The truth is fearful, but we must be unafraid of finding and following the truth. My mom taught me this lesson when I was a boy as I watched her change her mind, consider her deepest ideas, and then act on them. Truth is unmoving and if you pursue it with care, you will (almost surely) find that you have been wrong or that even when you are right, you have been right badly. Mom just kept pushing on . . . not relentlessly,... Read more
The Handmaid’s Tale is one of those not very good books that many people think is a great book at least for a short time. I wanted to love this book, because I know if I do not love it, I will be dismissed. The cool kids love it. The kids I would like to be like love it. I did not even like it. There is a plot, but not much of one. There are some beautiful passages, but... Read more
My mother was at the School Feast on the last day of classes. It was a glorious party as we finished our first year educating kindergarten through college, ages 4 through 26. Mom, as wise women often do, had come with a good word. She pointed me to a passage in the Bible: 12 And it came to pass in those days, that he (Jesus) went out into a mountain to pray, and he passed the whole night in the prayer... Read more
M* asks: “How do you explain how any of Jesus’ disciples, who were most likely illiterate, as most simple people were back then, would have learned how to write in Koine Greek?” There are two ways to respond to any challenging question: one is to refute it by denying the premises in the question and the other is to concede the premises of the question and the truth of the conclusion, but show that the alleged problem still does not exist. Here... Read more
The funniest single bit of video I have seen in the last year was MST3K: Pumaman. Somehow I missed this Laff-Riot when it was on the air, MST3K was must watch television in those days, but now my children are watching it and I joined them. For those who have been deprived, MST3K is a chance for witty comedy writers to riff during a very bad movie. At its best, with films such as Manos: The Hands of Fate , cinematic straw is turned into... Read more
Listen to Hope. If you are married to Hope, as I am, then that is just decent human courtesy. No prizes, no insight here, just the sound ideal of treating another human being as you would wish to be treated. The thing about being married to Hope is that I think about Hope a great deal which without any better reason than her name has caused me to meditate on the virtue hope. “Listen to hope” turns out to be generally... Read more
One hundred days have passed in the Age of Trump. I did not vote for Mr. Trump, yet, for the next four years (God willing!), President Donald Trump is my President. I honor the office, if not the man. As an American, I am a member of the loyal (non-Democrat) opposition, but that does not mean I want the President to fail. Love of country is more important than any partisan disagreements. This means I am happy when the President... Read more
If you went to a hospital, you would assume the patients there want to get better. That might be true of most, but not all. Sometimes we learn to define our life by what is wrong with us. That is a problem and it is not a new one. Sometimes our sickness gets us attention, sometimes we have simply had the pain so long that it has come to be part of our day. What would I do if my... Read more
Recently, I had a chance to dialog with skeptic Michael Shermer. I hope it does not harm Professor Shermer’s standing in the atheist community to say that my wife and I enjoyed meeting him. Hope had a chance to see him at breakfast and enjoyed talking to him about his family. Watch the dialog and you will see why theists and reasonable people should give two cheers to Shermer. First, Shermer has strong views and argues for them boldly. There... Read more
Liberty is rare in human history if you are not rich, powerful, or in the right group. That’s a very sad truth, because for a Christian, the more liberty a society can maintain, the closer we have gotten to God . . . who is the author of liberty. Ideally, morality would be each person’s job, the laws would be written on our heart, and government could be tiny. That is not the world we have inherited or the world... Read more
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