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
Today is Daniel’s birthday. . . not the prophet, but my brother. My mother used to tell me: “Cherish your brother. There is nobody closer to you on the planet by blood.” She was right. Dan is not just my brother, but (to quote the Flintstones) my lifelong pal. The fact that he was calling Brexit a movement whose time was coming twenty years ago means you know he is smart, but he is also a good guy. Smarts he got from... Read more
A good man dies well, a great one makes his death matter. A leader looks after those around him right to the end. He will shift the focus from death to what comes next: eternity. The most human truth is that we are immortals in mortal bodies. Death, at least death as we experience it, is foreign to human nature as it should and will be. Jesus conquered death and so in the end humanity will be healed and death... Read more
A human reading this is going to die or is dead and is wasting the afterlife. Death is more sure than taxes and that is the surest thing not certain. Not all humans have died: Enoch, Elijah, and perhaps Arthur and a few others folk, but so many have that one need not plan on immorality. One good way of thinking about education is preparing to die well so that a good life is not ruined. You might learn to... Read more
There is a West Virginia expression: “He is so straight, he leans a little.” God help us never to be such jerks for justice . . . The jerk for justice takes a good cause, a noble idea, and bends his whole life around that idea until he makes the truth, the cause, or the idea loathsome to everyone. He isn’t wrong about his guiding truth, just wrong in how he allows it to swallow up every other truth. This... Read more
Justice is hard to find in these perilous times. if you are a Christian in the parts of Syria no longer controlled by the government, martyrdom and God’s justice on the other side of the sword are your only hope. If you live in parts of the world, the rich can buy justice while the poor have not hope of a voice in court. If you are an unborn human, the United States Supreme Court will not protect you. How... Read more
Picking a private school for your child or college for yourself is made difficult by marketing. Every Christian school looks good in the brochure and every Christian college shows you the best side of the program when you visit. How can you know if the school is right for you? One bad reason people pick for choosing a school is that it was good. Sadly, your grandfather’s teachers will not be teaching you. A school that had a strong mission in... Read more
God has “needs” . . . which seems odd. In the worst of the original series Star Trek movies (still better than any of the Next Generation films), the aging crew goes looking for Eden and God. Since this feels like the plot of half the original series television programs, I need not explain further except to say that when Captain Kirk confronts “God,” he discovers that “God” wishes to borrow his star ship. This proves the lack of omniscience in the being because... Read more
It was with great disappointment that I discovered that my birthday marked the Battle of Little Big Horn and the death of General Custer. Even greater disappointment came the more I learned about “cowboys and Indians.” I rode a stick horse around the house and yard in Clendenin, West Virginia, so often that the end grew dangerously sharp. I don’t know how many I wore out . . . and there was never a day from six to eight when... Read more
I have never taken John the Baptist as seriously as the Bible takes him. He was “the not Jesus” in the story, so he vanished in my imagination. This is odd since everyone else in the New Testament is the “not Jesus,” but even a fairly minor figure like Nicodemus played a bigger role in the Sunday School stories of my childhood. The Gospels do not agree with my Sunday School. To give just one example: the first part of... Read more
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