A servant is not greater than his master, and so in principle we should always expect to get the same treatment that Jesus did. But because — despite being His followers — we are still tangled up in our own sins and failings, there is always for us a measure of deserving some of it. …
Surrender the Good Surrender?
Carl Trueman says a lot of good things here, and I invite you all to reflect on them. Having done so, I want to take this occasion to argue with his selection of one word, about which more in a minute. Trueman sees right through the posing of those Christians whose idea of “engaging culture” …
The Pride of Life in a Codpiece
As the bathroom wars continue to unfold, and as the advocates of totalitolerance continue to embrace the arts of coercion, as they continue to bombard us with ideas so fine they have to be mandatory, it has been natural for Christians to try to pivot. Perhaps we shouldn’t be opposing same sex mirage. Perhaps we …
21 Principles for the Christian Citizen
Because the teaching of the apostle Paul on civil authority is widely misunderstood and misrepresented, we need to review some basic principles. As we do, we need to remember something that Abraham Kuyper once said: “In any successful attack on freedom the state can only be an accomplice. The chief culprit is the citizen who …
American Jesus
So I have written about American exceptionalism before, and so let me begin with a quick review of my take in the first paragraph. Taken one way, the notion is just ten more pounds of idolatrous silliness. Every great nation at the top of its game — and there have been lots — knows how …
John Piper’s Saturday Night Special
In my response to John Piper’s post on guns, I alluded to some of the paradigmatic issues underlying the differences we have concerning what we should do with our guns — whether we should have them in the first place, and what direction we get to point them. One of the paradigmatic differences I mentioned …
Welcome the Child
One of the more notable features of the life of our Lord, as recorded in Scripture, is the fact that references to the outside world are overwhelmingly political. When Jesus was born, Augustus was Caesar (Luke 2:1) and Quirinius was governor of Syria (Luke 2:2). Herod the Great was ruler in Judea (Luke 1:5), and …
Masculinity as Cultural Gluten
As things continue to devolve, as things get ever more crazy, as our culture, to use that term loosely, continues to come unstuck, many believers have become discouraged, not knowing if there is anything they can do. Other believers have been eschatologically immobilized, thinking that these dire developments are just baked into their “last times” …
The Suicide of the West
The massacre in Paris has brought two things, already obvious, into high relief once again. We are observing, in slow motion, a collision between two very diseased cultures. The diseases are quite different but seem, in some respects, to be made for each other. One disease is listless and the other aggressive. One has no …
Principalities, Powers, and Pecksniffs
I have recently been listening through a collection of essays by C.S. Lewis, and have been having a wonderful time. I don’t have a long commute, three or four minutes is more like it, but it is amazing how much steak you can eat when you cut it up like that. I just recently finished …