“Myths for which there is no direct proof that they are structured by the scapegoat mechanism; the very fact that are implies that the mechanism is nowhere apparent. This is precisely what we observe in all the speeches that are not by Job. The friends cannot be expected to recognize their own injustice. As with …
Not Too Much
I would encourage all our friends out there to enjoy the following short clip from youtube. But, of course, if you have ever been subjected to “the treatment,” or are related by marriage or blood to Doug Phillips, R.C. Jr., Steve Wilkins, or me, I would also admonish you as a brother in Christ not …
Right Out of the SPLC Playbook
A coalition of fledgling opposition to Putin just had its offices raided. Kasparov, the chess guy, is one of those trying to mount some sort of accountability to the authoritarian rule of Mr. Putin. But taking their talking points from our very own Southern Poverty Law Center, the Russian government said that the raid was …
So Who Has More Fun Than People?
Hope you have a white Christmas.
A Plain Man’s Path
“Though its abuse could lead them from Him, its proper religious use was a ‘plain man’s pathway to heaven.’ It offered the plain poet a world rich in intrinsic symbols, correspondences, and significances that were not decorations but necessary parts of the truth he attempted to tell” (Daly, p. 71).
And Power Corrupts
“These new models tend to be adopted without the demands for rigorous evidence required by traditional scholarship. If Euro-centrism is a fault, one would think Afro-centrism would be similarly narrow-minded. If patriarchy is wrong, why would matriarchy be any better? But these quibbles miss the point of postmodern scholarship. Truth is not the issue. The …
Barbaric Lyricism
“Those who create the sacred with their own violence are incapable of seeing its truth. This is what makes the friends totally deaf to the appeals Job is constantly making. The more they participate in violence against the unfortunate man, the more they are carried away by their own barbaric lyricism and the less they …
Choosing Your Own Designer History, One That Works for You
“Since there is no objective truth, history may be rewritten according to the needs of a particular group. If history is nothing more than ‘a network of agonistic [i.e., fighting, contending] language games,’ then any alternative ‘language game’ that advances a particular agenda, that meets ‘success’ in countering institutional power, can pass as legitimate history. …
Sacralizing the Violence
“Under our very eyes, the three friends sacralize the violence. The insults and meanness are metamorphosed into the grandiose accomplishments of a supernatural mission . . . Whenever opinion turns against a leader formerly elevated by the people’s favor, the community automatically attributes the change to the intervention of an absolute Justice” (Girard, Job, p. …
Margarine of the Arts
“Based on his study of twenty-one world civilizations—ranging from ancient Rome to imperial China, from Babylon to the Aztecs—Toynbee found that societies in disintegration suffer a kind of ‘schism of the soul.’ They are seldom simply overrun by some other civilization. Rather, they commit a kind of cultural suicide. Disintegrating societies, he says, have several …