I saw an insightful cartoon a number of years back. Somebody was done up flamboyantly — I forget how, whatever was outré the year of the cartoon — and walked past a mother with her children at the mall. The mother, ever mindful of good manners, corrected her children earnestly. “Children, don’t stare.” “But, mom …
Not Counting the Barnacles
Okay, I am a Protestant. I get that. This is why I believe there are many things wrong with the papacy, and that is not even counting the barnacles. But hope springs eternal, and every time a new pope is selected, a lot of people — including Protestants who should know better — start yearning …
To Curvet and Simper in the Pulpit
The sodomy challenge — and all related sexuality challenges — present us with a glorious opportunity. It is a glorious opportunity that the Spirit has cleverly disguised as a real hazard to our future comfort and well-being. For the gospel is a troublemaker. Let me explain that first and then come back to the sodomy …
Poking at a Dead Bird with a Shovel
He who defines, wins. He who successfully redefines, wins. And this is why Christians are not faring well in the current battles over homosexuality. We will not reverse this trend without some imaginative warriors. Not only do our adversaries want to redefine marriage, they want to do so because they have already claimed the right …
The Love Child of Baghdad Bob and Tokyo Rose
In The Ballad of the White Horse, Chesterton has a great line about the men who will come to threaten the West in the future, men who work “by detail of the sinning, and denial of the sin.” As Chesterton put it in another context, to be wrong, and to be carefully wrong, is the …
On Learning to Hate Their Dog
I want to thank you all for your kind invitation to address a recent dust-up in the blogosphere. It is not often that I get to discuss things like this. Thabiti wrote a good article here, which elicited boatloads of comments, and so he followed it up with more here. Jonathan Merritt thought that the …
A Wireless Kingdom
In conversation with a friend this morning, a thought came to mind that I thought I would pass on. We were talking about the world in which things like twerking and Miley Cyrus can happen — the realm of pop culture and all the bubbles floating around it. And every bubble that floats by right …
Challenging a Young Man’s Ten Assumptions
This is a rough outline of remarks I gave to the young men of New St. Andrews. Those of you who have been here for a while know that we strive to live in community in a way that cultivates a garden of grace. We know that law doesn’t have the power to enable you …
The Hamfisted Jackboot
So the Supreme Court of New Mexico has determined that a wedding photographer does not have the right to decline a job shooting a homosexual wedding ceremony. This is obviously a hamfisted jackboot, to coin a phrase, but there are a few nuances that we believers have to work through. Because we have refused to …
The Humpfest Masquerade
Those Christian activists who are laboring — God bless them — for some kind of “equal time for Jesus” arrangement are not on a fool’s errand. It is worse than that. They are in a fool’s war. “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; That put darkness for light, and light for …