The most recent version of this post is available here.
“Love often manifests itself in giving people what they can’t appreciate and don’t want, and
in demanding from them precisely what they most want to retain for themselves.” — Tom
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Monday, December 12, 2016
Sunday, December 11, 2016
Show’s Over
It’s the devil’s show I’m talking about, not
God’s. I mean this present world.
The fact that it is the devil — Satan,
Lucifer, Abaddon, Beelzebub, the Serpent of Old — who is running the show
here on earth is not well understood in or outside religious circles, possibly
because so many have difficulty with the notion of personal evil. Social evil,
sure. Patriarchal evil, definitely. We’ll even maybe sorta kinda acknowledge
that once in a while there comes on the scene a man or woman so virulently depraved
that even a bad upbringing, lack of education, racism or poor social conditions
do not fully account for it. Who would blame Jeffrey Dahmer’s mother, after all?
But an invisible supernatural being pulling
the strings behind the scenes? A bit of a stretch. For the source of all the
bad news in this world, let’s look elsewhere.
Saturday, December 10, 2016
Any Story But Their Own
‘Child,’
said the Lion, ‘I am telling you your story, not hers. No one is told any story but their own.’ ”
— C.S. Lewis, The Horse and His Boy
I’ve always liked that last line.
Aravis asks the Lion about the fate of the slave
she drugged in order to make her escape. Lewis does not tell us whether her
question is prompted by guilt, compassion, fear or curiosity. All are possible.
But the Lion’s answer is simply, “No one is told any story but their own”.
Labels:
1 Samuel
/
C.S. Lewis
/
Occultism
/
Saul
Friday, December 09, 2016
Too Hot to Handle: Getting Reoriented
The most recent version of this post is available here.
Labels:
Homosexuality
/
Too Hot to Handle
Thursday, December 08, 2016
Quote of the Day (28)
“ ‘Ruff,
I talked to a mom in there who is going to give up everything for her kids,
even her life. I also talked with a man who did not see the point of keeping
one’s word. I want to be in her world, not in his.’
Ruff
said, ‘You’d live longer in his.’
Gil
said, ‘And be just as dead at the end and be called to account for my life.’ ”
— John C. Wright, Swan Knight’s Sword
See, now THERE’S a sentiment I’d want my
kids to read and internalize.
Labels:
Book Reviews
/
John C. Wright
/
Quote of the Day
Wednesday, December 07, 2016
Islands Shouting Lies
— Rudyard Kipling, The Light That Failed
The public life that we lead is a façade; a mask we wear
that is in large measure demonstrably false, primarily because it is an
incomplete representation of who we truly are in private.
There are three reasons for this division between the public
and the private life.
Labels:
Christ
/
Loneliness
Tuesday, December 06, 2016
Don’t Be Outdone
Nowadays we don’t like to hurt anybody’s self-esteem. The solution? Give
out prizes, ribbons and accolades just for showing up. My youngest son once brought
home a trophy for participation.
“Hey Dad, look, I was there!”
No, actually, he didn’t say that. He rightly recognized even
at the age of six or seven that there was little value to an award received for
no particular effort. For merely dignifying an event with his illustrious
presence. For managing to breathe and stand upright without any unanticipated side-effects.
I don’t know where the trophy is now and I suspect neither does
he. If you ask me it was kind of pathetic.
Labels:
Apostle Paul
/
Honour
/
Recycling
/
Reward
Monday, December 05, 2016
The Commentariat Speaks (6)
“Socialism
is basically Christianity without the divine power. Socialism is man’s attempt
to bring utopia to reality.”
Uh ... not really. I mean, yes on the
utopian bit, no on the comparison to Christianity.
It’s not just the absence of divine power, though that’s certainly one reason socialism reliably fails. As Margaret Thatcher noted, “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”
Labels:
Corinthians
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Giving
/
Socialism
/
The Commentariat Speaks
Sunday, December 04, 2016
Saturday, December 03, 2016
God’s Man of the Hour
The most recent version of this post is available here.
Labels:
Augustine
/
Controversy
/
John Wesley
/
Martin Luther
Friday, December 02, 2016
Too Hot to Handle: Will Science Survive Our Politicized Culture?
