“If we are going to be engaged in true cultural reformation, we need a gospel that kicks the devil in the teeth. And that means it must be a message of penal, substitutionary, vicarious blood-bought atonement. When it comes to this substitute, we must accept no substitutes” (Rules, p. 239).
Among the First Responders
Brussels is only 200 miles from London. I live 2,500 miles from Washington, D.C. Perhaps you see where this is going. We are living in a time of enormous upheaval. Some of it is good, lots of it is bad, and all of it is challenging. The Brexit exit was one of the good things, …
On Sharing Our Manna
All right. So there are several threads to tie together here, re: Falwell and Moore. First I need to address the lame defense of himself that Jerry Falwell Jr. gave. “Honored for same hypocrites who accused Jesus of being a friend of publicans and sinners to be targeting me over a decades old mag cover!” …
Just to Make It More Interesting: A Guest Post
I got a letter from a friend about my post on Russell Moore, and I asked him if he could rework it a bit and I would run it as a guest post. I would then reply (which I will probably do tomorrow morning). He said sure, but wanted to post as “a friend.” That’s …
A Sparkly Lunatic
Fair Warning: Just so that you have ample warning beforehand, I would like to provide an advance heads up that I intend to lay about myself like a coruscating berserker. So that you don’t have to resort to google, what that basically means is “sparkly lunatic.” Some of you may have guessed — from the …
Conservative Curmudgeons
I don’t get many opportunities for this, so let me take them when I can. I refer, of course, to the exhilarating sensation of disagreeing with C.S. Lewis. In an essay on good work, Lewis says this: “Work nowadays must not be good. For the wearer, zip fasteners have this advantage over buttons: that, while …
What Makes Racism Sinful
Back when the world was more oriented in a right side up way than it is now, racism was a short-hand way of describing the mental outlook of the bigot — and everybody knew what a bigot was also. Racism was a descriptive term, and I did not mind describing racism as a sin against …
Quick Follow Up on The Flag
As a number of you noticed, I wrote yesterday on what I regard as empty posturing on the part of the Southern Baptist Convention. This elicited a lot of reactions and comments, and so I thought to follow everything up with a few additional comments of my own. One of the reactions was by Jeff …
Southern Baptist Lava Lamps
Just the other day, in a masterpiece of bad timing, delegates to the Southern Baptist Convention voted to disassociate themselves from the Confederate battle flag. I maintain this was a cloth-headed blunder for three basic reasons. First, it was as though the second story of your house were on fire, and the fire department did …
Circumambient Imbecilities
The phrase in my title comes from Mencken, but the reality that we must deal with every day comes from . . . from our thought leaders, I think. It is a bad business when a nation’s thought leaders quit thinking. A radical Muslim, working the ISIS angle, shot up a homosexual nightclub, murdering 49 …