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
- Home
- What We’re Doing Here
- F A Q
- Anonymous Asks
- Apocrypha-lypso
- Book Reviews
- The Commentariat Speaks
- DAMWWTIM
- Flyover Country
- How Not to Crash and Burn
- Inbox
- The Language of the Debate
- Letters from the Best Man
- Mining the Minors
- On the Mount
- Quote of the Day
- Recommend-a-blog
- Semi-Random Musings
- That Wacky Old Testament
- Time and Chance
- What Does Your Proof Text Prove?
Sunday, July 16, 2017
Saturday, July 15, 2017
Quote of the Day (35)
Photo: Adam Jacobs, under license |
Jordan Peterson (for
the three remaining people who haven’t heard of him) is a U of T
professor who took a lot of flack late last year for adamantly refusing to use the
made-up gender pronouns of the transgendered Left with his students. Since
then, he’s been all over YouTube, and I’m not surprised. The number of
Canadians willing to take a public stand in front of the daunting combo of the State, the State-owned media and the Progressivist lobby for things like morality,
tradition or (God forbid) anything even remotely resembling Christian values is, well, microscopic.
The following exchange
occurred in the question period after Peterson’s fourth lecture in his Old
Testament series, which was NOT about abortion. Not at all.
Labels:
Abortion
/
Jordan Peterson
/
Politics
/
Quote of the Day
Friday, July 14, 2017
Too Hot to Handle: Unsanctioned “Churches”
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
Tom: I just came across a blog entry by a Christian fellow named Danny Eason. Danny had this silly idea of inviting a bunch of random (I believe his own description is “ragamuffin”) believers into his home for “Coffee and Jesus”. He describes their get-togethers like this:
“... fellowship, studying the Word (we’re walking through Ephesians), corporate confession and prayer, and worship through song. The time together is incredibly relaxed with no official format.”
That and, oh yeah, “Breaking of Bread”.
Labels:
Apostle Paul
/
Church
/
Recycling
/
Too Hot to Handle
Thursday, July 13, 2017
Guess Who’s Not Coming to Dinner?
Yesterday I dealt with the most practical reason ecumenicalism is a non-starter.
But not every argument against a major campaign to reunite the Church organizationally is all about utility.
The other reason we haven’t seen a lot of small, local churches devoting their energies to ecumenicalism is theological.
Labels:
Denominationalism
/
Ecumenicalism
/
Unity
Wednesday, July 12, 2017
Sacrifices and Trade-offs
Nathan Abdy says some churches pay
insufficient attention to what’s currently being taught in the larger
evangelical community. I have argued that, at least in my experience, lack of
elder awareness about the big picture isn’t a problem.
But then I also happen
to know some exceptionally well-studied, highly intelligent older Christian
men. I hope they represent the larger trends, but I could be wrong.
If so, that’s an
issue. After all, elders keep watch over both the flock and themselves. That’s
their job. “Pay careful attention,” said the apostle Paul. So they should, and so should we all.
Labels:
Church
/
Denominationalism
/
Ecumenicalism
/
Unity
Tuesday, July 11, 2017
In a Nutshell
Better question: If you had only a few
seconds to communicate the essence of salvation, which verses would you choose
to put it across? How much could you get in there in, say, thirty seconds?
My son was asked how he would explain it
this week.
Labels:
Gospel
/
Romans
/
Witnessing
Monday, July 10, 2017
The Heights of Accommodation and the Depths of Evil
The most recent version of this post is available here.
Labels:
Deuteronomy
/
Truth
/
Witnessing
Sunday, July 09, 2017
Stuck in the Middle with You
The most recent version of this post is available here.
Labels:
Church
/
Conservatism
/
Liberalism
/
Unity
Saturday, July 08, 2017
On Not Showing Up to the Conversation
Abdy is a Bible College student who feels the churches in
which he circulates are out of touch with the broader Christian community: “If
the greater Evangelical Christian world is a party, then ‘the Brethren’ are in
the corner twiddling their thumbs, waiting for it to be over.”
Now, in some quarters them’s fightin’ words, and the feedback
reflects it: “It’s so sad to read articles like this,” or “Today, [evangelicalism]
is a big mess.” Other comments are cautiously approving or even enthusiastic.
Labels:
Debate
/
Denominationalism
/
Ecumenicalism
/
Unity
Friday, July 07, 2017
Too Hot to Handle: Another Kind of Empowerment
The most recent version of this post is available here.
Labels:
feminism
/
Too Hot to Handle
/
Youth
Thursday, July 06, 2017
What’s Behind Faith?
The most recent version of this post is available here.
