Some Unexpected Blessings

You're probably as astonished by the news as I am: a newly-uncovered scroll in the Dead Sea caves, an addendum to the gospels, an apparent message from Jesus to the people of the USA. I'm sure you've heard all about it. Coverage on the networks has been unrelenting. Yet it is a transformative discovery. For the sake of any reader who's been in the dark the last three days, the translated text is below.

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Special Rules for the Liberty People

It shall come to pass in future days that a nation of liberty will arise on the far side of the world, to be renowned for its spacious skies and waves of grain. Unto this nation I proclaim a corollary to my sermon on the mount. (Not the Mount of Olives; I mean my other sermon, on the Mount of Beatitudes—a name that never made sense to me until just now.) For this nation, and them alone, I proclaim a separate set of blessings to override and replace the ones I spake before. They are thus:

Blessed are the powerful; their power is self-justified.
Blessed are the moneyed; money shall be theirs.
Blessed are the money-lenders, for they shall inherit their neighbor's ass.
Blessed are the bold, for they shall have their neighbor's wife.
Blessed are the cold; they shall spare their people from the refugee.
Blessed are the hard of heart; they shall scourge the land of weakness.
Blessed are the pious; their faith absolves them.
Blessed are the prayerful; no work but prayer is required of them.
Blessed are the resourceful; they shall take the Earth from the meek.
Blessed are the swordsmen; they shall need no plowshares.

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There were more lines beneath that, but they're now illegible. For more context, you can turn to cable news, where there's no shortage of commentary. Being no biblical scholar, I can't offer any useful footnote. I can only say I'm embarrassed and surprised. I didn't see this coming, and I owe apologies to a number of people.

It's awkward timing, too. I had meant to use today's front page reprinting a different quotation, a small discovery in a humbler book. I guess I'll print it anyway, since I went to the trouble of typing it up. Here are a few paragraphs from the preface to the second edition of Jane Eyre, dated December 21st, 1847, under Charlotte Brontë's pseudonym, Currer Bell. I thought they were good words, but maybe now they're overturned.

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... Having thus acknowledged what I owe those who have aided and approved me, I turn to another class; a small one, so far as I know, but not, therefore, to be overlooked. I mean the timorous or carping few who doubt the tendency of such books as “Jane Eyre:” in whose eyes whatever is unusual is wrong; whose ears detect in each protest against bigotry—that parent of crime—an insult to piety, that regent of God on earth. I would suggest to such doubters certain obvious distinctions; I would remind them of certain simple truths.

Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last. To pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee, is not to lift an impious hand to the Crown of Thorns.

These things and deeds are diametrically opposed: they are as distinct as is vice from virtue. Men too often confound them: they should not be confounded: appearance should not be mistaken for truth; narrow human doctrines, that only tend to elate and magnify a few, should not be substituted for the world-redeeming creed of Christ. There is—I repeat it—a difference; and it is a good, and not a bad action to mark broadly and clearly the line of separation between them.