Reflections on God … Man … Life
Few people who go to church on Sunday expect to encounter mass murder. We think we are in a safe place. Yet sin abounds, and there is no place that is 100% safe. Last Sunday, a presumably safe place in a small Texas church turned into a scene of terror. Details are now emerging about that killing spree. We see a combination of evil, incompetence, and, as we more recently found out, heroism. The evil was in the heart of… Read more »
C. S. Lewis, in his Mere Christianity, has an interesting take on temptation that may run counter to what many think. Of course, he has interesting takes on quite a few concepts, but this one stands out to me today. He begins with this: A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. It’s the “good” people who… Read more »
This year commemorates the 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. I use the word “commemorate,” not “celebrate.” There is nothing to celebrate in the establishment of the first Marxist communist state; that state, and all the progeny to which it has given birth, embodied the greatest scourge of the 20th century—and its pernicious beliefs and system continue to plague us today. Russia was ripe for revolution while enmeshed in WWI. I won’t go into all the historical background; suffice to… Read more »
C. S. Lewis exchanged Oxford for Cambridge in 1955. He never received the recognition he deserved at Oxford; Cambridge offered him a special professorial chair designed with him in mind. It was a major event when he gave his inaugural Cambridge lecture, speaking to a full house about the distinctions between the ancient and the modern. It’s in that lecture, De Descriptione Temporum,” that he made his oft-quoted comment about being a dinosaur because he was an Old Western Man,… Read more »
I’m teaching my American Revolution course this semester. Every time I do, I’m impressed with how character shapes history. In this case, the character of George Washington comes to the forefront. As 1776 drew to a close, it seemed more likely than not that the fledgling nation was in jeopardy and that the Declaration of Independence was destined to be a silly footnote in history, another testament to man’s folly. Washington’s army, such as it was, composed primarily of untested… Read more »
The cultural (and political) Left poses as the nation’s moral conscience. Building upon real grievances from our history, it refuses not only to let go of those grievances and learn what forgiveness is (especially when the current generation didn’t commit those grievances), but it spreads a root of bitterness that, as the Scripture says, “causes trouble, and by it many be defiled.” Innocent comments devoid of any tinge of racism are somehow found to be racist. Minorities are offended; women… Read more »
“We must picture Hell as a state where everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancement,”” advised C. S. Lewis, “where everyone has a grievance, and where everyone lives the deadly serious passions of envy, self-importance, and resentment.” Lewis wrote those words in his preface to the 1961 edition of The Screwtape Letters. Although Screwtape is, in one sense, a comical devil, Lewis never lets his readers forget what lies at the heart of hell: the self, with… Read more »