The Botoom of the Pot

“I speak as a close observer of some conservatives whose worldview is made out of cinder blocks and cheap cement . . . That is a problem, sure enough, but in our age, it is not a huge one. The intellectual life of our age is characterized by a squishy goulash of subtleties all the way to the bottom of the pot, a farrago of pomothot, and the purveyors of this pomothot are often quite clever—they don’t hate labels because they can’t follow arguments. They hate labels because they can follow them, and those arguments get in the way of their lusts. Remember that the devil is a dialectician.”

Mere Christendom, pp. 15-16

Explosive Glory

“But we want to see You glorified now.
And deliverance that comes like a bolt from the blue
Would also be glorious, and Your name would be praised in it,
But I pray we might see this grace as its building.
Father, I pray for a gathering crescendo
That then reaches in glory a climax of wonder.
I pray that Your glory comes in like a thunderclap,
So that we might try to match an amen.”

21 Prayers, p. 106

Mild or Orgiastic

“The choice between secular options on the right is like a competition between a gentlemanly Epicurean and a rowdy one. The former walks at dawn in a manicured flower garden, contemplating chess moves and Rawlsian political theory, while the latter is more interested in crack cocaine and hoochie mamas. Without an overarching standard governing the two of them, we are simply comparing a longer life of nobler, milder pleasures, and a shorter life consisting of a blowout filled with orgiastic ones. But when we have to choose on those grounds, it is simply a matter of personal preference.”

Mere Christendom, p. 10