This is the fourth Lord’s Day of Advent, the year of our Lord, 2005. Worldviews are more complicated than a being just a simple bundle of propositions. Propositions are of course involved—no one has a worldview who cannot answer questions about what he believes. But in our circles, this tends to be the only aspect …
The Table of Acceptance
We are a conservative church. We believe the Bible. We hold to the tenets of the Reformed faith, and we have no patience with the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which God also hates. With all this being the case, this meal could easily turn into a banquet of self-congratulation. But it is a meal for …
Propositional Dust Bunnies
Okay, let’s be honest. Context matters. If someone had handed me a xerox copy of McLaren’s next chapter (the one on being “mystical/poetic”), I would have thought most of it was pretty okay. In fact, because he quotes Lewis and Chesterton repeatedly, bits of it were much more than okay. But the irony was not …
Check It Out
My son Nate wrote a review of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe for Books and Culture. That review is now on-line and can be found at the Christianity Today site here.
Trying to Freeze the Linebackers
McLaren goes on to explain in his next chapter why he is a liberal/conservative. In this chapter, his use of these terms is primarily in a theological context, as opposed to the political one. This chapter is an attempt to get beyond “the confining boxes of liberal and conservative” (p. 131). Of course, since conservatives …
Growing Up in Harmony
Our Father and gracious God, we look to You now in the great name of Jesus Christ our Lord. We know that apart from Him, we could not even approach You, still less celebrate in Your presence. We are grateful for forgiveness of sins, and we are grateful for the resultant fellowship around this table. …
No Brakes On Hip
“Aside from the settings and multiple victims, another common feature of these killings has been the influence on the perpetrators of films such as Natural Born Killers and Basketball Diaries, of fantasy video games, and of the nihilistic lyrics of Marilyn Manson . . . The pursuit of evil, then, can have a certain grandeur …
A Special Gift
“Whenever the Christian faith is accepted and established in a nation, and a large number of people are members of various churches, one of the first and deadliest temptations is the lust for respectability — a lust which is defined and established by complacent worldly values, and not by the Scriptures. Soon the pulpits of …
God Rest Ye Merry
Advent marks the beginning of the ecclesiastical year. As we approach yet another celebration of Christmas as a people, we need to recall how to celebrate such days as the people of God. If we are not careful, we will stumble—perhaps to the right and perhaps to the left. For the weapons of our warfare …
The Republic of Doug
In his next chapter of A Generous Orthodoxy, Brian McLaren addresses the question of why he is a “post/protestant.” He hangs the discussion on two ways the word protestant can be taken. The first is the common one. “The dominant meaning of protestant relates to the verb it contains: protest” (p. 123). This is great …