“Images have a way of evoking an emotional response. Pictures have a way of pushing rational discourse—linear logic—into the background. The chief aim of television is to sell products and entertain audiences. Television seeks emotional gratification. As a visual medium, television programming is designed to be amusing. Substance gives way to sounds and sights. Hard …
Oxymoronic Adultery
“No double standard exists in God’s law. If a woman were an adulteress she could be executed for it, and if a man were an adulterer he could be executed for it. So the double standard on the part of Christ’s adversaries here is evident. They catch a woman committing adultery all by herself, and …
Romance No Foundation
“Romance is believed to be ‘the thing’ which ties a marriage together, and it is further thought that young people understand the dynamics of romance far better than their elders. Now the emotional attraction and attachment we have for one another is a gift from God. But romance has the same function as the curtains …
Why Essentialism is Essential
“The first major point in our look at the roots of postmodernism is the rejection of essentialism, which takes several forms in different postmodern thinkers. In general, essentialism is the idea that things have real qualities, independent of our knowing them” (Millard Erickson, The Postmodern World, p. 36).
A Protestant Zenith
“Pointing the way to these heights more clearly than any of the works hitherto discussed is the poetic version of the Psalms produced by Sir Philip Sidney and his sister, Mary Herbert, Countess of Pembroke. As contemporary references to them demonstrate, though these psalms were not published for over two centuries, they were well known …
One Follows His Reasoning
“If I had to choose an image to sum up our times, I would not choose from among the usual ones, such as the Nuclear Age, the Technological Society, the Age of Anxiety, the Computer Generation, the Affluent Society, or the Space Era. I would call it the Age of Noise” (Michael D. O’Brian, A …
Not Preachy
“On one level these novels [Narnia stories] are tremendous adventures, and on another they are rich theological treatises that teach truth without failing into the tedious habit of preaching to children. The search for truth is simply part of the excitement” (Michael D. O’Brian, A Landscape With Dragons, p. 125).
The Rebirth of Christian Story
“Because the Holy Spirit is always pouring out life upon God’s people, we must never succumb to the temptation to think that the false culture has won. Despite its apparent powers, its noise, and its glamour, it is a moribund system that has not much longer to live . . . A regeneration of Christian …
No Kidding
“Films, videos, and commercial television have come close to replacing the Church, the arts, and the university as the primary shaper of the modern sense of reality” (Michael D. O’Brian, A Landscape With Dragons, p. 61).
Why the Serpent Does Not Symbolize Honesty
“The meanings of symbols are not merely the capricious choices of a limited culture. We cannot arbitrarily rearrange them like so much furniture in the living room of the psyche. To tamper with these fundamental types is spiritually and psychologically dangerous because they are keystones in the very structure of the mind” (Michael D. O’Brian, …