“A man’s words reveal, first, the man. The words are not the man, and yet they reveal him faithfully. Out of the abundance of the heart the man speaks. The foundational nature of all language is therefore metaphorical because every word a man speaks reveals him–just as God reveals Himself though His Word. Every word …
New Bait, New Hook
“No longer would Americans buy to fit in or impress the Joneses, but to demonstrate that they were wise to the game, to express their revulsion with the artifice and conformity of consumerism. The enthusiastic discovery of the counterculture by the branches of American business studied here marked the consolidation of a new species of …
Choosing Sides
“Also we should look very carefully at what he actually says here; we are to be kind to one another. Sheep are to be kind to sheep. Shepherds are to be kind to sheep. But if a shepherd is kind to wolves, that is just another way to let them savage the sheep. Kindness to …
Commodify the Revolution
One of the things I will be doing in this Devil in a Blue Dress thread will be to assemble quotations from a stack of books I have read on the matters surrounding pop culture. I thought I would share them with you as I gather them, although with minimal comment. The comment will come …
Nicer Than God
“Before we can answer this question rightly, we have to ask it rightly. This is one of those situations where even to ask the question–“How do we tell the right time for satire and the right time for tenderness?”–answers those who want to say that there is never a time for polemical speech. But of …
And Lo
“I have sometimes thought about writing an article advocating the courtship model found in the book of Ruth — work hard in the field at harvest, have enough to drink to make the heart merry and sleep sweet, go to sleep on the threshing floor, and wake up in the middle of the night to …
Audio Reading of Post
Real Discernment
“Not only is the fashioning of deity hard physical labor, it takes a good deal of shrewd discernment. It is not just anybody who can look at a log and see which end of it should be used for cooking dinner and which end should become the object of worship and adoration” (A Serrated Edge, …
Sugar Levels
“When God rebukes Job our of the whirlwind, Job has the humility and sense to cover his mouth with his hand, thoroughly abashed. But modern evangelicals chatter on. They have embraced the theology of the foolish women Job mentioned at the beginning of the book, and, judging by the posters in their Bible and bauble …
A Place of Dubious Honor
“The Bible even goes in for a little bimbo humor. ‘As a jewel of gold in a swine’s snout, so is a fair woman which is without discretion’ (Prov. 11:22). Here, let us consider the parable. Is feminine beauty worth anything? Absolutely, between three and four hundred dollars an ounce. But what is her lack …
Glitterati
“Woe, in other words, to those who roll around on their beds like they were really something, with mirrors on the ceiling, pink champagne on ice. These people think they are rock stars at the Grammies, gathered together with all the glitterati, all ready to receive the award for Best Album, and with a prepared …