Posted on 12/30/2001 10:59:23 AM PST by SemperFidelis
OF MEN OF GOOD WILL
By Phil Brennan
The other night there was a priest on Fox News who ended his little homily on Christmas with the words "peace on earth, good will to men."Moments later, Tony Snow closed the program by repeating this meaningless inanity.
Let's get this straight; authentic Holy Scripture concerning the birth of Christ contains no such line. It's an aberration that springs out of that false, feel-good Christianity which seeks never to offend, and always to placate.
The Bible quotes the angels who appeared to the shepherds as singing "Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to men of good will."(Luke 2 : 13-14)
Lately, in an obvious bow to the exquisite sensibilities of the feminist fanatics bent on the emasculation of men and the masculation of the female sex, wimpish biblical exegest have rewritten the line to read "... peace on earth to those on whom His favor rests," a pretty clever way of avoiding the use of the now offensive noun "men," without violating the real meaning. God's favor, after all, obviously doesn't rest on men of ill-will."
Think about it for a minute - the " good will to men," line is not only an outrageous distortion of the angelic blessing; it's just plain meaningless. It sounds good and snugly, but that's all. Otherwise it's devoid of any real meaning.
But the original and correct version is pregnant with the most sublime wisdom; in it can be found the exact formula for the peace on earth the angels proclaimed.
The peace of which they sang is the internal peace that comes from being of "good will,"- an attitude of mind and spirit that involves surrender to the source of all good will - the will of a loving God who yearns for us to allow Him to direct every moment of our lives towards union with Him.
Those who accept the Divine will in all they think, do or say are at peace because they know that whatever God wills in their lives is willed for just one purpose; to bring us into complete union with Him now and in the hereafter. It's a state something like that of a child putting his hand in his father's hand, feeling safe and secure and free from worry because he trusts his father without question.
Don't get me wrong: putting ourselves in God's hands doesn't mean that our lives are going to be free of pain, difficulty and crises. But it does mean that whatever He puts in our path, good or bad, comes with the grace to handle it. Knowing that allows us to live in a state of inner peace. It allows us to say with the song "Que sera, sera, whatever will be, will be," add "Thy will be done" and say it with serenity.
St. Augustine put it this way: our Lord "made us for Himself" and we will "not rest until we rest in him."
Peace on earth is attainable only when mankind is at peace with itself, and we cannot be at peace within ourselves when we are asserting our own wills in opposition to God's will.
Their can be no internal peace for thieves, liars, corrupt public officials, exploiters of the poor and defenseless and murderers. Their very lives are a denial of good will. The woman who butchers the child in her womb may feel relief at being freed from the consequences of her behavior, but her mind will remain in a state of turmoil for having defied the Divine will - the sole source of inner peace.
It is a source of wonderment to me that we have stood by and permitted this corruption of Biblical wisdom to spread far and wide with nary a word of protest from the pulpits, or for that matter, from many men of good will.
Good will to men: Bah Humbug!
There are better fish to fry. The choice to focus on this is at least seemingly rather excentric.
"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will."
another corruption of the bible is how people say 'the truth shall set you free'. I don't remember where the verse is but it says 'the truth shall make you free'. there's a lot of subtle corruptions like that. It is worth sticking to the original, otherwise we are just writing the bible or the constitution as we go along to suit our needs.
Then it is only wishfull thinking. Isn't it?
Feminism is patricide via abortion. It's a theology of gyncentricity, replacing objective-Biblical morals with immoral power centers.
If we could just find some good men to love those ladies maybe they'd soften up a little.
I've heard this put in much more graphic terms. "They need some..."---you can guess the rest.
Too bad most of them look like Rosa De Lora and Eleanor Clift. How bout it, doc? You up to the challenge? =)
If feminazis looked like Linda Vester (FoxNewsChannel), that would be one thing.
However, they all look like DWORKIN (EVIL HYPERLINK)
As a side note:
The original texts of the bible were in Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic and was first translated by St. Jerome into Latin, who had access to these texts. He was a towering linguistic genius.
St. Jerome (342-420) was fluent in Latin and greek, Hebrew and Aramaic. He was also 1500 years closer to the original languages than any scholar today, which would make him a much better judge of the exact meaning of any greek or hebrew words in the scriptures. He also had access to ancient Hewbrew and Greek manuscripts of the 2nd and 3rd century that have since perished and are no longer available to scholars today, which is why I choose the Douay-Rheims bible [english translation of the Latin Vulgate] as my bible. =)
'have a nice day' and
'no problem'?
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