“I grew up in conservative evangelical circles, and I know that the power of the gospel was not made relevant to me in the ways it could have been. I was not taught to mortify sin the way I would have been if John Owen had been our youth group leader, teaching us all to hunt the wolves of lust in the deep forests, with the musket of mortification and with a sharpshooter’s eye. No, what I learned was more like Elmer Fudd trying to kill the rabbit. And, at the end of the day, that was nobody’s fault but mine.”
Their Own Cooking
“But in the society we actually have, in this chaotic place where the Gramscians have brought us, our arbiters of approved speech insist that they be the only ones allowed to shock, and that we be the ones to be dutifully shocked. In response to this proposed arrangement, I cheerfully refuse. I refuse to accept their authority in any of this, and I fully intend to make sure that they get an opportunity to eat their own cooking.”
Ladies Present
“You cannot fight for the right of women to swear like weaving sailors, and then, if you find they have heard something untoward, have them pull away their petticoats.”
You Know, That Thing
“In addition, and running concurrently with all of this, we have had unrelenting mockery for those uptight conservatives who have, for decades, been protesting the coarsening effects of all of the above. They are, of course, puritanical . . . They started having their censorious problems back when Elvis swiveling and doing that thing with his leg.”
How Dare You, Sir?
“Lo, another river of lava. The thing that is actually taboo is not the language, but rather the criticism of women by a man.”
Two Feather Hobbits
“I don’t mean to pick on English departments today, but if the head of such a department at some soft Christian college has a bumper sticker that says “Not All Who Wander Are Lost,” and the background of the bumper sticker is decorated with stardust, and the driver of this particular Volvo things my language here is intemperate, injudicious, and unbecoming a Christian minister, then what we are actually dealing with is a cowardly refusal to read the situation. And I don’t care if he is published and has tenure. I don’t care if he is a two-feather hobbit.”
As Swift as Anything
“Shall I praise you for this checklist mentality? Wisdom is pursuing you, friend, but you are fleet of foot.”
The Issue Is Actually the Circumference
“We continue to allow our evangelical leaders to represent us with an etiolated ‘gospel-centeredness’ that keeps the gospel at the center of a tiny little box that we store in the innermost recesses of our being.”
Which Is Not a Sign of Advancing Sophistication
“Young people today are routinely tempted by things that their grandfather didn’t find out about until his second year of medical school.”
Meditative Preparations
“Each one of your teenagers today is walking around with Bourbon Street in his pocket, or in her purse. And in many cases, always downloaded. You are driving off to church, and your (inexplicably sullen) teenager is in the way back, AirPods in, preparing his heart for worship by listening to “effin’ on the blim blam, n-word in the vocative plural!”