There are problems, but reading Stanley Grenz is not at all like reading Brian McLaren. In his book A Primer on Postmodernism, Grenz begins by giving us a general survey of the intellectual landscape, which he does competently. It is when we get to the “and therefore we shoulds” that I start to object. Even …
And to Children
Photography by Mark LaMoreaux
Humor Is Resistance
Malcolm Muggeridge, who knew his totalitarians (and the liberals who loved them) once said, “To laugh is to criticize . . . Humour, that is to say, is a kind of resistance movement, which is sometimes indulgently tolerated, sometimes barely tolerated, and sometimes not tolerated at all.” George Orwell, who also knew something about the …
Willful Mediocrity
“The dishonor was not the in the confusion, but in the ritualistic character of that confusion; not in the appalling cultural, scientific, and historical ignorance, but in the refusal to mend that ignorance; not in the incompetence, but in the exaltation of that incompetence; not in the mediocrity of execution, but in the meanness of …
The Chattering Classes
[Speaking of Carlyle] “The danger, as he saw it, was in the distraction: ordinary men and women turned to ‘art,’ and the worship of art, only when they had nothing more important to do or to think about. And idle humans – bored humans – were not whole humans. They were shells, chattering away to …
Argument Weak, Shout Here
“They [literary critics] had become an interest group battling for a share of influence, seeking to preserve their sense of self-importance by bullying an increasingly disgusted public into extending their mandate for another decade or two. The more they were called to account, the louder did they howl; the more they were asked to explain …
Blowing Bubbles At the Moon
The thoughts of man are vain. The thoughts of man are carried around in a bone case, five or six feet above a couple of ground pounders (with ten pink toes splayed on the ends of them) that pack those thoughts around from place to place. In order to keep those thoughts going, a man …
Entertained By Decadence
“After that all was chaos, and it was no longer possible to discover just which critics were making the most definitive statements about which Voluptuous Grotesqueries. The incessant gibberish had become one long rumble in the night, and Major Critics bobbed like corks in a sea of splendid horror.” [Bryan F. Griffin, Panic Among the …
Reform and Abramoff
Just a quick thought on the aftermath of the Abramoff scandal. The scandal has, of course, the squeaky clean types bellowing for Reform. And they have the moral high ground currently, and all the sound bytes. But almost no one points out that our current woes are caused by the last round of Reform. When …
The Table and the Ball
Once there was a table, and on the surface of the table there was a ball. For a long time they both just sat there, but one day the ball—who had been taking some philosophy classes at the local community college—spoke to the table. “I don’t know why you think you’re so important,” said the …