“I want to defend the Christian classroom as a normal and appropriate way to teach children, one that has been used for millennia by covenant parents and that should not be rejected for modern ideological reasons. Covenant schools were common before the time of Christ. The classroom can (and often should) be rejected for practical …
Rallying Points
“Whether it is a public hanging, a war, or a televised glorification of violence, a culture’s righteous violence will fascinate its onlookers. It will be a spectacle. Regardless of the rhetoric and details of its justification, if a society can heighten that fascination and bring it to a cathartic sacrificial conclusion, then the sacrificial violence …
Good Motivation
“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11) Growing Dominion, Part 100 “He that laboureth laboureth for himself; for his mouth craveth it of him” (Prov. 16:26). This might seem a bit obscure in the Authorized Version. The NIV is blunter. “The laborer’s appetite works for him; his hunger drives him …
Constant, Total War
The subject before us now is that of holy war and its relation to the First Commandment. In a pluralistic society, faithfulness to the First Commandment is necessarily a declaration of war. And this in turn leads to a certain lack of popularity. “When the LORD thy God shall bring thee into the land whither …
Go, Eat Your Bread
In this Supper, all the benefits of Christ’s death are sealed for those who partake in faith. This includes everything He has done for us: forgiveness, justification, reconciliation, and infinitely more. We have our conversions renewed and ratified before God as we partake. We have our covenant relation to God renewed as we partake. This …
The Arbiter
We will come at the conclusion of this service to the Lord’s Supper. Too often this Table has been made the occasion for disputes, but this has happened because one aspect of the Table has been neglected. We need to learn to think of this Table as a central arbiter of all disputes. Too often …
Which Is Like Calling Grape Kool Aid A Fine Merlot
“. . . crudity is equated with sophistication, just as pornography made for immature minds is labeled ‘adult’ material” (Robert Knight, The Age of Consent, p. 91.).
Taught or Entertained?
“This means work on the part of the pupil. The entertainment model goes in the opposite direction. When the student is entertained rather than taught, he is in an oxymoronic way being aroused to passivity. Good teaching awakens in the student a desire to learn” (The Case for Classical Christian Education, p. 193).
Hostility As Distraction
“One is that the ‘us versus them’ motif can be manipulated to revive a group’s esprit de corps and to ‘divert attention from internal problems.’ That is to say, communal violence is an antidote for internal strife and the ‘civil’ or domestic violence to which it might otherwise lead. Campaigns against outsiders or evildoers revive …
Not That Kind of Fabric
The Christian Church is a commonwealth. One of the great things that we have in common is our access to this Table. It is a tremendous privilege, and we are not worthy of it in one sense. But in another sense, we are commanded to walk in a manner that is worthy of it. This …