“Adam’s sin includes us. We are sinners by nature, bad to the bone from the very first moment—bad to the bone before we have any bones.”
Keep Your Kids, p. 4
A Surly Bobcat
“The fact that the sweet child in the cradle hasn’t started smoking cigarettes or pounding shots does not signify anything. You say, ‘Oh, they look so sweet, they look so innocent.’ But five years later, they are out terrorizing the neighborhood, acting like a cross between a hobgoblin and a bobcat.”
Keep Your Kids, p. 4
Letters to Help Make Us All More Mindful
Letter to the Editor: Peter Bell of the Sons of Patriarchy podcast has done interviews with former members [of our church] and many of our congregation are shocked and dismayed. Mr. Bell ...
Fertility and Dominion
What is the scriptural teaching on birth control? The question needs to be narrowed down a bit. The raw reality of birth control could refer to anything from a man deciding not to marry, which results ...
Little Bundles of Sin
“Children do not begin in some neutral place. They do not start out innocent. As my father used to say, with great affection, ‘Babies are little bundles of sin.’ All that is necessary for the sinning to start is the requisite muscle strength and intelligence. Once the muscle strength and intelligence are there, the sinning starts. And sometimes it starts a little bit before that.”
Keep Your Kids, p. 3
Let’s Pop the Hood, Shall We?
Noise Abatement Long Term
“If the father uses the rod judiciously, his son will not die—sound effects notwithstanding.”
Keep Your Kids, p. 2
Descend to Hilarity
“Few earthly blessings compare to sitting around a dinner table with your grown kids and their spouses, all of them Christian. Someone starts telling spanking stories, and the evening descends into hilarity. In the next room, the grandkids are going at it as well. All this, coupled with wine, and laughter, and psalm singing, and jokes, and sausage stew, and a fire in the fireplace . . . The covenant is a wonderful thing.”
Keep Your Kids, pp. xi-xii
Anxiety Storms and the Empathy Wars
Introduction: The empathy wars seem to have some staying power. It was around seven years ago that Joe Rigney set the whole thing off within Reformed circles when he sat down with me for an interview ...
No Nuance at All
“All of this means you have to settle in your mind, in your soul, down in your bones, what you actually believe. And you have to be ready to walk into a buzz saw if you’re really going to practice some of the things that the Bible says we ought to practice. Your stance should be that of the sailor at Pearl Harbor who, when the third wave of Japanese Zeros was flying overhead, thought to himself, ‘The time for nuance has passed.’”
Keep Your Kids, p. xi