For many years, one of the things I have most liked to do is stick up for Puritans. If there is ever a contest for “most misrepresented” groups within the history of Christendom, the Puritans will certainly be in the final four, and would probably win the championship. Caricatured as stuffy, priggish, censorious, prim, prudish …
All of It Everywhere
“When Chesterton writes about anything, each thought is like a living cell, containing all the DNA that could, if called upon, reproduce the rest of the body. Everything is somehow contained in anything. This is why you can be reading Chesterton on Dickens and learn something crucial about marriage, or streetlights, or something else” (Writers …
Too Many Delicatuli
The central thing that believing Christians have to learn in our current cultural challenges is how to deal with the full court press. We have to learn how to break the press. At the same time, in order to do this successfully, we have to learn how to dismiss irrelevancies. We do not need to …
An Easy Mistake to Make
“Future readers, a century or two out, might make the mistake of calling the twentieth century a truly Christian literary age, because the only writers from that age still being read are overwhelmingly Christian. ‘Ah,’ they will say—‘a golden age of the Christian faith, when giants walked the earth. Not like today . . .’ …
Little Pieces of Helicopter
Introduction: So let me begin by noting that I am going to be discussing what I think is going on, which is quite distinct from what I think ought to be going on. If we were dealing with what I thought ought to be happening, Frédéric Bastiat would be the Secretary of the Treasury. That …
And Then Some
The Work of Celestial Bees
“Watching covenantal righteousness and mercy come to your children’s children is not an abstraction, a dry datum out of your catechism or doctrine class. This is one of God’s great promises, and it tastes just like the honey made by celestial bees allowed to forage in heaven’s clover” (Rules, p. 279).
Thabiti and Thanks
I would like to say a few brief words about Thabiti’s latest, and at the same time promise to respond more extensively to his (most gracious) admonitions in a week or two. The reason for that delay is that I really want to take to heart anything and everything I can, and not just automatically …
John the Baptist’s Yard Sign
Introduction: A few days ago, I replied to Thabiti’s initial post about how he felt constrained to support Hillary as the lesser of two evils. He was kind enough to issue a rejoinder here, and now with the tennis ball over here in front of me again, I suppose it is my turn. Before getting …
On Dodging the Flaming Hailstones
Introduction: So I think it would be fair to say that I have been pounding away at Trump for lo these many months. Now that the primary season is over, and each major party is now stuck with its nominee, people are starting to coalesce (or not) behind somebody. I mentioned yesterday that Wayne Grudem …