| LITERATURE
Hostile
Witness: Approaching Literature with Christian Discernment
"Suppose
I asked you to read a book whose pages were sprinkled with
murder, rape, incest, adultery, mutilation, blasphemy, idolatry
a virtually inexhaustible catalog of human sin? Perhaps
you would take offense."
DIATRIBES
No
Shame
"Christians have learned
too well how to live with themselves. We have lost our sense
of shame. True, the whole world has lost it—but being
in the majority comes as no comfort to the believer, who is
called to a higher standard."
Getting
In Touch With Our Feelings
"The magic bullet is epistemology,
how we know things. Rationalists say we gain knowledge through
reason and logic. Empiricists say we know things through our
senses. Both views have their merits, but how do we account
for things beyond human reason, or things that are real and
yet cannot be ‘sensed’?"
The
Rule of Faith: Why Protestants Shouldn't Be Afraid
of Tradition
"When it comes to tradition,
today’s Christian sees no baby, only bathwater. Paul may have
instructed Timothy to hold fast to the tradition entrusted
to him, but we aren’t having any of that. People who embrace
tradition end up swinging incense burners and praying to the
saint of the week."
The
'R' Word: What's Wrong with Saying 'Religion'?
"Not long ago I heard
a radio interview with a modern-day witch. It was half campy
send-up, half New Age solipsism. The witch was there to 'raise
awareness' and the interviewer was in it to have some fun.
Along the way, I learned some things."
The
Big If
"Christians
have pretty much given up. Not only have we abandoned the
culture our faith established and shaped, but in setting up
our own alternatives, we have taken our cues from the apostate
example we left behind."
Love
Will Keep Us Together
"When Philip Sidney began
his epic sonnet sequence Astrophil and Stella with
the lines, 'Loving in truth, and fain in verse that love to
show,' he was only saying what everyone who loves has felt
before: the frustration of putting his deepest feelings into
words."
Everybody's
Got A Choice
"Last
night I found myself pacing along the riverfront. Up ahead
was a lone tree, stripped by winter of its leaves, and down
among the roots I saw a man crouched. As I approached, I mistook
his activity for prayer." |
THE
CHRISTIAN MIND
The
Legacy of Inconsistency: A Defense of Hair-Splitters
"One of the immutable
laws of the universe is that in every theological discussion,
there will be at least one hair-splitter (and a really good
discussion requires at least three of them)! All of which
leads the layman to ask, 'Why bother? Aren’t these things
too trivial to merit discussion?'"
A
Reasonable Faith: A Few Things Athens Can Teach
Jerusalem
"One
thing Athens can teach Jerusalem is the value of a gadfly.
This is a hard lesson to learn. Socrates was the
gadfly of Athens, the man who pestered the brave and beautiful
with inconvenient questions, the man who cornered people in
the streets and wouldn’t let them pass until they had given
an account of themselves."
The
Christian Mind Under Siege
"If
there is one duty we do not take seriously enough, it is care
for the Christian mind. Instead of cultivating a habit of
profound, regenerate thinking, the Church today is too often
guilty of passing off anti-intellectualism as spirituality."
THEOLOGICAL
The
Resurrection of Orthodoxy
"No longer is the individual
believer bound by any creed or confession. He is free to believe
that the Bible means whatever he wants it to mean—and anyone
who challenges his interpretation is, at best, splitting hairs,
and at worst, tearing down his fellow Christians."
Beautiful
& Supernatural
"He
gave me one of his long, considering looks—and to be honest,
I squirmed under it, expecting the inevitable ‘deep’ question
that always followed these ponderous looks of his.
He made me wait a moment longer than was comfortable, and
then came out with it. 'Do you believe,' he asked, 'in the
supernatural.'"
Bought
with a Price
"The Lord redeemed
them, but they never accepted or appropriated that redemption
by faith, and therefore they were not actually saved. To support
this reading, we must maintain that redemption is not synonymous
with salvation, and it is possible to be 'redeemed by the
blood of the Lamb' and nevertheless perish."
Freedom
from God?
"Christians today, myself
included, talk about 'free will' as if it were the first article
in some spiritual Bill of Rights, a document protecting sinners
from unwarranted interference in their lives. But the Bible
doesn’t speak in terms of man’s freedom from God. Instead,
Scripture describes man’s will as fallen, not free."
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