“A crude culture makes a coarse people, and private refinement cannot long survive public excess. There is a Gresham’s law of culture as well as of money: the bad drives out the good, unless the good is defended.” (Theodore Dalrymple, Our Culture, What’s Left of It, p. 52).
A Bragging Fog
“I am married now, but have no idea whether or not it is God’s will for me to be married tomorrow. How would a mist know something like that? This is why James tells people not to boast, saying that they will go here and there, making big bucks as they go. he says that …
Men and Bees
“When the bee stings, she leaves her sting behind her and never gathers honey more. Men, but by stinging one another, do not lose their stings, but they lose their honey” (Burroughs, Irenicum, p. 274).
Scraping Paint Off a Gun Turret
Well, I now have the deep privilege of being a scarecrow in local politics. There are many individuals that I would like to thank for this peculiar honor . . . But first, for those who are from out of town, here is the sitch. The Greater Moscow Alliance, a group that had gotten themselves …
A Baptism That Cleansed the Water
We will certainly stumble in reading this Gospel if we attempt to understand it as a stand-alone biography. The wonderful story told here cannot be comprehended apart from the backdrop of the entire narrative of God’s purposes for Israel given in the Old Testament. This section shows us the richness of scriptural allusion found in …
A Dazzling Figure
“Even at this distance Sidney is dazzling. He is that rare thing, the aristocrat in whom the aristocratic ideal is really embodied . . . poet and patron of poets, statesman, knight, captain — fate has dealt such hands before, but they have very seldom been so well played” (C.S. Lewis, English Literature in the …
Stewardship As Motivation
“The first truth concerns the source of the preacher’s incentive. Preaching is hard work. The preacher is often tempted to become dispirited. He needs powerful incentives to strengthen his flagging soul, and there is no doubt that he can find one here. St. Paul certainly did. He was a steward of God’s mysteries, ‘a trustee …
I Dare Say
“While in Mecca, he had remained married to only one wife, Khadija, who died after twenty-five years of marriage. During his first year in Medina, Muhammad signed a marriage contract with the daughter of one of his most loyal followers, Abu Bakr. This would not seem unusual except that the girl was only six years …
Sign of Spiritual Election
“Until then I had assumed, along with most of my generation unacquainted with real hardship, that a scruffy appearance was a sign of spiritual election, representing a rejection of the superficiality and materialism of bourgeois life. Ever since then, however, I have not been able to witness the voluntary adoption of torn, worn-out, and tattered …
Books Other Than the Bible
“The writing and reading of God-honoring books is not a substitute for Bible reading; it is the result of Bible-reading . . . The teaching of Scripture on this point [Eph. 4:11-12; Neh. 8:7-8] is very clear. God requires uninspired teachers to exposit His Word and apply it to the lives of God’s people . …