We are made to be happy. Created to enter into the eternal joy of God, our whole being inclines to that end, but the fallen world has put forth barriers and by our own sin we bar ourselves from that endless delight, and death blinds us to that reality. Yet laughter breaks through.
This tendency for all things to bend to joy is seen in memory. Nobody in recalling an injury feels its pain again, but at the slightest invocation of a joyous event laughter spills out. Pain is forgotten yet joy soars on, achieving greater heights at each remembrance. Faith and hope join hands in laughter, for it is a bold declaration that though this world is fraught with terror, evil and ills yet we can delight in it because we know its comedic end.
Laughter is a powerful weapon. It is a divine act and a powerful contrast between Yahweh and Allah, who does not laugh. But for all that is praiseworthy in laughter there is the laughter of fools that should give us pause. What is the difference between foolish laughter and the laughter of the wise? (more…)
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…)
I recall meeting Dr. R.C. Sproul for the first time. He was sitting with his wife Vesta and a few other scholars at lunch. A friend took me there and introduced me to him. “How are you, young man?” he asked. I didn’t respond to his question. Instead, I uttered with all the courage I could muster: “Thank you for your ministry.” Indeed I was thankful and still am.
Dr. R.C. Sproul died on the 14th of December, 2017. He died the year we celebrated the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. I have read the many tributes to Dr. Sproul in these last several days. Some of them written by people I know well and who worked closely with Dr. Sproul. Death provides a time of reflection. Sproul’s death at the age of 78 brought back many memories of my days in Orlando. His influence continues in my library. I have dozens of his books and an unending selection of Tabletalk magazines and almost a gigabyte of his audio lectures. His legacy will live on for generations to come.
Introduction to R.C. Sproul
I lived in Pennsylvania in the late 90’s. I had arrived to study a year in America. The evenings were cold in December. The only distraction I had at night was an old radio that worked half the time. One particular night, I turned on the radio to the sound of Handel’s Messiah. The lecturer was clear and poetic in his delivery. I listened intently for 20 minutes or so to a lecture on Augustine. “You’ve been listening to Renewing Your Mind with Dr. R.C. Sproul,” the voice concluded after each episode. I retired to my room early every evening to hear his talks.
Though my curiosity increased with each year, my commitments to my synergistic theology prevailed. I could not embrace a theology that took away my liberty to have a voice in my spiritual condition. The following winter I returned to Pennsylvania for Christmas. It was there that I read Michael Horton’s “Putting Amazing Back into Grace.” His brilliant analysis of John’s gospel pierced me and persuaded me to put down my lingering hesitations of Reformed Theology. (more…)
Stephen West is wrong on this issue primarily because he fails to see the bigger issues involved. He takes such a narrow view that he seems to think this issue is merely an academic discussion about the placement of a grain of sand: should it go here or over there? Meanwhile a tsunami is heading our way. This discussion is not primarily about loving people who suffer from transgender dysphoria. This is about the reality of the world and how our culture is trying to reject that basic reality. California already has a law on the books forcing doctors and nurses to refer to patients by their “preferred” pronouns. The law says it is illegal to “willfully and repeatedly fail to use a resident’s preferred name or pronouns after being clearly informed of the preferred name or pronouns.” If this isn’t a law straight out of 1984, then I am not sure what is.
West says he is aware of this larger cultural issue: “I certainly do not believe that Christians—or anyone else—should be coerced into using gender-neutral pronouns. I think that we are seeing an abuse of power by people who support an extreme left-wing ideology. Christians need to speak up and take a stand for biblical morality, God’s design in creation, freedom in society, and the danger of Orwellian thought-police using human rights’ tribunals to force people to use invented words.”
But then West fails to realize that the very advice he gives is setting things up so that the “left-wing ideology” can “force people to use invented words”. He seems to think that we can maintain these basic freedoms by freely agreeing to use these invented words. How is that not being controlled by these people? He is suggesting that we don’t have to be coerced to use these words, we will do it gladly ourselves. The title of his article should actually be: “How to use the pronouns the thought-police want us to use.”
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…)
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.
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…)
Dr. Steve Turley teaches Theology, Greek, and Rhetoric at Tall Oaks Classical School, and he also is a professor of Aesthetics, Music and World Cultures at Eastern University, a co-educational, comprehensive Christian university in St. Davids, Pennsylvania, fifteen miles northwest of Philadelphia. He also writes and hosts the Turley Talks podcast and is an accomplished classical guitarist.
Dr. Turley has a recent publication available that posits the question: What if, instead of watching Christian movies, we cultivated the practice of learning to recognize biblical themes and symbology in films in general? (more…)
Proverbs seems aimed at a young man–someone who is at least an adolescent since he is capable of being sexually tempted. He may be old enough to be a young married man. After all, one of Solomon’s exhortations is to be satisfied with one’s young wife (Proverbs 5:18-19).
I don’t know at what age men got married in Israel in Solomon’s day, but his wisdom seems aimed at males ranging from adolescence to early marriage.
As Scripture, Proverbs is a book meant to be read by all people, young and old, male and female. But to apply the lessons, if you are not a young man, then you need to imagine being a young man in most cases, so you can apply Solomon’s warnings to yourself.
