“This is the lie that is at the heart of our society, the lie that encourages every form of destructive self-indulgence to flourish: for while we ascribe our conduct to pressures from without, we obey the whims that well up from within, thereby awarding ourselves carte blanche to behave as we choose. Thus we feel …
Socialism Preys On the Guilty
“Now it is quite true that a wealthy man can be saved — look at Abraham — but it is equally true that hte Bible is filled with stern warnings about the seductions of wealth. Modern Americans are among the wealthiest people ever to have lived. So sure, when we consider the warnings of Scripture, …
Grit, Grime and Grease Are All Most Real
The heroin addict “was under the influence of the idea that some aspects of reality are more real than others: that the seedy side of life is more genuine, more authentic, than the refined and cultured side—and certainly more glamorous than the bourgeois and respectable side. This idea could be said to be the fundamental …
Automatic Economies
“Cotton Mather once commented that the faithfulness of the people begat prosperity, but the daughter devoured the mother. In some ways this irony is a perpetual one. When a man comes to Christ, and begins to obey Him, this means working with his hands and living [a] quiet life in all diligence. One of the …
Dancing Solipsistically
“On the dance floor itself, a great seething mass of people move like maggots in a tin. With so large a number of people crammed into so small a space, it is astonishing that they is no social contact among them. Most of the pairs do not even look into each other’s eyes; because of …
Putting the Fun Into Fundamentalism
“What is the tithe for? As the church receives the gifts from members, the elders should keep in mind the three basic functions of the tithe . . . support ministers of the gospel, the relief of the poor, and celebration before the Lord. We have already seen Paul’s requirement of the first category. Christian …
Foundations for Poetry
“My point here is simply that Calvinism provided a detailed chart of the spiritual life for Elizabethan and seventeenth century English Protestants, and that this map also afforded fundamental direction to the major religious lyric poets” (Lewalski, Protestant Poetics, p. 14).
Flaunting the Body She Thought She Had
“I enter the [pub]. Everyone is shouting, but still no one can make himself heard (which perhaps is just as well). Twenty televisions blare: eight each playing two different songs (one rock and one reggae), and four relaying a wrestling match. Ten seconds of this and one feels one has a food mixer inside one’s …
Creation Law and Redemption Law
“We may divide the law of the Old Testament into two basic categories, those of creation law and redemptive law. Creation law is that which looks the same throughout the history of the world. The definition of marriage and adultery did not change in the transition between the old and new covenants. Theft looked the …
Poetics of Grace
“Similarly, William H. Halewood argues that the pervasive Augustinianism of the period — Augustine as interpreted by the Reformation — led Donne, Herbert, Vaughan, Marvell, and Milton to develop a poetic mode exploring man’s radical sinfulness and God’s overpowering grace” (Lewalski, Protestant Poetics, p. 14).