If I may, I would like to ask your permission to go up the stairs three at a time here. Great. Glad that’s all set. What I mean by that is that I want to assert a number of things together in order to indicate a pattern. The argument for some of these things has …
Book of the Month/January 2015
This month the book of the month is a brace of books. You should get them together, and read them both. Together they address the central political issue of our day, one that rests underneath whatever the turmoil of the moment might be. The doctrine of the lesser magistrates is one of our lost doctrines, …
A Year of Fresh Outrage
Tomorrow a new year of fresh outrage begins, and so I want to take a few moments to encourage those Christian preachers, writers, thinkers, and bloggers who are, out of biblical principle, sailing contrary to all the prevailing winds. It is harder to sail this way, but when you are done, more that is worthwhile …
39 and Counting . . .
So today marks our 39th anniversary together. That is a long time to be married to the kind of woman who is, as my father put it the other morning at our Christmas breakfast banquet, “amazing.” I haven’t really gotten over it, but, on the other hand, why should I?
Sexual Smithereens
In a remarkably prescient joke, Bob Hope said this back in the seventies. “I’ve just flown in from California, where they’ve made homosexuality legal. I thought I’d get out before they make it compulsory.” As we look at what remains of sexual ethics in America — the old sexual norms that somebody took a weed …
Racial Animosity
The cross of Christ deals with real sins, not imaginary ones. It deals with real sins by offering free and full forgiveness. It “deals” with imaginary sins by enabling us to see them for what they are — vain constructions of our own imaginations. When it comes to issues of race, the cross of Christ …
L’Affaire Sony NORK
If festivals of hypocrisy were to be compared with the riotous celebrations that are actually already on the calendar, L’Affaire Sony NORK would have to rank right up there with the Mardi Gras in Rio. Let us recap and without any snorting. Sony made what I have no doubt was a perfectly appalling movie called …
Does It Not?
Like an Out-of-Control Office Christmas Party
“Much has been made of the Puritan opposition to Christmas, but more than a little bit of the problem was caused by how Christmas used to be celebrated . . . The problem was actually comparable to us objecting to the drunkenness and fornication at Mardi Gras, only to be told that we have a …
A Common Caricature
“One of the most common caricatures of the Puritans is that they were a lot of ecclesiastical killjoys, and that if their eyes were any closer together, they would each be on the other side” (God Rest Ye Merry, p. 75).