To pick one of Calvin & Hobbes many high points, I would recall the time when Calvin was industriously pounding nails into the coffee table. His mother comes tearing up to him, screaming, “What do you think you’re doing?!” He looks and her and looks at the table and says, “Is this a trick question?” …
Vampire Guilt
Just a few more comments on the vampire deal. First, everything in this fallen created order “answers to” something unfallen, with the possible exception of hyenas. In other words, the dragon is the archtypical emblem of sly, crafty, rebellion — and this goes back to the Garden. Satan is that ancient dragon. If we read …
Vampires With Self-Control
Yesterday in my sermon I mentioned in passing some of the problems with Christians allowing their kids to “get into” the Twilight series. Since this is an outrageous eruption of inexplicable legalism on my part, I thought I ought to defend it. Here is a brief four point discussion starter, and perhaps there will be …
The Great Luge Run to Perdition
If you read through the linked article on homosexuals in ministry, you will find yet another example of what happens when professing Christians try to reconcile the plain teaching of Scripture with what their lusts are demanding of them. What to do? What to do? Why you “wrestle with the issues.” You grapple with them. …
Unleashing Your Inner Fundamentalist
Suppose that John R. Rice, during his Sword of the Lord days, accidentally took a couple hits of acid, and prophesied wildly about what would happen down the road if women quit wearing their hair in a bun, and started wearing slacks like crazy. Suppose he got really out there, and promised us all that …
Audio Reading of Post
Like Jello on a Plate
C.S. Lewis once wrote a short story (I think it was called The Shoddy Lands), in which a female character reveals herself to be utterly uninterested in anything but (I think it was) jewelery. I bring this up because I recall reading a reference to that story by someone else who took it as clear …
That”s So Gay
So follow this link and watch the three television commercials that are there. (HT: Frank Golubski) Okay, all set? In the first place, I am almost tempted to give my whole-hearted endorsement to such an ad campaign just for the pleasure of hearing modern adults tell teenagers to “knock it off.” No qualifications, no poor …
Our Bedlamite Riot
A friend sent me this link to a demolition job of Radical Orthodoxy. This is the kind of scholarship that makes you want to say something like “push ’em back, push ’em back, waaaay back!” I am glad we still have scholars around who have the ability (and the olfactory tolerances) to sift through steaming …
Making Hypocrisy Possible is a Cultural Virtue
Paul Begala has said that the GOP should stop lecturing everybody about sex — because of the hypocrisy recently manifested in the behavior of Sen. Ensign and Gov. Sanford. But this overlooks the important role of hypocrisy in every decent society. As it has been well observed, hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to …
Ten Reasons to be Glad that President Obama Pronounced June to be LGBT Month
For those just joining us, LGBT stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Trangender, and the proclamation can be found here. On another note, lgbt is the noise I make in the back of my throat whenever very solemn people do things like this. But here are ten reasons to be grateful for the small mercies …