“They haul you away to their reeducation centers more in pity than in anger.”
Only Seems Sudden
“Sudden apostasies only seem sudden. How do you go bankrupt? First gradually, and then suddenly. That last bit is what everybody notices, but it was a long time coming.”
Keep Your Kids, p. 34
Which Anchor?
“For the sake of additional clarity, let’s call this toxic form of empathy ‘untethered empathy.’ But that immediately raises a question. This pathos, this feeling: what is it untethered from? It is untethered from God, from His Word, from His people, and from His world. A person’s feelings are disconnected from absolutely everything else—and your feelings are disconnected from everything but their feelings. This is the logic of the outer darkness.”
Keep Your Kids, p. 32
If I Could Prove Them, They Wouldn’t Be Axioms
“Being a creature, I reason from axioms and decline the invitation to prove my axioms.”
Letters Intended for the Edification of All
Letter to the Editor: The link here is the apology/acknowledgement of Stated Clerk’s office of PCA. Jerry Jerry, thanks. This is good to see. Letter to the Editor: ...
Anchored or Not
“With sympathy, there is an objective solution outside of and independent from anyone’s feelings. It’s objectively true. But with empathy, feelings are the only reality that may be considered to taken into account. With empathy, feelings are the only game in town—and if you’re not empathizing, then you are judgmental and hateful.”
Keep Your Kids, pp. 31-32
Unnecessary Redundancy
“But Job attributed all of it to God and submitted to God’s will in it. The fact that he recognized the hand of the Lord in all of it, and accepted that loss from the Lord, did not mean that he had acquiesced to a new economic theory as developed by Chaldean raiding parties, or socialists, but I repeat myself.”
Various Means
“If God’s object is to reveal my undue attachment to stuff, He could do that by means of fire, flood, high winds, or congressmen saving the children.”
LIttle Froggy Laws
“Laws multiply when the lawgivers want to have subjects instead of citizens. When laws swarm like the frogs of Egypt, the reason for it is to increase guilt. This guilt means two things—one is that when there are multitudinous regulations, they can always get you for something. Second, it turns everyone into a lawbreaker, but because our consciences are not trained by the Scriptures, when it gets to the point of resistance, we are dragged into the fray with uneasy consciences—instead of walking toward the confrontation with a clean heart and well-oiled shield.”
Radical Relativism
“This toxic use of empathy is destroying Western civilization, and I don’t think I am overstating things. The doctrine of empathy is tearing our culture apart . . . I’m talking about empathy as it is being employed by our therapeutic professionals. Their definition—the toxic one—has worked its way into our laws, into our customs, into our HR departments, into our media, into the military, and into our courts. This form of empathy demands that we feel with others without making any judgments whatsoever about them or their behavior. It is the delivery platform of radical relativism.”
Keep Your Kids, pp. 30-31