God’s people are a missionary people, and this is not true only of the New Testament church. God called Abraham to bless the Gentiles through him, and one of Israel’s recurring sins was her failure to carry out this mission. Israel was supposed to evoke praise from the Gentiles, but instead , er idolatries and sins caused the Lord’s name to be blasphemed. (more…)
A Very Kuyperian Book List
Another journey around the sun is almost complete and some of our contributors have compiled a list of book recommendations just in time for Christmastide. Be sure and plunder the Egyptian’s After-Christmas sales before Twelfth Night. (more…)
Author Interview: C R Wiley
Congratulations on the new release of The Purloined Boy from Canonball Books (available for pre-order from Canon Press)
KC: Pastor Wiley, I am always interested in hearing from different authors regarding the place of fiction in the Christian pursuit of wisdom. Where, in your opinion, does its value lie? (more…)
On Crude Humor
Author Remy Wilkins is a teacher at Geneva Academy.
His first novel Strays is available from Canon Press
“You wouldn’t hit a man with glasses would ya?”
“No, of course not. I’d hit him with a bat.”
In our culture of frivolity it is tempting for Christians to think that solemnity should be our defining attribute. The coarseness of the world impedes us from enjoying an y sort of sexual or bodily function jokes because we do not want to be guilty of approving that which is sinful. Even though we know that the bed is undefiled and the body is good, and are therefore free to enjoy those aspects of life in humor, we are stunted in our ability to appreciate them due to the folly and poor taste of our age.
So while we are not to be characterized by coarse jesting, we must learn to distinguish jokes that laud wickedness (the ribaldry forbidden in Ephesians) from those jokes that merely highlight the glorious and comedic world. We cannot merely clam up and play it safe, throwing out the good jokes with the bad. If we are to be characterized by joy then we must be leaders in laughter, but Humor is not a tame lion. It is invasive, subversive and mysterious. It is hard to determine where it is anchored, whether it mocks or praises, and what it is standing with or against.
For this reason many hedge their laughter, guard their mirth like an untrustworthy servant. There is a temerity that would rather not laugh at something funny than to laugh at something sinful. So how can we train our minds to laugh wisely? (more…)
Bombadil at Home
When it comes to what the Bible means by taking dominion Tom Bombadil comes to mind for me; but I think what comes to mind for most people looks a lot more like Saruman.
If you’re a reader of Lord of the Rings, you understand those references. But if you’ve only seen the films, you probably didn’t–at least not the reference to Bombadil.
Poor Bombadil, what’s he in the story for anyway? (Peter Jackson, the director of the films thought he was expendable.) That whole episode in the Old Forest before the hobbits get to Bree seems like a senseless detour. Was Tolkien dallying? Was it just a bit of comic relief?
I don’t think so. Tolkien worked with texts professionally and he doesn’t strike me as the sort of person to do something on a whim. He was fussy.
I’m a writer in my own small way, and even I know that something that can’t be made to fit should be thrown out.
Either that, or you leave it in because it is somehow a way to underscore the point if the thing.
What’s the point?
There are many things like this in the world: the Sabbath, (what’s the point?), beauty, (what’s the point?), higher education, (what’s the point?).
When it comes to those things some people edit them right out of their lives. Or perhaps worse, they repurpose them to make them fit our restless, ugly, and benighted lives.
I think Saruman missed the point of life in Middle Earth. That’s why he tried to repurpose what he found there.
This was the reason he was interested in the lore of Middle Earth. He wanted power, ostensibly to save Middle Earth from Sauron. But in the process he became Sauron’s slave.
In order to acquire this lore, many eggs had to be cracked and his interrogations were torturous. That’s why Gandalf said to him, “He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.”
Saruman thought he could save Middle Earth by dominating it.
But Bombadil just lived there. That’s why he was truly the master.
The word dominion has a fascinating provenance. It’s from the Latin, domus, for house. It is where were get the words: domestic and domicile. And those words never alarm people. But say, dominion, and your mind immediately runs on to domination.
But really, should it?
And this brings me to Bombadil. Just who is this guy? Tolkien didn’t say.
But in The Fellowship of the Ring, in chapter a chapter entitled: In the House of Tom Bombadil (the seventh chapter, by the way), we have Frodo, and the other hobbits wondering the same thing.
And Frodo asks, “Who is Tom Bombadil?” And this is the answer he receives:
“He is, “ said Goldberry, staying her swift movements and smiling.
