Culture on Miscellanea

Generational Criticism and Nostalgia

Sun, 30 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

And it is sometimes the fault of old people to discourage the services of the present age by crying up too much the performances and attainments of the former age.

The Real America

Fri, 21 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

If aliens were to be called upon, at the discretion of officials, for their registration cards, citizens must be given some means of proving that they are not aliens, and so they must presumably provide themselves with registration cards, too.

And so we shall have a full-fledged European police system established almost before we know it; the American citizen will be required as he goes from place to place to “show his papers” quite in the European style.

Tough Times for Evangelical Theology

Sun, 14 Jan 2024 21:07:01 +0000

Evangelical theology faces tough times ahead: the church seems variously determined to prioritise management technique, religious experience, or that nebulous bane of contemporary life, ‘relevance’, over any notion of careful reflection upon and articulation of its irreducibly doctrinal message and experience.

Dishonor to Protestant Christianity

Mon, 14 Dec 2020 01:35:09 +0000

We can conceive few things more dishonourable to Protestant Christianity, or more fitted to impair its progress, than to be able to say, with apparent truth, that it is careless of the interests of poor—more careless than the men who make less pretension.

And, on the other hand, we can conceive few things more fitted to propitiate the good-will of the world, which, at all events, admires benevolence, than to be able, in a way which does not admit of cavil, to show that the same religious system which alone can provide for the welfare of eternity, is the most active and unwearied guardian of the poor man’s interest in time.”

Deplorable

Wed, 04 Nov 2020 02:06:04 +0000

The state of the nation, the state of the churches—both are deplorable! Those who should be praying—are disputing and fighting among themselves! Alas! how many professors are more concerned for the mistakes of government—than for their own sins!

Voting in Accordance to Conscience

Tue, 06 Nov 2018 12:12:00 +0000

A great many men feel that there is no use in voting against a thing unless you can defeat it.

I do not feel that way.

I think it is a very important thing to vote exactly in accordance with your conscience, quite irrespective of the immediate success of your vote in your dealing with that measure.

Hot-Brained Bigots

Sat, 01 Sep 2018 11:19:41 +0000

There is little doubt but many, if they had the courage and honesty to speak out, would add St. Paul himself to the list of those whom they despise as uncharitable and hot-brained bigots; for who has offended more than he against the rules of that indifference to error which is at present miscalled charity?

Strain of Anabaptism in American Religion

Tue, 06 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

It is no exaggeration to assert that there exists a decided strain of Anabaptism in American evangelicalism.

The prevalent powerful prejudice, against certain things the use of which should be left to the individual conscience, and the too strong insistence sometimes at young people’s Bible conferences that they devote themselves to ‘full-time’ Christian service rather than engage in so-called secular vocations, are just two bits of evidence.

Evil, Enormous Multiplication of Books

Wed, 14 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000

The enormous multiplication of books in every branch of knowledge is one of the greatest evils of this age. It presents one of the most serious obstacles to the acquisition of correct information, by throwing in the reader’s way piles of lumber in which he must painfully grope for the scraps of useful matter….

On the Invention of Telephones

Wed, 07 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000

If Bell had invented a muffler or gag, he would have done a real service. The human voice carries entirely too far as it is.

Here we have been hollering ‘shut up’ to our neighbors for centuries, and now you fellows come along and seek to complicate matters.

No Neutrality in Words

Mon, 03 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Some words are destructive, misleading, unnourishing (Eph. 4:29a); others are constructive, timely, true, loving, grace-giving (Eph. 4:15, 29b). None are neutral.

Religion that Stands

Sat, 24 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

The type of religion which rejoices in the pious sound of traditional phrases regardless of their meanings or shrinks from controversial matters will never stand amid the shocks of life.

Pulpit Bored with God

Sat, 10 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

The institution that has most failed America in our lifetimes is the evangelical pulpit that is bored with God and dares not have the temerity to speak the truth of a holy, sovereign God who commands obedience and offers grace through the atoning blood of His Son.

Outlaw Conquerors

Wed, 30 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000

What want these outlaw conquerors should have But History’s purchased page to call them great?

The Lord’s Political Instruments

Mon, 07 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000

The instruments whom the Lord employs in political matters are usually such as are incapable of better employment.

Practice What is Good

Sat, 25 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Every day I am more persuaded of this because I see men for the most part spending their strength and time more to oppose things they disagree with than to practice the things they and others agree are most necessary.

