Oh, great. Now I have to interrupt my hectic day to quash some more scuttlebutt. How’s a guy supposed to install an Al Qaida training camp on his acreage with all these irresponsible rumors flying about? Comes now one of the solons of Vision 20/20, who weighed in on the subject of our little development …
Voyeurism Broadcasting Network (VBN)
“We are, of course, only doing what television and the movies have made legitimate. They have tilted the scales away from privacy toward exposure, away from bodily modesty toward public nakedness, away from the thought that grief and pain should be private and toward ‘the canonization of the intruding investigative reporter.’” [David Wells, Losing Our …
The Empty Space Above It All
“However, we have imposed a severe penalty on ourselves in the process: a terrifying sense that while all we have left is the self, the self unfortunately does not amount to too much. The passion of believing and the passion of being have now been replaced by the empty stare, the ironic posture.” [David Wells, …
I Just Can’t Outwit These Guys
I would start off by saying that it is hard to type while you are wheezing, except that I am used to it, and so I am not wheezing. The news of a private venture I am involved in has hit Vision 20/20 and the fevered speculation there is almost one hundred percent wrong, as …
Redemption In A Bottle
“It is hard to miss the redemptive themes in the many dreamy scenes of sensuality that we have so often seen in perfume advertisements, scenes that waft across the viewing public with the promise of bodily regeneration, even renewed sexual attraction, if one simply purchases the product.” [David Wells, Losing Our Virtue (Grand Rapids, MI: …
The Lure
“Advertising, which is a large part of our public world, has learned how to dip its bucket into the well of our inner desires and fantasies; it projects those desires and images as part of its merchandising prowess” [David Wells, Losing Our Virtue (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), p. 109]
Souls Without Gravity
“Thus the freedom to ‘be one’s self’ was soon held hostage to the views of others, the world of fashion, and the pressure of social trends. And without a clear sense of the self, the ability to deny the self began to weaken. Standards became blurry, and without a religious framework of meaning to give …
Almost As Rule-Guided As A Sonnet
Forty things that only happen in movies can be found here. Inexplicably, they left out the red wire/green wire moment, but they came close to covering the waterfront here. HT: David Field
Values Instead of Virtues
“Expressive individualism, which grew out of the Romanticism of the late eighteenth century and today has an especial affinity with our therapeutic culture, assumes that all people have a unique core of intuitions and feelings within them that is then coupled with the understanding that they have the inherent right to pursue and express these …
Most Scholars’ Review
“In fact, so many appeals are made to ‘most scholars’ that the young student may be tempted to try to find articles at the library listed under Most Scholars’ Review. Even those Christian colleges that have managed to retain some doctrinal integrity with regard to their Christian commitments have capitulated to the spirit of academic …