Prayer probably works, even if you are an atheist. Prayer almost certainly helps the person who prays. Studies on the external effects of prayer are mixed. This is just what one would expect if Christianity were true. First, God is love and answers the prayers of all His children, even the heart cry of an atheist, when this is best. However, the cosmos is very complicated and interconnected, so one action often impacts billions of future events. As a result, Christians... Read more
Perhaps we can find someone to do some evil for us that good may abound or we can cheat, lie, or cut corners and once we win do some good with our ill gotten gains. Can a John D. Rockefeller pay off God by doing charitable deeds with his brutal gains? If Lenin builds enough schools, will we forget the millions dead in the Red Terror? What if the pirate builds a enough chapels, then is his piracy a good... Read more
A perpetual error of humankind is to think that knowing the future would help us prevent some evil. Start with Homer and realize that the men of Troy knew they were doomed, but could not act to free Helen and get rid of Paris. There are many reasons for this, somethings are willed by God, some are necessary due to natural causation, but human cussedness plays a large role. We do not need a curse on our Cassandra to ignore... Read more
I have been told Americans elect a president and not a pastor. This is true: no president as president baptizes children into the church! Even when we elected a former pastor as president, James Garfield, we did so not so he could preach or administer the Lord’s Supper, but to lead our body politic. Voters liked his background as a Christian minister, yet put him in office for civil service reform! I doubt, however, this is very controversial. What these folk seem to... Read more
Being honorable, at least in death, is a hard calling, but not one that is contrary to jollification. In fact, there is no true jollity without honor. I say this as one who must labor to restore honor. Having begun badly, I cannot hope to anything other than to end with more honor. To dishonor one’s people, family, or community is bad, worst of all for others, but also bad for self. The temptation is to despise honor and not strive, by God’s... Read more
Beware the temptation to find unity in hatred of a common foe. Shakespeare starts his Henry IV (Part 1) with the King advocating a Crusade so that fighting will be against “them” “over there” and not in England. Every death in a civil war diminishes the kingdom. There is no winning in such a fight, just minimizing the losses. The Crusade never comes off, because the Kingdom is in turmoil. King Henry faces two foes and fears that his heir, Prince... Read more
We need hope, badly. Is there hope for a happy ending in reality? Can a story begin “once up a time” and end “they lived happily ever after” really? Christianity says that we are in a divine comedy: history ends in a wedding feast. The structure of the “fairy tale” (a Christian invention) reflects our deepest truth: history turns out well. Hope is a virtue and not a cheat. This late Jewish and Christian truth defied Homeric religion’s hopelessness. Homer*gave... Read more
God save the swineherds. If you have read the excellent Prydain series, and you should, then you already have a fondness for pig keepers. The baths of Bath were founded, legend says, by a pig keeping British king who saw the benefits of the waters on the swine of the area. In the fairy tale The Swineherd, the wisdom of the (sort-of) swineherd teaches a princess Christian charity and humility. The Lord Jesus Himself has the prodigal in his parable of... Read more
The lure of secret knowledge destroyed Poe, warped Lovecraft, wounded Machen,and left Charles Williams less than he might have been. We might recollect the dead, pray for them, ask for their prayers, but it is never wise to seek them out. The Bible’s King Saul looked the part of king and fought hard to maintain his nation’s liberty against the more technologically advanced Philistines. He had some success, attracted talent to his court, and then grew jealous of his superstar commander: David.... Read more
Once I was asked how people managed to hang around Jesus and miss Him. Having grown up on fairy tales, a repository of sensible human psychology, this struck me as an odd question. People are always hanging around heroes and failing to notice that this is true. They are like the man in one of my dad’s churches that was always speaking on revival and praying for revival while failing to recognize that he was in a church in the... Read more
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