David Wells recently gave an excellent address sponsored by the (Carl F. H.) Henry Center on preaching to postmoderns. He spoke in the ATO chapel at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Wells made a few comments about (American Protestant) Fundamentalism toward the...
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God Uses PHAT Christians
I once heard a sermon titled "God uses PHAT Christians." The preacher's acronym spelled out the following: Pure Humble Available Teachable/Trained Now don't try to guess who preached this sermon. I don't know. I keep a "bad sermons" file—simply because I want wild...
Thanksgiving
Last night my church had its annual Thanksgiving praise service. It's an open mike night, and I headed joyfully to the front to deliver this thanksgiving: I would like to give thanks to the Lord for giving me his favor in the form of a beautiful, godly new wife,...
Never Forget. You’re Reminded.
This kind of insight is the real reason I read the New York Times. I actually don't read the politics much. For American audiences a Holocaust movie is now more or less equivalent to a western or a combat picture or a sword-and-sandals epic—part of a genre that has...
Op-Ed Columnist – Obama and the War on Brains – NYTimes.com
Oh, Kristof! I've always liked you! Why do you have to think like so? An intellectual is a person interested in ideas and comfortable with complexity. Intellectuals read the classics, even when no one is looking, because they appreciate the lessons of Sophocles and...
Love for God, Not for Self, Should Be Ultimate
Even lost people can have their affections toward God raised high if they think that God is making much of them, says Jonathan Edwards. But the exercises of true and holy love in the saints arise in another way. They do not first see that God loves them, and then see...
Son, Say Something Nice About Your President-Elect!
Parents sometimes force a child to say something nice about the sibling with whom he just finished a death match. That is not the way John McCain spoke about Barack Obama, as evidenced by his gracious speech last night—and it's not the way I feel like speaking,...
The Quotable Wife
My wife was listening to an otherwise good sermon which happened to run afoul of my dissertation's thesis. We'd talked about the issue at hand (the definition of love) many times. As we passed each other in the hall, she said with a smile... "You've ruined my ability...
The Level of Political Discourse in Mass-Media
The past was supposed to be better than today. I'm a conservative, aren't I? Did you know that people in America used to memorize poems and read stuff longer than a blog post? Did you know there was a day when kids' brains weren't full of Hannah Montana—or Eminem, for...
Star Wars Philosophy Melange
Obi-Wan Kenobi delivers a line in the final Star Wars movie (III) which has achieved some level of fame. It appears 8,270 times on the Web, including as the name of a blog. Anakin has just informed him, "You're either with me, or you're my enemy!" Obi-Wan replies with...
Another debate without much religion » GetReligion
One of the best blogs I read is GetReligion. They give me a bit too much good material, but I do try to at least scan most of it. Their aim is to cover coverage of religion in the mainstream media (MSM, they call it). Incisive stuff. Last night's post on the...
Bob Jones University Unfairly Maligned
I track all mentions of "Bob Jones University" via Google Alerts. Many articles are critical or dismissive. Many are not. Some criticisms are deserved—we're sinners! Some are not. Check out the opening of this AP article, carried in SC's The State: Gay rights group...