“Even as a child growing up in Egypt, I chafed at the way Muslim society treated women. As I studied the Quran and Islamic history, I could see how the many restrictions placed upon women came directly from Muhammad himself. Again, this put me in a position of wondering whether the true God of heaven …
Hypocrisy of the Heart
“Such artists strained after emotions not that they felt, but that they felt they ought to feel. This, of course, is one of the sources of sentimentality; it is the tribute that vanity pays to compassion” (Theodore Dalrymple, Our Culture, What’s Left of It, p. 119).
Three Winter Quilts
Here is an inchoate thought or two related to at least one blessing that has come out of the emergent church movement. I don’t have anything really specific yet, but I think there really is something to this. Summarize it this way: conservatives have a talent for taking over edginess. I’ll talk about the emergent …
Love at the Center
“Jesus and Muhammad describe the nature of God in very different ways—for Jesus, God is a loving father; for Muhammad, Allah is a demanding master. This description sets the tone regarding love for all their other relationships” (Mark Gabriel, Jesus and Muhammad, p. 151).
Doublethink
“Doublethink—the ability to hold two contradictory ideas and assent to both—is with us too, and will remain so as long as we have large bureaucracies that claim to act for our own good while pursuing their own institutional interests” (Theodore Dalrymple, Our Culture, What’s Left of It, p. 112).
Beams, Motes, and American Eyes
How can Christians learn to stand against the emerging empire without becoming either cranks on the right, or closing ranks with the envious on the left — those who would have no problem with such immense power being wielded, just so long as it was not being wielded by America? In virtually all political discourse, …
God Is Love
“When I was living as a Muslim in Egypt, I was always puzzled by a little saying that the Christians used to put on their cars or frame in their shops. The phrase of Allah Mahabe, or God is love. These two words are never put together in the Quran. I always thought, I wonder …
Aristocracy is Not Deity
“[Virginia Woolf] protests and complains as a woman and as a writer, but above all as a human being, who has discovered with bitterness that being born privileged does not alter the conditions and limitations of human existence” (Theodore Dalrymple, Our Culture, What’s Left of It, p. 75).
Follow the Leader
“And what you told me about the evils done by Christians—these people were Christians in name only. They disobeyed the word of Christ and they were led astray by the desires of their hearts. The Bible says, ‘The heart of man is deceitful.’ Because of this, you will see no difference between the actions of …
The Dull Pornographer
“Yet literal-mindedness is not honesty or fidelity to truth—far from it. For it is the whole experience of mankind that sexual life is always, and must always be, hidden by veils of varying degrees of opacity, if it is to be humanized into something beyond a mere animal function. What is inherently secretive, that is …