“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. …
Because Dead Children Can’t Breathe Fresh Air
“Some excellent brethren seem to think more of the life than of the truth; for when I warn them that the enemy has poisoned the children’s bread, they answer, ‘Dear brother, we are sorry to hear it; and, to counteract the evil, we will open the window, and give the children fresh air.’ Yes, open …
Written in 2003
“I have defined postmodernism as a turning from rationality, and at the same time an embracing of spectacle . . . The image waits for a political life . . . . There are more reasons to fear fascism than communism in a postmodern world. For one thing, fascism is anti-intellectual (communism is predicated on …
Which Explains a Lot of Church Services
“Postmodernism is a turning from rationality, and at the same time an embracing of spectacle” (Arthur Hunt, The Vanishing Word, p. 185).
The Trouble With Boys
“As parents consider their little boys who appear to have a surplus of this initiative, a surplus of masculinity, they may err by leaving it entirely undisciplined, or they may seek to discipline the troublesome masculinity out” (Her Hand in Marriage, p. 38).