Solomon’s warning in Proverbs 7 is specific and detailed. He wants the young man to avoid the trap of a married, wealthy, immoral woman. He doesn’t explicitly say she is older, but Solomon doesn’t call her young. The impression we get is that she is older than the youth, and certainly more experienced.
And she is not tempting the young man only with sex, but with the enjoyment of wealth that is not his and he did not earn. Her bed is a luxury that the man could not afford unless he was wealthy. Her mention of the husband’s “bag of money” that he took on his trip emphasizes his immense wealth. If he has so much money to risk going somewhere far away (an inherently dangerous endeavor in the ancient world) then we can safely assume he has far more wealth in his home estate.
So, here’s a rich woman offering a night of sinful pleasure to a young man.
The adulterous temptress of Proverbs 7 seems unprecedented in the Bible. The closest situation is the story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife. But Joseph was a successful and capable manager. The wife’s desires, while wrong, made more sense. She wasn’t offering herself to a young stranger who hadn’t accomplished anything. Joseph was a genuinely admirable man. (more…)
I was honored to be asked to speak at the annual Front Porch Republic conference alongside the Notre Dame political theorist and savant Patrick Deneen and the regionalist writer and wit Bill Kauffman, among others. The theme of the conference was, Localism and the Professions. They let me tag along I suppose because, like Mr. T., they “pity the fool!” Another reason may be that ministers were once considered professionals.
Professionals profess things. That’s what professionals do. They have been entrusted with valuable information.
I’m a minister, I’m entrusted with professing the gospel.
Information should bring Aristotle to mind, the man who identified the causes that inform everything. While every community begins with material causes that make a community possible, there are three other causes that actually make a community out of the materials on hand.
It is worth noting that each of the traditional professions corresponds to one of these causes. I think it is fair to say that the medical profession attends to the efficient cause. Sick people can’t work. Then there is the legal profession. Lawyers are stewards the formal cause. Through the administration of the laws, people can serve the common good as they pursue private goods. But traditionally it was the clergy that helped a community see what it is all for. We were the stewards of the final cause.
Notice the use of the past tense? For reasons that have spawned a million books, I’m out of the traditional job. No one really wants to hear from me about what it’s all about.
This can be seen in urban planning. People don’t build churches in the center of things anymore.
I live in New England where every town green is graced by a while clapboard Congregational church. But the only question people ask of those old buildings is, “What time is it?” when they glance at the steeple clock.
When people do look to the clerisy for guidance it isn’t as a community, but as consumers. And generally these individuals are looking for what George Barna calls “life coaching” to help them reach their personal goals. I’m like the trainer down at the health center. I provide advice on a proper diet and workout regime for the spirit.
Some of my colleagues have taken this up with gusto. They help people develop a personal relationship with Jesus. And this relationship is inward, and very, very personal. I’m reminded of Harold Bloom’s take on the old hymn, “In the Garden”. People go to the garden alone to commune with Jesus. And Bloom asked, “Just where is this garden, anyway?” It’s a Gnostic garden, he surmised, I think correctly. It is a virtual place; it only exists inwardly.
But local communities are real places that can be found using a map.
The Blessing of Getting Stuck
Speaking of places, now that I’ve treated the professions, let’s look at the other operative word in title of this conference—localism.
I now grudgingly accept that you don’t choose the location; the location chooses you.
I’ve moved around a lot during my time on the planet, first as luggage, then as the guy with the luggage. But I’ve been sitting on the same spot for the last ten years or so. The spot is in the Connecticut River valley, the rusted heart of industrial New England. The mills are largely gone; the gun makers are leaving, and if we ever beat our spears into pruning hooks the folks who work for Electric Boat will be out of work. But I won’t be leaving any time soon. I’ve set down some roots.
It’s not because I’m from there. I’m from a different valley—the Ohio River valley, western Pennsylvania specifically. It’s a rusted belt too, but different enough that I don’t feel entirely at home in my new home. There’s no going back, though; I’m different enough now that western Pennsylvania isn’t home anymore. I’m a stranger wherever I go, I suppose.
Now, we all know what Wendell Berry thinks of ministers. We’re careerists, careening from church to church. We just don’t care enough about the places we’re called to. He’s right. But it begs a question. Yes, many of us blindly take our cues from mega-church pastors thousands of miles away, and we hanker after a “larger sphere of ministry”, but the ladies in our churches often take their cues from a pastor who’s been dead for thirty years. And when a congregation turns on you, your best hope is to get out of Dodge as fast as you can. This can discourage putting down roots.
What does it mean to put down roots anyway? Does it mean buying a house? Shopping at farmers’ markets? Scolding yourself when you feel the urge to run?
After thinking about it a while I’ve concluded it means what the metaphor implies: it means drawing nourishment from the place where you’re planted.
I’m not talking about drawing something from the atmosphere of a place. Local color is wonderful, but it won’t feed you (unless you can package it and sell it like they do on Cape Cod or in Vermont). What keeps you somewhere is productive property, the sort that can’t be moved. Wendell Berry has a farm. He cultivates it, and draws a living from it.
