INTRODUCTION: We have spent a good bit of time considering the applications of the prophet’s words to his original audience, to the Israelites in the northern kingdom of Israel. Lord willing, we will spend two weeks considering how those words may legitimately be applied to us as Americans. This is not a topical sermon so …
Appalled or Disgusted
I haven’t commented on the presidential campaign in a bit, and now that Obama is over in the Holy Land — I can’t quite make out what he is doing there, but piecing together reports from the media accompanying him, I think he has been walking on the Sea of Galilee — let me offer …
Keeping Dragons Dragony
“The imagination fed on truth knows that the serpent is a symbol of hatred and deceit, of evil knowledge and power without conscience . . . I want [my children] to read plenty of stories in which there are dragons that act like dragons and meet a dragon’s end” (Michael D. O’Brian, A Landscape With …
Catechized by Fairy Tales
“Good magic and bad magic in truthful stories correspond to true religion and false religion in our real world . . . True religion is about surrender, while false religion is about control” (Michael D. O’Brian, A Landscape With Dragons, p. 29).
A Corker from Peter Hitchens
Peter Hitchens has written a corker about the Archbishop of C, a corker which I would commend to you here. I am constantly astounding by those who think that fruit can mysteriously continue to show up in crates every autumn after we have chopped down the tree in June. As in C.S. Lewis’ famous observation …
All Three of the Flying Bambino Brothers
This is archived under “Book Review” but it is not really a book review proper. It is more of a statement. Last April I finished reading a short book by David Bentley Hart called The Doors of the Sea, a theological reaction to the Asian tsunami. In my short book log review, I just said …
Why the Horse Isn’t Dead
I have mentioned before the atheism jag that I have been on, and even if I hadn’t mentioned it, it would have been obvious. Just last week I posted covers of some of the new titles coming out. One thought that has occurred to me is that a number of Christians may be thinking, “For …
Shriveling the Inner Man
“We must consider each situation in its own right to get some sense of who or what is responsible for the boredom and what can be done to relieve it. We have seen many influences in our culture and in the individual choices that people make in response to their circumstances that might lead to …
The Walnut of Doom
I just recently realized that we still have some copies Right Behind around here, and what’s with that? Unfortunately we don’t have any more copies of Supergeddon (“A Really Big Geddon”), but we do have some copies of, as I mentioned, Right Behind. What is that? you wonder. Is it connected at all to the …
Do We Think That They Think That We Are Influenced by What They Show Us?
“If their techniques for influencing us were not successful, I doubt they would spend millions of dollars for a thirty-second commercial during the Super Bowl or the Academy Awards” (Richard Winter, Still Bored in a Culture of Entertainment, p. 85).