All posts by Phil

Blogs, Socials

Doktor Luther is Back

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What’s that roar of clarity and wit you hear on the horizon? It’s Doktor Luther criticizing the movies. Yes, he’s back, and he’s on Twitter. To wit:

  • Lutherans who have not read Bo Giertz’s “Hammer of God” should be forced to wash Joel Osteen’s wife’s car for a year. http://bit.ly/bNggXW
  • That also goes for the works of Lars Walker, despite his retrograde fashion sense. http://bit.ly/16Ujpg
  • If you don’t buy this book now, I will find you and sit on you. http://amzn.to/bPXrBM Fascinating and sad.
  • This guy created 20 rooms out of 350 sq. ft. He should be a Marvel superhero or something: Efficiency Man. http://bit.ly/bsRTvM

You’ve been blessed, haven’t you? Yes, you have.

Authors, Non-fiction

It Only Gets Freakier From Here

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Author Terence P. Jeffrey talks with National Review Online editor-at-large Kathryn Lopez about his new book, Controls Freaks: 7 Ways Liberals Plan to Ruin Your Life.


LOPEZ: Why is a book published in 1910 important to you, Mark Levin, and the Social Security Administration?

JEFFREY: In Liberty and Tyranny, Mark Levin notes that Columbia University economist Henry Rogers Seager, in his 1910 book Social Insurance: A Program for Social Reform, laid out an argument for an American welfare state anchored in a social-security program. As Mark pointed out, the contemporary Social Security Administration is so taken with Seager’s statist views that it has posted his book on its website. Seager was the consummate Control Freak, someone who wanted to eradicate the pioneering spirit from American life, and he pushed not only for a welfare state, but also for eugenics — literally advocating the sterilization of people he believed unworthy of breeding. Seager exemplifies how modern liberals parted ways with both the constitutional and the moral traditions of our nation.

LOPEZ: Is the conscience front the most insidious? Or is the speech front?

JEFFREY: Yes, conscience is the most insidious. Liberals today don’t just believe they can force you to pay for the killing of someone else’s unborn child (and brazenly tell you they are not doing it), they also believe they have a right to teach your five-year-old kindergartner that same-sex unions are a good thing — without ever telling you they are doing it. There is a reason why liberal politicians like President Obama don’t like school choice, even if they send their own children to very expensive private schools. They see the public-school classroom as a moral battlefield where they can wage a 13-year insurgency to capture the soul of your child.

Authors, Writing

Writing is Hard

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NPR’s Talk of the Nation has a good segment about writing with three authors who are honest about the struggle to put words on paper, so to speak. One caller asks if pain is a requirement for writers, noting a particular unhappy author who stopped writing during a short happy spurt then returned to writing once the sadness settled back.

Religion

You Can’t Clean Yourself Up Before You Go to God

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I heard something of a radio show tonight that ties in a bit with Lars’ last post. The show was discussing a Christian response to homosexuality, and I believe both guests had struggled with same-sex attraction over the years. A woman called in to ask if they believed people could be born gay and told her painful story of being rejected by churches repeatedly. She was 66 years old now, did not want to have homosexual feelings, but was beginning to believe God made her this way.

What burned me up was when she said churches had alienated her when they learned she struggled with homosexuality. Some churches wanted her to embrace the perversion; others wanted her to clean herself up before she could come to God with them. Naturally, I believe the first group is not practicing biblical morality, but the second group? Who do they think they are?! Are they in church to do God a favor? Does the Almighty need them to do his work? Did they clean up themselves before God redeemed them?

I hate hearing of church people who reject those struggling with the ugly, public sins. It’s just as blasphemous as any play or movie you might be recruited to boycott.

But as usual when I start writing, I calm down before I’m finished. I know the church has many godly people who help anyone who comes to them through the roughest sins and struggles. And I know there are churches with many religious people, who do not know God, but think they can save themselves by doing good things and avoiding certain bad things. Of course, the second group is going to hold to whatever religious culture they have in their town and kick out the ugly sinners who can’t overcome their own faults through sheer moral courage or maybe bad luck.

Yes, it’s bad luck to overcome your faults on your own because you may begin to believe you can meet God on your terms, that you are strong enough to negotiate with him, or that he doesn’t matter in the long run (in which case, there wouldn’t be a long run). Some of us are blessed to have faults or weaknesses that encourage us to sin visibly; we may seek God sooner than those who are self-made.

Continue reading You Can’t Clean Yourself Up Before You Go to God →
Uncategorized

Movie: For All Mankind

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Hulu is offering the documentary, “For All Mankind,” a film about the 24 men who have gone to the moon in their own words and images.

And for something completely different, this movie is a Japanese staged King Lear. I wonder when I’ll have time for these.

Uncategorized

Building Men

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World’s Anthony Bradley describes his motive for teaching a class of boys the fundamentals of the faith.

A ninth-grade history teacher and I decided to create a “Men’s Bible Study” for our students because we noticed that the feminization of church was churning out a generation of “nice guys” who were not capable of leading, had no sense of why God created them to be men—other than have a family and a nice job—and were oddly passive. The ninth-grade boys would walk the halls with heads bowed and shoulders slouched as if they were carrying 80-pound weights in each hand as their bodies were carried along by an airport terminal moving sidewalk.

Authors

Playwright Mamet Rejects Liberalism

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David Mamet, “America’s most famous and successful playwright,” has rejected the political liberalism of his past, perhaps in an effort to avoid unpleasant New York cocktail parties. In the current Commentary magazine, Terry Teachout describes the playwright’s conversion as revealed in print.

Blogs, Socials

Style Guide Update: His Beneficence

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When referring to the blog, “Writing, Clear and Simple,” do not cite rmjacobsen.squarespace.com, but writingclearandsimple.com instead. When referring to the blog’s author, use “Roy Jacobsen the Magnificent” when quoting and “Roy Jacobsen the Beneficent” for all other references.