Sublime

Christianity, as articulated by Paul, worked a cultural revolution, restraining and channeling male eros, elevating the status of both women and of the human body, and infusing marriage—and marital sexuality—with love.

Second,

vitriolic.

One leader told me how dangerous a particular theologian on the “liberal” side was because she was always there with her students when someone lost a job or suffered a miscarriage. This meant, he implied, that she elicited a type of loyalty that would lead those students away from orthodoxy. I would disagree with the “liberal” on virtually all the

Hard as it can sometimes be, as parents we need to let our children become who they are, not who we have decided they should be.

The Prodigal God

Augustine might make Christianity plausible again for those who’ve been burned—who suspect that the “Christianity” they’ve seen is just a cover for power plays and self-interest, or a tired moralism that seems angry all the time, or a version of middle-class comfort too often confused with the so-called American Dream.

This is the same philosophy I remember from high school evangelistic strategy, where we were urged to take the gospel to the quarterback of the football team, the captain of the cheerleading squad, and the student body president. These were the “key kids.” The key kids need Jesus very much, of course. But we forgot then and we forget now that Jesus