The Biggest Donut Hole of All
Radical Muslims are quite energetic in their blasphemies. They want their blasphemies to come across as blasphemies. Like a toddler in the middle of an epic meltdown, they know what they want and they know how to get it. Secularists are quite tepid in their blasphemies. I mean, cartoons? But immediately I must correct myself. …
A Battle of Blasphemies
The news about the radical Muslim assault on a French satirical magazine is still unfolding, and so it would be wise to withhold comments on the details until we actually have sufficient details. But quite apart from the particulars of this assault, there is one thing that we can say with some certainty. This is …
Down at the Pool Hall
Warfield’s little book The Plan of Salvation is one of the few books that I have read three times. The first time was in 1988 when I was first becoming a Calvinist, and it was no doubt part of that bumpy but wonderful process. I read it again the next year. I read it a …
Baby Oil on the Bowling Ball
If I may, I would like to ask your permission to go up the stairs three at a time here. Great. Glad that’s all set. What I mean by that is that I want to assert a number of things together in order to indicate a pattern. The argument for some of these things has …
Book of the Month/January 2015
This month the book of the month is a brace of books. You should get them together, and read them both. Together they address the central political issue of our day, one that rests underneath whatever the turmoil of the moment might be. The doctrine of the lesser magistrates is one of our lost doctrines, …
A Year of Fresh Outrage
Tomorrow a new year of fresh outrage begins, and so I want to take a few moments to encourage those Christian preachers, writers, thinkers, and bloggers who are, out of biblical principle, sailing contrary to all the prevailing winds. It is harder to sail this way, but when you are done, more that is worthwhile …
39 and Counting . . .
So today marks our 39th anniversary together. That is a long time to be married to the kind of woman who is, as my father put it the other morning at our Christmas breakfast banquet, “amazing.” I haven’t really gotten over it, but, on the other hand, why should I?
Sexual Smithereens
In a remarkably prescient joke, Bob Hope said this back in the seventies. “I’ve just flown in from California, where they’ve made homosexuality legal. I thought I’d get out before they make it compulsory.” As we look at what remains of sexual ethics in America — the old sexual norms that somebody took a weed …
Racial Animosity
The cross of Christ deals with real sins, not imaginary ones. It deals with real sins by offering free and full forgiveness. It “deals” with imaginary sins by enabling us to see them for what they are — vain constructions of our own imaginations. When it comes to issues of race, the cross of Christ …