Frodo looked at her questioningly.
“He is as you have seen him,” she said in answer to his look. “He is the master of wood, water and hill.”
“Then this strange land belongs to him?”
“No indeed!” she answered, and her smile faded. “That would indeed be a burden,” she added in a low voice, as if to herself. “The trees and the grasses and all things growing or living belong each to themselves. Tom Bombadil is the Master. No one has caught old Tom…. He has no fear. Tom Bombadil is master.”
Goldberry is Tom’s fairy-like wife that he received as a gift from the Withywindle–like a similar gift received my another man, long ago.
But unlike that man, or Saruman for that matter, Tom’s mastery is of a different kind than the kind sought by those men. We’re told that he knows the songs. I think that means he knows the natures of things. And his mastery preserves those natures. I think that can be seen in Tom’s rescues of the hobbits. And each time he comes singing the songs that set things right, not as a conqueror. (I’ve written more about that here.)
That’s real dominion for you. It is a very different sort of dominion we see in other deliverers. Whether the deliverer goes by the name Adam, or Bacon, or Saruman, we can know one thing, the sort of dominion they seek is unnatural.
But Bombadil, the funny fellow with the nonsense songs and the yellow boots, we can be sure that he’s on our side. And even though he looks clumsy, he’s graceful enough to flick individual raindrops away from his head in a downpour. He’s the master.
Fathers, when it comes to dominion in your houses be like Bombadil.
Guarding Against Discontent
Lindsey Tollefson is a mother and homemaker in Moscow, ID
Learning to be content and completely satisfied in Christ is certainly a life-long process and a lesson that we are always learning, and always being tested on. As I am learning and wrestling against discontent, I am always looking for practical and tangible ways to set my course towards joy and peace. (more…)
Author Interview: Remy Wilkins
So your novel Strays is available (for order) . What’s it about? What inspired the story?
It’s about a boy named Rodney who has to spend the summer at his weird uncle’s and gets caught up in a demonic invasion. The major influence is The Screwtape Letters, which is a book that never goes more than a couple of years without being pulled off my shelf. The other point of inspiration is Martin Luther, particularly his dealings with Satan. His legendary abuse of the devil has always tickled me. His hymn A Mighty Fortress is also a touchstone and I use its lyrics as chapter titles.
![Strays by [Wilkins, Remy]](https://i0.wp.com/images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51-0QFfTefL.jpg?resize=324%2C500&ssl=1)
Canon Press, 2017
I love the title. Is it too much of a spoiler to ask what the name is about? (more…)
Caution: Some Slopes Really Are Slippery
“That’s a slippery slope argument.”
An actual person on social media, in the year 2017, said this to me after I predicted the Boy Scouts’ new separate-but-equal arrangement for girls will last about as long as a Kit-Kat bar in a hot car.
The progressive memory is evidently around 2.5 seconds long, because 3.0 seconds ago culturally, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were opposed to gay marriage, people with male genitalia were men, people with female genitalia were women, and intentionally spreading AIDS was known to the state of California to cause felony charges.
The first obvious point is that some slopes really are slippery. (more…)
On Living As if God Is Real
Guest post by G. Shane Morris
Last night I watched PBS’s new full-length documentary, “Martin Luther: The Idea That Changed the World,” and was impressed. As soon as Carl Trueman showed up, I knew it was going to be good, but this thing is an achievement. It gets Luther right, warts and all, even if it does try a little too hard at the end to connect him with secular sensibilities. You will be more thankful for the Reformation this Augustinian monk started and better prepared to appreciate its 500th anniversary after watching this. If you’re fuzzy on the details of Luther’s life and work and don’t expect to get a good biography before November, this program is for you. (more…)
A word to sons… and therefore to all of us
I’d like to say a few words by way of challenge to young men as they’re growing up. It concerns how they relate to their parents, particularly (but not exclusively) their fathers.
This will be most obviously relevant to young men who are approaching adulthood. At the same time, it will also be relevant in various ways to the rest of us. For as Paul writes in Galatians 3:26, all of us are sons of our Heavenly Father through faith in Christ.One of the great temptations of young men as they grow older is the wrong kind of competitiveness.
As boys grow into men, they enter what we might call a different relational “space”. That is, they (rightly) start to relate as men to other people, such as their parents and siblings. They start exercising leadership, initiative, and a new kind of emotional strength. This is all good, but it brings some dangers. (more…)
