Charles Krauthammer has noted, more than once, and I have quoted him, I also think more than once, that liberals don’t care what you do, so long as it is mandatory. This coercive spirit driving them applies to everything, and what once used to be used as a reductio ad absurdum in our debates with …
The West Is Dead. Long Live the West.
The other day I read Robert Capon complaining about a kitchen knife that was as dull as dialectical materialism. Marx got his version of that from Hegel, modified it so as to make the commies responsible for the deaths of tens of millions, thus making the consequences of dialectical materialism anything but dull. Hegel — …
State of the Church 2014
Introduction It is our custom to have a “state of the church” message every year around this time. Sometimes the message has to do with the church nationally, and other times the point is more local, pertaining to our own congregation. This year I want to focus on this congregation, and the point of this …
Base Line Generosity
Gratitude for God’s liberality toward us is best displayed in liberality toward others. If we think that we can learn gratitude best when buried under a pile of gifts, but that other people need to learn it by husbanding scarce resources, we are demonstrating that we have learned virtually nothing. God does not dispense His …
When Your Well Runs Dry
We are creatures, and so it is that we must be fed. When we have food, it can simply seem like part of the framework of life, and we take it for granted. But when we miss a meal, or on a grander scale, if there is a famine, we know acutely what we are …
Fear, Shame, and Guilt at Lunch
My friend Toby Sumpter has written a series of posts on food here (starting with his Free Range post), and this has generated some back and forth in various places, both online and off, and I thought I should join the discussion. But first some exegetical background. In John 6, the Lord fed the five …
Two Christmas Thoughts
The kids and all the grands came over for our annual Christmas breakfast together, and we had ourselves a time. I have to say that the sheer volume of gifts was significant. There are sixteen stockings to be stuffed, and then the regular presents for the grands, and then the adults give one another presents. …
Sun Rising
“Christ was born at night, and His arrival was the arrival of the morning star . . . He is the one who was born at night, and His birth was the arrival of the morning star. It is important for us to allow Scripture to tell us what time it is. If you did …
A New Way of Being New: Christmas Eve 2013
The Spirit of God was upon Jesus, and with Jesus, from the very first moment of His human existence. “And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall …
The Scars on Your Forearms
I have heard that this post was quoted this morning by @EWErikson on the Rush Limbaugh show, so I bumped it to the top so visitors could find the whole thing more easily. Welcome, all. I once heard a story told of Ravi Zacharias, where he was being driven around a campus where he was …