Heavenly Father, we are so grateful for Your kindness in watching over us. This last week has seen many enemies trying to do their worst, and we praise Your name for the fact that they did nothing but advance Your kingdom. We thank You, sovereign God, and we rejoice that we serve the one who …
Glory, Greed, and Girls
The fact that they don’t have a foundation for it has not prevented philosophers from trying to come up with improvements on the Golden Rule that Jesus gave us. And without granting that they are in fact improvements, we might still benefit from looking at the ancient problem of selfishness from new angles. Kant’s form …
Billions of His Brethren
Christ is not ashamed to be our brother. He is not ashamed to share completely in our humanity. Further than this, He was not ashamed to be identified with us in our sin and folly. This is what He did throughout the course of His ministry. He began at the baptism of John by identifying …
Gluggity Gluggity
“‘It is with narrow-souled people as with narrow-necked bottles,’ said Pope: ‘the less they have in them, the more noise they make in pouring it out’” [Bryan F. Griffin, Panic Among the Philistines (Chicago, Regnery Gateway, 1983), p. 183.]
Abandoning Education
“And the result of that is the destruction of education, which is what we in fact see all around us. Without discipline, there are no disciples, and without disciples or students, there can be no education . . . The excuses may be believed for a while, but time is a great revealer. The abandonment …
Ezra Nehemiah 9
Introduction: Integrity in leaders is not something that makes safeguards unnecessary. Integrity in leaders is manifested in the first place by their insistence on safeguards. This desire for manifest integrity and accountability is seen clearly in how Ezra behaves in this chapter. The people of Israel are under the law of God, all of them. …
A Table of Groveling?
The disciples, Jesus said, were those who continued with Him in his temptations. And closely associated with this, He said that He appointed to them a kingdom, just as the Father had appointed unto Him. Confession of sin is certainly appropriate in the worship of God, but it belongs in our first approach to Him, …
Take Off Your Shoes
As we are given the enormous privilege, again, of ascending into the heavenly places to worship God in the name of Jesus Christ, take special care. We are walking into the throne room of God, and so we must take off our shoes — we are entering into a most holy place. If we walk …
A Democratic Downgrade
“The phenomenon was in part merely an unpleasant by-product of mass education: a man who might have done no harm as a head footman a century or two ago can do tremendous harm as an assistant professor or a film critic.” [Bryan F. Griffin, Panic Among the Philistines (Chicago, Regnery Gateway, 1983), p. 183.]
Punishment and Discipline
“Punishment is interested simply in justice; discipline is interested in the twin aspects of preparation and correction. When students are made to work hard, this is preparation for life. When a student is corrected for fooling around and wasting time, this is correction that returns the student to his preparation for life. In both cases, …