“Throughout Scripture we find a clear contrast between the philosophy of the natural man and the mind of Christ. When such passages are brought to bear on the various doctrines of the rationalist, the response is usually to shrug them off. And yet this is not sufficient; indeed, it is not reasonable. The Word of …
Magazined
“We adults look around, for example, and observe that while brain surgeons and Nobel laureates probably have their good points, surely glossy-magazine editors are the most impressive people in America. Every month, in the front of their magazines, many of them have to write those six-hundred word columns with titles like ‘From the Editor’s Desk’ …
All of Them Face Down
“To what may we liken God? The answer, friends, is nothing. And we show that we may compare Him to nothing by comparing Him to everything that is worthy of Him, and, of course, nothing completely is. In Him we live, and move, and have our being. This is not zen Christianity; it is the …
The Tombs of the Prophets
“Every rock anthem, every fashion statement, every protest gesture, every novel about rebellious youth—starting with The Catcher in the Rye and On the Road—carried the same cultural message: It’s better to be a nonconformist than a conformist, a creative individualist than a member of a group, a rebel than a traditionalist, a daring adventurer than …
Poetic Failure
“Only the most profound kind of spiritual blindness can keep a man from seeing what Isaiah is doing here. ‘To whom then will ye liken God?’ Isaiah has been comparing God to all kinds of things throughout this chapter [40], and therefore the point of every comparison must be to show that all of them …
The Bedlam of the Elites
“There is no one single elite in America. Hence, there is no definable establishment to be oppressed by and to rebel against. Everybody can be an aristocrat within his own Olympus. You can be an X Games celebrity and appear on ESPN2, or an atonal jazz demigod and be celebrated in obscure music magazines. You …
Looking Beyond
“When Isaiah cries out that we are to behold our God, he does so in a way that does not encourage us to start looking under the furniture. This is not altered in the slightest by his use of an image taken from the created order. Yet even here, each single image, however wonderful, if …
If One’s Good, Two Must Be Better
“Though Realtor Mom likes Wal-Mart, it’s the price club that really gets her heart racing, because price clubs are Wal-mart on acid. Here you can get laundry detergent in 41-pound tubs, 30-pound bags of frozen Tater Tots, frozen waffles in 60-serving boxes, and packages of 1,500 Q-tips, which is 3,000 actual swabs since there’s cotton …
Flesh That Reveals the Father
“The majesty of biblical poetry always lifts our thoughts up. Biblical poetic expression is incarnational, which means that there is a body of ‘flesh,’ but it is a body which reveals the Father. Idolatrous poetic expression reveals nothing from above, and spends its energy in rearranging matter down here below. Idolatrous images of the divine …
Cloth Ratios
“[In] America today the average square yardage of boyswear grows and grows, while the square inches in the girls’ outfits shrinks and shrinks. The boys carry so much fabric they look like skateboarding Bedouins, and the girls look like preppy prostitutes.” [David Brooks, On Paradise Drive (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004), p. 56]