“Hatred of tyranny in the petty prohibitionisms came the same way. Sam Gamgee comes back to the Shire very different from the thick-fingered peasant that he was when he left. He came back to all kinds of progress, including industry, zoning changes, and a higher level of health consciousness. ‘All right, all right,’ said Sam. …
Carping Envy
“Egalitarianism, the political name for carping envy, was made obnoxious, the way it ought to be. The White Witch came upon an extravagant feast at Christmas, with all sorts of waste and conspicuous consumption. ‘What is the meaning of all this gluttony, this waste, this self-indulgence?’ She then turned the partyers into stone and went …
Story Adorns Virtue
“Too often Christian parents simply seek to make the rightness of virtue apparent to their sons. But that is the easy part. The difficulty lies in making virtue altogether lovely, which is what happens in the right kind of story” (Future Men, p. 106).
Evangelism and the Beanstalk
“In short, Canaan was a land filled with giants. The invasion of Canaan was a war of giant-killing, and a type of the giant-killing gospel . . . Christ became one of us, and, as a son of David, He bound and defeated the Goliath of that age (Lk. 11:21-22) . . . The Christian …
The Gospel as Dragon Bane
“We fell into sin as a race because we were beguiled by a dragon (Gen. 3:1). God promised to send a warrior who would crush the seed of that serpent (Gen. 3:15), and He has done this in Jesus Christ. In sum, the gospel is the story of a dragon-fight. The serpent of Genesis is …
Dragons and Drains
“It is a standing rebuke for us that there are many Christians who have an open sympathy for the ‘true’ books which Eustace read–full of true facts about governments and drains and exports–and who are suspicious of great works of imagination, like the Narnia stories, or The Lord of the Rings, or Treasure Island, because …
Bread and Growth
“Often, young people are kept back from the Lord’s Supper because they are not yet spiritually strong. This is refusing to give your son bread when he asks for it–and, being too cheap to give him a stone instead, we give him air. When asked why the bread was refused, the reply is that he …
Tough and Tender
“This can, of course, be easily misunderstood. No one is saying that a boy with a severed limb should yelled at for bleeding on the carpet. Nevertheless, instilling toughness in boys is extraordinarily important. A masculine toughness is the only foundation upon which a masculine tenderness may be safely placed. Without a concrete foundation, thoughtfulness, …
Passions Growing Up
“Another important principle is that of seeing small boys as future men. The way boys learn to deal with their various immature “passions” will generally be the way they deal with adult passions. A boy who is not obviously learning self-control with regard to his temper, his stomach, his video games, or his school work …
Liberty and Law
“But liberty always implies a standard, and this standard always brings with it an antithesis. This means that he who says ‘free from’ must also assert a specified ‘free to.’ A man cannot turn away from something without simultaneously turning to something. Liberty always assumes an appeal to law” (Future Men, p.76).