christianity

Classical Christian Psychologist Paul Tournier on Old Age, Death, and Faith
Aging

Classical Christian Psychologist Paul Tournier on Old Age, Death, and Faith

08/26/2025 Bruce Strom 2

Tournier reminds us that we may experience many successes, but as we grow older, “success retreats, and escapes us, it is limited, unfulfilled.” “When one comes to the end, a man’s life is nothing much.” “Professional life is over, and it finishes unfinished. This is a prefiguration of death, in which the whole of life will finish it, too, being unfinished. That is the dramatic contradiction of death.” Quoting Robert Mehl: “An end, but not a fulfilment, that is the face of death.” […]

St Augustine’s On Christian Teaching and JD Vance, Order of Love
Politics

St Augustine’s On Christian Teaching and JD Vance, Order of Love

07/05/2025 Bruce Strom 0

St Augustine clearly teaches us: “All people should be loved equally. But you cannot do good to all people equally, so you should take particular thought for those who, as if by lot, happen to be particularly close to you in terms of place, time, or any other circumstances.”
St Augustine explains further: “Suppose you have plenty of something which had to be given to someone in need but could not be given to two people, and you met two people,” you could flip a coin for who would receive it. But if one of them was a relative, Jesus would not object if you benefited him. In other words, if your children are starving, you need not share what little food you have with strangers.
Should we love everyone, even our enemies? Definitely, Christians are exhorted to love their enemies. As St Augustine teaches us: “We do not fear our enemies, for they do not take away from us what we love, but we pity them, for they hate us all the more because they are separated from the one we love,” since they are separated from God. […]

JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings: How Was It Influenced by Nordic Mythology and Catholicism
History

JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings: Was It Influenced by Nordic Mythology, Homer’s Iliad, and Catholicism?

05/10/2025 Bruce Strom 0

What inspirations did JRR Tolkien draw from for his best-selling series The Lord of the Rings, and the Hobbit? Like his friend CS Lewis, Tolkien was an English Professor specializing in medieval and ancient literature and languages. When CS Lewis was contemplating whether to return to his Episcopalian roots, abandoning his youthful agnostic views, Tolkien argued that he should convert to Catholicism. CS Lewis resisted these pleas. IMHO, though CS Lewis was conducive to Catholicism, and may have even confessed his sins to a priest, he likely thought he would be more effective evangelizing through his books as an Episcopalian.
Both JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis fought in the trenches in France as British soldiers during World War I, they both lost many friends who fought beside them: they both experienced the horrors of war. Both were too old to serve in World War II, but this struggle against the evils of Naziism directly influenced CS Lewis’ Mere Christianity and Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, both released shortly after the war. […]

Should You Leave Your MAGA Church? Or Should You Choose To Stay?
Current Events and History

Should You Leave Your MAGA Church? Or Should You Stay?

12/09/2024 Bruce Strom 1

Rev Trevors does not address the common situation where the pastor or priest is setting the MAGA tone when he is leading the congregation, which is so often true in congregations in America. This generates another concern: Should you stay in a church where you will be challenging the teaching authority of the pastor or priest?
Is this a special case for this more basic question: Does the Decalogue exhort us that respect precedes love? Is love impossible when we disrespect either God or those in authority?
There is no verse in Scripture that directly commands the believer to attend weekly services. Several verses in the Psalms sing on how the believer should joyfully be drawn to the house of God, but in the New Testament we only have the verse in Hebrews that simply exhorts:
“Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another.” […]

Summary of Mere Christianity, WWII Ecumenical Broadcast: Morality, Not Polemics
CS Lewis

Summary of CS Lewis’ Mere Christianity, WWII Ecumenical Broadcast: Morality Not Polemics

06/14/2024 Bruce Strom 4

Many scholars speculate on whether CS Lewis was inspired by the writings of Richard Baxter, a Puritan and prolific author who first coined the phrase “Mere Christianity.” Baxter lived during the intense religious struggle in the late 1600’s, a century after Henry VIII split from the Catholic Church to form the Anglican Church. Baxter was appointed to the royal chaplaincy, but he left his post after the passage of the Act of Uniformity in 1662, which required that all pastors exclusively use the Book of Common Prayer and be ordained as Anglican ministers. Baxter was reluctant to adopt a denomination, proclaiming that “I am a Christian, a MEER CHRISTIAN, of no other religion,” and “I am against all sects and dividing parties.” He did not want to identify either with Catholics, or Anglicans, or Presbyterians. […]

CS Lewis’ Mere Christianity: Forgiveness, Pride, and Envy. Can Pride Ever Be Good?
CS Lewis

CS Lewis’ Mere Christianity: Forgiveness, Pride, and Envy. Can Pride Ever Be Good?

06/06/2024 Bruce Strom 1

CS Lewis notes that in the middle of the Lord’s Prayer we pray: “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” He observes: “There is no slightest suggestion that we are offered forgiveness on any other terms. It is made perfectly clear that if we do not forgive, we shall not be forgiven.”
Indeed, immediately after the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew, Jesus exhorts us: “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you; but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” […]

Was St Paul a Former Slave
Biblical Interpretation

Was St Paul a Former Slave? Were His Parents Enslaved by the Romans?

06/05/2024 Bruce Strom 0

Our authors in Christianity Today note that several prominent Biblical scholars in past 150 years have speculated that Paul’s parents were enslaved, perhaps in “the uprising in 4 BC, when Varus, Roman governor of Syria, burned entire cities and crucified 2,000 people. In Galilean cities like Sepphoris, Josephus wrote in Antiquities of the Jews, ‘troops made its inhabitants slaves.’” Furthermore, in St Jerome’s commentary on Philemon, written around the end of the fourth century, likely using Origen’s commentary as a source, states St Paul’s parents were Gischala in Judea, and were among the Jews exiled to Tarsus by the Romans. A few centuries later, St Photius, the scholarly bishop of Constantinople, confirms this, adding that St Paul was born to enslaved parents in Tarsus. These ancient sources are highly regarded by modern scholars. […]

CS Lewis’ Mere Christianity: Reflections on Intimacy, Romance, Marriage, and Divorce
CS Lewis

CS Lewis’ Mere Christianity: Intimacy, Romance, Marriage, and Divorce

05/31/2024 Bruce Strom 1

CS Lewis continues: “Being in love is a good thing, but it is not the best thing.” “You cannot make it the basis of a whole life. It is a noble feeling, but it is still a feeling.” But CS Lewis warns us that the initial excitement will not last, that “love in the second sense is not merely a feeling, but is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit, reinforced in Christian marriages by the grace which both partners ask, and receive, from God.” […]

Faith, Hope, Charity, and Love in CS Lewis’ Mere Christianity: The Theological Virtues
CS Lewis

Faith, Hope, Charity, and Love in CS Lewis’ Mere Christianity: The Theological Virtues

05/30/2024 Bruce Strom 2

CS Lewis teaches us, “Charity means Love in the Christian sense. But love, in the Christian sense, does not mean an emotion. It is a state not of the feelings but of the will; that state of the will which we have naturally about ourselves and must learn to have about other people.”
“Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbor; act as if you did.” Be kind to your neighbor, and often you will like and love him more. But if they do not reciprocate, or are openly hostile, love them anyway, and help them if you can. We always find it easier to love, or like, those who are courteous towards us. […]