The Lord Jesus compares His followers to two things, salt and light (Matt. 5:13-14). Salt that loses its saltiness is despised by men, and as a consequence is walked on. Light that is hidden from men is not something they respond to at all—because it is hidden from them. So we either have a no …
Love and Loyalty: A Meditation on the Fourth
The other day I tweeted this, and it drew more than the usual number of comments, and I thought I needed to develop it. Here is the tweet. “Feel uncomfortable at a patriotic worship service? Don’t feel superior if you would also feel uncomfortable at a Fourth of July parade.” The comments were mostly generated …
Uplift and Sunshine
This article is long enough and ignorant enough to be pretty tedious, but if you want to know how “what passes for journalism these days” is dealing with issues over on what they consider to be the Hard Right, you need look no further. “Throughout Scripture,” Leithart declared in a passage from his 2012 book …
Aluminum Deniers
A couple of posts ago, I said that limited government was absolutely dependent upon public virtue. Here’s why. It all goes back to Burke’s “little platoons.” Raw individualism is not the opposite of the collective. It is what makes the collective possible. The collective likes it. The Hive can handle a pothead bee. The collective …
Sanctuary and Parish
I have written before on the ideal relationship of church and kingdom, comparing it to the church at the center of town, and life in the kingdom fanning out into the parish from that center. Word and sacrament are at the center, and they shape and form the lives of believers outside the sanctuary, but …
The Next Big Thing
Those who pay attention to the progress of their sanctification have long noticed the optical illusion of spiritual regress. By the end of his life, after decades of faithful service to Christ, the apostle Paul saw himself by that time as the chief of sinners (1 Tim. 1:15). The more you learn, the more you …
A World of Admin
In my previous post about coercion, in which I did not have very much good to say about it, I mentioned that oppression and injustice is able to work because of its respectability. Lewis made a very similar point in the preface to Screwtape. “I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of “Admin.” …
Answering Some Ire Fire
One of my recent points, and one that drew some ire fire, was my contention that liberalism is inherently and tyrannically coercive, and that liberals, by advocating the programs of liberalism, are thereby advocating coercion. Not being an anarchist, I believe that some forms of coercion are good and necessary, but because I also believe …
Getting Lost in the Deep Weed
I have written before on the sinfulness of recreational marijuana use. In an appendix to Future Men, entitled “Liberty and Marijuana,” I argued that the one use for alcohol that is prohibited in Scripture is a condition remarkably similar to the effects of marijuana — and to the extent that there is a distinction between …
7 Thoughts On Becoming a Better Hater
My resolution for the new year to become a better hater. But I suppose this requires at least some explanation before itemizing the ways I propose for improving on our hatreds. “The fear of the Lord is to hate evil: pride, and arrogancy, and the evil way, and the froward mouth, do I hate” (Prov. …