“This may seem like a commonsense observation, but relativism in aesthetics is constantly trying to undermine the obvious. When the Bible tells us we are to ‘sing to Him a new song; play skillfully with a shout of joy’ (Ps. 33:3), this means there is such a thing as musical skill. The Lord has not …
Nameless Others
Chesteron had a famous comment where he spoke of tradition as the democracy of the dead. He thought we ought not to exclude someone’s voice from a discussion on the technical grounds that they were not still alive. The point was well-taken, but there are some discussions and arguments where voices ought to be excluded. …
A Situated Idahoan
In his fifth chapter, Grenz introduces us to the forerunner of postmodernism, to the voice crying in the wilderness — Fredrich Nietzsche. The philosophers of modernity (who bookended that age when rationalistic charismata were still being given to men) were Descartes and Kant (p. 84), and this gives us the approximate dates of 1650 to …
Ah, Texture
“But to demonstrate their superiority to such people, the educated elites prefer to build environments full of natural irregularities. For the Bobos, roughness connotes authenticity and virtue. So the educated elites love texture . . . Really rich Bobos will hire squads of workmen with ball-peen hammers to pound some rustic wear into their broad …
Vouchers and Neutrality
“So we either have to grant that we may be taxed so that a Buddhist parent may be funded to instruct his kids that Buddhism is true, or we must say that Buddhist education and Christian education are the same for most of the day. Support for vouchers among Christians reveals that we have not …
Tie Goes to the Runner
I need to begin with a couple of jokes that you may have heard before. But they are offered not so much for the joke value as for what they illustrate about the power of interpretive grids, which is the point of this post. There was a guy who was convinced that he was actually …
My Soul Is Broken With Desire
Minister: Lift up your hearts! Congregation: We lift them up to the Lord! Can this poor man a servant be? Deal bountifully with me, That I may live and keep Your Word, That I might walk and never stray, In all the blessings You poured out. And if You open both my eyes, I will …
Bus Fare
One gray afternoon, there were five people standing at a bus stop. There was a minister with his clerical collar, a school teacher, a mechanic, a professor, and a street walker. The bus was running a little late, and so they all lined up eagerly when they finally saw it approaching. But when the doors …
Nothing Can Stop Him
The Lord’s Supper is not impotent. The Lord’s Supper does not need our protection. If I were standing up here with an enormous lion, I do not expect that I would get many questions after the service, wondering “how I protected it.” In fact, I might not get any questions at all. But if I …
Humiliating the Apostle
We must consider another variation on “by their tactics ye shall know them.” When controversy erupts in a church, and it is over the color of the carpet in the nursery, the end result can be a personal and/or ecclesiastical mess. But when the stakes are higher, it is not rare for the civil magistrate …