When children are young, we recognize how impressionable they are. Children pick up the world around them like sponges, and often regurgitate whatever they have been soaking in. If they see smiles, they give smiles. If they hear foul language, they speak foul language. Their world shapes them in ways that are easy to define and recognize. As we become adults, we tend to believe that we are set in stone; we are no longer malleable. The reality, however, is that all of us are constantly being formed. Formation did not cease when we became adults. We are still soaking in the world around us and adapting in various ways.…
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Spiritual Formation In A Secular World
I recently read some comments from Tim Keller on modern secularism, and how it is now seeking to evangelize Christians. Keller points out that children need to be inoculated against secular thinking, because we’re now surrounded by this evangelizing force in our daily lives: “We don’t have as much control over what our kids hear now. … So basically, they are getting catechized. So if you just take them to church and to Sunday school or youth group, that’s nothing compared to what they’re getting” While Keller’s focus is on children in this context, it applies to older generations as well. It’s not just kids who are being formed by…
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Engage The Culture, Not The Culture War
Erwin Rommel, a military general under Nazi Germany, is quoted as saying, “in the absence of orders, find something and kill it.” While this may strike us as amusing on the surface, it reveals the dark nature of war. War frames everything it touches in the context of war; all of life becomes about war, which means all of life becomes about death and killing. Until the enemy is dead and utterly defeated, the war is not over and you must continue to kill or be killed. Culture wars are not so different. In culture wars, too, we have enemies, nebulous though the categories may be. We do not merely…
