“Casualness is proper at times, but the trouble is we have made it a fetish. Whether shopping or going to school or even to church, we take too literally the invitation of the second-class hotel, ‘Come as you are.’ And the sloppier we come, the sloppier we tend to act. A slouch in the body …
Civilized Murder
[Speaking of those who want to kill Jesus in John 8] “But their murderousness is not simply moral perversion. it is fundamental. It is anthropological. It is structural. It is the ordering principle of culture, ‘hidden since the foundation of the world'” (Gil Bailie, Violence Unveiled, p. 222).
Old Flat Top, Grooving Up Slowly
I have just a few random comments, public-service-announcement-wise. I put them under this category because it does relate to a couple of them, but taking one thing with another, this is just a mishmash. Besides, I need something random to go with the title. 1. Happy Thanksgiving. Take great care to eat too much, but …
Spiritual Disciplines in Narnia
The topic before us now is “spiritual disciplines” in the Narnia stories, and I have to begin by explaining the topic perhaps a little more than some of the others. Spiritual disciplines are those practices which should be practiced on a daily basis, so that they become habitual, with the result that you are prepared …
Partaking of Life
When the Lord established this meal, He intended for His people to proclaim His death until He comes again. And this is what we are doing. The death of Jesus is the new testament; we say this as a means of shorthand—we do not exclude the resurrection and ascension of Christ, but rather speak of …
Telling the Whole Christmas Story
As we continue to celebrate Advent, a central part of our task is to avoid the common idols of this time of year, and sentimentalism is chief among them. The Christmas story is told in Scripture in some detail, and as we celebrate this story, some of our lapses into idolatry can be identified by …
No Problem Passages
“By the grace of the Lord, we must resolve to be faithful to every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. From Genesis to Revelation, we must not be embarrassed by any passage of Scripture, and once we have submissively ascertained its meaning through careful and patient grammatical, historical and typological, we must seek …
Inescapable Artistic Standards
“Until the artistic impulse is eradicated more thoroughly from human life than has so far been done, even by the best efforts of the metallic civilization of our day, we cannot get rid of the categories of good and bad or high and low in the field of art” (J. Gresham Machen, as quoted in …
The Death of Scandal in the Death of Jesus
“Ultimately, it was Jesus’ public execution and not his public ministry that consummated the biblical revelation, inspired the New Testament, launched the Christian movement, and eventually led to the anthropological crisis in which we now find ourselves. As the first Christians moved beyond the Jewish cultural orbit into the wider Greco-Roman world, they found people …
The Politics of Fruitfulness
Introduction: What does it mean to be pro-life across the board? We know, of course, that abortion-on-demand is a gross violation of the law of God, and we also know that biblical parents are really “into” their kids. But the question is much larger than this, and so we need to consider the politics of …