Bavinck on Rosseau

Wed, 01 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000

In the eighteenth century, Rousseau became the apostle of a ‘back to nature movement’ that repudiated human culture as the source of all evil. If only, in education, religion, morality, society, and the state, we would return to nature, to the idyllic circumstances of shepherds and farmers, the innocent and carefree lifestyle of natives, then humanity, virtue and happiness would instantly be restored. The attempts to follow through on this vision–the French Revolution and all it’s step children, a variety of utopian colonies–demonstrate the futile attempt to bring heaven on earth.

Morality of Food

Wed, 18 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

If we are to discuss the morality of food, foremost in our minds must be the ability of people (especially the poor) to eat.

Whatever else the modern food elite may say—their push for soda and Twinkie taxes, their promotion of local foods, their attempts to regulate processed and fast food, their aversion to biotechnology—their actions make it harder for the poor to meet the most basic necessity of fending off starvation.

Chesterton on Motherhood

Sun, 08 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

How can it be a large career to tell other people’s children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one’s own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No; a woman’s function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness.

Bad Parents Make Bad Children

Sun, 01 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

I cannot suppose thee to be such a stranger as to be ignorant of the general complaint concerning the decay of the power of godliness, and more especially of the great corruption of youth. Wherever thou goest, thou wilt hear men crying out of bad children and bad servants; whereas indeed the source of the mischief must be sought a little higher: it is bad parents and bad masters that make bad children and bad servants.

Diminshed Value of Historical Arguments

Tue, 01 Mar 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Complicated answers rarely work well in public debates. In his classic Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville observed that ‘a false but clear and precise idea always has more power in the world than one which is true but complex.’

If anything, the disparity he discerned nearly two centuries ago is greater in our own age of sound bites and tweets. Our society asks for easy lessons and uncomplicated truths, and if our primary reason for studying the past is to win arguments in the public square, we will be sorely tempted to provide them—to our detriment.

Foolishness of Preaching

Sat, 09 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Could anything be more impractical than the attempt to influence conduct by rehearsing events concerning the death of a religious teacher? That is what Paul called ’the foolishness of the message.’ It seemed foolish to the ancient world, and it seems foolish to liberal preachers today.

The History of Philosophy

Tue, 29 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

But in philosophy itself, thinkers today discuss essentially the same questions that Plato and Aristotle did. That interesting fact suggests that the history of philosophy might be to an extent a history of wrong turns.

Give Me Liberty or?

Thu, 17 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

I think a heathen said, ‘The day which deprives a man of his liberty, robs him of half his virtues.’ If I was a heathen I should say so too. But the gospel teaches me otherwise.

Random Elections?

Thu, 17 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

I have so poor an opinion of the bulk both of the electors and the elected, that, I think, if the seats in the house of commons could be determined by a lottery, abundance of mischief and wickedness might be prevented, and perhaps the nation might be represented to as much advantage by this as by any other method; but these are not my concerns.

Thomas Jefferon on Jesus

Wed, 05 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000

And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.

But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with all this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this the most venerated reformer of human errors.

Farm Work

Mon, 20 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Our problem today is that we picture farm work from the vantage point of never having done it.

Kahneman on Media and Memory

Mon, 29 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

People tend to assess the relative importance of issues by the ease with which they are retrieved from memory—and this is largely determined by the extent of coverage in the media. Frequently mentioned topics populate the mind even as others slip away from awareness.

Countercultural Christianity

Sun, 12 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

By refusing to engage in the quasi-religious customs surrounding the official Roman governmental structures, by resolutely setting themselves against some of the immoral practices prevalent at the time, and by meeting so often on their own to celebrate the Lord’s Supper, Christians were regarded with suspicion and hostility. The readers of 1 Peter were probably being criticized, mocked, discriminated against, and perhaps even brought into court on trumped-up charges.

Madmen in Authority

Mon, 06 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.

Pilgrim Life

Sat, 14 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Peter will describe the political and social duties of the Christian pilgrim. But first the pilgrim must know his calling. It is not to pursue the mirage of humanistic hope. Neither is it to bow down to worship the imperial images of totalitarian power. It is to obey Jesus Christ until the day of his appearing.

Douglas Adams and P. G. Wodehouse

Mon, 19 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Actually, the literary tradition that Douglas [Adams] was part of was, at least initially, the tradition of English Humor Writing that gave us P. G. Wodehouse (whom Douglas often cited as an influence, although most people tended to miss it because Wodehouse didn’t write about spaceships).

The Fate of the Country

Fri, 09 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

The fate of the country does not depend on how you vote at the polls — the worst man is as strong as the best at that game; it does not depend on what kind of paper you drop into the ballot-box once a year, but on what kind of man you drop from your chamber into the street every morning.

