Issues of Life
June/July 2002
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James is not antitheology; what he is against is the separation of theology from life, the reduction of faith to easy-believism, and the negation of action as the expression of faith.
Last month I heard a group of candidates for our rural county's Board of Supervisors give brief campaign speeches at a public forum. One candidate, in appealing to the environmentalist opposition to logging, said that we should not let timber companies think they can cut down trees "just because they own the land."
As a social norm, "manners" carry a bad reputation. When someone mentions the word manners, we may instantly think of self-absorbed snobs who use their pretentious and formal manners as a weapon designed to vanquish supposed inferiors. Such social guerilla warfare has long been the ideal for many to measure all common social conduct.
I was recently invited by an Australian-Chinese entrepreneur in Beijing, China, to provide expertise on how best to teach the Chinese to read and speak English.
Perhaps it is only in politics that Christians would even consider the concept of praying and trusting God about the situation, and then do nothing practical about what is going on! Sadly, this is how many approach the nasty business of politics, and why I began sharing the "Three P's" of politics with the young people. If Christians do not apply these concepts and engage in the real work of politics, then our culture will surely fail, just as our churches and families would fail if all they did was pray and trust God for the outcome.
Let us start at the start: I am a Southerner, and an Arkansan. I am proud of my heritage. I am glad we celebrate Robert E. Lee's birthday...But I can't stand racism. And neither can our Lord.
In part one of this series, I examined the nature of storytelling and mythology in the movies. We saw that movies are a persuasive influence because they meet the holistic need — body, mind, and emotions — for man to find significance and meaning in life.
George Orwell's book 1984, first published in 1949, has had a notable impact in English-speaking countries. Attempts by governments to limit the flow of politically relevant information, for example, are commonly referred to as "Orwellian."
Every time Abbot and Costello got together on the silver screen, they routinely embarked on adventures caused by words gone wild. That's what made them funny. Let's face it. We love to laugh at dolts who argue when "they don't even know what they're talking about!" Except when those dolts represent the kingdom of God. Especially when we might be one of them.
The motto of the Protestant Reformation was post tenebras lux, a Latin phrase which means, "after darkness, light."
In this four-part series of economics from a Christian perspective, I have been using the Westminster Larger Catechism's explanation of the Eighth Commandment to illustrate an older view of how the Ten Commandments were interpreted and understood.