We can’t all get back to the farm, though–not soon, anyway. But there are other forms rooted property can take.
Small businesses usually work this way. Your reputation for minding the store takes years to build. And a pastor knows that a local businessman is worth three corporate executives. While the guy in the corner office may fill the offering plate with dough, his knowledge of a community is generally nil. And he could be transferred to Minneapolis in the blink of an eye. I’ve seen it: there he is; now he’s gone.
There is a risk to staying put. We should acknowledge it. That seems odd—what could be more conservative than putting down roots? But it is wildly speculative. The risk goes by the name: “opportunity cost.” By staying put you limit yourself to what this particular place can yield. And if you’ve made Detroit your home, well, too bad.
Local churches are somewhat like this. They’re not property—at least not a pastor’s property. But how my church fares will largely determine how I fare. While Connecticut isn’t Detroit, I do see young people leaving, and old folks too. It’s a hard place to start out, and a hard place to finish. It’s expensive to live there; it’s even more expensive to die here. Still, we’re holding our own, even growing some.
I wonder a bit about the future of my church, though. Someday she will be better served by a younger man. What then? Where will I go? I’ve seen old preachers kill their churches by using them as life support.
My church isn’t the only thing that keeps me here. There’s my wife’s family. We moved here between pastorates a decade ago in part because we wanted our kids to be around grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. It was a good move.
But there was another reason we moved here: investment real estate. I had collected some properties in the area on the side over the years.
When I was just starting out my wife and I went to visit a saintly pastor and wife who were getting along in years. They lived in a trailer. Their good cheer and hospitality spoke to their royal status in heaven amid their humble surroundings. But I was ashamed of the church for forgetting them. I’ve known others like them, elderly ministers living in trailers.
Often they were the best men, not ladder-climbers, or namedroppers, just simple preachers who visited widows in their distress and went to fetch wayward children from the street. These were men I think even Wendell Berry would respect. But it was in the car during the ride home that I decided I would not become one of them. If possible, I would be both saintly and propertied. I don’t know if I’ve managed saintly—I’ve been told my faith is pretty earthy—but I’ve managed to become propertied. Maybe I’ve made some kind of trade. But I knew that day that, while I could trust the Lord to meet my needs, I could not trust the church.
That sounds terribly Protestant, I know. I suffer from the cautious love for the church that typifies the brand of Christianity I belong to.
I began investing in real estate in the early 1990s. I’ve done all right. Now I’m a freeholder. I even own enough to be considered a yeoman. I could have been a voter in colonial New England. It has afforded me a rare measure of independence for a preacher. But it has cost me something. I’m not free to get up and go. I’m rooted in the Connecticut River valley.
Commercial corporations have their own form of itinerancy. In the church the itinerancy was there from the start. The Son of Man had no place to lay his head, and Paul was a tentmaker—the perfect trade for a man on the road. Apostles didn’t set down roots. There was always another village on the other side of the hill that needed the gospel. But the apostles depended on the Lord. Their rootlessness distracts us from the roots that stuck straight up into the air. Corporation men are not rooted in the soil either. But their roots don’t reach up to heaven. They dig into corporations that float in the contested space between heaven and earth, where the Prince of the Power of the Air dwells.
Every formula for freedom I’ve come across contains some measure of dependency, usually hidden, like some secret ingredient. The Apostles were free because they depended on bread from heaven; corporation men are unencumbered by local loyalties because they live like tiny corpuscles in national and transnational bodies. But the yeomanry: family farmers, small business owners, and people like me, depend directly on a particular place for a living. As those places fare, so do we.
But we enjoy another form of freedom. We’re more self-reliant because we depend on things close at hand, things that grant us more agency than the rootless are granted. Sure, our local communities can’t separate themselves from the world entirely, as Berry’s fiction beautifully laments, but I’ll take the risks that come with my place over the freedom of the corporation man. He’s tied to the earth too. The body he lives in is a giant Mickey Mouse in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. It’s tethered to the ground with strings too thin to be seen on television. But eventually everything that begins on earth falls back to earth and dies. There is great freedom in accepting this. I suppose I will die where I am planted.
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If you’d like to know more about my latest book before shelling out your hard-earned money for it, Wipf and Stock, the publisher of my book, Man of the House, has given me permission to share a little sample of the book with you. The hope, of course, is you will like it enough to purchase a copy. Enjoy!.
There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, ‘Mine!’Abraham Kuyper
The Gospel Coalition published an article last week by Stephen West titled “
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.
What does it mean to put down roots anyway? Does it mean buying a house? Shopping at farmers’ markets? Scolding yourself when you feel the urge to run?
But we enjoy another form of freedom. We’re more self-reliant because we depend on things close at hand, things that grant us more agency than the rootless are granted. Sure, our local communities can’t separate themselves from the world entirely, as Berry’s fiction beautifully laments, but I’ll take the risks that come with my place over the freedom of the corporation man. He’s tied to the earth too. The body he lives in is a giant Mickey Mouse in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. It’s tethered to the ground with strings too thin to be seen on television. But eventually everything that begins on earth falls back to earth and dies. There is great freedom in accepting this. I suppose I will die where I am planted.
