In his 1967 poem Annus Mirabilis, Philip Larkin, one of Britain’s best-loved poets, famously declared that: “Sexual intercourse began in nineteen sixty-three… Between the end of the Chatterley1 ban and the Beatles’ first LP.” He was referring, of course, to the huge change in sexual attitudes taking place in the country during the early 1960s. A jury had recently cleared publication of D. H. Lawrence’s scandalous novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and The Beatles’ first album, Please Please Me, had appeared. A new tide of “sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll” was sweeping away the last vestiges of Victorian morality, […]

   Ken S. Ewert is currently editor of U-Turn, a Christian worldview magazine. Writing in 1989, he examined a number of contemporary Christian criticisms of free-market economics. One such criticism is that the market promotes selfishness, and so enshrines sin. Ewert argues such critics misunderstand the root cause of sin—the falleness of man. Further, he suggests that the market itself is morally neutral and that the free market provides the means by which wealth for charity is generated.

 by David Powlison A Journal of Biblical Counseling reader recently raised a question about something he’d read from articles on anger that I wrote in 1995-1997 (JBC Volumes 14:1, 14:2, 16:1). He writes: “In one of your articles on anger you say, ‘Anger is not morally neutral.… It is not something that happens to us or a substance inside of us.’ Here’s my question: Is the emotion of anger itself morally conditioned or is it the wrong beliefs, idolatrous desires, self-pity/self-righteousness that are morally conditioned? Your article seems to say that anger itself is morally conditioned, but if that is […]

Pastor John Scripture Reference: Revelation 15-16

   13 And they sent to him some of the Pharisees and some of the Herodians, to trap him in his talk. 14 And they came and said to him, “Teacher, we know that you are true and do not care about anyone’s opinion. For you are not swayed by appearances, but truly teach the way of God. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not? Should we pay them, or should we not?” 15 But, knowing their hypocrisy, he said to them, “Why put me to the test? Bring me a denarius and let me look at […]

   The New York dramatist, Elmer Rice (1892-1967), is best known for his 1923 play, The Adding Machine. Its main character, Mr. Zero, spends 25 years of his life faithfully crunching numbers for a department store until he is replaced by a machine. In a fit of rage Mr. Zero kills his boss, only to find himself adding and subtracting in hell. For Mr. Zero, life boiled down to punching a time clock and receiving a paycheck—it was a meaningless existence that led to a meaningless afterlife. In The Adding Machine, Rice satirized his perception of the Protestant work ethic. […]

   Having retired from regular classroom duties in 2001, C. M. Naim is now an emeritus professor of South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. A Muslim from India, he has observed and participated in Christian-Muslim dialogues, four of which he described in a 1996 article for the Lutheran journal Word and World.1 He was struck by the eagerness of the Christians to denigrate themselves and their history, exhibiting what might even be described as self-loathing. The Muslims were only too eager to join in this chorus of Christian-defamation, playing upon their counterparts’ overwrought sense of guilt. […]

Pastor John Scripture Reference: Revelation 14

  In late 1900, in today’s province of Hubei in south central China, Pastor Wang Ming handed his congregation a letter of resignation, humiliated by his faithlessness under pressure. In the letter, he assumed full blame for his actions and those of his fellow pastors.

   By Pastor John MacArthur Today’s article deals with an idea that is still widely held in some circles — that the divorce rate among Christians is the same, if not higher, than among non-Christians. Note how easy it is easy to claim to be a Christian for a survey.