The function of that argument is purely internal. It's not an attempt to persuade others. It's not addressed to others. It's a therapeutic, self-help affirmation addressed to themselves -- a way of reassuring themselves that they're not being as cruel and unfair as it sounds. This mantra of self-assurance always includes a denial of personal responsibility: "It's not me. It's the Bible. The Bible is making me say these cruel things." Read more
"With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt-offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with tens of thousands of rivers of oil?" Read more
I thought "Gotham" was going to be the story of the lone hero bravely battling against the forces of corruption in the city. Instead, it's the story of how this lone hero comes to see that the forces of corruption have already figured out how to account for him. He's realizing that his incorruptibility might serve their ends just as well as if he were a willing accomplice in their corruption. Knowing that, what should he do then? Read more
"This is how the entire book works. They seek out every opaque piece of apocalyptic imagery in the Bible, assemble these into a seemingly arbitrary sequence (Revelation, then Ezekiel, then Revelation again, then maybe Daniel ...), and then cloddishly transcribe this imagery into an unimaginatively literal series of events. So if, in the authors' view, Ezekiel says that Russia and Ethiopia have to attack Israel then, by gum, that is how their story will go." Read more
Here are two options for Christians in America: We can be known for being the People Who Fight for the Legal Right to Refuse to Bake Cakes for Those We Think Are Wicked; or we can be known for being the People Who Feed the Hungry No Matter What. (Also too: 21st-century bomfoggery!) Read more
If we are to be "Bible-believing" Christians -- people for whom that scripture is, in any real way, authoritative or meaningful -- then we have to have some principle or set of principles that allows us to distinguish between the various passages we are picking and choosing to be authoritative and those we are picking and choosing not to be. Otherwise, we're just projecting our own preferences and prejudices into the text and then gleaning them back out of it through our self-serving, arbitrary selection of some prooftexts and our self-serving, arbitrary disregard for others. Read more
Some Thursday afternoon miscellany, including: Does Janet Mefferd say stuff like this on purpose? Glioblastoma multiforme does not care about your pious, irrelevant abstractions. Paranoid anti-government alleged cop-killer apprehended in Pa. as voters send paranoid anti-government cop-pension killers to Harrisburg. Plus, a resource for all your bidet-related questions. Read more
"I know it feels good to belong to a group, to feel righteous in belonging to a cause, but causing fear and pushing people away from gaming is not the way to go about doing it. Think through the repercussions of your actions and the people you are aligning yourself with." Read more
Pennsylvania's electorate contradicted itself yesterday. If it was right to reject Tom Corbett, then it was wrong to reinforce the Corbett agenda by increasing the Corbett majority in the state legislature. If it was right to strengthen the Republican hold on the state legislature, then it was wrong to vilify Tom Corbett. Read more
Maybe Jerry Jenkins' jarring refusal to maintain even the broadest, most basic consistency in his fictional world is some kind of theological experimental fiction. Maybe these huge contradictions and massive continuity errors are actually his literary attempt to convey a world in which divine grace has been withdrawn -- taking with it the consistency, coherence, logic and non-contradiction that we now, by God's grace, take for granted. Read more
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