From Time to Build , by Yuval Levin (ISBN: 9781541699274), p. 135-136. [This is why I've limited my social media use:] "...there is no denying that the social media platforms have undercut our social lives.  They plainly encourage the vices most dangerous to a free society.  They drive us to speak without listening, to approach others confrontationally rather than graciously, to spread conspiracies and rumors, to dismiss and ignore what we would rather not hear, to make the private public, to oversimplify a complex world, to react to one another much too quickly and curtly.  They eat away at our capacity for patient toleration, our decorum, our forbearance, our restraint.  They leave us open to manipulation - by merchants, algorithms, even real-life Russian agents [and I would add Chinese agents].  They cause us to mistake expression for reflection, affirmation for respect, and reaction for responsibility.  They grind down our democratic soul." [It's more m...

 A good one.  We are to be in the world, but not of it.

I just sent this to supporters of my work at UTC:   Dear Friend of the Study Center, One of America's most prolific hymn writers was Johnson Oatman, Jr., of New Jersey.  By the time he went to his reward in 1922, he had about three thousand hymns to his credit!  One of his many famous songs is "Count Your Many Blessings."  As it is often sung to a tune by Ira Sankey, the light-hearted feel of lyric and note can have a rather superficial sense to it.  However, there are times when "count your many blessings" is serious and important spiritual counsel!  We are in one of those times. We are familiar these days with many voices speaking ill of our country and its Christian roots.  This cynical spirit is part of the philosophy of the world we live in today.  Sadly, many in the official Church, we might call it, have imbibed this spirit.  These people, while professing the faith of Christianity, are not thankful for our Christian tradition.  H...

Silent Night, Holy Night: All is calm, the Witch is gone! Father Christmas comes again; Joy is ours, for Aslan reigns! Narnia sleeps in peace, Narnia sleeps in peace. Silent Night, Holy Night: The snow falls on Aslan's How. Moonlight makes the snow to shine With a glory all divine. Aslan, our true king, lives! Aslan, our true king, lives! Silent Night, all is well: Pilgrims we to Cair Paravel. Fawns dance for us, as we sing; Homage pay we to the High King. Aslan will come again! Aslan will come again!

  Have you ever asked God to stop loving you so much?  I’m sure that sounds like a strange thing to ask, but C. S. Lewis, in his book The Problem of Pain , explains to us, that if we are complaining or resisting uncomfortable or painful things in our lives - which his providence has allowed - we may be doing just that very thing.  Why?  How?  We are forgetting that God’s love for us is an inexorable love.  If someone is being inexorable, they are insisting on their own way about things, regardless of how much someone may be complaining about it and petitioning against it.  God has an inexorable love for us, and that means he is going to insist on giving us what is best for us, even when we don’t like how he’s doing it. Here's an example of God's inexorable love: Jesus comes riding into Jerusalem in a fashion which he knows is a fulfillment of an Old Testament prophecy about the way the king of Israel would come home to his capital city.  The peopl...

[Paul on the Road to Damascus by Rubens] Years ago, there was a lot of debate in evangelical circles about "easy grace" and "Lordship salvation."  The concern was over people who were being told that they could become a Christian without submitting to Jesus's call to discipleship, as if discipleship was an optional add-on for people going to heaven.  The answer was that "Jesus must be Lord of all or he is not Lord at all."  "The disciples were first called Christians in Antioch" (Acts 11:26).  In other words, a Christian is a disciple; discipleship is not an option. We can understand that some evangelicals were so afraid of Pelagianism (salvation by works) that they could reduce the call to "repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ" [Acts 20:21] to just "believe in Jesus," and even minimize that belief to mere intellectual assent to the claims of Christ.  But that is surely a classic example of throwing out...

Douglas Murray and Dennis Prager hit on issues important for Christians who seek the redemption and healing of our culture for God's glory and the good of our neighbours.