The Gospel According to Essential Oils
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“We have added to the gospel through smells and scents, and promised those we lead that joy is found in something you apply to your skin and not something that happens to your heart.
Updated: Michael D. Aeschliman’s 1983 book, “The Restoration of Man: C. S. Lewis and the Continuing Case against Scientism”
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“There is a double surprise in store for Aeschliman’s readers. It is alarming to learn how the rise and growth of a scientific culture has been linked with the most blatant subjectivism. It is a joy to be introduced to the ‘great central tradition’ of witnesses to the true meaning of words and defenders of human reason.” - National Review
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Is faith in politics “another Gospel”?
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“[T]o have a God is nothing else than to trust and believe Him from the [whole] heart,” Luther said. “That now, I say, upon which you set your heart and put your trust is properly your god.” - Acton (Gene Veith)
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What Can Miserable Christians Sing?
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“[A] high proportion of the psalter is taken up with lamentation, with feeling sad, unhappy, tormented, and broken.
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Book – The Idol of Our Age: How the Religion of Humanity Subverts Christianity
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“In this short book, Daniel Mahoney brilliantly lays bare the shallow and facile but dictatorial modern religion of optimistic humanitarianism: shallow and facile because it does not acknowledge the depth and persistence of human evil, and dictatorial because it will brook no rival.” - National Review
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How Did Wellness Become Our New Religion?
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“In place of religion, we now have spirituality (or pseudo-spirituality). Instead of church, we do elaborate #selfcaresunday rituals. We get baptized at Burning Man. We pay tithings to yoga studios. Wellness has in many ways become our new religion, with practitioners, instructors, and coaches its priests, imams, and rabbis.” - Quartzy
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Idolatry in Corporate Worship
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Embrace Disillusionment
When wisely managed, disillusionment is a beneficial misery. It qualifies as what the Puritans called “a severe mercy”—a torment that purifies the soul. Since disillusionment is emotionally painful, we naturally regard it as an enemy. But to be disillusioned is to be set free from illusion, and that is never bad. Disillusionment bursts an illusion much as a pin pops a balloon. The experience is jarring; but in the case of illusions, it is equally liberating.
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FEARING God or Fearing GOD?
The Scriptures constantly remind us to fear God (Leviticus 25:17, for example), and we find out that such a fear is the “beginning of knowledge” (ESV, Proverbs 1:7). while the fear of man “lays a snare” (Proverbs 29:25).
Many who choose to honor God struggle over what it means to “fear” God. Should we be afraid of him? Or does it mean we reverence him? Or some of both? Even believers in Jesus need to fear God in the sense that we fear his wrath, discipline, and displeasing him. We remember, as the writer to Hebrews reminds us, that our God is a “consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:29). Yet we can call God “Abba, Father” (Romans 8:15), a term of endearment.
A Jewish perspective on fearing God is summarized in the Jewish Encyclopedia:
Who fears God will refrain from doing the things that would be displeasing to Him, the things that would make himself unworthy of God’s regard. Fear of God does not make men shrink from Him as one would from a tyrant or a wild beast; it draws them nearer to Him and fills them with reverential awe. That fear which is merely self-regarding is unworthy of a child of God.
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