To love absolutely one must learn to say no to love. This is not a paradox since everyone can “love” more than one thing or person at once. To love one person is to give this beloved time and psychological energy making them unavailable to that other beloved. If I give myself to pizza totally, then the love of fitness will be squeezed out. On top of this, some loves are incompatible with other loves: you cannot love God and... Read more
I am told that Ayn Rand did not like CS Lewis. Yet having read Fountainhead over this Saturday*, I am convinced she should have given him more credit than she did. Her Fountainhead shares a theme with his That Hideous Strength. She loathes the “secondhander” … the man who loses his self by giving up self for the approval of other people. She sets up her hero, Howard Roark, as a man who lives selfishly. He lives for his own desires in pursuit of greatness in... Read more
True love is willing to wait for the beloved and in our broken world, love’s long game is the best strategy for peace. Hate and revenge get immediate results and so satisfy our desire to “do” something. The thing we do is evil and never works. Intent is the content of our morality and so no action based in hate can be truly moral. The hate may not be obvious, but in the vast interconnections of God’s cosmos, hate cannot... Read more
Racism. Dead African-Americans. Dead officers. These are bad things. The temptation is to use stronger words, but bad is perfect. The murders and centuries of slavery, Jim Crow, whitewashing, stereotyping, are a decent definition of bad. Thinking a problem is solved when the group impacted by the “problem” knows it continues is itself part of the problem. Everybody who is decent wishes racism was gone and it has not. Unconscious, unintentional racism (“those people”) is wrong. Being “color blind” is... Read more
My Nana was a strong woman surviving a childhood that would send most people spiraling into a dark place, yet my first memories of her are sitting on her sun-porch with her laughing. She was “Mrs. Cucumber” and I was “Mr. Tomato” and we were up to some nonsense. Whenever times got tough, she would smile and remind me that she had been through the Great Depression. She would gently point out that times had been very bad, nobody wanted them back,... Read more
Look at the cover of Consumer Reports and consider whether you should sign that loan document at State U. Every year tuition goes up, but the quality does not increase while student debt skyrockets. Why? Schools are wasting your money on vanity administrative projects, bloated administrative salaries, and programs most students do not use (sports, recreation, party planning). Worst of all, hundreds of thousands of dollars that the students borrow and come from parent’s savings go to consultants who study issues like... Read more
When I was a boy, I was sitting next to the collection plate during Sunday Service. Sadly, that day a normal offering went missing and I was the last person seen near the money. Dad was a pastor and a man of great integrity. When he heard the news, he brought me into his office and asked if I had taken the money. I had not and told him so. Dad believed me and then said that he thought that... Read more
There is nothing that can be done about it now. She is dead and buried in Jerusalem. Yet if there was something, anything, we could have done, somebody, somewhere should have done it. Humans did not, she died, and so Russia was lost. Elizabeth Romanov was a Grand Duchess, was a nun, did help the poor and the lost and so the Revolution killed her. A Revolution that begins by killing Elizabeth Romanov cannot prosper. And of course the Revolution would... Read more
Be of good cheer! If you are discouraged about the Presidential choices we have today, imagine picking from these candidates: a former Secretary of State who became the worst President in American history, a rogue Republican who knew little or nothing about the government and had an unfit temperament for the office, while a Know Nothing Party ran a former President whose name nobody can now recall. On the nation’s birthday, here is a thought from an American textbook: Let... Read more
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. How did such an obviously false rhyme get passed down to me on the playground?* Words are much more hurtful than getting punched. I don’t remember a single fight that still matters to me, but several slurs from elementary school still sting. When kids in Rochester called me “Reb” in fourth grade, because of my West Virginia accent, it hurt. A teacher said my accent would make... Read more
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In