Reflections on God … Man … Life
The Senate vote for Neil Gorsuch to take his place on the Supreme Court will be coming up soon. As with all Court nominees that Republicans promote, I am both hopeful and cautious about how that nominee will actually perform. So many have had what appeared to be conservative credentials upon first glance, then somehow find a way to look askance at the Constitution once they take their place on the Bench. Gorsuch has an unblemished record on religious liberty… Read more »
Oxymorons are words that don’t ordinarily go together—they come across as inherently contradictory. The classic is “jumbo shrimp.” I’ve always liked “congressional ethics”; others prefer “military intelligence.” I held an oxymoron contest one year with students. The co-winners were “study lounge” and “intense apathy.” Why am I pondering oxymorons this morning? It has to do with the recently failed GOP healthcare fix. It wasn’t really a fix because it left the infrastructure of Obamacare largely intact, fixing virtually nothing, thereby… Read more »
Today I complete my 66th orbit of the sun. Do I become reflective when this annual event transpires? Absolutely. There’s a difference, though, between being reflective and being obsessed with introspection. We are to examine ourselves—our motives and actions before God and others—but that’s a daily thing. This annual reflection is not the same. First, it’s a matter of gratitude to the Lord for another year passed and for the good things that have happened during that year. Were there… Read more »
A very pleasant task I’ve set for myself is to read C. S. Lewis works that I’ve not yet taken the opportunity to examine. In this journey, I’ve taken on The Discarded Image, The Allegory of Love (tough read for me; not done yet), and now An Experiment in Criticism. Since I’m a historian and not a literary critic per se, I admit I was hesitant to tackle this one, figuring it might be too dense for my taste, too… Read more »
Yesterday was supposed to be the big vote on the Republican bill to repeal (?), replace (?), revise (?), surrender on (?) Obamacare. It didn’t happen. Now today is supposed to be the big day. What’s the problem? Republicans can’t agree on whether this proposed bill does much of the above, and that has led to this impasse. This is a mess; it certainly doesn’t indicate competent leadership. The most conservative House members say it leaves the essence of Obamacare… Read more »
As a historian, I have this faith that people might actually learn something from history. What a quaint notion. The first requisite, of course, is that people know some history. Those kinds of people are becoming a rare commodity. Please excuse the seeming air of resignation in this post. It’s just that some lessons from history are so easy to find that it boggles the mind that mankind continues to repeat all the old errors. Take socialism/communism, for instance. It’s… Read more »
What startled many readers of Whittaker Chambers’s Witness when it first was published in 1952 (and became a bestseller) was its deeply spiritual tone, its message of returning to faith in God, not only for the sake of individual salvation but also for the hope of salvaging Western civilization. Chambers had been a avowed atheist, an ideological stance influenced by his dysfunctional family upbringing, the nihilism communicated to him by his university education, and his commitment to changing the world… Read more »