own it without being it - as much as I can. Hence my references to silence and austerity and roads less traveled. If this reality is the spiritual matrix it seems, I'm in no condition to stand in any pulpits, as casual or slim as they may be.)

It's also beyond question that this blog is not primarily religious nor does its purpose appear to be to proselytize for Christians. It's a blog of general information that is distributed by the posters on the basis of whatever subject happens to be of interest to them. I for one enjoy stopping by from time to time and I particularly enjoy the lectionaries that BD posts. Personally I find it refreshing, a bit of timeless wisdom amongst the day to day news.

So it is casual then. Granted, and you've answered my question. In fact, it seems clearer then to find these weekly lectionaries more of that same lifestyle blogging. Look at me, for I am periodically of a certain kind of spiritual ilk and community that naturally bears less exposition than dealing with cocktails, hotels, or five-coursers evidently does.

The lectionary as window-dressing for and with those other things. As you say, a refreshing happening among the other amusements. I see now how this leaves the lifestyle intact.