So no, I haven’t seen the movie, and no, this is not a review of it. Aside from that resulting in a couple of hours that I couldn’t get back, there would be the problems caused by the possibility of me writing a review of an Aronofsky film that might run counter to the analysis …
Why Nature Is Necessary
Let’s clear a few things out in the first paragraph. Nature is nature, which seems obvious enough, but less obvious is that nature has a nature. The grain of the natural order runs in a particular way. It is not amorphous goo that can be shaped by any volunteer demiurge that happens by. It is …
Architectural Incongruity
God hates a particular kind of incongruity with a passion. He detests the notion that we can create a liturgy, or a worship space, or a tall steeple, that somehow masks or deals with sin. But if such things could deal with sin, then Jesus didn’t have to die. “When ye come to appear before …
Sanctuary and Parish
I have written before on the ideal relationship of church and kingdom, comparing it to the church at the center of town, and life in the kingdom fanning out into the parish from that center. Word and sacrament are at the center, and they shape and form the lives of believers outside the sanctuary, but …
What Mardi Gras Has for Breakfast
This is happening in lots of different areas, so I don’t want to pick on Rand Paul. But for the sake of convenience, let us start with him. He recently called for a “truce” within the Republican Party on “social issues,” but what such a truce would actually amount to is total capitulation on the …
Derek and Laura
As we prepare ourselves to hear the marriage vows exchanged just a few moments from now, everyone here in the congregation should make a point to reflect on several important aspects of this solemn and joyful occasion. The first aspect is that many of us here in this sanctuary are married, and so this is …
Put an Egg in Their Shoe
In just a moment I would like to interact with a post by Kirsten Powers and Jonathan Merritt, which you can read here if you haven’t already. In one sense, I wish they hadn’t written that thing together, because I have some respect for Kirsten Powers. She has done some very fine against-the-tide work on …
A Slack Hand
Scripture takes a dim view of a slack hand. “He becometh poor that dealeth with a slack hand: But the hand of the diligent maketh rich” (Prov. 10:4). This applies to all of us—men and women, boy and girls. It applies to every station of life—job holder, housekeeper, or student. One of the plain indicators …
Apologetics and the Heart
This article was originally published in Antithesis (July/August 1990). I still agree with all of this, but I must say that reading stuff of mine that is over twenty years old gives me the feeling that I used to compose my prose with flattened cardboard boxes and tin snips. Just so you know. In preparing …
Not That Kind of Blessing . . .
A few years ago, I wrote eleven theses on birth control, which you can read here. But the fact that a certain line of discussion broke out in the comments of another recent post made me want to develop my eighth and ninth points, which is that children are covenant blessing, not an automatic blessing. …