"They do not know what words mean;
they do not know how to ward them off or blunt their edge or fling
them back; they are a prey to words in their emotions instead of being the
masters of them in their intellects.
"We who were scandalized in 1940 when men were sent to fight
armoured tanks with rifles, are not scandalised when
young men and women are sent into the world to fight massed propaganda
with a smattering of “subjects”; and when whole classes and whole nations
become hypnotised by the arts of the spellbinder, we have the impudence
to be astonished.
"We dole out lip-service to the importance of education—
lip-service and, just occasionally, a little grant of money; we postpone the
school leaving-age, and plan to build bigger and better schools; the teachers
slave conscientiously in and out of school-hours, till responsibility becomes a
burden and a nightmare; and yet, as I believe, all this devoted effort is largely
frustrated, because we have lost the tools of learning, and in their absence
can only make a botched and piecemeal job of it."
British Novelist Dorothy Sayers, 1947
Published in 2019 by the Observatory of Christianophobia, a French website dedicated to documenting incidents of anti-Christian hate crimes, map marks every area a church has been attacked in France with a red pin. As a result, virtually the entire map of France appears covered in red, highlighting the ubiquity of church attacks.
Tomorrow is the President’s State of the Union Address. I have no preview of what he will say. It may be rewritten an hour before presentation because the state of our affairs is changing by the hour.
My question every year at this time: will the speech reflect the same reality that God sees when He considers our state of affairs, the condition of our collective “heart,” and the relative unresponsiveness of our souls?
I have a lot of long-term hope for our nation because I’ve seen the historical evidence of nations rebuilding the ruins of their early foundations, and rediscovering righteousness, peace, and prosperity. I’ve seen the records of their rebuilding Christian civilization on top of ruins.
I’m watching a number of small communities in the US rebuild countercultural families, their churches, their marriages, and their radical independence from the government. These communities are rediscovering the meaning of hope and the favor of God.
But, overall, what is the state of ...