[Matt. 7:15-20] “This is Jesus telling us what to do. He is telling us that — without access to the decrees or the examined prophet’s heart laid out before us on a dissecting table — we have the authority to conclude that someone is inwardly a ravening wolf. This is not reading hearts, or reading …
Dealing With Brother Zed
“Corrupt fruit means corrupt tree, and good fruit means a good tree. Some false teachers have to be examined closely because they come in sheep’s clothing. But your reading of the story tells you something is ‘off’ — ‘my, what long ears you have . . .’ Now when you have obediently applied this instruction …
Despite Everything
[John 8:39,41,43-44] “They were blue star covenant members, these men, and all their sacramental papers were in order. The only problem was that despite everything, they still had the wrong father. They were therefore, by definition, unregenerate” (Against the Church, p. 122).
Grape Twizzle
Eric Hoffer once noted the trajectory of institutions — first a movement, then a business, and finally a racket. As it happens, higher education in North America is deep into the racket phase. They have perfected the process of extracting money from the great American sap, whose resources appear to be limitless. The extractors have …
A New Upstream
“No, regeneration occurs when someone receives a father transplant . . . All the questions of regeneration are foundationally questions of relationship — who’s your daddy?” (Against the Church, pp. 120, 122).
Saved By the Bell
I didn’t want to read Piketty’s book Capital, and probably wouldn’t have, but now comes a development that removes every trace of all my guilt and shame. I didn’t want to read it because he believes in way-progressive tax rates, which is grabby, grabby, grabby, and grabby, grabby, grabby is contrary to the spirit of …
The Whites of Their Thighs
An essential part of a pastor’s duty is to fight heresy. But it is not an essential part of his duty to screech at it in such a fashion as to make all the heretics bless their false god for having given them such an incompetent adversary. Some shepherds fight so listlessly or apologetically that …
The One Who Relates
“There are two errors to avoid here. One is to assume that each individual as such is self-contained and is provided with a hard shell casing . . . The other error is to think that the self is nothing more than a ganglion of relationships, with no ‘hard atoms’ of individuals between whom such …
On Not Leaving Out the Whole Point
“A denial of the need for a foundational heart change is therefore messing with the narratival arc of the whole story” (Against the Church, p. 117).
A Father Transplant
“Regeneration means becoming the seed of another — ultimately, starting with one family tree and then acquiring a different one. My father used to be Adam and now he is the second Adam. My father used to be the devil and now he is Abraham . . . Rebirth entails having been in existence already, …