The Magician’s Nephew
Russell Moore writes about The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and The Magician’s Nephew and gives his take on which comes first. I agree with him. “The Magician’s Nephew is what would be called in today’s film lingo a “prequel,” rather than a beginning. The narrative takes place chronologically before the other stories. But it makes sense only when read after them. That’s because it ties together loose ends and throws further light on the origins behind some of the characters and plotlines readers have already grown to know.”
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The Europeanization of America
Mark Steyn: “Most Americans don’t yet grasp the scale of the Obama project. The naysayers complain, oh, it’s another Jimmy Carter, or it’s the new New Deal, or it’s LBJ’s Great Society applied to health care… You should be so lucky. Forget these parochial nickel’n’dime comparisons. It’s all those multiplied a gazillionfold and nuclearized – or Europeanized, which is less dramatic but ultimately more lethal.”
The Modesty of Personal Restraint
Lydia Brownback pens a fantastic article about single women and the modesty of personal restraint. Though most people, when they think of modesty think of necklines and hemlines, “We are just as prone–if not more so–to overexpose what’s under our skin. Revealing too much about ourselves is immodest too.”
The Public Rebuke of False Teachers
James MacDonald: “I do not view Brian as an ‘erring weaker brother,’ worthy of sympathy or olive branches, but rather as a dangerous false teacher who repackages mainline liberal theology. (Have the past 50 years not been adequate to see how liberal theology empties churches and damns souls?) More dangerous still is that McLaren packages his false teaching and denials of Scripture as solutions to some of the excesses currently plaguing evangelicalism–the danger being his winning over of young people who have legitimate complaints about the current church, but who lack the discernment to see that his solutions are often unbiblical even when his critiques are fair.”
Easter and Commercialism
Slate suggests why Easter stubbornly resists the commercialism that swallowed Christmas. “So what enables Easter to maintain its religious purity and not devolve into the consumerist nightmare that is Christmas? Well, for one thing, it’s hard to make a palatable consumerist holiday out of Easter when its back story is, at least in part, so gruesome. Christmas is cuddly. Easter, despite the bunnies, is not.” And incisive quote: “Easter is an event that demands a ‘yes’ or a ‘no.’ There is no ‘whatever.’”
With the Debt, I Thee Wed
Owen Strachan looks to the reality of so many young couples entering marriage burdened with huge debts.
The Blackaby View of God’s Will
Dan Phillips is looking at Henry and Richard Blackaby’s very popular but very faulty view of God’s will and making decisions.
