We have a short attention span. We like to think of ourselves as current with everything; we are, after all, modern men. But, to use Andrew Lytle’s striking phrase, we are not modern men at all, but actually momentary men. We careen from one thing to the next, thumb on the remote. Our presidential debates …
Defining Our Days
Most of us learned in high school that nature abhors a vacuum. When a vacuum is created, it takes concerted effort to keep it a vacuum because nothing always tends to fill up with something. The principle is unexceptionable, but we can still be surprised from time to time at the ways in which the …
What Would Jesus Damn?
I hope it is possible to say this with all reverence, but Jesus was a tough customer. Contrary to popular opinion, the Lord of the gospels was not the original flower child, and He did not come in order to make us all feel better about ourselves. The image that many have of the Lord’s …
Grace Has No Handles
Grace has no handles and is impossible for sinners to pick up. But grace does have hands and consequently has no difficulty picking us up. As long as we cling to our very natural (and sinful) tendency to have some kind of righteousness that we can call our own, this is impossible for us to …
Ghost Town Denominations
As the ancient preacher pondered the futility of our existence here under the sun, one of his complaints pointed to the problem of inheritance. Each of us will die, and each of us will leave behind us the fruit of our labors. And who knows, the preacher wondered, whether these heirs will be wise or …
Not Whether, But Which
Next time you are shut up in the house — say it is a rainy day with nothing much to do — a pleasant and instructive afternoon could be spent with a world atlas. The cartographical exercise I have in mind would perhaps reveal something about the world which is well worth knowing. While staring …
Timelines and Gaps
A wag once commented that the difference between Americans and Englishmen is that Englishmen think that one hundred miles is a long way, and Americans think one hundred years is a long time. And of course in one sense a hundred years is a long time, or, put more accurately, time enough. Much can happen; …
Parish
In his lectures, George Grant has recently been highlighting the remarkable work of Thomas Chalmers, the great Scottish theologian and preacher of the last century. At the center of that work was the concept of “parish.” We frequently start our discussions at the wrong end. Say for example that we bring up the issue of …
The Great Knox
In the providence of God, John Knox was a nation builder. But he was emphatically not what we would call a political operative. He was no coalition builder, no maker or shaper of consensus. He knew nothing of polls, but if he had, he would have despised them. He probably never took a personality test …
A Culture’s Prow
We live in a time when most believers have less understanding of the cultural impact of preaching than did some unbelievers of another era. For example, Herman Melville once wrote, “What could be more full of meaning? — for the pulpit is ever this earth’s foremost part; all the rest comes in its rear; the …