God loves to teach us by throwing one thing alongside another. Parallelism is one of His central teaching devices, and He has many ways of putting things in parallel. When two things are lined up together, we compare and contrast them, and we see what they have in common and in what ways they are …
Loving the Divisions God Made
“In the world created by the triune God of Scripture, the boundaries don’t blur, like a watercolor left out in the rain. God divides, and he loves to call those divisions good. God created heaven and earth, which created the fundamental division between that which is God and that which is not God. The gulf …
Crossing Our Corruptions
“If the law is the revealed will of God, and the minister is the angel of God, then where should they seek the will of God but at the mouth of his angel? Such is the logic of this text [Mal. 2:7]: we should ‘seek the law at his mouth, for he is the messenger …
It Just Keeps Getting Better . . .
The Republicans of Connecticut have picked Linda McMahon to run for the U.S. Senate. She made her millions in the very odd world of professional wrestling, and I have already seen more than one airing of a video clip in which she is holding a microphone and kicking someone in the crotch, professional wrestling style. …
Not to Mention the Ecclesiastical Variant
“While falling, a number of people have the temporary sensation of absolute freedom, and they seek to use that freedom in the creation and pursuit of various sexualities. And that is why we are now dealing metrosexuals, sodomites, catamites, lesbians, virtual perverts, bisexuals, and transgendered individuals — not the mention the ecclesiastical variants, the lesbyterians. …
Marring a Good Tale in the Telling
“Let all those who are God’s angels — and desire to be honoured as his angels and ambassadors — fulfill the responsibilities of God’s angels, lest (as many men mar a good tale in the telling) they take away the power and majesty of God’s Word in the way they deliver it” (Perkins, The Art …
High Philosophy on the Carpet
“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11) The Basket Case Chronicles #7 “For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath …
And I Mean All the Furniture
“This is why the question of women’s ordination is emphatically not about a simple matter of including women in Christian ministry. It is not a simple matter of rearranging the furniture. This is about redefining the nature of Christian ministry, in order to make it compatible with another religion entirely. And this is why, once …
So Leave the Pots and Pans in the Kitchen
“The preaching of the Word is the testimony of God and the profession of the knowledge of Christ, not of human skill. Furthermore, the hearers ought not to ascribe their faith to the gifts of men, but to the power of God’s Word (1 Cor. 2:1, 2, 5). But this does not mean that pulpits …
The Memoirs of Old Walnut Heart
My fifth bit of advice for writers was this: “Be at peace with being lousy for a while. Chesterton once said that anything worth doing was worth doing badly. He was right. Only an insufferable egoist expects to be brilliant first time out.” But let’s unpack this a bit. 1. Concert pianists do what they …