It has struck me in recent days that it is of little benefit to a child to teach them to seek success over learning and character formation. This is not a new realization, of course. Countless others know and have said the same thing. But it is an important thing to say again and to think about, however briefly. Recently I read Ross Douthat’s book Privilege, a memoir of the twentysomething Atlantic writer’s experiences as a Harvard undergrad. The book... Read more

New York’s City Journal has an excellent piece in the print version of the magazine on this topic (no link) entitled “Why Study War.” It’s written by the accomplished military historian Victor Davis Hanson and it is well worth checking out. Hanson is a Senior Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, a conservative, and a contributing editor to the conservative and provocative City Journal. I’m not going to do a walkthrough of the piece; that’s not really my bag. I will... Read more

No. They aren’t. But many of us get confused on this question, and begin to equate the two. Our witnessing thus becomes a recitation of the Lord’s work in our life. The Lord’s work in our lives is a marvelous thing, and should be shared whenever possible (and far more than most of us do, myself included!). However, the gospel is not the Lord’s work in our lives. The gospel comes into our lives and changes them, but the gospel... Read more

Don’t worry about me. I’m not becoming a psychological creature, one who chatters on about my steadily rising self-esteem and my considerably improved self-understanding. I plant my flag firmly in theological terrain, and unearth most of my answers from it. However, in the course of lots of reading of psychological material (for my job–psychologists are among the only people in society who talk/care about the well-being of boys), I’ve found something interesting. Psychologists appreciate people. They like people. They thus... Read more

Hello to the consumed contingent, all 21 of you. I’m back from a great vacation in Oregon, my first encounter with that marvelous state. Oregon has to be one of the healthiest places in the world. The air is crisp and light, cyclists seemingly outnumber car drivers, and being “green” is one of the highest compliments you can pay a peer. I particularly enjoyed the ocean (we went to Cannon Beach), the Nike stores (they stuck their capitalist claws into... Read more

— Matthew R. Crawford – “The preacher, Brother Wingfare, was a seminary student only recently established with his new wife in Port William – a pale, slightly plump, impeccable young man, very new to his profession, very eager to please both God and man, a difficulty of which he had not yet encountered either extreme” (150). One of the most daunting tasks for a new pastor is to preach a funeral, especially if the deceased was not a follower of... Read more

— Matthew R. Crawford — “10. Who among you fears the Lord and obeys the voice of his servant? Let him who walks in darkness and has no light trust in the name of the Lord and rely on his God. 11. Behold, all you who kindle a fire, who equip yourselves with burning torches! Walk by the light of your fire, and by the torches that you have kindled! This you have from my hand: you shall lie down... Read more

— Matthew R. Crawford — I just started reading Robert Louis Wilken’s The Christians as the Romans Saw Them. It is a fascinating book. Wilken is a church history professor at the University of Virginia who specializes in the early church. His book was originally published in 1984, but was recently republished by Yale in 2003. Wilken’s method in the book is to look at the early Christians through the eyes of their detractors. He examines the descriptions of the... Read more

— Matthew R. Crawford — In this post I hope to bring together the themes that I have discussed thus far as well as shed further light on them. Another book from my summer reading list is James V. Schall’s The Life of the Mind: On the Joys and Travails of Thinking (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2006). Schall is a Catholic who teaches government at Georgetown University, and he has written numerous books on education, philosophy, and related topics. The... Read more

— Matthew R. Crawford — Summer is the time for big blockbusters at the theater. Movies are fun, at least partially because they allow us to escape for a short while from our less-than-satisfying reality. However, movies also speak volumes about the state of the culture. Many conservative Christians sharply criticize movies with morally objectionable content because they think that such films will lead to the practicing of the type of sin displayed on the screen. Undoubtedly there is truth... Read more