Perspective on the “Virus War” & Eternity

  

Along with probably all, or nearly all, of my professorial colleagues in the US and in many other countries, I am homebound now, completing my courses remotely. Is this something that is important to do in light of the current global pandemic? Shouldn’t we perhaps just drop all this “learning stuff” and devote our whole selves to the “virus war”? C. S. Lewis dealt with this same issue as WWII ramped up. Should the university continue teaching during the crisis?… Read more »

The Faith & Faithfulness of Catherine Marshall

  

I remember, as a teenager, watching the movie A Man Called Peter, and being profoundly impacted by the faith displayed in the film, not only of Peter Marshall himself, but also of his wife, Catherine. You know how some things always stay with you? That movie did, and I’m grateful to God that He placed such influences in my life early on. The Christian History e-mail offering from yesterday focused on Catherine Marshall and how God fulfilled her desire to… Read more »

Fear, Foolishness, & Cults of Personality

  

Reading in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago this morning, I came across this fascinating account. The author tells of a Communist Party conference during the time of the Great Purge of Party leaders (and hundreds of thousands of others as well) in 1937-1938. The presiding officer was a new man who had taken over for the previous secretary of the District Party who had recently been arrested. Solzhenitsyn relates, “At the conclusion of the conference, a tribute to Comrade Stalin was… Read more »

The Lord’s Continuing-Education Program

  

The Lord always has a continuing-education program for me. There are so many books I’ve never read (well, who can say otherwise?) that I need to delve into not only for head knowledge but for spiritual growth also. I seek to read resources that will do both. Here’s an update on what He is doing with me currently. I’ve now completed two-thirds of Dante’s The Divine Comedy. I’ve chosen the Dorothy Sayers translation because of my intense interest in her… Read more »

Mere Survival Is Not the Goal

  

“Let us suppose,” ventured C. S. Lewis, “that nothing ever has existed or ever will exist except this meaningless play of atoms in space and time: that by a series of hundredth chances it has (regrettably) produced things like ourselves.” What “things” does he mean? “Conscious beings,” he continues, “who now know that their own consciousness is an accidental result of the whole meaningless process and is therefore itself meaningless, though to us (alas!) it feels significant.” That disturbing supposal… Read more »

Lessons from the Clinton Impeachment

  

It was February 8, 2000, one year after the conclusion of the impeachment trial of Bill Clinton, and I was in the office of Congressman Henry Hyde, the man who had led the House Managers over to the Senate to argue for Clinton’s removal from office. From one perspective, the attempt had been an exercise in futility, but I was there to interview Hyde about the experience and why he had chosen to participate. This was the first of thirteen… Read more »

Lewis: “We Have Been Waked from a Pretty Dream”

  

When the atomic age dawned in 1945, the utter devastation of such a bomb awed the world, and many were driven to a fear that the entire world might be destroyed. C. S. Lewis lived through that initial shock but didn’t allow the fear to grip him. In an essay written in 1948, “On Living in an Atomic Age,” he brought his common-sense Christian mind to the topic. How should one live in an atomic age, he asks? “I am… Read more »