Suppose for a moment you deeply disagree with a friend or family member. What do you do? Imagine that the family member or friend does something bad. How do you handle it? I know I don’t know, but I know things I have done that haven’t worked or been wrong. Given the Christianity that formed my childhood, the easiest thing for me to do is forget it. I was “moving on” before there was a moveon.com. God and my pastor... Read more
A joy of blogging and Facebook are the thoughtful people who respond to what you write. Trolls exist, but they like all trolls they can mostly be ignored and left living in their basements working out their impotence in socially harmless ways. More common is a person with a different perspective who teaches me how I sound to those who do not agree. I never stop learning from such wise folk. One of my best correspondents is a person I shall... Read more
We are being told by people who should know better that making the “morning after pill” over-the-counter is a “matter of science.” Those of us who oppose this cost cutting and convenient measure must be “anti-science.” If one cannot get a cheap abortion as easily as exfoliant, than science is being assaulted! This is either ignorance of the Honey Boo Boo watching level or a falsehood told by powerful people who think they will not get caught. Here is what nobody disputes:... Read more
This year I supersaturated in Charles Dickens to celebrate his bicentennial and used his Christmas Carol as part of my jollification. Whatever the state of Dickens’ soul, and no man can judge, he lived in a pervasively Christian country. His books are shot through with references to the Faith and he assumes the Christianity of all but his Jewish characters and that appeals to Christian ethics make sense to his readers. Secularists have a poverty of writers before the nineteenth century, so they... Read more
Scrooge repents. He repents even though he is unsure of salvation. He is sorry for his misdoings and no longer attempts to bargain with Justice. He accepts that he is wretched and does not just retreat from selfishness, but to positive charity. C.S. Lewis made the point that too many of us confused unselfishness with charity, but charity, as he points out, is a positive virtue while unselfishness is merely getting rid of a vice. A husband may be utterly... Read more
We discount Scrooge’s sins too steeply if we make him merely stingy. Scrooge’s stinginess made him a bad neighbor and subject of the Crown. This was his chief sin and the Ghost of Christmas Future reveals that the City is better off without him. His story is the reverse of that of George Bailey: it was a Horrible Life chiefly because his absence made the community better. Mostly, Dickens lays the blame on his “worldly mind.” Secularists need not become... Read more
Christmas Carol has targets in mind and it isn’t Ebenezer Scrooge. Charles Dickens is after Ignorance and Want. Nobody, even Mr. Scrooge, is in the Ignorance and Want Lobby, but Dickens knows that many of us support both without intending to do so. My vices, small in themselves, added to the vices of my neighbors, can destroy a community. Dickens knew a people dedicated generally to Christian morality, which he took for granted, would generally fail in their moral ambitions, but... Read more
Ebenezer Scrooge has refused to make merry on Christmas and so Christmas jests with him. Sinners are always serious when they should be merry, and trivial when they should be serious. Christmas Past reminded Scrooge of chances missed and Christmas Present will teach him of opportunities about to be squandered. The Ghost of Christmas Present is really the Ghost of Christmas Soon to Be. One cannot actually live in the present . . . one can seize the “day” (to... Read more
Unlike Ebenezer Scrooge, the memories of my Christmas past are happy. My parents worked hard to give us a holiday centered in Jesus and full of jollification. We went to Church, watched Christmas specials on television before video gave us even more control of our media lives, and practiced the American rituals of the season. They never pretended there was a Santa, but we enjoyed the Santa myth as fairy story. (Read Frank L. Baum on Santa!) Ebenezer Scrooge had... Read more
The murder, abuse, and suicide of a NFL player has brought all kinds of emotions into our national discourse. Some blame the “violent game of football,” but studies don’t seem to confirm that players are made more violent off the field. Some blame our “gun culture,” but the increasing rates of violence in the United Kingdom, which has strict gun control laws, and many other studies seem to challenge that idea. So maybe, but isn’t there another possible cause? What... Read more
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