Early in my Christian life I was struck by a fascinating quote in C. S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letter #21. On the sin of peevishness, he wrote, Men are not angered by mere misfortune but by misfortune conceived as injury. And […]
Theology
What Christian Reconstruction Gave Me
As everyone who investigates me online knows, in my 30s I was a Christian Reconstructionist. Part of the appeal of that to younger people in that era was the specific blueprints for society and personal action that seemed to fill […]
The Theonomization of Anabaptism
At the time of the Reformation, certain groups emerged which said that one ought to be baptized again [despite one’s infant baptism] when one came to conscious faith in Christ. Therefore, they were called Anabaptists, which means ‘again-baptizers’. But they […]
Did Jesus Give Us Our Individualism?
Patrick Deneen has warned that modern ‘liberalism’, which includes American style conservatism, has stressed the individual and dominion over nature so much as to weaken community. In trying to liberate the individual, the state, and for conservatives the market, expand to protect […]
Jesus Did Not Teach Universal ‘Acceptance, Tolerance, and Inclusion’
We are often told today that Jesus taught radical ‘acceptance, tolerance, and inclusion’. Well, he did open the door to many the Pharisees thought beyond hope, and on the other hand he excluded many of the Pharisees themselves. Let’s start with […]
James K. A. Smith and the Pentecostal World View
Is there such a thing as a ‘Pentecostal philosophy’? James K. A. Smith says there is. They don’t necessarily talk about it in ways we are accustomed to, but he says they have one. And here are its major elements […]
Heterosexual Cohabitation and The Church – After Obergefell
The historic church, evangelical, Catholic, and Orthodox, has taken a dim view of ‘cohabitation,’ which used to be called ‘shacking up’ or ‘living in sin.’ The faithful churches in fact generally try to deny the Sacrament to those in cohabitation. […]
Some Things People Can’t See or Understand Anymore
In my last post I wrote about how the secular mind can no longer understand the difference between ‘forgiveness’ and ‘tolerance-acceptance-inclusion’. Things like this are not a surprise; in 1Corinthians 2:14, Paul informs us that “The natural person does not […]
“Shared Intentionality” and its Implications
The ‘developmental and comparative psychologist’ Michael Tomasello, an American who now works at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany, has come up with a concept called “shared intentionality” as a mark that separates humans from chimpanzees and bonobos [asserted in […]
Christians Creating Culture: Charles Schulz Did It
The last couple of nights I happened to watch two famous television specials on DVD: A Charlie Brown Christmas and It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. I pity any members of younger generations who have not seen them. Today people […]