“In my experience, those who are most ambivalent or cynical about patriotic pieties—flags, fireworks, and fun—are most likely to support the abuses of statist power when the state is attempting to become some jitney god in the lives of the citizens. But those who wave the flag at the parade and eat their hot dogs …
Gorsuch A Time as This
As I have commented already, I am enjoying the early phases of the Trump administration a lot more than I thought I was going to. The most recent manifestation of this was Trump’s nomination of Neil Gorsuch for a place on the Supreme Court. And not only did he nominate someone apparently true blue, but …
Aren’t Coincidences Marvelous?
Book of the Month/February 2017
I am going to be praising this book highly, so let me get just a couple of criticisms out of the way at the very front. This book is a “reimagining” of the apostle Paul, one that defends him from some very common modern misunderstandings. It undertakes this task on the basis of a very …
Prophetic Proportions
[No sense of proportion] “is why so much of the contemporary ‘prophetic’ witness to our civil rulers is such a joke. It is not so much dressed in camel hair with a leather belt as it is decked out in some Kuba the Clown outfit. And then it blames the lack of responsiveness on hardness …
A Big Sheet
“Christians who feel guilt over their decisions of what to eat need to go to sleep on the roof, like Peter did, so that they might see the entire inventory of General Mills lowered in a sheet from heaven” (Food Catholic, pp. 29-30).
Surrounded With Beer Cans
If, under the new covenant, the promises of Deuteronomy can legitimately be applied to a nation today, then it is possible for us to sort out what we should think about immigration biblically. If the promises of Deuteronomy do not apply, then we (and the refugees) are cast upon our own resources. The whole subject …
False Moral Equivalence
“If He does not lose a sense of proportion in the Day of Judgment, then His representatives must no ‘get to preaching’ in such a way as to get carried away. And they must not get to denouncing sins in such a way as to create a moral equivalence between excessive consumerism on display at …
Dietary Sanctification
“There is a kind of mind that flips this around, and wants the heart to be established by food—wants to be in with God by means of what is put into the mouth” (Food Catholic, p. 27).
Modified Stationary Freak-Out
Introduction: So Donald “Jehu” Trump comes to the Left’s estate sale, looks at an expensive vase left by their deceased grandmother, and offers them ten bucks for it. “Ten dollars?!?!,” they screech in unison. “That is worth two thousand, at least.” What kind of idiot offers ten dollars for a two thousand dollar vase? After …