Henry James’ “The Beast in the Jungle” has been playing through my mind at odd hours recently. If you haven’t read it, I won’t give the plot away, but it’s built on a premise of fearing the thing which your own fear creates. If you had not feared it in the first place, it would never...

I have come to terms. I’ll admit it: Philosophers are less attuned to ‘the obvious’ than most. I even remember the morning that I realized I had no choice but to accept the stereotype. A group of philosophy faculty and students were gathered in my professor’s office, and we needed...

I read romances during church. Or so GK Chesterton writes in his book Orthodoxy, (see my previous post for a overview). When my congregation recites the Apostles’ Creed, we are declaring what Chesterton calls “the best root of energy and sound ethics…’orthodoxy’.”  Christian Orthodoxy,...

I have a bone to pick with G.K. Chesterton about his book Orthodoxy. It took me a ridiculously long time to read. He just had to go and make every sentence so delicious and profound that I was forced to sit back after every line in order to laugh at his wit or furiously scribble notes. Think I’m...

“That’s a cop-out,” I said mockingly, when a friend told me that he prefers to call himself “just a Christian” rather than an evangelical. My rude comment was out-of-place in our amiable discussion and I regret not apologizing at the time (in case he reads this: dude, sorry,...