“I have spoken of the emergence of the global cliché culture as the birthmark of Our Time. Until modernity was ushered into our world, cultures were always local. They were, by definition, sets of meanings and morals, beliefs and habits that arose in specific contexts of history and religion, a people’s social organization and place …
Intelligent Design and Stealth Creationism
Last Friday, a friend named Scott Minnich addressed the weekly disputatio at New St. Andrews. Dr. Minnich is a professor in microbiology at the University of Idaho, and he testified in the recent trial in Dover, PA as an expert witness on behalf of Intelligent Design. His talk was fascinating — with regard to the …
Convenience Store Therapy
“Television entertainments tend to avoid problems that can’t be solved by the end of the hour.” [David Wells, No Place for Truth (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1993), p. 200.]
Lazarus Didn’t Help Do It
“A dead man is in no shape to prepare himself for resurrection. He is impotent. When Christ raised Lazarus from the dead, it was not a cooperative effort between the two. Christ raised him, and then Lazarus came forth” (The Paideia of God, pp. 62-63).
Keeping the Cash Register
Just a short post to tie up my thoughts on the last chapter of Stanley Grenz’s book on postmodernism. The book was informative (for the most part) and with a few exceptions a good review of the characters and players in all this. But coming to the last chapter, I have to confess that my …
A Cute Descendant
Now that I know how to do this, you can expect to see pictures of my grandchildren from time to time. Just one of the costs of checking in on this blog. This is Evangeline.
God Above
Gracious God above us, we thank You in the name of Jesus Christ, and we pray to You in the authority that the Holy Spirit gives to us. We look forward to the arrival of yet another Lord’s Day, another opportunity to rejoice before You together with our people. We thank You for the food, …
The Power of the Cultural Vacuum
“What is now in place is not exactly an alternative system of belief. What is in place is no system of belief at all. It is more like a vacuum into the quiet emptiness of which the self is reaching for meaning – and finding only itself. But this is to put the matter more …
The “Malady” of Modesty
“The moral hedges that surrounded our collective life have been trampled down. That is the paramount truth. What once was sublimated is now, in all of its raw and often violent nature, spewed forth in the name of liberty or self-expression. What once had to be private is now paraded publicly for the gallery of …
Culture As Cop
“Culture, then, is the outward discipline in which inherited meanings and morality, beliefs and ways of behaving are preserved . . . It is what tells us what owning a Cadillac means, what significance being gay has, how we can measure someone whom we learn is a doctor, an engineer, a street artist, or homeless. …