Dear visionaries, Anthony writes that “restorative justice is a value driven approach.” This is correct, because everything is a value-driven approach. And we return to the question that folks in this pluralistic little town of ours do not want to face squarely. Whose values? Why? Societies cannot function unless certain values are imposed and others …
Potboiler Preterism
I’d like to take this opportunity to recommend a book that I am more than halfway through. The book is The Last Disciple, written by Hank Hanegraaff and Sigmund Brouwer, and is an fictional preterist counterpart to the enormously popular (and futurist) Left Behind series. The novel is set in the years of the Neronian …
A Just War?
Dear visionaries, I was asked off line for the reasons I oppose the war in Iraq. But before summarizing those reasons, allow a brief response to John’s translation of my request. John said, “Translation: Do not comment about the war on terror or the war on Iraq. I might disagree with you.” Actually, I would …
Bad At Dodgeball
A goodish bit of indignation has been expressed by the Intoleristas over the apropos application of the word Intolerista. Remember when we were kids and used to play dodgeball with those red, rubber school balls? And there was always that kid who thought that getting hit by a ball constituted a foul and an outrage, …
Bright Red Orthodoxy
I appreciate what my friend John Armstrong has to say about postmodernism here. The postmodernists have climbed into the car of modernity’s premises, and have driven it into a tree. What the postmodernists do not appear to grasp, however, is that mumbling incoherently to oneself in the wreckage of that old car does not constitute …
Intolerista Slogans
As some of you know, a week or so ago, the Intoleristas launched a new attack on us here in Moscow. But because their behavior is now getting out to the skinny branches, Jim Fisher of the Lewiston Morning Tribune wrote an editorial that attempted to talk them down out of their tree. “Come to …
Incrementalism
Anyone who really believes that yeast works through the loaf slowly is an incrementalist. Anyone who holds that the biblical pattern is reformation, and not impatient revolution, is an incrementalist. Many “clear-headed” individuals on the hard right are functional revolutionaries and not conservatives at all because of their inability to grasp this. Brian Mattson is …
Audio Reading of Post
President Bush and the High Places
Brian Mattson, of The Banty Rooster, has raised some interesting questions about my characterization of President Bush as a false teacher. In response to this, Mattson cites the biblical example of Asa. “But back to the issue about President Bush. All I want to do is quote 1 Kings 15.14: “Although he did not remove …
The Horse Laugh and the Syllogism
Where we have had recent disagreements with the folks over at christianculture.com, it is good on several levels to be able to agree with Monte Wilson’s recent post there on the need for more court jesters. As Mencken put it once, a horse laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms. For those interested in a detailed …
Objective Exegesis
In a recent entry on his web page, Andrew Sandlin makes an important point about the incarnational nature of the Christian faith (“The Faith is What We Are”), but in my view misses the biblical balance dangerously. In rejecting an objectivity outside ourselves (that when detached from how we actually live should be rejected), I …