So your son is out of control, and you feel helpless. You don’t know what to do. If you tell him to do something, and he doesn’t want to, he throws down and there you are. He is defiant, says that he hates everybody, and you know the rest of the drill. And yet Scripture …
Let It Snow
Today is June 10 and, as I look out my window, the snow is coming down steadily and briskly. And, to pervade the whole thing with a delicious sense of irony, if I don’t accept the tenets of global warming, I am a dangerous lunatic. If I play my cards right, one day I might …
Eating Out of the Zeitgeist Can With a Spoon
Rodney Clapp says a number of structurally admirable things in his conclusion, but he can’t get them to add up. He states, rightly, that baptism is a political act (p. 121). He says, also rightly, “for the baptized, nothing can be more basic or more significant than their baptism” (p. 122). Batting a thousand, he …
Simple Pimple
I have finished Rodney Clapp’s book, and enjoyed it a good deal. This post will be on his penultimate chapter — on violence and peace, and my last post, following shortly thereafter, will be on the central contradiction that has plagued Clapp’s attempt to work through these issues. This post will be fairly short because …
Is This Checkmate?
Here is a quick response to Lane’s latest, and then I am content to move on. First, I don’t object to detailed grammatical exegesis, and I don’t object to it in the Thessalonians passage that Lane was dealing with. I was simply pointing out that we were talking about the kind of problem that remains …
A Barrier to Help
Over the years, I have seen many hard cases of difficult kids not effectively loved by their fathers. Because I don’t see the problem disappearing, I thought I would post a series of short pointed exhortations to a dad who has a problem child. The child actually has a problem dad, but the child doesn’t …
The Great Cretan Gaffe
A few weeks ago, N.T. Wright responded to a few of his critics on the debt relief issue here. A more detailed interaction needs to wait for another time, but I want to put a few thoughts up now. As Wright himself put it, “I don’t have time for a full answer, but I hope …
Not Neutral At All, As It Turns Out
My nephew Davis Wilson recently had a paper published in the Seton Hall Law Review, a paper entitled “Judgmental Neutrality: When the Supreme Court Inevitably Implies That Your Religion is Just Plain Wrong.” The paper exhibited clear thinking in a straight line from beginning to end, and for those who want to read the abstract, …
No Monochrome Deity
As you read the newspaper, as you follow political campaigns, as you watch the evening news, you will see outrage after outrage. But I am not referring to the outrages of private criminals, which can certainly be horrendous. I am referring to the outrages of our elected officials, our appointed justices, our magistrates. Now all …
An Exhibition of Grace
Our confessional standards, the Westminster standards, say that when rightly used, grace is exhibited in the sacraments. There are two sides to this. First, note that the sacraments can be, and have been, wrongly used. When that happens, as it happened at Corinth, the apostle says the observance does more harm than good. This is …