“The Bible tells us that it is legitimate to mark someone’s position in a particular culture or society by how they dress. Having students on the way home from school recognized as students is fully in keeping with a general human pattern, and is observed in Scripture and seen regularly in other situations. To illustrate, …
The Great Bluff
“I am using the term secularism, then, to refer to the values of the modern age, especially where these lead to the restructuring of thought and life to accommodate the absence or irrelevance of God. Secularization is the process that creates the public environment in which these values seem natural and inevitable” [David Wells, No …
The Centrality of Peripherals
“In all this, we must remember the centrality of peripherals. The point is not to favor the peripherals instead of the center. That would be the sin of majoring on minors, swallowing camels, and all the rest of it. Rather, the point is that on this question the Christian world has fallen into the fallacy …
Come Again?
“In literature, a whole generation of deconstructionists has emerged within the universities who, despite their calling to be the custodians of the nation’s language, now make their living by denying that words have any meaning at all.” [David Wells, No Place for Truth (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1993), p. 65.]
Wearing Sweats Into the Throne Room
“We find that in Scripture, salvation is frequently pictured for us in the image of wonderful clothing: ‘Awake, awake! Put on your strength, O Zion; put on your beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city! For the uncircumcised and the unclean shall no longer come to you’ (Is. 52:1). Granted this is a metaphor, but …
Poster Boy
“It is, in fact, this assumption of an ability to move from one plateau of achievement to another that has given us a need always to be post: we feel compelled to assure ourselves that we are post-Puritan, post-Christian, and post-modern. Our world is post-industrial and post-business. Our time is post-Vietnam, post-Watergate, and post-Cold War.” …
Vocabulary of Obedience
“Put another way, the Bible does not tell us whether the British or the American military salute is ‘more proper’ than the other. But it does require the fact of the salute. Expressions of honor are common to all human societies, and the Bible requires that we honor others and maintain such expressions of honor. …
Worldliness and Faux Innocence
“The stream of historic orthodoxy that once watered the evangelical soul is now dammed by a worldliness that many fail to recognize as worldliness because of the cultural innocence with which it presents itself.” [David Wells, No Place for Truth (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1993), p. 11.]
Principles and Methods
“Naomi instructed Ruth to keep this in mind when she presented herself to Boaz: ‘Therefore wash yourself and anoint yourself, put on your best garment and go down to the threshing floor . . . (Ruth 3:3). The point being made here is a very simple one. The Bible reflects what we all know to …
The Lewis and Clark of the Soul
“Lewis and Clark didn’t return from their trip and say, ‘Well, we didn’t find the Northwest Passage, but we did find ourselves.’ But that is the spirit of Bobo travel. Our travel dollars are investments in our own human capital. We don’t just want to see famous sights; we want to pierce into other cultures. …