Well, it looks as though the Lord has been very kind to us on the health care monstrosity. Not only was He kind to us, He was kind to us through the instrumentality of the people of Massachusetts. Whodah thunk? Without getting into any rah rah republican stuff over this, which I don’t think I …
Panglossian Pipe Dreams
The catastrophe in Haiti is one that ought to challenge multiple cherished assumptions, but instead it is just providing us with a venue to put them all on display yet again. I have been to Port au Prince once, when I was in the Navy, and the abject poverty there, when everything was “okay,” was …
Earthly Clay on our Heavenly Boots
I want to begin by noting the importance of being loyal to a bunch of things — in every area of life. I do not speak of idolatrous loyalty, but rather a fierce kind of Chestertonian loyalty to the piles of stuff and collections of people that God surrounds all of us with. If we …
Like a Bee in a Barn
So I am sitting here with my solitary thought — that thought being like a bee in a barn — and I thought to myself, what good is an unblogged thought? If Scott Brown upsets Martha Coakley in the Massachusetts Senate race, I’ll take it. If he turns out to be the vote that defeats …
Whatever You Do, Don’t Reify Nothing
When I stand in defense of liberty, as I do, it is fairly easy for those on the Christian left to see and describe this as a concession to, or holdover from, certain Enlightenment ideals, owing more to Adam Smith than to the Pauline sentiment that where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is …
Warriors Not Thugs
“Marry, Sirs, if Merlin who was the Devil’s son was a true King’s man as ever ate bread, is it not a shame that you, being but the sons of bitches, must be rebels and regicides?” (That Hideous Strength). A fight, by its very nature, is not delicate. This is true in spiritual warfare, and …
And From the Department of Creepy . . .
When I first heard the wowza reviews of the eye candy show in Avatar (from what I hear, Pocahantas with Blueskins instead of Redskins), the first thing I thought of was a passage from Lewis who, about seventy years ago, saw all of this coming. How long would it take for bent men to turn …
The Future is the True East
We need to start thinking about church/state relations in eschatological categories. If we think of them in static categories, the Christian church will find it hard to avoid becoming reactionary. That kind of conservatism is the way of death. The Marxists know what they are supposed to be doing right now because they have an …
With Twice As Many Fireworks
Here is a small hodge podge of discussion starters for when you next divvy up your seminary class into small encounter groups. To head off your curiosity, they are all in praise of Christendom. 1. The radical two kingdom approach within the Reformed world represents a fundamental capitulation to one of the central tenets of …
A Conservative What?
Somebody, I think it was William James, once referred to the scramble for the good words. And because words go in and out of fashion, the scramble can get pretty tangled and pretty interesting. People get tired of the liberals, and so everybody wants to be conservative, whatever that means. When they get tired of …