“The Devil made me do it.” A cheeky television catchphrase from my boyhood begged indulgence, because the naughty acts could not be helped: “The Devil made me do it.” Nonsense. Devils exist, but if they make us do something, this is only because we gave them permission to act earlier. Devils are powerless against the Almighty, and those created in His Image need not suffer from demonic control. Like Sauron in Lord of the Rings, they can whisper and tempt,... Read more
To get us to adulthood, God speaks in signs to His children. He wishes us to think, is here to lead us in a personal relationship with His Spirit, and so is clear where He must be, but often is cryptic where we need space to learn. Jesus found two men wandering away from Jerusalem and instead of meeting their felt need, He met their deepest need. They were broken that He was dead, but only because they had misunderstood... Read more
The soil under my feet was yellow dirt with small rocks and the sky above me was blue, a simmering sun. The olive trees gave shade so I could look down toward the sea standing on the edge of a ruined Mycenaean palace. Just that moment, in the home of Agamemnon, shepherd of the people herded to Troy, I knew why men loved Zeus. He fit the scene: beautiful, fierce, civilization and ruin with the hope that something glorious and... Read more
One night my parents had a meeting, who knows what tedious committee work was up, but that meant Daniel and I would be exiled to the bedroom all evening. Mom, as moms like Mom do, made this most wonderful by taking us to the library and letting us check out loads of books, records of spoken books, and gave us all the snacks. Imagine an entire evening with Russian fairy tales, snack crackers, cheese, and sweet vinyl of Trumpeter of Krakow. ... Read more
Jesus once asked a man “would you be healed?” . . .an odd question until we recall that sometimes we have so built our lives around the quest to be healed, or even our disease, that being healed can be a problem for us. We have to consider: by now, after all our pain, do we wish to be healed? Odysseus: another man of sorrows, is presented with this dilemma. Homer has his hero spend twelve books finding a way through... Read more
Love is the greatest good, but even love can go wrong. Perhaps everything that has ever gone wrong for human kind is love done badly. Eve and Adam wanted a delicious fruit, knowledge, all good desires by themselves. They forgot their deeper relationship with God and His wise warnings. Love degenerated to desire. As the most powerful and enduring virtue, charity is the most dangerous. Twist charity, misapply love, and what is good does evil. (Lord have mercy on me... Read more
I asked for new voices and got some outstanding writers! Today we hear from the erudite James R. Harrington. James R. Harrington earned his M.A. in Ancient History at California State University Fulleron and is a member of the Torrey Honors Institute. James has been a classical educator in a variety of settings over the past thirteen years. He lives in Houston with his wife, Sharon, and their daughter. Harrington began with a series on shields in classical literature and now... Read more
Having killed millions, atheistic socialism finally found victims unwilling to die or at least able to resist the regime. As a result, in Eastern Europe and Russia, atheist socialism fell. Sadly, the brave dissidents did not “win.” Immediately, the sort of European who had agonized over “Ronald Ray-gun” went to the front of the victory parade and declared victory. Ryszard Legutko saw socialism, barbaric and brutal, fall due to the power of traditional religion, morality, and old values, then was... Read more
No idea is so good an ideologue cannot make it monstrous. An ideologue turns a good into the good and so makes an idol of an icon: a false god for a window to God. Perhaps, however, there is an ideology that can liberate humankind in our generation. Why would anyone wish to be ideological? Marx proposed we cannot help ourselves. We are all nearly blinded by ideology. Marxism proposed an “ideological man” – governed by the assumptions of the elite... Read more
Politics is everywhere. Try to think of one area where you have not run into contemporary politics in the last year. My church is liturgical, so unless the fall of Constantinople is still an issue, things have been fairly politics free, but I am better off than most people. Other areas of interest have not been so lucky: sports, literature discussions (even from Ancient Greece!), theology, have all become more political. Some political discussions are necessary in a field like... Read more
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