An ancient error, that of pendulum swinging, finds that when the cognitive functions of man have been emphasized too much, the time has come to careen toward the passions. And when life under the tyranny of the passions becomes unbearable, which it always does, the error is to swing back to the life of pure …
Make Sure Its Liturgy, Not Liturgay
In a recent discussion with some men I made mention of the problem that I call “clogged filters.” Like a car going down the highway, the air available is the air the car is driving in, and so the air filter needs to be replaced from time to time. The environment we live in is …
His Last Ham Sandwich
A correspondent has asked me to comment on the “sin of homophobia.” What is my take on that? In order to address this, we have to ask some questions first. If someone asked us about the sin of eating pork, our follow-up question would be to ask what religion they were concerned with. Judaism? Isalm? …
Political Kabuki
On the tube this evening, I saw a couple of neocons surrendering on the question of homosexuals in the military. The top brass are starting to capitulate on it, Obama is going a whole lot slower than the homosexual activists want him to, but he is moving on it, and what passes for a right …
Nostalgia Is Not An Eschatology
What are we to do over Chrissie Hynde’s distress over the fact that her city was gone? And back when I was a kid, there was a singer named Joe South, who had a similar song — “Don’t it make you want to go home?” “There’s a six-lane highway down by the creek where I …
And From the Department of Creepy . . .
When I first heard the wowza reviews of the eye candy show in Avatar (from what I hear, Pocahantas with Blueskins instead of Redskins), the first thing I thought of was a passage from Lewis who, about seventy years ago, saw all of this coming. How long would it take for bent men to turn …
No, No, Not This Kind of Creep. That Kind of Creep.
Gore Vidal has come out with a ringing defense of Roman Polanski — he says the 13-year-old recipient of Polanski’s attentions (back in the day) was a hooker. And this makes everything better . . . how exactly? Polanski hired a 13-year-old hooker? And then drugs her? Most men who hire prostitutes just pay them …
Protesting Too Much
In my earlier post on Porn as Liturgical Corruption, I described a process whereby a minister who has a private problem with porn makes more and more room for his own compromises in his preaching. This is of course one response, but there are others. One commenter asked about such a man, one whose opposition …
Porn as Liturgical Corruption
This is just a short sketch of something that requires much fuller treatment. On top of that, this is a statement about just one aspect of this problem, and not an attempt to minimize the other problems that might be in play. Pastors are usually husbands as well, and this means that when a pastor …
Bottle Blondisity
Modern evangelicalism is a day-old doughnut, but this may require further explanation. We flatter ourselves by saying that evangelicalism is over here doing its thing, and American culture is over there marching to a different drummer entirely. If we are convicted by our sins and inconsistencies, we like to think that they are self-contained sins …