Adam Smith on Watches

Thu, 09 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

But the person so nice with regard to this machine, will not always be found either more scrupulously punctual than other men, or more anxiously concerned upon any other account, to know precisely what time of day it is. What interests him is not so much the attainment of this piece of knowledge, as the perfection of the machine which serves to attain it.

In Our Days

Mon, 28 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0000

In our days, to be a true Christian is really to become a scandal.

John Newton on Jonthan Edwards

Thu, 29 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

‘Edwards on Free Will,’ I have read with pleasure, as a good answer to proud reasoners in their own way; but a book of that sort cannot be generally read: where the subject matter is unpleasing, and the method of treating it requires more attention than the Athenian spirit of the times would bear, I wonder not if it is uncalled for.

Tolkien on Disney

Tue, 01 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000

It may be advisable, rather than lose the American interest, to let the Americans do it seems good for them – as long as it was possible (I should like to add) to veto anything from or influenced by the Disney Studios (for all whose works I have a heartfelt loathing).

Frivolousness of Newsness

Mon, 31 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

And it is sure the duty of the older generation to be embarrassingly old-fashioned, for the claims of the ’newness’ of any younger generation are mostly frivolous. The young are born to the human condition more than to their time, and they may face mainly the same trails and obligations as their elders have faced.

People Don't Talk About Anything

Mon, 31 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

“People don’t talk about anything!”

“Oh, they must!”

“No, not anything. They name a lot of cars or clothes or swimming pools mostly and say how swell! But they all say the same things and nobody says anything different from anyone else.”

C. S. Lewis on Media and Sexuality

Sun, 30 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

It is all a fake, of course; the figures in the popular art are falsely drawn; the real women in bathing suits or tights are actually pinched in and propped up to make them appear firmer and more slender and more boyish than nature allows a full-grown woman to be…. As a result we are more and more directing the desires of men to something which does not exist—making the rôle of the eye in sexuality more and more important and at the same time making its demands more and more impossible. What follows you can easily forecast.

The Realm of Science

Thu, 27 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Because of the cultural prestige of science and scientists, many people simply accept the present state of things as if it were the only possibility. But once we question the underlying assumptions, it becomes clear that there are other possible ways of construing the meaning of science: science studies the regularities of God’s providential rule, and can do so without making assumptions that ban the idea of divine purposes or ban God’s exceptional acts.

Illusion of Liberal Ideology

Sun, 09 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

It is one of the more facetious illusions of liberal ideology that people will like each other better by getting to know each other.

Peace Passing Understanding

Wed, 26 Feb 2014 00:00:00 +0000

There is a peace passing understanding, of which the politicians cannot deprive us.

The Huge Task of Mothering

Mon, 20 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

How can it be a large career to tell other people’s children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one’s own children about the universe? … I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness.

The Vice of the Age

Wed, 25 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

It is not reasoning but neglecting to reason, and to extend conclusions to their just consequences, that I condemn as the vice of the age.

Eschew Obfuscation

Tue, 24 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

If you care about being thought credible and intelligent, do not use complex language where simpler language will do. … In an article titled ‘Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity: Problems with Using Long Words Needlessly,’ [Danny Oppenheimer] showed that couching familiar ideas in pretentious language is taken as a sign of poor intelligence and low credibility.

James Madison on the History of all Governments

Sat, 21 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

The constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care vested the question of war to the Legislature.

Media and the Importance of Issues

Sat, 21 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

People tend to assess the relative importance of issues by the ease with which they are retrieved from memory–and this is largely determined by the extent of coverage in the media.

Tim Keller on the Lord of the Rings

Sun, 24 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000

When people ask me how often I have read The Lord of the Rings, the answer is, I actually never stop. I’m always in it.

Bavinck on Crime

Tue, 23 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

If the state’s only right to act against criminals is for self-protection and to improve them, how will we stop those who wish to deal with all kinds of sick people in similar manner, to view the religious and moral convictions that are judged to be contrary to the public good as so many diseases, remnants and aftereffects of an earlier state, and to take over the entire upbringing of its citizens and the whole culture of the society in question.

Disagreeability of Beards

Sun, 12 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Thus we have now for many centuries triumphed over nature to the extent of making certain secondary characteristics of the male (such as the beard) disagreeable to nearly all the females—and there is more in that than you might suppose.

As If the World Were All

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Men walk and talk as if the world were all, when comparatively it is nothing.

