We already tend to misunderstand the nature of the relationship between God and His creatures, and so it is unfortunate that we sometimes use language calculated to perpetuate that misunderstanding. One term that is misunderstood in this way, in the view of many, is the irresistible grace of the famous TULIP. But is the misunderstanding …
The Tropes of Anti-Semitism
“Throughout the Muslim world, the Nazi calumny and the tropes of medieval Jew-hatred have become assimilated into Islamic thinking . . . The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is treated as a basic text and sold throughout the Muslim world along with Mein Kampf” (Melanie Phillips, Londonistan, pp. 110-111).
Ugly Is As Ugly Does
“O beautiful, for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain, has there ever been another place on earth where so many people of wealth and power have paid for and put up with so much architecture they detested as within thy blessed borders today? I doubt it seriously. Every child goes to school in a …
Intelligent Despair, the Foundation of Hope
When Jesus said that He came for the sick, not the healthy, one of the great implications of His gospel is that it is a gospel of hope. The healthy tend to take it all for granted. As it was yesterday, so it will be tomorrow, and so, as far as their condition is concerned, …
Momentary Men
We have a short attention span. We like to think of ourselves as current with everything; we are, after all, modern men. But, to use Andrew Lytle’s striking phrase, we are not modern men at all, but actually momentary men. We careen from one thing to the next, thumb on the remote. Our presidential debates …
Their Tandem Polygamy Instead of our Serial Polygamy
“The Association of Muslim Lawyers went even further, saying that it wanted formal recognition of a Muslim man’s right under Sharia law to have up to four wives. Ahmad Thomson, a member of the AML, said: ‘Under the Human Rights Acts they actually have a right to live and practice as Muslims and part of …
Is the Moon Really Necessary?
“Therefore to talk of not seeing the need for the Church is like talking of not seeing the need for the moon. The Church, like the moon, is not a human project, but a divine creation” (Harry Blamires, The Christian Mind, p. 119).
You Can’t See What You Won’t See
“British Muslims, however, are increasingly pushing for their culture to highly visible and given parity in the public sphere. Halal meals and separate prayer rooms are now commonplace throughout British institutions” (Melanie Phillips, Londonistan, p. 94).
Surprises
“The Christian mind knows that, in any sorting out of the sheep and the goats, of the virtuous from the sinful, the forces of Heaven would slice through human society at an unexpected angle” (Harry Blamires, The Christian Mind, p. 91).
Defining Our Days
Most of us learned in high school that nature abhors a vacuum. When a vacuum is created, it takes concerted effort to keep it a vacuum because nothing always tends to fill up with something. The principle is unexceptionable, but we can still be surprised from time to time at the ways in which the …