Thank you, politics. Without you, I wouldn’t even know any racial slurs. Ignorance is bliss, and I’ve been happy for a long time. But along comes politics, and I have to learn words I didn’t want to know. You would think that the number one rule politicians learn in...
Culture
Extravagant Music
While I was on the Israel tour, I had some great discussions about modern choral music with Aaron Greene. It’s always a thrill to find someone who likes the same arcane stuff I do, let alone someone who already liked it during his freshman year when I had never heard...
TNIV and NLT vs. Pretty Much Everybody Else On Something Kind of Important
http://www.gnpcb.org/esv/search/? q=gen%201:26-28
Turn Neither to the Right Hand nor to the… Wait… Mom, Which One is My Left?
I saved this whole article in my BibleWorks notes. Here are the excerpts I highlighted for use as a future sermon illustration: Not long ago, a team of researchers watched a 1-year-old boy take justice into his own hands. The boy had just seen a puppet show in which...
The Enlightenment Needs Religion like Fish Needs a Bicycle
Enlightenment rationalism has failed as a worldview. There’s just something missing. And some of the Enlightenment’s most redoubtable defenders are willing to admit it. Sort of. That’s the theme of Stanley Fish’s latest blog-column. He tells the sad story of Jürgen...
Forward this Blog Post to 8 Friends and I will Prove that Your Worldview Is Right
Neil Postman has pointed out that when the flow of information in a society has become a flood, information filters become increasingly important. We need mechanisms to distinguish good information from bad, useful from worthless. Postman’s prescience amazes me,...
Getting Obama Right, Left and Right
I can’t claim very much insight and experience when it comes to politics, but I can say that I’ve sensed that the right-wingers around me don’t have Obama pegged. They tend to view him as the socialist antichrist, someone who can do no right, the most dangerous man in...
One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish
I love Stanley Fish for his willingness and ability to see the bankruptcy of his employers. He regularly stands on the foundation which supports him and whacks at it with his prodigious intellectual sledgehammer. I admit I haven't read enough to see if he ever tries...
Linguistics, Homosexuality, and Friendship
Back in 2005, I wrote the following for the monthly newsletter I’m charged with producing: Touchstone recently dedicated its cover story to the disintegration of male friendships in American society. In the article, perceptive cultural observer Anthony Esolen noted...
Andy Crouch on Postures and Gestures
Over the last few months since work (and baby!) deadlines led me to drop Andy Crouch’s Culture Making, waiting to pick it up again some day soon, I’ve thought many times about his model for describing typical Christian cultural engagement. He sees four typical...
An Arresting Metaphor
J. Gresham Machen, in “Christianity and Culture,” Princeton Theological Review, Vol. 11, 1913. The elimination of the supernatural in Christianity—so tremendously common today—really makes Christianity merely natural. Christianity becomes a human product, a mere part...
Star Trek and Richard Dawkins
It was a beautiful fall day for a seven-year-old kid to be playing outside, but when I came back into the house my dad was watching people in weird pajamas striding around on a spaceship. That was 1990, I believe, and my first episode of Star Trek: The Next...