One of the recurring irritations of my life has been one of my brothers. This brother, from an early age, made it his constant purpose to try to get me to go outside and do stuff.

My idea of a good time is to stay in the house with a book. A house to be inside of, a good book, and chocolate are about all I need for perfect contentedness.

This was, naturally, highly frustrating for my brother, who loved the outdoors and wanted somebody to play with, but was stuck with me for a sibling. As a playmate I left much to be desired. Experience had taught me that if I yielded to his importunities, the result would be 1) some game in which he’d beat me, and then, 2) a fight in which he would beat me again. This was a programme whose charm wore off at a pretty early stage.

For my brother, of course, as a normal human being, going outside and playing was a good thing in itself. My refusal to help him out with that was a major frustration in his young life. Continue reading Going out and playing with God →

Over at Patrick O’Hannigan’s The Paragraph Farmer, he quotes Peter Kreeft’s response to the question: “But is not God a lover rather than a warrior?”

A: No, God is a lover who is a warrior. The question fails to understand what love is — what the love that God is, is. Love is at war with hate, betrayal, selfishness, and all love’s enemies. Love fights. Ask any parent. Yuppie-love, like puppy-love, may be merely “compassion” (the fashionable word today), but father-love and mother-love are war.

Read the whole thing. It’s not long.



In a somewhat related vein, I had reason to consult one of Sigrid Undset’s novels today (The Axe, the first novel of her less-famous tetralogy, The Master of Hestviken, which the author preferred to the more famous Kristin Lavransdatter, and I think I agree). Here’s a speech from one character:

“It is an easy matter, Olav, to be a good Christian so long as God asks no more of you than to hear sweet singing in church, and to yield Him obedience while He caresses you with the hand of a father. But a man’s faith is put to the test on the day God’s will is not his. But now I will tell you what Bishop Torfinn said to me one day—it was of you and your suit we were speaking. ‘God grant,’ he said, ‘that he may learn to understand in time that whoso is minded to do as he himself wills will soon enough see the day when he will find he has done that which he had never willed.’”

Olav looked earnestly before him. Then he nodded. “Aye. That is true. I know it.”

A lot of us all over the western world watch England with fascinated horror, to see what our own futures may bring.

Our friend Hal G. P. Colebatch has an article today over at the American Spectator about local government actions to restrict the freedoms of Christians in England that occurred in one single week.

I frankly don’t approve of all the challenged actions, but the pattern of repression, along with the reasons given for repression, are troubling.

The UK’s Channel 4 is running a series on Christian history, and Scottish Pastor Iain Campbell is blogging about it. The first episode argued Christianity was an anti-Semitic invention of the Apostle Paul. Iain writes, “History might demonstrate that some Christians have been against Jews; but the New Testament is decidedly for them. ‘God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew’, says Paul of Israel, and he anticipates a day when they – to quote one of the Hebrew prophets – will look on the one they pierced and mourn for him.”

Another episode tells us how bad the Reformation was and Protestants today [are] a sorry bunch (some Protestants have especially sorry grammar and spelling habits).

From the London Daily Mail: More news from what was once the land of the Venerable Bede, Duns Scotus, Thomas More, John Wesley, William Wilberforce, and C. S. Lewis:

A foster mother has been struck off the register for allowing a Muslim girl in her care to convert to Christianity.

The woman, who has looked after more than 80 children in the past ten years, is considering suing the council over the decision.

Do you think there would have been any problem if she had allowed a Christian child to convert to Islam?

Last April, they ruled that the girl, now 17, should stay away from church for six months.

No coercion was involved:

Of the Christian convert, she said: ‘I did initially try to discourage her. I offered her alternatives.

‘I offered to find places for her to practise her own religion. I offered to take her to friends and family.

‘But she said to me from the word go, ‘I am interested and I want to come.’ She sort of burst in.’

Somewhere an English World War II veteran is lying in a bed in a rest home, asking, “What did I fight to protect?”

Tip: Threedonia.

The Freedom from Religion Foundation organization has put up a few church-styled billboards with the message, “Praise Darwin, Evolve Beyond Belief.” They tried to place one of the billboards in downtown Dayton, Tennessee, site of The Scopes Trial with William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow. My local paper quotes a pastor making a good point:

The Rev. J. Milton Knox, pastor of First Baptist Church of Dayton, said many residents would get “bent out of shape” over the sign but look past more subtle anti-Christian messages every day.

“This mindset continues to be propagated whether it’s on a billboard or not,” he said citing advertising messages like “What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas.”

World has some good articles on Darwin and the current phase of the evolutionary debate.