Theology That Bites Back
“Everyone is growing up into something. No matter what the world says, our life is not static. You are either growing up into Christ, or you are growing up into Gollum—diseased, malicious, and bent. Those are the only options. You can’t just freeze the frame and say, ‘I want to stop right here and be sorry for myself forever.’”
Keep Your Kids, p. 49
“A number of you have been languishing out there for a while, listening to sermons from a man who, if he had been a character in The Pilgrim’s Progress, would have been the Rev. Rabbitheart.”
Letter to the Editor: I am considering sending my children to a Classical Christian School. One criticism that I recently heard about the movement was the kind of women that it produces: ...
“There I was, I will tell my great-grandchildren, sitting on a skittish horse, hands behind my back, rope around my neck, and a learned academic voice called out from the crowd, ‘Ya! What does someone like you know about Girard?’”
“Dad teaches his sons how to hit a ball and gathers his family around after dinner to read to them. Mom teaches her daughters how to make the family-favorite recipes. And yes, I know that the examples I just used are Platonic forms of gender stereotypes, and it would not be possible to tell you how sorry I am.”
Keep Your Kids, pp. 47-48
Some Guidelines for Online Anons, And Some Advice for Dealing with the More Angular Anons: Introduction: We live in a tumultuous time, a time in which we have recently seen specific anonymous ...
“Christian virtue needs to grounded on the bedrock of grace. Education in virtue is no substitute for gospel. If all you’re offering your kids is a moral course of instruction, all you’re doing is bringing up Pharisees. You’re raising a household of moralistic prigs. You’re going to get two inches of snow on a dunghill: it looks really pretty, and it photographs well, but it is what it is. Or to use the illustration the great Puritan Thomas Watson once used, you’re treating a broken leg by putting a silk stocking on it. An external conformity to virtuous behavior is not going to cut it. Everything depends upon the new birth.”
Keep Your Kids, pp. 46-47
“Remember that, right after having committed the crime of all crimes, the murder of the Christ, when Judas came back and returned the thirty pieces of silver, these orderly process-mongers were very concerned about what account to put the money into. They didn’t want to get dinged in the next audit. Ethics are so important.”
“One of the things that Girard noticed about the Scriptures, not to mention human history, is that oppression is always respectable, and that the victim who protests that oppression is not respectable. He is told to shut up. Persecutors always feel persecuted. The oppressor feels oppressed and is highly indignant when the victim won’t shut up. When the victim writes a psalm of lament, he is not playing the dutiful role that he was assigned. The victim is therefore the troublemaker and must be dealt with.”
