#school

Honestly Assessing Our Decision to Public School Our Kids

Last week Aileen and I had the joy of attending our son’s high school graduation. Nick graduated as an Ontario Scholar, certified as bilingual in French and English. Now he gets six weeks of vacation before he heads south to Boyce College in Louisville, Kentucky, to begin the next phase of his education. We are tremendously proud of him not just for getting through school but for being a young man of character and godliness. I’ve written in the past …

Letters to the Editor #23 (Arminianism, Public Schools, Ebooks)

I received quite a lot of interesting letters to the editor this week and their topics ranged from Arminianism to ebooks and just about everywhere in between. I have captured a few of the most noteworthy and hope you enjoy reading them. Comments on Why I Am Not Arminian First off, I love this series you are doing “why I am not…” It has been extremely edifying to me personally and has helped answer a lot of questions, especially regarding …

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Letters to the Editor #18 (Public Schools, Gossip)

Not surprisingly, this was a busy week for letters to the editor. I say it is not surprising because of the article I wrote on Monday concerning public schools and their teachers. The majority of the letters today (and, indeed, almost all of the letters I received this week) concern that article. I’m grateful that so many people took time to write kind, thoughtful responses. Comments on A La Carte (March 22) I am a long-time reader and enjoy your …

Stop Slandering Public School Teachers

We are now in our twelfth year of public schooling, and between our three children we have totaled twenty-two school years of public education. This has taken place in a limited context, of course: one primary school and one high school in one school district in one town in one province in one country. I have written elsewhere about how and why we made the decision to educate our children this way and do not wish to cover that ground …

Not a Fan

This review of Kyle Idleman’s Not a Fan comes a little bit late. The book released almost two years ago and has sold over a half million copies. I have been meaning to read it for some time, but something else always seemed more urgent. However, with Idleman’s follow-up releasing in the next month–a book that is likely to hit the list of bestsellers before Not a Fan has fallen off–it seemed logical to read the first before the second. Not a …

Gandhi Doesn’t Like Us

How many times have you come across this quote attributed to Mahatma Gandhi? “I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” I must have read it a hundred times in books, magazines, articles, tweets. It is used by believers and unbelievers to point to the hypocrisy of Christians and to call us to more and to better. Our inability to live what we preach is driving the multitudes away. Or so …

How Could They Get It?

Yesterday I came across a quote by Richard Ganz that really jumped out to me. He is dealing with the frustration we often feel when we read the gospels. We read of Jesus’ disciples and see how time after time they just completely failed to understand who Jesus was and what he was up to. Ganz offers a biblical perspective: We look back at the disciples, and we wonder, “What in the world was wrong with them? How could they …

RCT5: Christianity & Liberalism

Today we come to another of our readings in Gresham Machen’s classic work Christianity & Liberalism. By this point Machen has already noted 3 points of difference between liberalism and Christianity: their message, their view of God and man, and their understanding of the Bible. With differences of this magnitude, it is not at all surprising that they differ drastically in the message they teach. But before he can consider the message, Machen needs to consider the Person upon whom …

King’s Cross

Tim Keller’s career as an author has been rather unusual. Ministries of Mercy, his first book, was published in 1997. It was 11 years before he wrote his second book, The Reason for God, a title that rocketed right onto the New York Times list of bestsellers. Since then he has averaged more than a book a year and each of those titles has garnered a lot of acclaim; within just a few years Keller has established himself as one …

Reading Classics Together – The Seven Sayings (Introduction)

Last year some of the readers of this site began to read Christian classics together with me. The impetus for this project was the simple realization that, though many Christians want to read through the classics of the faith, few of us have the motivation to actually make it happen. This program allows us to read them together, providing both a level of accountability and the added of interest of comparing notes. We spent eight weeks reading through J.C. Ryle’s …