Skip to main content

Quotation of the Week

Cultural snobbery rooted in personal superiority is a cancer of our time. America famously practices what Richard Hofstadter called “politics in the paranoid style,” but in truth, we don’t confine our paranoia to politics. We politicize everything today: the national anthem, sustainable food, cars and trucks, love of country, music, sports. All the good stuff and everything else besides. Even as America grows supposedly less religious, it becomes all the more chiliast. The secular apocalypse haunts us far more than the spiritual one ever did.
Because of this secular spirituality, we demonize those who do not share our practices. They become the incubators of original sin. So we turn our backs on them. We write them off. They do not deserve our fair-mindedness. Other people who mostly agree with us, who share a variation on our theme, do merit tolerance, but the counter-culturalists do not.
Owen Strachan

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A Grace Too Small

Last evening our sermon passage was found in Genesis 38.  It is an ugly passage.  It tells the story of Judah, his sons Er, Onan, and Shelah, and Er's wife Tamar.  Judah marries a Canaanite woman and has three sons.  His sons are so evil that God kills both Er and Onan for their wickedness.  Because Judah fears the loss of his remaining son, he fails to fulfill his obligation to Tamar of marrying her to his last son so that an heir might be raised up to Er.  Seeing the failure of her father-in-law, Tamar takes matters into her own hand by dressing as a prostitute and sleeping with Judah.  Judah, unaware of with whom he has had sex, subsequently hears that Tamar is pregnant by immorality. He demands that she be brought out and burned for her crime (can anyone say "hypocrite?").  Tamar then produces the evidence against her father-in-law and he relents.  The story ends with the birth of twin boys. I jokingly called the sermon the "Jerry ...

Getting Ready for Friday

Learn to know Christ and him crucified. Learn to sing to him, and say, "Lord Jesus, you are my righteousness, I am your sin. You have taken upon yourself what is mine and given me what is yours. You have become what you were not so that I might become what I was not." --Martin Luther

Only One Life

Two little lines I heard one day, Traveling along life’s busy way; Bringing conviction to my heart, And from my mind would not depart; Only one life, ‘twill soon be past, Only what’s done for Christ will last. Only one life, yes only one, Soon will its fleeting hours be done; Then, in ‘that day’ my Lord to meet, And stand before His Judgment seat; Only one life, ‘twill soon be past, Only what’s done for Christ will last. C. T. Studd