Canadian artist and author Michael O’Brien discusses the “soft totalitarianism” of secularism’s “friendly dragon.”
Walker Percy once wrote about the Western writer’s tendency to what he called “Solzhenitsyn-envy.” Percy’s witticim is tongue in cheek, and insightful, but it begs a deeper look: Why is the envy there in the first place? Why would one envy a suffering, persecuted man?
Ignorance of the Bible’s very consistent architecture has led to the assembly of many well-meaning but errant doctrinal constructs over the centuries. With reference to it, however, the conflicts are made plain. Our own towers to heaven, however historic they might be, and however cherished, must be torn down.
An excerpt from a new book, Metropolitan Manifesto, by Rich Bledsoe.
Institutions say they want change, but this is at best a schizophrenic desire. Change requires pain and nobody wants pain.
An excerpt from a new book, Metropolitan Manifesto, by Rich Bledsoe.
The ancient and pagan world was conquered by martyrs. Can modernity be re-Christianized by anything else?
Why You’ve Been Duped Into Believing The Myth That The World Is Getting Worse and Worse
by J. D. King
A former colleague disclosed his anxiety about the violence in the Middle East. Of particular concern for him were the brutal onslaughts against Christians by an organization known as ISIS. This terrorist organization that began as part of al Qaeda in Iraq has spread throughout Arab world. It has beheaded and brutally opposed anyone who differs from their fierce form of Islamic Fundamentalism.
“Based on covenant history, the fact that God’s words now enrage His enemies is not a sign of failure. It is a sign of their imminent doom.”
With same sex marriage now legalized in many Western countries, and militant Islam ravaging the East, Christians might be wondering what God is doing. With the repeated failure of predictions of an imminent second coming, is the Bible any help to us at all in predicting what will happen next? I believe it is.
(Recorded October 2013)
“We are not things.”
George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road is a two hour chase movie. It is also, unwittingly, a bold portrait of biblical feminism.
‘Stories are equipment for living.’ – Kenneth Burke
Blog gurus tell you never to blog “off brand,” but this one’s not as off as it might appear.
If you love the Bible and haven’t read Robert Alter’s The Art of Biblical Narrative, you really need to. One of the reasons for the Reading the Bible in 3D seminar in April was to help people understand that the tools they gain from watching quality movies and TV and reading good fiction should not be shelved when reading the Bible. Sadly, it seems most Christians really aren’t interested in understanding the Bible in a new way. They are taught by ministers who have little idea of what they are actually dealing with in the Bible, and the ministers were trained in Bible academies ruled by men without an ounce of the childlike imagination the Bible requires to be understood. Consequently they miss the beauty, the musical rhythm, the intricacies and the constant use of “plant and payoff”, all of which are understood by the best authors. This includes screen writers, who have to say everything the writer of a novel says but in less words. Robert McKee writes:
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“I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser.” John 15:1
One of the problems with exalting Enlightenment thinking over the Scriptures is that it disconnects theology from the real world. One is left to wade through and deal with the sometimes stimulating but mostly irrelevant tomes of philosophers who jettisoned our only source of light. The main reason modern Christians need to be up-to-speed on philosophy is to deal with godless philosophers in terms they can understand. I don’t consider myself to be up-to-speed, but from what I have read, many if not most of the questions they consider to be profound are really just the shadows left once Jesus is locked out. The average man has more pressing matters to contend with, and subsequently has a better grip on real life. For instance, we can spend hours swatting every available philosopher and lawyer on the existence or nature of natural law, and interact with all of them, or we could just ask the man on the land.
This post has been slain and resurrected for inclusion in my 2015 book of essays, Inquietude.
Bible Matrix blog
