“Men delight in argument — not in its forms, but in its reality. You will see a light in the faces of unlettered rustics, when an argument drawn from matters within their range of thought or suited to their taste, is presented in terms so plain, so vigorous, so interesting, that they take hold of …
Joel King, R.I.P.
In a time of sudden grief like this, our reactions, not surprisingly, include an oscillating range of emotions—whether sorrow, or pity, or anger at God, or unanswerable aching questions for God, and so on, down the line. Some of the questions make sense, the rest don’t, and none of them need to make sense. They …
A Three Car Funeral
Spotify just informed me that Vince Gill had listened to Merle Haggard’s “The Fightin’ Side of Me,” and so naturally, I did too. It had been, what? — thirty years? Maybe more than that. Apart from how Congress votes on Syria, and regardless of what Obama does after that, we are not really in a …
At the Top of the Siege Ladders
“As men and women grow old together, many people’s natural response is pity. Because the elderly can’t ‘keep up’ anymore, they are thought of as society’s stragglers. Sometimes this comes out in exasperation (on the freeway, when we’re behind somebody in geezer drive), and other times in pity, but the root assumption is the same. …
With Cudgels
“Exhortation, without implementation, can soon become a verbal beating” (Hughes, Expository Preaching With Word Pictures, p. 112)
Syria in a Sentence
I want Congress to authorize something I don’t believe they need to authorize, and which I reserve the right to do anyway whether or not they authorize it, in order that I might defend the credibility of a red line I didn’t actually draw, so that I may take decisive action that will not in …
Why Cigarette Smoking is Not a Sin for Others. Just a Sin for You.
Here is the general outline of a talk I gave on August 24, 2010 at Collegiate Reformed Fellowship. Reposting it again three years later for obvious reasons. My point this evening is not that smoking cigarettes is a sin everywhere and for everyone, under any conceivable circumstance. My thesis is a great deal simpler than …
High and Lowly
Not to worship, but to serve, Not to worship, but to save, Christ wrapped a towel around His waist, And as He knelt He gave A glorious affront To pious expectation here. Peter faltered at the grace, Peter faltered in dismay, Christ knelt to wash the grime and dirt As Peter tried to say His …
The Love Child of Baghdad Bob and Tokyo Rose
In The Ballad of the White Horse, Chesterton has a great line about the men who will come to threaten the West in the future, men who work “by detail of the sinning, and denial of the sin.” As Chesterton put it in another context, to be wrong, and to be carefully wrong, is the …
Symbols Matter
“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11) The Basket Case Chronicles #127  “For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for man” (1 Cor. 11:8-9). We will return in the next verses to …