Al Mohler on the Church and Marriage

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

The U.S. Supreme Court may well decide the future of marriage as a legal institution, but the church must hold to marriage as far more, but not less than, a legal reality. Marriage is one of God’s most gracious gifts to humanity. It will be the Church’s responsibility to honor marriage, no matter what the Court may decide.

Not a Thought in Her Head

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

She had not a thought in her head that was not a slogan.

Churchly Trendiness

Sun, 03 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Today’s churchly trendiness is really yesterday’s unbelief.

Lacking Fellowship?

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000

At least as it regard the handful of families that showed immediate excitement and then after a month changed heart, this is what ’lacking fellowship’; means. It means that the family needs a church made up of people who are just like they, who raise their children using the same childrearing methods, who take the same stance on birth control, schooling, voting, breastfeeding, dress codes, white flour, white sugar, gluten, childhood immunizations, the observance of secular and religious holidays.

Great Men and their Mothers

Thu, 06 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0000

It may well be questioned if history reveals a single instance of a truly great man who had a fool for his mother.

John Fesko on Christian Liberty

Sat, 12 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

If we are to excel in the next twenty-five years, we must hold fast to the biblical doctrine of Christian liberty as part of the greater whole of the Reformed system of doctrine.

We must not be fearing that different practices and opinions on child rearing, schooling, politics, and dating will somehow bring about the collapse of the OPC. Nor should we believe that such practices will somehow revive and edify the OPC.

Dabney on Submission to the Past

Thu, 03 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

We shall be wise, therefore, if we harken to the striking instruction if these instances, and make it our method to submit with modesty to the sober teachings of the past in all our legislation for the future.

Beer and Reformation

Tue, 01 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Drinking beer with friends is perhaps the most underestimated of all Reformation insights and essential to ongoing reform; and wasting time with a choice friend or two on a regular basis might be the best investment of time you ever make.

Theology Bores Christians

Sun, 11 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Theology bores today’s Christians, which is another way of saying we are bored with God himself.

Good Ol' Days

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

‘Say not, Why were the former days better than these?’ For it is not from wisdom that you ask this.

Mencken on Professors and Theories

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000

A professor must have a theory as a dog must have fleas.

The Invisible Mosaic

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000

All the world, as a matter of fact, is a mosaic of little places invisible to the powers that be. And in the eyes of the powers that be all these invisible places do not add up to a visible place. They add up to words and numbers.

Splendors of a National Government

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Happiness is preferable to the Splendors of a national Government.

Cult of Ignorance

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’

Offenseless Christianity

Sun, 27 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

I believe it to be a grave mistake to present Christianity as something charming and popular with no offense in it.

Madness of People

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies but not the madness of people.

Music as a Marvelous Creation

Sun, 06 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

A person who gives this some thought and yet does not regard music as a marvelous creation of God, must be a clodhopper indeed and does not deserve to be called a human being; he should be permitted to hear nothing but the braying of asses and the grunting of hogs.

If God Were Indeed a Human Projection

Sun, 19 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000

If ‘God’ were indeed a human projection or creation, a human effort to explain reality now known to us via science, or a means of providing security, comfort, and benefits now available to us through technological mastery, then indeed religion would wither away. But if God is real and religion is inevitable for us as human beings, then religion remains. It has, and it will.

Employment Outside the Home

Tue, 17 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000

I do not belive that ’employment outside the home’ is as valuable or important or satisfying as employment at home, for either men or women.

Wendell Berry on the Influence of TV

Tue, 10 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000

By television and other public means, we are encouraged to believe that we are far advanced beyond sitting till bedtime with the neighbors on a Kentucky ridgetop.

Jane Austen on Boys and Girls

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000

It would be , could they be made to understand how little the heart of man is affected by what is costly or new in their attire; how little it is biased by the texture of their muslin, and how unsusceptible of peculiar tenderness towards the spotted, the sprigged, the mull, or the jackonet.

Defilement of Processed Food

Tue, 25 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

It seems that some people take the word refined as an indication that we humans have somehow defied the law of Nature by having the audacity to remove some undesirable materials from food before eating it.

Einstein on the Expected Chaos

Wed, 22 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Well, a priori, one should expect a chaotic world which cannot be grasped by mind in any way. There in lies the weakness of the positivists and professional atheists.

Institutions Controlling our Chidren's Lives

Tue, 07 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Two institutions currently control our children’s lives: television and schooling, in that order.

America's Answer to Intractable Problems

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000

America’s answer to any intractable problem is schools.

Extreme Mental Modesty

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0000

We are on the road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table.