Blog & Mablog

"The satirist who doubles down is saying, in effect, that the presupposed norm is real. It is transcendentally grounded. It is fixed and cannot be moved. It was written in the spangled stars above us, before any of us were born, and the inscription read, “Thou shalt not allow trannies into the girls’ restrooms.” This is because the satirist is centered. He has a sense of the absurd. But he can only have a sense of the absurd if he knows and loves what plain old surdity is. You know, the normal. A red-checked tablecloth. An apple pie cooling on the window sill. A Winchester over the fireplace. Mom and dad holding hands to say grace with the kids. Norman Rockwell teaching a Sunday School class."

Show Notes

"The satirist who doubles down is saying, in effect, that the presupposed norm is real. It is transcendentally grounded. It is fixed and cannot be moved. It was written in the spangled stars above us, before any of us were born, and the inscription read, “Thou shalt not allow trannies into the girls’ restrooms.”

This is because the satirist is centered. He has a sense of the absurd. But he can only have a sense of the absurd if he knows and loves what plain old surdity is. You know, the normal. A red-checked tablecloth. An apple pie cooling on the window sill. A Winchester over the fireplace. Mom and dad holding hands to say grace with the kids. Norman Rockwell teaching a Sunday School class."

What is Blog & Mablog?

The point of this podcast is pretty broad — “All of Christ for all of life.” In order to make that happen, we need “theology that bites back.” I want to advance what you might call a Chestertonian Calvinism, and to bring that attitude to bear on education, sex and culture, theology, politics, book reviews, postmodernism, expository studies, along with other random tidbits that come into my head. My perspective is usually not hard to discern. In theology I am an evangelical, postmill, Calvinist, Reformed, and Presbyterian, pretty much in that order. In politics, I am slightly to the right of Jeb Stuart. In my cultural sympathies, if we were comparing the blight of postmodernism to a vast but shallow goo pond, I would observe that I have spent many years on these stilts and have barely gotten any of it on me.