Eros Undefiled

Mature romantic love is the cultivation of affection into an unconditional commitment that's consummated in marriage.

Gnostic + Update = Knostic

A quote lifted from here:

Many modern knostics have wanted to learn how to appreciate the arts of narrative. As far as that goes, nothing wrong with it, but whether writing about novels, or movies, or stageplays, they have found "redemptive" or "death and resurrection" themes in all kinds of grimy stories. In other words, an abstract thing, the structure of the story, is mysteriously able to sanctify the actual content of the story. By means of this amazing magic trick, any amount of Tarantino sludge can be made edifying.
Now . . . three cheers for structure, but content matters. Content is determinative. (Douglas Wilson)

A Parable of Bulverism

I'm going to riff off of Douglas Wilson riffing off of C. S. Lewis.

Bulverism, as Lewis defined it, is dodging your opponent's argument by psychologizing him. Your treat him like a psychological patient who needs your evaluation to explain why he came up with such a ridiculous argument in the first place.

So what was his inferior state of mind that produced the silly argument? Hmmmm.... Let's see (says the faculty at Enlightenment U). He's obviously so weak he needs a crutch. So he invents a God to help him through life.  

No! Wait (says Freud)! He misses his papa, so he invents a heavenly father to hold his hand every step of the way.  

No! Here it is. He doesn't live up to his goals so he projects a perfect image of himself into the sky and calls it God. Yeah! Yeah!  

Wait, (says the patient) but how do you explain the incarnation Feuerbach?  

Oh that's easy (says the philosopher). You see that projection got a little intimidating after awhile, so man just brought it back down to earth in the form of Jesus, so he could pat his God on the head and say "There, there. Your not so scary. You love me so much you're going to die and rise again to save me." 

Now let's all go to bed and rise tomorrow to live wiser lives (says the Lady of the Green Kirtle). 

What about Thomas's Five Ways (says the patient)? 

Oh, don't you know that philosophers have pointed for years out that those arguments don't really prove anything scientifically. Thomas' only use now is on my couch. That will explain everything.  

But aren't there grave difficulties in psychoanalyzing the dead (says Roland Bainton the perfectly sane historian)? 

No, not when they really need you (says the faculty of Enlightenment U in their most updated accent).

Secular Jihad

Today, when the whole population of every civilized country is subjected to an intensive process of schooling during the most impressionable years of their lives, it is the school and not the church that forms men's minds, and if the school finds no place for religion, there will be no room left for religion elsewhere.
                                Christopher Dawson, Cultural Historian, Civilization in Crisis  (1950) (Thanks to Chris Baker for this quote.)

When government schools declare religion out of bounds, they aren't, as they claim, being neutral towards all religions. They aren't just saying that religious expression isn't relevant to education either. They are enshrining the religion of secularism with its saints (like Darwin), martyrs (like Galileo), and liturgy ("separation of church and state") to be the established faith of the school.

Because religious beliefs are our most basic beliefs, they frame, color, and define our view of the world at every waking and sleeping moment. Claiming otherwise, would be like telling your coach you could see the ball just as well wearing your welding helmet as your batting helmet. The welding helmet keeps certain things out while the batting helmet helps you see as God intended. Your coach would not be fooled.

"What God has joined together no man can put asunder." So government schools pull a fast one by pretending to have put it asunder, while installing their own belief system for all practice day in and day out from pre-K to graduation.

The students get the message too. When I spoke up from a Christian perspective in my government school, it wasn't the teachers who were offended. It was my fellow students who told me to shut up!

Teachers are expressly forbidden from teaching from a Christian point of view. Evangelism is an outrage and Christianity is evangelistic. This makes Christian statements unwelcome in the classroom.

Christians in public schools have been conquered by secular Jihad and reduced to the status of dhimmitude, which means "concession, surrender and appeasement" towards government demands. The government isn't Sharia law but Secular law.

With government schools leaving no place for Christian expression, is it any wonder that the Christian recession in the public square starting in the early twentieth century continues today with disastrous moral results?

Freedom From Responsibility

Thanks to Mark Horne for this quote:

In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all – security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again. -- Edward Gibbon

Burning Eloquence

Got this from Blog and Mablog:

One of the best definitions of eloquence is, 'to have something to say and to burn to say it'." (Fish, Power in the Pulpit, p. 18).