Reflections on God … Man … Life
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
“What need have I of Christ?” some say. “I’m a good person. I don’t do all those truly evil things other people do.” That’s one of the greatest deceptions we face. C. S. Lewis confronts it directly in Mere Christianity when he compares the “nice” person with a person who doesn’t come across as quite so nice. He notes that some people are just naturally more even-tempered and balanced in their personalities, and that is what can lead them astray…. Read more »
From the heart today. Well, everything I write is from the heart, but this one is burning within. I have been doing my best to warn conservatives—and Christian conservatives, in particular—about giving any aid, verbal or otherwise, to the candidacy of Donald Trump. Some of you, I’m sure, are tired of hearing my warnings. No one has responded to my warnings with anger, I don’t believe, yet I’m still astonished by people I certainly love and respect giving room to… Read more »