Month: September 2015

In Support of Christian Higher Ed

  

I remember my one experience teaching at a public university, which will go unnamed. I was an adjunct there for at least three semesters and thoroughly enjoyed the classes I taught. Student evaluations at the end of each semester were high, and it was my first taste of college-level teaching, prior to getting my first full-time position. I recall fondly one student who walked out to the car with me after the last class session one time, telling me that… Read more »

A Companion to Mere Christianity

  

I’ve been teaching my C. S. Lewis course at Southeastern University since August. I’m delighted that my students, by their own testimonies, have found it to be so valuable. For some of them, this is the first time they have truly had direct contact with Lewis and his writings, rather than just seeing a couple of Narnia movies. They got a lot out of reading his autobiography, Surprised By Joy, and The Screwtape Letters. In between those two reading assignments,… Read more »

The Christian Witness to the World

  

The arrival of Pope Francis in America takes me back in my thoughts to an earlier era when a pope who grew up under communism and understood the horrors of socialist practices worked with an American president who was a Protestant (with a Catholic father) and a British prime minister who was tutored all her early years by her Methodist shopkeeper father (and who later said that C. S. Lewis was one of her spiritual mentors) to overthrow the Soviet… Read more »

Carson, Islam, & the Constitution

  

Ben Carson says he wouldn’t support having a Muslim for president and the politically correct world explodes in outrage. He says Islam and the American Constitution are at odds and he’s decried as some kind of constitutional ignoramus. Time to step back and breathe. As many have noted, he made the quite valid point that anyone who is devoted to Sharia law as the basis for one’s personal life and for how a society should operate is not in sync… Read more »

Walker’s Withdrawal

  

Wisconsin governor Scott Walker last night withdrew from the GOP presidential nomination race. All things considered, it is understandable that he did so, but I believe it says a lot of things—mostly bad—about our current nominating process and the expectations of the electorate. I’ll explain in a moment. First, I want to examine Walker’s comments in his withdrawal statement. They say a lot. One of the points he made was how disappointed he was that this entire campaign “drifted into… Read more »

Lewis: The Inconsistency of Naturalism

  

In his book Miracles, C. S. Lewis takes aim at “naturalists” who say that there is no “outside” reference [i.e., God] for calling anything good or evil. When men use the words, “I ought,” Lewis notes, they are saying something about the essence of right and wrong that is built into the universe. In fact, naturalists should never use such terminology: “But if Naturalism is true,” he writes, “‘I ought’ is the same sort of statement as ‘I itch’ or… Read more »

The Fine Art of Being Sorry

  

We’re very good at being sorry. We’re not so good at being repentant. Wait a minute—aren’t those the same? Not necessarily. You can be “sorry” for a lot of things, and it’s all too easy to make your “I’m sorry” statement sound petulant or forced, as if you don’t really mean it. Genuine repentance takes stock of one’s heart and actions, acknowledges when there is sin, and does more than a simple “I’m sorry” in response. Repentance leads to a… Read more »