“A boy can seem to be developing into an almost rational creature, but then when girls come into the picture we see what might be called the catnip effect. One moment he is upright and strong, a most promising young man, and the next moment, after a glimpse of her, he is barging into furniture …
Troublemakers
“Girls cause a lot of trouble. If it weren’t for girls, we would have no moms, and if there were no moms, we would have no boys — and boys cause a lot of trouble” (Future Men, p. 135).
Scripture and Sports
“We must never forget that the Bible alone determines the boundaries of sin. Not once in Scripture is there a hint that athletic competition should be considered as immoral or sinful. The Bible, and not the traditions of men, determines the definition of sin. We have no more ground for saying that athletics [are] sinful …
Orc-talk Instead
“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 …