Imagine yourself sitting in the center row of a darkened theater at an evening performance of a show entitled Cabaret. Tonight’s offering is a musical, and yet it is a musical unlike most others. It’s almost entirely devoid of the kind of cheerfulness that is usually associated with that particular genre, focusing as it does on the excesses of the Weimar Republic in the days just before the outbreak of World War II. Such humor as the play has is heavily ironic, filled with innuendo, and ultimately black.
“We don't hate sin. We don't see it as destructive. We don't love our neighbors.
We love the peace we have when we avoid dealing with them.” — Antemodernist
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Thursday, March 17, 2022
Friday, November 19, 2021
Too Hot to Handle: Religious Freedom, Limited
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
The Independent reports that Belgium’s Walloon region is the latest territory to ban kosher and halal meats. Denmark, Switzerland and New Zealand all got there first, in each case turning a deaf ear to the protests of Jewish and Islamic minorities.
Tom: That’s fine with me. We’ve already established in the U.S. and Canada that there are reasonable limits on religious freedoms, though these have been applied more frequently (and certainly more visibly) against Christians than against religious minorities recently.
Wednesday, October 27, 2021
Out of His Lane
Last Tuesday, John Piper used his mega-platform among Reformed Christians to come out in favor of COVID vaccination and to implore his fellow believers to go out and get jabbed:
“My aim in this article is to encourage Christians to be vaccinated, if they can do so with a good conscience and judicious medical warrant.”
Hey, at least he had the decency to include the caveat of “a good conscience”.
Thursday, September 23, 2021
Freedom: The False and the True
“For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. Therefore what benefit were you then deriving from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the outcome of those things is death. But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit, resulting in sanctification, and the outcome, eternal life.”
What is freedom? Does it mean what people today think it does? Does it mean doing whatever, whenever? Does it mean liberty to surrender to our own impulses? Does it mean opportunity to do whatever-the-heck we feel like at a given moment? Does it mean being exempt from moral censure or practical criticism regardless of what action we may choose to do?
Does it mean total independence? Does it mean not needing anyone, or not feeling the lack of anything?
Tuesday, May 11, 2021
Reality Check: Religious Freedom
Religious freedom is not a Christian value.
There, I said it.
Now, let’s be real about it: religious freedom is certainly a value held and promoted by many Christians. It is also a benefit that, when conferred on us by the occasional society that looks favorably on the faith (or simply neglects to single it out for special persecution), has made preaching the gospel a whole lot less painful for those who preach it. If I could have religious freedom or not have it, I would certainly prefer to have it.
Nevertheless, these things in themselves do not make religious freedom our inalienable right, and they should not remotely encourage us to seek to spread it around.
Sunday, February 10, 2019
Invisible Chains
Thursday, July 05, 2018
Promiscuous Freedom and Enslavement
The most recent version of this post is available here.
Tuesday, August 22, 2017
Freedom: The False and the True
The most recent version of this post is available here.
Thursday, July 20, 2017
The Snare Is Broken
from the snare of the fowlers;
the snare is broken,
and we have escaped!”
Friday, May 19, 2017
Too Hot to Handle: Religious Freedom, Limited
The most recent version of this post is available here.
Tuesday, June 21, 2016
Quote of the Day (23)
Monday, June 15, 2015
Promiscuous Freedom and Enslavement
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[Originally presented April 11, 2014] |
Thursday, April 09, 2015
Quote of the Day (1)
“George W. Bush once said, ‘God has planted in every human heart the desire to live in freedom.’ But that’s just wrong. In fact, how any man who believes in the Bible could believe that, I truly don’t know. The Bible tells how God freed his chosen people the Hebrews from Egyptian slavery. He sent them the prophet Moses, he sent them signs and wonders, he rained plagues on their enemies, he defeated the mighty pharaoh and his armies with uncanny heavenly warfare. And when the Lord was done and his chosen people were free, the chosen turned to Moses and said, in effect, ‘We’re hungry! We were better off as slaves!’ ”— Andrew Klavan
Tuesday, November 04, 2014
Promiscuous Freedom and Enslavement
Monday, July 14, 2014
The Snare Is Broken
Friday, July 11, 2014
Baptism and Freedom
Thursday, May 01, 2014
Chesterton on Freedom
“It is impossible to be an artist and not care for laws and limits. Art is limitation; the essence of every picture is the frame. If you draw a giraffe, you must draw him with a long neck. If, in your bold creative way, you hold yourself free to draw a giraffe with a short neck, you will really find that you are not free to draw a giraffe. The moment you step into the world of facts, you step into a world of limits. You can free things from alien or accidental laws, but not from the laws of their own nature. You may, if you like, free a tiger from his bars; but do not free him from his stripes. Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump: you may be freeing him from being a camel. Do not go about as a demagogue, encouraging triangles to break out of the prison of their three sides. If a triangle breaks out of its three sides, its life comes to a lamentable end. Somebody wrote a work called ‘The Loves of the Triangles’; I never read it, but I am sure that if triangles ever were loved, they were loved for being triangular. This is certainly the case with all artistic creation, which is in some ways the most decisive example of pure will. The artist loves his limitations: they constitute the THING he is doing.”— G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
That’s the funny thing about truth ...
Wednesday, April 30, 2014
Freedom: The False and the True
Monday, April 07, 2014
God’s Sovereignty, Man’s Responsibility and the Two Witnesses
“… what they disagree about is how prescriptive His management of the universe has to be in order for that to be true. Does He have to mandate the movement of every molecule that twitches? Or is it possible that God allows human beings some measure of freedom of choice and action? How “tight” does sovereignty have to be in order to remain sovereignty?”
Let’s suppose in analyzing the chapter that its words are intended to be taken at face value; that is to say, that when John writes “if anyone would”, it means “if anyone would” (as opposed to something along the lines of “if the sovereign God compels anyone to”).
If we do that, is it possible to see the sovereignty of God on display at the same time as man’s will?