I am a pastor. And I cover up sin for a living. In order to talk about such things intelligently, the gospel must always come first. God gives sinful man a most reasonable offer. Come, let us reason together, He says. Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow. As far …
Fraudulent Meaning
“Postmoderns who have, in one way or another, pointed to the emptiness of life, the absence of meaning, of enduring, stable value structures, are astonishingly close to the truth—far closer, in fact, than many in the Enlightenment period who lived off fraudulent meaning” [David Wells, Above All Earthly Pow’rs (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), p. …
Oblique Nihilism
“Once our world was centered; now it is not. Once there were ultimate principles of criteria; now there are not. Once there was Authority; now there are only authorities, specialists who have mastered a small corner of life’s complexity. We have been left to drift in the flow of melting reality. This is our nihilism. …
Seinfeld and De Profundis
“Postmoderns live on the surface, not in the depths, and theirs is a despair to be tossed off lightly and which might even be alleviated by nothing more serious than a sitcom” [David Wells, Above All Earthly Pow’rs (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), p. 177].
Sick Pleasure
This is a public statement, made on behalf of the session of Christ Church: On June 5, 2006, a disgruntled former member of our church took it upon himself to post an announcement on his web site about a former NSA student, Steven Sitler, who has been convicted of child molestation. This posting was done …
Cognitive Confrontation
“When rival worldviews are in play, it is not adaptation that is called for but confrontation: confrontation not of a behavioral kind which is lacking in love but of a cognitive kind which holds forth ‘the truth in love’ (Eph. 4:15)” [David Wells, Above All Earthly Pow’rs (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), p. 156].
Somebody Always Wants to Do It
“During most of the twentieth century, threats to campus free speech and academic freedom came mostly from the right, and from outside institutions of higher learning. The new attacks on free thought that arose in the late 1980s turned this pattern on its head: they have arisen from leftist sources inside the ivory tower” (Donald …
Scratch and Sniff Multiculturalism
“What multiculturalism in the curriculum assuredly does not mean is a renewed emphasis upon the mastery of foreign languages or the close study of complex civilizations . . . the campaign to impose ‘multiculturalism’ amounts to nothing less than a war on Western civilization and, beyond it, a war on the very idea of civilization” …
Retained and Put On Steroids
“The autonomy of the individual that the Enlightenment championed has, in the postmodern spirituality, been retained, but also radicalized.” [David Wells, Above All Earthly Pow’rs (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), p. 115]
A Pig in a Poke
God has established three fundamental governments among men — family, church, and state. These are the governments which He directly ordained; other governments (like the board of a trust or a corporation) are man-made. This means that men have no authority to tinker with the fundamental structures of these God-given governments — in contrast to …