“Once our world was centered; now it is not. Once there were ultimate principles of criteria; now there are not. Once there was Authority; now there are only authorities, specialists who have mastered a small corner of life’s complexity. We have been left to drift in the flow of melting reality. This is our nihilism. …
Push Ups in the Brain
“And we cannot understand the incarnation of Christ by sitting in neat rows in a classroom, doing push-ups with the brain” (The Case for Classical Christian Education, p. 64).
Seinfeld and De Profundis
“Postmoderns live on the surface, not in the depths, and theirs is a despair to be tossed off lightly and which might even be alleviated by nothing more serious than a sitcom” [David Wells, Above All Earthly Pow’rs (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), p. 177].
The Wind in the Willow Creek
“It is unfortunate indeed that Rat and Mole had a greater sense of the numinous in the presence of the god Pan than many modern evangelicals do in the presence of the God of Abraham” (The Case for Classical Christian Education, p. 64).
Cognitive Confrontation
“When rival worldviews are in play, it is not adaptation that is called for but confrontation: confrontation not of a behavioral kind which is lacking in love but of a cognitive kind which holds forth ‘the truth in love’ (Eph. 4:15)” [David Wells, Above All Earthly Pow’rs (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), p. 156].
Calling It Good
“A Christian worldview is not a matter of having an opinion about everything, with all those opinions being interconnected or, as some might say, entangled. Our lives are supposed to go together a certain way. Parents who have labored over assembling a child’s Christmas present, one with multiple parts, know that it is not sufficient …
Somebody Always Wants to Do It
“During most of the twentieth century, threats to campus free speech and academic freedom came mostly from the right, and from outside institutions of higher learning. The new attacks on free thought that arose in the late 1980s turned this pattern on its head: they have arisen from leftist sources inside the ivory tower” (Donald …
Scratch and Sniff Multiculturalism
“What multiculturalism in the curriculum assuredly does not mean is a renewed emphasis upon the mastery of foreign languages or the close study of complex civilizations . . . the campaign to impose ‘multiculturalism’ amounts to nothing less than a war on Western civilization and, beyond it, a war on the very idea of civilization” …
Retained and Put On Steroids
“The autonomy of the individual that the Enlightenment championed has, in the postmodern spirituality, been retained, but also radicalized.” [David Wells, Above All Earthly Pow’rs (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), p. 115]
Salt and Light
“Parents us this [the salt and light argument] as a reason, but they acknowledge the need for preparation to be salt and light in other settings. Who sends their kids to Vacation Bible Schools run by Mormons in order that they might be salt and light? Who sends their eight-year-old to India to be a …