Part of teaching gifted and talented students over the last thirty years (!) has been making observations. Here is one: students get the main point of a chapter, but often do not know the meanings of most of the words. Try this experiment yourself. Read the following from Dickens’ A Christmas Carol: From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children; wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its garment. Now... Read more
Charles Dickens might save us from producing a Christian church ripe for destruction by zealots and revolutionaries. Before we get to how that is possible from a fellow long dead, and of questionable personal orthodoxy, understand what he did in his time. France wallowed in Revolution and Russia was consumed by it. England, Merrie Olde England, escaped, but barely. Charles Dickens did not save England from the Red Terror by himself, but he did more than his share. He was one... Read more
If there is a new Bill Buckley, his name is Hugh Hewitt. He is a calm and thoughtful voice and if he is partisan, then it is with good cheer. He bets his hopes and not his fears. I was (and remain) NeverTrump, part of the loyal opposition of Republican in exile from power. Hewitt chose a different path. While he was critical of our President during the primaries and election, Hewitt stayed the course based on several arguments. They... Read more
Dear Milo, I am not a fan. I could be a friend. You can check and see that I have opposed what you have said and done to date. Still, you are smart and have been hurt. You are a sinner, but then I am a sinner. You were hurt horribly, but yet you persist in speaking some truths. I hear a love for Jesus and His people in all the bluster, the hate, and the pain. Many of us... Read more
We are in difficult times, as we always are. The church needs revival, but the revival we need will not come with panic or demonizing our foes. We will not “win” by adopting a “by any means strategy” so becoming the people we fear, but by love, prayer, and work. A great failure of modern apologetics has been (God help me!) to adopt an “us versus them” strategy. Instead, we should have said that it is all of us versus... Read more
My wife took one of those social media challenges where you describe your husband. When asked my favorite food, she said: meat. This is true and by “meat” she meant bacon or beef or salmon or any other meat product up to and including Spam. I am not a medical doctor and I have never played one on television. As a result, I cannot say if fasting from meat for roughly fifty days will be good for me physically, but... Read more
When I was a boy, so long ago the New Atheists were young men, atheism was sold to us in many a science fiction book as freedom from the sexual repression that was killing us all. Someday, writers like Isaac Asimov promised, sex would be less of a mystery and a great deal more available. Meetings of atheists were proudly freewheeling. They were governed by “science” and “reason” so they were going to get rid of archaic sex rules. At... Read more
Chaucer did not wrote a book called Cranberry Tales despite what one of my students thought. Instead, he wrote Canterbury Tales, and then came to regret it. He said (translated from Middle English): Now pray I to you all that hear this little treatise or read it, that if there be anything in it that likes them, that thereof they thank our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom proceedeth all wit and all goodness; and if there be anything that displeaseth them, I... Read more
When Jesus was arrested, not many people covered themselves in glory, but one person in particular wasn’t covered at all. The historical records note: And a young man followed him, with nothing but a linen cloth about his body; and they seized him, but he left the linen cloth and ran away naked. This odd bit of history is only recorded by John Mark and so most scholars think the streaker was almost surely John Mark. When my dad named... Read more
I love Sherlock Holmes stories. On any given night, I go to sleep hearing Charlton Griffen read the stories to me. Somewhere in my heart, it is always 1895 and the game is always afoot. Thank you, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Oddly, this bright medical doctor went off into an odd mental corner. He became fascinated with Spiritualism and became an exceedingly effective debater for the cause. Doyle did an odd thing for a very decent reason. He was a... Read more
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