Came across this one-two gem between Lewis and Tolkein, on Christianity Today: “Why C.S. Lewis Was Wrong on Marriage (and J.R.R. Tolkien Was Right).” And while it’s technically about divorce (their generation’s “gay marriage,” if you will), it still has similar applications. That CT sided with Tolkein is no shocker—just look at the post title…. Continue Reading »
I looked at this page for the number of miracles performed in the Bible. It lists the number at 120. Some of them I wouldn’t necessarily count them as Biblical miracles (like number 120), but 120 is probably a good number to start with. But I would double that, just to be sure, for a… Continue Reading »
In turn of the century letter-writing—I can’t exactly point to where—I have read on “dying a good death”. In a general sense this means dying under favorable circumstances, and most of us would take the phrase to mean favorable material circumstances: living to a prosperous old age, free of disease or dysfunction, in the company… Continue Reading »
From near the end of The Abolition of Man (read it free online here). Emphasis mine. But once our souls, that is, ourselves, have been given up, the power thus conferred will not belong to us. We shall in fact be the slaves and puppets of that to which we have given our souls. It… Continue Reading »
While trying to escape that weird part of Youtube, I landed on the first video posted below, of C.S. Lewis on the problem of evil. He explains, with much better clarity and elegance, what I mentioned before about God having preferences (he even used the same word), and that He prefers free moral agents over… Continue Reading »
To add to my image of long-suffering but borderline dorkdom, I had the thought to add the text of incantations I’ve seen in Bleach episodes somewheres online (probably Facebook), not because I think fictional magic is cool, as I have no strong affections either way for it, but because those particular ones are nicely written…. Continue Reading »
I first heard about Nicholas Wolterstorff from reading Platinga’s Warranted Christian Belief (reviewed here), and I bought Lament for a Son because I didn’t want to delve into another philosophy book quite so soon. Wolterstorff is best known for his work with Plantinga, William Alston, and others, in constructing reformed epistemology and the Faith and… Continue Reading »
My friend Seth W just posted on his blog on failing at an endeavor out of our league. There’s some good advice for novice fiction writers, like me. It’s axiomatically unavoidable: you’re going to start out writing complete garbage, but that’s the only way you’re going to learn how to really write a good story…. Continue Reading »
See my other smoking writers posts here and here. I decided to incorporate color shots; I predict that a scarcity of black and white ones would eventually show itself. There are some repeats, like Alan Moore but in a more candid setting. Other ones, like Moore, just have a wonderful visual character about them that… Continue Reading »