Reflections on God … Man … Life
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a message on Facebook saying that I was going to take a break from commenting on Donald Trump. My rationale was that no one is going to be convinced to examine their unalloyed support of a man who doesn’t deserve to hold the highest office in the land. I hoped for a respite. Yet Donald Trump doesn’t give anyone a respite. Shortly after my stated desire to ignore him, he was credibly accused… Read more »
One book I always include in my C. S. Lewis course is his Abolition of Man. It’s a weighty book, and I sometimes wonder if my students will be able to grasp its message. Yet I also believe it is worth requiring it because the message is so relevant, even more so today than when the book was published during WWII. The overall theme is the replacement of the natural law God has implanted within his creation with whatever new… Read more »
My students finished reading C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters this week. The final letter includes one of the most profound insights Lewis has ever offered as to what happens when a Christian dies. Even though it is described through the eyes of a demon (or perhaps because it is described in that way), one can get a glimpse of the glory that awaits those who have found the narrow path and remained faithful. Wormwood’s “patient” has died in a… Read more »
Pastor Robert Jeffress is one of Donald Trump’s most fervent evangelical defenders. He has recently tweeted the following: “If the Democrats are successful in removing the President from office (which they will never be), it will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal.” What bothers me about this tweet is the exaltation of a man to the point that removing him from office would be tantamount to the kind of division… Read more »
As a historian, and as someone who has also taught in a master’s program of government, I am naturally attuned to the politics of our day. That doesn’t mean I love politics or am particularly enamored of the way politics manifests itself through the aggrandizement of politicians’ egos. Yet I cannot divorce myself from it because it now seems to invade every aspect of our lives. What I do like is governing, in the sense that God is interested in… Read more »
This has been a dismal political season. And the real campaign doesn’t begin until a year from now. Frankly, I don’t look forward to it. Democrat presidential candidates continue their march into Far-Left Oblivion as they promote policies that even most Democrats reject. They remain particularly strident on abortion, even to the point of birth—and, in some cases, even after birth. On the one hand, they will talk about the how much they care for people that they want to… Read more »
I’m teaching my C. S. Lewis course at my university again this semester. The students began their Lewis reading with Surprised by Joy, his insightful autobiography. We are now focused on Mere Christianity and discussing the significance of that book. Every time I come back to it, I’m deeply impressed all over again, and I always seem to find nuggets of truth and wisdom that stand out more clearly than in my previous reading. This time I was struck particularly… Read more »