Category: Christians & Culture

Commentary, from a Biblical perspective, on current events that are primarily cultural. There may be some overlap with politics and government, but the emphasis is on broader societal developments apart from politics, which also includes analysis of specific individuals.

Being Christian in a Non-Christian Culture

  

I’m currently teaching a course at my church that I’ve titled “Being Christian in a Non-Christian Culture.” I laid out five questions at the beginning of the course to show what I hope to accomplish through this teaching. They are the following: What is the Church and what is its mission? How are Christians supposed to interact with the culture? What is the proper relationship between the Church and the State? What has happened to the Christian witness to the… Read more »

A Time of Preparation

  

July and August are my months “off” from teaching, but they aren’t months off for preparation. Although I’m constantly preparing year-round, the absence of teaching during this time allows a greater concentration on what I’ll be doing over the next year. Much of it has to do with C. S. Lewis and Dorothy L. Sayers. Last month, I received a pleasant surprise when I was contacted by the Wade Center about an article that I had sent in a couple… Read more »

True Friendship: The Least Jealous of Loves

  

To C. S. Lewis, Friendship is an obvious love, even if it seems to be unnecessary. He says Friendship has fallen by the wayside in modern times. Lewis believes the foundation of Friendship is not the avoidance of loneliness. Rather, it is the recognition of shared truth. In the Friendship chapter of The Four Loves, Lewis asserts, “Without Eros none of us would have been begotten and without Affection none of us would have been reared; but we can live… Read more »

When Affection Goes Wrong

  

In my last post, I reviewed the love of Affection, as C. S. Lewis explains it in his masterful work, The Four Loves. Lewis has affection for Affection, as he states near the end of that chapter, “Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our natural lives.” Yet, he spends the last part of the chapter (as he does in the following chapters on Friendship and Eros) pointing to the dangers that can… Read more »

C.S. Lewis on Loving One’s Country

  

Before C. S. Lewis starts analyzing the loves that his book, The Four Loves, focuses on, he sets the stage with some preliminary perspectives. In the last couple of posts, I’ve noted his identification of the distinctions between a gift-love, a need-love, and appreciative love. He then tackled the problem with making a religion out of the love of nature. In this new post, I will comment on the question he raises in the latter half of chapter 2. Perhaps… Read more »

Appreciative Love & the Love of Nature

  

In my blog series on C. S. Lewis’s The Four Loves (which I am teaching at my church currently), I first explained how the book came about, developed from radio broadcasts. Then I focused on an ongoing theme in the work, one that comes up in each chapter: how we can deify one of these loves so that it can go wrong—as Lewis says, a love can become a demon if it takes the place of God in our lives…. Read more »

When Loves Become Demons

  

In my previous post about the class I’m teaching on C. S. Lewis’s The Four Loves, I explained the background of the book, how it began as radio broadcasts that were then expanded and transformed into the book. Lewis’s first chapter—the Introduction—lays the groundwork for all that follows. He begins by making a distinction between gift-loves and need-loves. A gift-love, Lewis says, is the kind that moves people to do things for others even when they don’t receive anything in… Read more »