“We were fully in the modern age; the primitiveness and squalor of the Middle Ages had been left behind. The poet Swinburne proclaimed, ‘Glory to man in the highest, for man is the maker of things. Whitman sang of himself, and Nietzsche, a sickly recluse, wrote ecstatically of the Superman” (Harold O.J. Brown, The Sensate …
Certain Religious Sects Notwithstanding
“The Bible does not require pretty girls to wear paper bags over their heads to keep from stumbling all the brethren” (Her Hand in Marriage, p. 48).
Yeah, But the Incoherence Is HD on a Plasma Flat Screen
“The governments of Western countries do not have propaganda machines like Dr. Goebbels’, but all of Western culture is permeated by mass communications and round-the-clock entertainment. Whole populations are effectively anesthetized; independent thinking becomes rare; slogans replace thought; and logical analysis virtually ceases to exist” (Harold O.J. Brown, The Sensate Culture, p. 115).
Not the First Time We’ve Been Here
“Although it began at a time when the older idealistic view was already being replaced by a sensate mentality, the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century reasserted an ideational worldview, placing great emphasis upon God, his will, and his Word . . . The Protestant Christianity of the Reformation represented a far-reaching effort to reverse …
Assisted Suicide for Churches
“When religious groups compromise their foundational beliefs in order to coexist with the late sensate culture rather than challenging it or standing against it, they in effect consent to their own liquidation” (Harold O.J. Brown, The Sensate Culture, p. 67).
Making Authority Tolerable
“Trust is at the center of all family life. Trust is what makes authority bearable” (Her Hand in Marriage, p. 45).
Why There’s 57 Channels and Nothing On
“Only in this century did the techniques of recording, film, television, and video make art, music, and literature in all their forms—from the highest and most cultivated to the lowest and crudest—accessible to virtually every member of society, even teenagers and young children . . . This vastly increased availability of every form of art …
Getting the Will of God Too Easily
“A young suitor has absolutely no business telling a young lady that he has ‘prayed about it,’ and that the Lord wants her to marry him. He should be acting on what he believes to be the will of God for him; the will of God is not a ‘club’ to be used on her. …
Guess Which One We’re In
“Sorokin identified three distinct phases through which cultures pass: ideational, idealistic, and sensate. Each phase has distinctive characteristics and in general runs a specific course. Virtually every human society can be found at any particular time to be in one phase or another, or in transition between two of them . . . The ideational …
Like Straw in Fire
“Many parents try to teach their sons about sexual self-control after sexual temptation becomes an issue. But sexual self-control is just one species of the genus ‘self-control.” Sexual self-control is simply a subset of self-control . . . When sexual temptation first arrives, the necessary response of self-denial must not be an entirely new concept. …