Labels:
Faith
/
Rationalism
Wednesday, July 05, 2017
Sound Advice from a Secular Source
Consider the source, but not too much. |
Sometimes that works
out all right anyway, provided the instructions are general enough to apply
more broadly. For example, God told Cain, “If you do
well, will you not be accepted?” That piece of wisdom came in a specific
context to a specific person and had a specific historical meaning, but that
doesn’t mean we’re crazy to say to ourselves, “You know, things will probably
go better for me if I approach God the same way as others with whom he says he
is pleased.”
Just like Cain ought to have done … and didn’t.
Labels:
2 Chronicles
/
2 Kings
/
Conflict
Tuesday, July 04, 2017
Quote of the Day (34)
The late Christopher Hitchens famously
claimed men can be good without God. To prove his case he challenged his
detractors to name even one moral action performed by a believer that
could not equally have been performed by a nonbeliever.
Hitchens is dead and gone, but his claim is
not. Others continue to advance it in different ways. Stefan Molyneux explores the
subject in Universally Preferable Behaviour: A Rational Proof of Secular Ethics. Dr. Jordan Peterson, notably coy about his belief in the existence of an
actual Supreme Being, lays down a rationalistic scenario in a series of recent
lectures in which the Bible, though apparently the product of naturally evolving
morality rather than divine revelation, still serves a vital purpose in
civilizing man, providing an irreplaceable basis for social interaction and
transforming the individual.
Goodness without an actual God. Hmm. Does
that work for you?
Labels:
Atheism
/
C.R. Hallpike
/
Christopher Hitchens
/
Jordan Peterson
/
Quote of the Day
/
Worldviews
Monday, July 03, 2017
On the Value of Frank Speech
The first was in a video
lecture by Dr. Jordan Peterson. Pointing to a particular vignette in the Hieronymous
Bosch triptych The Garden of Earthly
Delights, Peterson improvised:
“That’s the lion lying down with the lamb. So that’s
this idea that’s maybe projected back in time that there was a time — or
maybe will be a time — when the horrors of life are no longer necessary
for life itself to exist.
And the horrors of life are, of course, that
everything eats everything else and that everything dies and that everything’s
born and that the whole bloody place is a charnel house and it’s a catastrophe
from beginning to end.
This is the vision of it being ... other
than that.”
Boy, you could have
heard a pin drop. He had the attention of everyone in the room.
Labels:
Grace
/
Hate Speech
/
Language
/
Speech
Sunday, July 02, 2017
If You Don’t Know, Just Say So
Some people just can’t bring themselves to say it, sadly.
This poor soul dared to pose a question on an
internet forum a while back. The silly fellow had been reading his Bible (on his own, possibly) and had the temerity to come across
this verse:
“As he said these things, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, ‘Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts at which you nursed!’ But he said, ‘Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!’ ”
Hooboy. Some people just know how to pick ’em.
Saturday, July 01, 2017
Thought Experiment #3: Consciousness and Memory
I know: heavy subject,
holy ground, tread carefully. I’m on tiptoes.
We recently ran a post from Immanuel Can on the subject of memory. He makes the case that there
are certain things Christians need to let go of and move on from in order to
stay spiritually healthy. I think he’s right about that. Now, for IC, that moving-on
process entails refusing to nurse or justify feelings of grief, bitterness or anger about things we cannot change.
We need God’s help for that, and it’s easier said than done, I know.
Labels:
God
/
Memory
/
The Mind
/
Thought Experiment
Friday, June 30, 2017
Too Hot to Handle: Invincible Girls
The most recent version of this post is available here.
Labels:
Culture
/
feminism
/
Men's Role
/
Too Hot to Handle
/
Women's Role
Thursday, June 29, 2017
My Ten-Year-Old Dad
Math is a tough, tough business. Some people can’t do it at all and are, I maintain, worse off for it.
I can’t stop doing it,
and sometimes that’s its own can of worms.
So take the first
verses of 2 Chronicles 28 and 29 — please! — in which we
discover that when we do a little simple addition and subtraction, it turns out
King Ahaz fathered his son Hezekiah at the ripe old age of — wait for
it — ten.
Drum roll please.
Labels:
2 Chronicles
/
Contradictions in Scripture
/
Hezekiah
Wednesday, June 28, 2017
No Quick Fix
“Toymaker
Mattel’s Ken dolls now come in three different body types: broad, slim and
original. There are new cultural tweaks, too: An African-American Ken comes
with cornrows, an Asian Ken rocks a sharp, design-director look and
another version of the figure sports a man bun.”
Not quite so promoted but also available:
the “broad” version, a 40-ish Ken doll that looks like a slightly
better-dressed version of every dad you know, complete with flagging physique.
If they were selling these things to boys, they’d offer a couch, big-screen TV and a Denver Broncos jersey as accessories. But since they’re still primarily marketed to girls, I suppose an authentic Ken Sr. ought to come with lawnmower and a pair of garbage bags to lug to the curb on Tuesday morning.
Subscribe to:
Posts
(
Atom
)