"Another such god is the god of the republicans and democrats--the god of civic religion and prayer breakfasts. This god would have been happily served by a pragmatic pagan like Cicero. This is the god to whom some want to offer prayer in the government schools. Such prayers … [Read more...]

"Our culture swarms with little gods, like the frogs of Egypt. But the gods of Egypt do have the advantage of being relatively easy to identify. They are gods of antithesis. The gods of synthesis, the gods of gray and off-white, the gods which sidle up next to you in order to … [Read more...]

"Say we are dealing with a young man who has dyed his hair purple. I am giving him counsel and I tell him (as I would tell him) that this was sinful. He would want me to look up 'purple hair' in my concordance and show him where the Bible prohibits it. But this is as unreasonable … [Read more...]

"Debates with Christians who embrace pop culture are frequently hamstrung by the tenacity with which they insist on discussing the audible sound only, and never the actual meaning of the word. Modern evangelicals have a clear eye this way; they have a true imitative genius. They … [Read more...]

"But because of an immature 'all or nothing' mentality in the evangelical world, as soon as anything is pronounced not inherently sinful, everybody rushes off to splash about in their Christian liberty, about which more later. And this is why the evangelical world today is … [Read more...]

"For example, in the fifties, when something became hot, something on the order of hula hoops, everybody had to have one. And they had to have on because they had to be like 'all the other kids.' But snookered by our new consumerist culture, we now see that everybody has to have … [Read more...]

"'This is a a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church' (Eph. 5:31-32). Those who want the formation of this great mystery to be reeduced to a simple checkoff list want something that cannot be. For those who have no hands, wisdom has no handles" (Future Men, … [Read more...]

"Unless wisdom governs, words are like proverbs in the mouth of a fool -- like the legs of a crippled man (Prov. 26:7). So it doesn't matter if it is called courtship, biblical courtship, or covenantal dating. What matters is more intangible. Unless wisdom governs, as I am fond … [Read more...]

"Fathers who want to control the details of their sons marrying are, ironically, behaving in a way that will make a very poor husband out of any son who puts up with it. When a man marries, he is stepping into headship and responsibility. He cannot do this well if he has never … [Read more...]

"All this is serious business, but it should not obscure what is being done. The Christian faith does not say no to a young man's sexual urges just to be a killjoy. Rather, it is more like a mother telling her son that he cannot have a bag of chips half an hour before dinner. She … [Read more...]