So then first, what is this Overton Window? That window, named after Joseph “Wiki” Overton — who coined the phrase — refers to the range of ideas that are palatable, thinkable, acceptable, or otherwise within the pale, when it comes to public discourse. Outside the window, you’re just a hate-filled weirdo. In the area of …
Tolle, Leg It
In the aftermath of the Obergefell decision by the Supreme Court, a lot of Christian parents are reeling. They know they must do something, but what can they do? The decision was so high-handed, so arbitrary, so insolently rendered, that it would be easy to assume that there is nothing we can do about it …
The Red Light District of Euclidville
I have some random thoughts on some problems related to pornography. Porn constitutes a huge problem, but I have had an increasing and nagging suspicion that it is not the kind of problem that we tend to think. But before I begin, I want to anticipate and head off several slanders. The first is that …
Flatter My Heart, Three-Person’d God . . .
For many years I have taught that authority in a Christian home is to be found in Christ — not in the husband, not in the wife, and not in the two them together. The masculine perspective is not normative, and the feminine perspective is not normative. Both the husband and the wife are to …
The Reason We Are in the Back Seat is So That We Can Be Salt and Light
If incoherence were beans, or cheese, or sour cream, or anything like that, Obama’s executive DECREE on bathrooms in government schools would be at least a nine-layer dip. Incoherence, how do I not follow thee? Let me be unable to count the ways. There are too many. They come too fast. They are throwing them …
Deny Him Seventy Times Seven
I was recently asked how the radical ethic taught by Jesus — if someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two — relates to baking a wedding cake for a same sex mirage ceremony. And then shortly after that, I saw the meme off to the right floating around somewhere, and thought …
On Refusing to Live in Pinkletown
A little while ago, a few weeks back, we had a discussion here in this space about my insistence on using um, flamboyant and non-PC language when discussing the homosex phenom. We had a good time in that discussion, but we weren’t done yet. Let me appear to change the subject for a minute. In …
Seven Effective Strategies for Dealing With Lust
This post was originally published April 15, 2011. 1. Run away. Paul tells Timothy to “flee youthful lusts” (2 Tim. 2:22). Joseph employed this admirable technique when dealing with Potiphar’s wife (Gen. 39:12), and he did not know that in running from her arms, he was actually running toward a throne. This was not made …
Submission as the S Word
I recently saw a post about wifely submission online, which you can read here, along with some reactions to it on Facebook, which can best be described as yet another round of the vapors. Now I grant that there were certain rhetorical aspects of the original post that were infelicitous, but the central one appeared …
Hundreds of Dead Canaries
So then, I recently received an (indirect) question about my use of language that “demeans.” Why do I speak, for example, about “gay activists” as though they were the enemy, the adversary, the foe? And the answer is that in a very important sense, they are the enemy — as testified by their unremitting onslaught …