The most recent version of this post is available here.
Labels:
Leftism
/
Politics
/
Science
/
Too Hot to Handle
Thursday, December 01, 2016
Doubling Down
If you haven’t heard this, prepare to be
appalled: A Double Down is 541 calories of pure brilliance: bacon, two different kinds of melted cheese and the Colonel’s
secret sauce in between (here’s the best part) two KFC Original Recipe chicken
fillets. No bun. Just an artery-clogging, heart-stopping quantity of tasty
deep-fried meat.
Fortunately the sandwich only shows up erratically
on the KFC menu, usually for four weeks every year-and-a-half or so. If you
need to justify consuming one, I recommend fasting the day before. And the day
after. Or maybe for a week.
Labels:
1 Samuel
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David
/
Rebellion
/
Repentance
/
Saul
Wednesday, November 30, 2016
Quote of the Day (27)
It was Epicurus who first posed this famous paradox around 350 BC:
“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?”
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?”
At least we think it was Epicurus. Some believe the lines were misattributed to him by later philosophers like David Hume. But it hardly matters who said them and when:
the fact is that men have struggled to explain suffering as long as men have
been thinking about their place in the universe, and this particular
formulation is one of the ways they have attempted to deal with the question.
Labels:
Epicurean Paradox
/
Epicurus
/
Evil
/
God
/
Quote of the Day
/
Suffering
Tuesday, November 29, 2016
Down the Road
Every day of our lives, by means of the
Holy Spirit’s agency, God is steadily working away to achieve in each of us the character of his Son.
Transforming us involves both IN-forming us
and RE-forming us — but there is often a fair bit of time that elapses between
the two.
Sometimes that means today’s lesson is only
understood later this week. And sometimes full understanding of any given
piece of spiritual information is years or even decades away.
Labels:
Luke
/
Matthew
/
Transfiguration
/
Truth
Monday, November 28, 2016
Sunday, November 27, 2016
Too Far Gone
Does your church need an ... er ... equalizer? |
— Korah’s Rebellion,
Numbers 16
Christian women are
priests just as Christian men are priests; therefore Christian women should be
able to do everything in the churches that Christian men have traditionally
done.
So goes the modern argument, and it’s dead wrong.
Saturday, November 26, 2016
Priests and Priesthood
If all believers are really priests, why is
it that some churches still don’t allow women to exercise the priestly role of
teaching the Bible publicly?
Martin Luther famously referred to a general priesthood in his 1520 tract To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation. Luther did not actually coin the phrase “priesthood of all believers”, and the
idea itself obviously did not originate with Luther but rather with the writers
of the New Testament. Still, the fact remains that the doctrine we know by that
name has been a significant feature of Protestantism for almost 500 years.
This being the case, you’d figure any
questions about the status of women in a universal priesthood must have been
asked and answered hundreds of times.
Labels:
Ministry
/
Priesthood
/
Service
/
Women's Role
Friday, November 25, 2016
Too Hot to Handle: E-dification
The most recent version of this post is available here.
Labels:
Edification
/
Internet
/
Millennials
/
Social Media
/
Too Hot to Handle
Thursday, November 24, 2016
Rights and Freedoms
In the wake of the U.S. election, Crawford Paul muses on the role of the church in a democracy. Here’s his setup:
“The
dilemma comes when the church, which is NOT a democracy, exists in a nation
that IS a democracy. How does the church uphold a democracy that would
ensure their right to follow the teachings of the Bible while at the same time
grant rights to those who contradict the Scriptures?”
Hmm. I agree with much of what
Crawford says in his piece, but I have a very different take on a few of his assumptions.
Labels:
Church
/
Government
/
Politics
Wednesday, November 23, 2016
The Enemy Within
In modern English usage, the difference
between jealousy and envy is not clear-cut, as this Merriam-Webster article helpfully points out. In fact, the two terms have become so muddled that three
major language guides from the mid-20th century disagree about their respective
meanings.
For convenience and to avoid making the
confusion worse, I’ll use “jealous” to describe the anticipative emotions
that arise over losing something you have, and “envious” to describe the desire
to possess what belongs to someone else.
But I won’t pretend to have the final word
on the subject.
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