My dad in eighty-three years of life has run into all kinds: saints, grifters, prophets, and madmen. One thing he taught me is that when all the weirdness is gone, there is death. A living human in touch with the divine and still living in the cosmos, religion and science united, will be both worldly and other worldly. Like the Lord Jesus, this person will feast with tax collectors and sinners, and yet also call us to holiness. He will remove no moral... Read more
God is not, in fact, the Great Mary Sue. A “Mary Sue” is an overpowered character that a hack writer uses as a stand-in for his or her own persona.* Writing a fictional character in our own image is tempting, even for great authors. Dickens works out his marriage problems in more than one novel and while Dorothy Sayers may not have been Harriet Vane, eventually married to her great detective Peter Wimsey, she bore more than a passing resemblance.... Read more
Reality may not be messy, but human understanding can be. We see partially, misunderstand mostly, debate continually, discuss endlessly, experiment constantly, examine universally. One joy of living is wondering and discovering. The good God allows us to grow through this school for our souls. Christians live by faith with uncertain yet reasonable beliefs. Nobody can claim more than this for any philosophy or religion. We live by faith, reasonably, passionately, hopefully. There is joy in our disagreement as one recent... Read more
If a group is small enough, say a group of American Christians in a small town with a charismatic founder, they can go awry. Why? Connection to the globe shows our peculiar institutions. The little group in one place, in one time, with one leader caught in that place and time, decide that they know all …when all they are doing is explaining what they wish to be as if it were so. This rapidly grows weird. Any sensible person... Read more
Let’s live based on the world around and in us. Fantasy, even high fantasy, is valuable as “what-if-ery”, but not as a final account of the truth, the good, and beauty. I loved fantasy novels as a boy, even groaners like Elfstones of Shannara, but never doubted that they were unreal. Science fiction, another literary passion, think Isaac Asimov or Ray Bradbury, had this advantage: it claimed a “could be.” Imagine the disappointment when after enough science reading, I discovered that science fiction... Read more
The new morality is too often the old immorality tricked out in pseudo-scientific language or backed with force. Many seem to assume there is something new under the moral sun, but there is not. Some wish vice to be labeled virtue. Worse men bully and hate. Vice cannot be virtue and we must love our neighbor. Christians must not defy the laws of nature and of Nature’s God, but we also will not bully or hate. Some confidently say, “Applauding... Read more
A good school knows when to quit. Of course, a good school starts by knowing what to do, how to do it, and who should be doing the job! The problem is that if a school is good enough, the mission can grow too large. The more we succeed, the greater the danger we will start doing other people’s jobs . . . only badly! A school cannot replace imaginative play, family, church, or social organizations. Most learning, especially formative... Read more
Classical education is education; everything else is a modification of the normal. Almost all American educational methods trace their origins to the splendid combination of Athens and Jerusalem. The result of Greek philosophy and Jewish revelation is the incarnation of education in Christendom: fully human and fully divine. There is nothing wrong with modifying a workable system, but good to know the nature of the system one is modifying. You cannot fix the operating system if you do not the... Read more
“Assuming” when I was a kid led to somebody, usually the fifth grade know-it-all, telling us “assuming made an ass out of you and me.” Annoying as he was the kid had a point. If you just assume what you wish to be true is true, then you will often be a fool. This kind of assuming is fatal: epistemologically fatal. Growing up one learns that the same word can have two meanings and in sixth grade hilarity can ensue.... Read more
Analysis of the race: This election, like most elections, hinges on the theology or philosophy of the current President and whether the public perceives it adequate to the times. An incumbent needs a narrative of why all will be better if he wins. This is generally true in democratic elections. If the President has a theology, a sense of the divine order and people believe he has a mandate from Heaven, a message that makes sense of our times, he... Read more
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In