We are simultaneously in a time that celebrates passion, but is pushing technology on us that reduces genuine passion. Whatever your deeply held feelings are, as long as you harm no person but yourself, then you will be celebrated, if you can also claim happiness. What about the spiritual happiness of Plato, Aristotle, Jesus, the Bible, and the Fathers and Mothers of the Church? Forget it. There will never be silence enough to reflect or empty time enough to think.... Read more
Just tomorrow reading through the Bible for the year will bring me to books of the New Testament. With fewer than four complete months left in 2016, I am reminded how much the Bible depends on the Old Testament and how beautifully the New Testament harmonizes with the Old. After you meet Jesus, then you see Him in the Creation, walking in the Garden, eating with Abraham under the oak trees, standing before Joshua as the Captain of the Lord’s... Read more
We know what to do, but few seem willing to do it. Education needs to return to eternal ideas and reject repeating yesterday. We desperately require entrepreneurs and innovators, but our 1950’s style education model is administration directed where innovation is a “problem.” Worse are schools in the grip of innovation for the sake of some favored ideology whether in the fundamentalist religious schools or the politically correct secular school. Education requires wonder and wonder dies when we know all the answers or... Read more
“Fake it until you make it” sounds like bad advice. Pretending to something you do not have is bad, but I think the advice is sound if understood as this: carry on, do your duty, until your feelings match your actions. Don’t pretend, because pretending is dangerous, but do carry on with virtuous deeds even when virtue seems foolish. As always, however, God will use even our errors to bless us if He can. God chose to give us free... Read more
Christians need to stop attacking happiness. I don’t know how it got started, but sometime in my teenage years (so long ago that Scooby Doo was new programming) pastors starting attacking happiness and telling us we needed joy. Since I was a CS Lewis fanatic, this first seemed cool (Surprised by Joy) and then confusing. The inner longing that Lewis describes as joy does find resolution in God, but as Pilgrim’s Regress argues, only by passing away. Joy, as CS Lewis uses it, leads... Read more
My Mother likes to tell us about the noble effort of the town of Clendenin, West Virginia, to stop spitting outside the Smoke Shop. They put up a sign that said: “Do Not Expectorate,” since a sign that said: “Do Not Spit” would have been vulgar. Needless to say, those old boys at the Smoke Shop would lean on the sign spitting. Do not be confused: they knew. Mountaineers are always free . . . as the state motto says. There... Read more
There are only one hundred days until Christmas and I can wait. This is not because I do not love Christmas, but because I do. Christmas is coming, the holiday will happen, and all of it is coming soon! I was never tempted to peek at my Christmas presents. My parents told me where they were, more or less, and my greatest fear was spoiling the surprise. Perhaps this is why I have never understood certain objections to God’s “hiding.” We see God’s... Read more
Stealing another person’s work is bad enough that it can damage a Presidential campaign, ask Joe Biden. Creating anything is hard enough without the fear that an intellectual or cultural pirate will hoist his flag over your creation. There is money to be made with a great art work and so the temptation will never end. Christian publishing and ministry is rife with stolen credentials, unacknowledged ghost writing, and plagiarism. There is a more deadly form of plagiarism . .... Read more
Some Bible names are everywhere: forms of John and Mary have gone global, but at least in the English speaking world I have yet to meet a man named Nahum. He was God’s messenger called to take on the power and corruption of an imperial power: Nineveh. We ought to remember Nahum just now because his story and message give us hope. The Church of God around the world is being persecuted. In Syria, one of the first homes of... Read more
Napoleon seduced much of Europe to his Empire by speaking of liberty, equality, and fraternity. He was a grand leader capable of making artists, academics, and artisans forgive his faults for his vision. Napoleon would bring freedom through the force of his personality, his star, and his will to power. He made many men feel lucky to serve him and the rest fortunate to fight him. The British, who exhausted themselves to defeat this tyrant, still admired him and sent... Read more
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