A Contemptible & Dangerous Attitude

  

Last week, we heard testimonies from a number of current and former Trump officials in regard to the accusations lodged against him in the Ukraine affair. Those testimonies, even from those witnesses called by the Republicans, confirmed that the accusations were true. Yet what was perhaps even more revealing was the Trump defense attempting to discredit some of those witnesses based on their ethnicity and/or family background. Marie Yovanovich was the ambassador to Ukraine until last May, when Trump removed… Read more »

C. S. Lewis’s Change of Residence

  

Fifty-six years ago yesterday, C. S. Lewis changed his place of residence. He left this vale of tears for the eternal home he had always longed for and which he wrote about so eloquently, particularly in The Great Divorce and in his sermon, “The Weight of Glory.” He had fallen into a coma in July of 1963 and everyone thought those were to be his final moments. He surprised them by waking up and asking for some tea. He hadn’t… Read more »

A Time of Refreshing

  

Last week, I attended a C. S. Lewis conference in Montreat, North Carolina. It was a welcome respite from my regular routine of teaching and grading. To be clear, I love teaching (not so much the grading), but there are times of refreshing when one can simply sit and listen and take in what the Lord wants one to hear. This was one of those times. Some of the most accomplished Lewis scholars were there as presenters. In the photo… Read more »

This World’s Last Night

  

“The doctrine of the Second Coming has failed, so far as we are concerned,” wrote C. S. Lewis, “if it does not make us realize that at every moment of every year in our lives Donne’s question ‘What if this present were the world’s last night?’ is equally relevant.” We live so much in the “present” that we often neglect what we say we believe about the transitory nature of this world. We have an eternity that awaits us, yet… Read more »

There Is a Time to Speak

  

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a message on Facebook saying that I was going to take a break from commenting on Donald Trump. My rationale was that no one is going to be convinced to examine their unalloyed support of a man who doesn’t deserve to hold the highest office in the land. I hoped for a respite. Yet Donald Trump doesn’t give anyone a respite. Shortly after my stated desire to ignore him, he was credibly accused… Read more »

A Series of Mental Acrobatics

  

Whittaker Chambers, in his autobiography Witness, writes about his days in the Communist Party prior to his disillusionment with it and his eventual rejection of that false vision of mankind, history, and the future. In it, he offers a portrait of one man by the name of Harry Freeman who was the perfect example of the Communist mindset. Here’s how he described him: No matter how favorable his opinion had been to an individual or his political role, if that… Read more »

“We Make Men without Chests”

  

One book I always include in my C. S. Lewis course is his Abolition of Man. It’s a weighty book, and I sometimes wonder if my students will be able to grasp its message. Yet I also believe it is worth requiring it because the message is so relevant, even more so today than when the book was published during WWII. The overall theme is the replacement of the natural law God has implanted within his creation with whatever new… Read more »