Most boys growing up need to be taught their strength, as when they are horsing around with their younger siblings. They are bigger, stronger, and much more influential let us say, than they think they are. But this need for teaching this lesson doesn’t disappear when boys get past the horsing around stage. In their …
Mercy and the Divine Warrior
If we talk about “balancing” the attributes of God, we can easily fall victim to our own metaphor. These are not discrete elements that can be placed on a balancing scale, with justice making the left side go down, and mercy making the right side go down. Rather, God intervenes in our story, and He …
Why There’s 57 Channels and Nothing On
“Only in this century did the techniques of recording, film, television, and video make art, music, and literature in all their forms—from the highest and most cultivated to the lowest and crudest—accessible to virtually every member of society, even teenagers and young children . . . This vastly increased availability of every form of art …
Bankrupt Mercy an Oxymoron
We have established that without justice and righteousness, mercy cannot be mercy. Those who universalize mercy are therefore adversaries to true biblical mercy, and are simply apostles of sentimentalism. But we must do more than simply list God’s attributes, as though they are all simply lined up like cans on a shelf. The Bible teaches …
Maybe I Don’t Wonder Why
The inflation rate in Zimbabwe was last month at about 2.3 million percent, thanks to their ruler-thug who refuses to leave office. And strident insistence, such as we might find proceeding from an Anglican episcopal seat, that we apply the ethics found in the parable of the Good Samaritan to international situations such as this …
War, Theft or Fraud?
Bush the Second is responsible for many Problems in Our Midst, but one of the worst of them is the legacy of “compassionate” conservatism. Conservatism with a heart is the kind of conservatism that won’t ever veto anything, no matter how financially insane it might be, and consequently is the kind of conservatism that doesn’t …
Mercy and No Mercy
One of the great dangers confronting those who would give themselves to mercy ministry is that of forgetting the antithesis. Biblical wisdom always remembers the antithesis, and places it where God has placed it. Forgetting the antithesis frequently consists of selecting a biblical virtue, absolutizing it, and using it to contradict or “balance” other biblical …
Either Way, Not Yet Viral
This is an odd one on a number of levels. The central oddity is why this isn’t found in all the regular news outlets and blogs. If you google “Supreme Court,” “Souter,” and “Obama’s birth certificate,” you will find the information in a bunch of cyber-backwater places. I haven’t found this discussed in any of …
Guess Which One We’re In
“Sorokin identified three distinct phases through which cultures pass: ideational, idealistic, and sensate. Each phase has distinctive characteristics and in general runs a specific course. Virtually every human society can be found at any particular time to be in one phase or another, or in transition between two of them . . . The ideational …
Mercy As Transferred Glory
Scripture plainly teaches us that the entire created order is a revelation of God Himself. The world is a book, sometimes called general revelation. But of course the fact that the world is a book does not mean that everyone knows how to read. Mankind is adept at suppressing the truth in unrighteousness, and often …