In my interactions with Bishop Wright on the matter of Third World debt, I have a couple times had the sensation of having been here before. Somehow. Tonight it happened again, and so I picked up a mental thread and pulled on it. This is what came of that. This is how Dorothy Sayers began …
Lots of Nice Houses
“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11) Growing Dominion, Part 140 “Rob not the poor, because he is poor: neither oppress the afflicted in the gate: For the Lord will plead their cause, and spoil the soul of those that spoiled them” (Prov. 22:22-23). The poor, because they are poor, …
Suspicion and Bitterness in the Ministry
“Nor is suspicion merely a source of disquietude, it is a moral evil, and injures the character of the man who harbours it. Suspicion . . . creates . . . in ministers bitterness; such bitterness as in spirit dissolves all the ties of the pastoral relation, eating like a corrosive acid into the very …
The Biggest Reef in the World
“Self-delusion about human nature is the reef waiting to make a wreck out of ideologies that wander out of a narrow channel” (Herbert Schlossberg, Idols for Destruction, p. 190).
Before Lawless Thrones
“A man must be meek before God before he can stand upright before lawless thrones. How can an arrogant prophet rebuke an arrogant king?” (For Kirk and Covenant, p. 113).
They Come in Crates of Twenty-Four
What might seem like the simplest problem in the world — just forgive the debts, man, how hard can it be? — turns out to have massive complications. These complications are not offered as an argument for doing nothing, but rather as an argument for taking the time to get it right. There are a …
Kudzu in Idaho
In his book The Millennium Myth, N.T. Wright acknowledges that debt forgiveness willy nilly is not the way to go. “Some will warn [like DW] that debt cancellation without political change will be a gift to the tyrants and bullies, not to the poor and weak. Steps will have to be taken to make sure …
Introduction to Amos
The series will be interrupted almost right away because next Sunday is Ascension and the Sunday after that is Pentecost. But yesterday I began a series through the book of Amos, which will resume after Pentecost.
Epitome of Sin
The word hamartia is used twice in the letters to the Thessalonians. The first use has to do with a particular Jewish sin, and the second with a characteristic Gentile sin. “For ye, brethren, became followers of the churches of God which in Judaea are in Christ Jesus: for ye also have suffered like things …
Don’t Let Gossips Drive the Ministry
“Every church, and, for the matter of that, every village and family, is plagued with certain Mrs. Grundys, who drink tea and talk vitriol . . . There are also certain persons who are never so happy as when they are ‘grieved to the heart’ to have to tell the minister that Mr. A. is …