Head-dibs

" Just go live your life, focus on your present reality, and  ignore the circus of social media.  Trust me, you'll be a lot happier." (from " This is why you shouldn't take people's Facebook lives seriously .")

One may wonder, “why do a book review on a book originally published in 1947?” The book to which I refer is by C.S. Lewis, “The Abolition of Man; or, Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools” (New York: MacMillan, 1978). One answer may be the fact that the 121 page book is still in circulation. Another answer may be likened unto climbing a mountain--because the old thing is there--and this unassuming book is a mountain. This reader recalls journeys up into the Rocky Mountains and the discovering the elusive nature of the summit. Climb, climb, climb, look up, reach the top only to find one has not summited but only acquired the lip of a terrace with another false peak looming overhead. Lewis give us three such chapters (plus an appendix) that lifts the reader up into the clouds of the author’s deep reflections (perhaps a descending metaphor should be more fitting)--heady reflections. This venture is no small hike. The firs...

Stumbled across this book and just had to read it. “ Be Intolerant Because Some Things Are Just Stupid ” by Ryan Dobson is an older book (Multnomah, 2003) that can be read in one sitting, but the premise is worth a lifetime of consideration. It’s up to you. This is actually a simple definition of moral relativism, a worldview that, when taken to its logical conclusion, is actually quite illogical and self-defeating. Moral relativism mixes well with nothing. Many don’t like to use the term “moral relativism” but can be heard to refer to “tolerance,” which is “the virtue of those who believe nothing.” (p. 36). The first chapter identifies the problem raging at epidemic proportions, making the point that “tolerance” is a TUMOR and should be addressed, even removed as if with radical surgery. The TUMOR looks like this: we live in a culture where good feelings rule, so do what you want as long as nobody gets hurt; however, whatever you do, be untraditional even if it means someone gets o...

Three books side by side by side on my bookshelf, making a powerful statement in a poetic fashion: Christ and Culture Christ and the Modern Mind A World of Difference Yes, He Does!

Reading through Acts 7:17-29, a few thoughts come to mind. First, our present time and national circumstance is not very much unlike those of Moses’ day. National leadership is highly controversial, operating with a kind of amnesia regarding how we came to be a nation and the great men and women who got us this far. Notable leaders are not merely forgotten how they went about doing those things that made them great. There is a great reversal from the “how” (the blood, the prayers, the sweat, the tears) to the “who”, those who use immoral and unethical means to accomplish personal agenda. The Church exists in context. We are “the called out ones” within a nation of not remembering. More on this momentarily. Second, the pragmatism that drives our national direction includes atrocities such as the exposure of our children. Just as Pharaoh killed the children of Egypt, we too are a culture of infant death. Abortion has been killing children for years and presently there is great debate co...

Over the weekend I came across yet another controversy regarding Christmas decorations which was rather unusual. The controversy concerned a woman who used Christmas lights to decorate her home, only the lights were arranged in the outline of a certain crude hand gesture. While I disagree with that particular arrangement, I find myself taking her point. Consider for a moment those who are offended at traditional decorations (to use an over-generalization to include biblical forms or otherwise)--what’s the big deal? I believe this woman turned the whole thing over on its’ head by being blatantly offensive. Biblical imagery is slowly disappearing from public view and the outcry is heard the loudest during the Christmas season. The truth is that removal of biblical imagery is impossible. The world as we know it would not exist--but what would happen if it were possible?  Let’s wake in the twilight zone where biblical imagery does not exist: There is no such thing as Michelangelo's D...

The Masque Returns--and Jim Carrey ain't in it, nor his little dog, either. As the Schaivo case gets kicked under the table, and copy-cat cases are springing up, I could not help but remember this quote: "With the death of abolutes, the prospects are grim for any lover of justice, freedom and order. Western culture will lurch drunkenly between chaotic lawlessness and countering authoritarianism, in which some particularly abysmal vacuum of confidence could finally issue in a supreme dictatorship, mocking Western aspirations for democracy as ineffective and demonstrating the strong alliance between technology and the state. Until then, violence--blood brother of such a totalitarianism--will play its fateful part, naked or disguised, in an inevitable power struggle on all levels." Os Guiness, "The Dust of Death" (1973)