“The parallels between Justine [by de Sade] and Frankenstein become obvious at this point. Sexual desire using science as a cover turns human beings into objects by promoting the notion that morals are either ‘unscientific’ or are a mere epiphenomenon of the mechanism as yet not understood ” (E. Michael Jones, Monsters from the Id, …
Moral Dyslexia
“Mary Shelley, at this point in our narrative, did not understand all this, but by the time she had finished writing Frankenstein she did not see things Shelley’s way, either. She had by that time experienced the sadistic consequences of her sexual profligacy. Frankenstein was her attempt to make sense out of the conflict between …
Oceans of Beer
“Thus a man who slept with twenty women before his conversion, but was enough of a jerk not to marry any of them, is thought to be qualified for eldership after his conversion, but a man who married one woman and was divorced from her before his conversion is thought to be automatically disqualified. This …
Porn As Revolution
“The revolutionaries simply put to their own use the libido that Versailles had unleashed. Sade, who more explicitly than any other in France described and reveled in the link between pornography and political revolution, was not an aberration of eighteenth-century French culture, but the culmination of the French predilection for pornography” (E. Michael Jones, Monsters …
Not Counting Rocks
“These passages describe required personal attributes and character — they are not a mechanical checklist. Paul and Peter require us to find a certain kind of man. This is important for many reasons, but early among them is that the elders are responsible to replenish their own ranks, and in order to find a certain …
Horror as Cultural Guilt
“The fact that the creator of the horror genre is celebrated as a proponent of sexual liberation indicates that our culture still does not understand horror. If our culture could make up its mind about sexual liberation, it would not need horror. It would either embrace sexual license wholeheartedly, as Mary’s husband did, or repudiate …
Candidates and Incumbents
“Put another way, the widespread neglect of elder qualifications certainly trivializes an office which the Bible says should be held in honor. But willingness to remove elders too quickly can have the same result. A young woman considering a suitor may legitimately decline his attentions for (comparatively) minor reasons. Those same reasons are not sufficient …
When Missing by a Hair Means Missing by a Mile
“There is one other general point I would emphasise here before we leave this matter of the content of the sermon; and that is that we are to preach the Gospel, and not to preach about the Gospel. That is a very vital distinction, which one cannot easily put into words, but which is nevertheless …
Self-Authenticating Ultimacy
“Hence the late-romantic tendency to insist on a total separation between the aesthetic and the moral; and finally the modernist tendency to grant art the ultimate legitimacy and authority that were previously reserved for morality” (Martha Bayles, Hole in our Soul, pp. 389).
It Shouldn’t Be Either
“Jesus tells us that the hireling does not care for the sheep the way a good shepherd does. In saying this, the Lord was teaching in effect that the ministry cannot be allowed to become a profession. Despite this severe warning, the modern Church has steadily drifted into a compromise with what we might call …