The Philippians 4:8 standard

Anything that's not those things ought to raise a red flag

I haven’t been in the best of shape emotionally, attitudinally or spiritually lately.

I think some of it is due to the colossally mediocre winter we’ve had. All the great storms have either passed to our north or south, leaving us with days on end of either industrial-grade grey skies or an unsparing brilliant blue sky devoid of nuance or variety. Some people are not much affected by the weather beyond whether they can get out and function in it. Good for them. I’ve always admired the so-together types among us whose agendas are impervious to what nature is presenting.

My wife and I also have some orthopedic issues that have us wondering how to navigate probable impact on household income, which leads to broader questions of vocation, responsibility, and the parameters that time imposes on our ambitions and dreams.

Also, as Precipice readers know, my main focus as a writer is the present cultural/political/economic/world-stage moment, and encouraging developments in any of those realms are pretty hard to come by. I don’t think I need to rehash too many particulars, as various posts here deal with each or several of them. I’ll offer just a quick reminder that

• the mainstreaming of drag-show “culture,”

• the “mainstream” editorial position in post-American journalism that we can speak of the “rights” of a “community” that no one was even conceiving of twenty years ago,

• the field of concern about such developments being handed over to forces that would respond with vindictiveness,

• the ever-worsening debt-and-deficit situation in which the federal government finds itself because a century of handing over what ought to be private-sector matters - health and aging - to the state has made a pariah out of anyone proposing an effective way out, and

• this week’s developments in North Korea, China, Russia, and Iran

are having real-time impact.

So, sorry, but I just haven’t been a barrel of guffaws lately.

And I know the rejoinders:

You have your wife, relatives and friends, in whom you take delight.

You live with modern conveniences unknown to most of humanity for most of its history.

You have an extensive library of books and musical recordings that bring you ever-deeper insights and rich aesthetic nourishment.

You have writing and musical talent, the sharing of which brings you genuine joy.

Well, okay, but what about the above-cited forms of toxicity and nastiness that require willful escapism to avoid?

Put another way, why does it seem that fewer people than ever are interested in what St. Paul exhorts us to do in his letter to the church at Philippi, which, sharp cat that he was, knew applied to us as well as those addressees?

You know, this:

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

I’m spitballing here, but I think fear may be a factor. Let me unpack.

Any and each of us, especially in this present moment of accelerated information flow, form our notions of what is right and true from incomplete inputs. We come to our conclusions on the run and hand off the work of making sure we’re being thorough to others who are as busy - and as fallen - as ourselves. When they are proven to come up short as champions of what we hold - or know we ought to hold - dear, we stick with them anyway, because the threats to what is dear seem so great that we conclude that this is no time to abandon those champions.

We’re afraid to explore options other than digging in our heels.

But you can’t embrace the pure and lovely with dug-in heels.

And then we lose sight of even the ability to recognize the pure, lovely, right, etc.

Were we to recognize it, would we be willing to make the tradeoff necessary to embrace it?

⁴⁴ “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.

⁴⁵ “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. ⁴⁶ When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.

That’s a level of vulnerability that most of us are inclined to take a pass on.

But why is that? Why does the silly armor of our pride have greater appeal than unsullied goodness?

A basic precept of the project-management field - approaching large tasks in manageable chunks - seems useful here.

Because of the way I’m wired, I’m not going to stop paying attention to those levels of modern human existence I enumerate above.

But I can hold fast to Paul’s beseeching as I venture forth into my daily life. This will equip me to determine what, among the experiences I encounter, does and does not pass the smell test. If it ain’t right, true, lovely, pure, right, noble and admirable, my long-term best interests - and those of the world - are served by backing away.

This requires a fair amount of slowing down, not an easy thing to do in this age.

But it’s necessary to be able to act from that barometer, that guide Paul provides.

There is always time to discern whether something is laudable without compromise. Each moment of our lives presents us the choice as to which kingdom we are going to further in this arena in which the two kingdoms strive for our souls.