Dramatic Apology

“Choose joy.” You have seen it. It is on coffee mugs, throw pillows, and at least one wooden sign in every farmhouse-style kitchen in America. Depending on when you hear it, it is either good advice or the two most irritating words in the English language. Said by someone who has been through real hardship and come out the other side still grateful, it can sound like wisdom. Said to someone standing at a graveside, three weeks into a depression, or the day after a layoff, it can sound more like, “Could you please be sad somewhere else?” So here is the question: Is joy something Christians actually choose? Or is “choose joy” just a polite way of telling hurting people to get over it? Neither answer quite works. Scripture does call believers to rejoice. It even commands it. But Scripture also describes joy as something God gives, and it makes a surprising amount of room for grief, lament, anger, and the honest recognition that the world is badly broken. If we are going to say anything us...

What we usually call freedom is, I suspect, mostly insulation from consequences, and wealth happens to be very good at buying insulation. It gets you out of the line. It turns a disastrous mistake into a mildly expensive one. None of that is quite freedom, which becomes obvious once you look at a king. He seems like the least constrained man in the realm until you start counting what he answers to, beginning with his own status and ending somewhere around the fear that it could all slide. At least his servants get their evenings off. So I’d define freedom a little differently. It has less to do with commanding people than with how few obligations you’re carrying that you never really chose. Each one stakes a claim on your future time. Debt, for instance, wants you back next month and the month after. Even luxuries nibble; the vacation home needs insurance and someone to check on it, and it also moves into the back of your head rent-free. Plenty of wealthy people collect obligations fas...

At some point, most people encounter someone whose sense of style, fashion, or decor feels consistently off. At first, this is easy to dismiss as a matter of preference. Taste is subjective, we tell ourselves. But when poor taste recurs across different contexts, it raises a more unsettling question. What exactly is taste? How does good taste develop? Why do some people seem unable to acquire it? Good taste is often misunderstood as trend awareness or personal expression. In reality, it is something far more restrained and disciplined. Good taste is the ability to recognize proportion, coherence, and intention within a given context. It reflects an understanding of relationships between elements rather than attachment to any single element. People with good taste notice balance, scale, rhythm, and absence. They sense when something is excessive, distracts from its purpose, or draws attention to itself unnecessarily. Most importantly, they adapt their choices to context. What works in o...

The difference between holiness and perfection is often blurred in modern theology, yet both Scripture and classical philosophy treat them as distinct concepts that answer fundamentally different questions. At its core, perfection concerns completeness or fulfillment. In the classical tradition associated with Aristotle and later Aquinas, perfection is teleological, meaning it is end-directed. A thing is perfect when it fully actualizes what it is meant to be. Perfection is therefore comparative and measurable relative to a standard, and it answers a specific question. Is anything missing? A perfect circle lacks none of the properties required to be a circle. A perfect knife fulfills its cutting purpose without deficiency. This understanding aligns closely with the New Testament’s use of the Greek word teleios (τέλειος), which means complete, mature, or brought to its intended end. Jesus uses this term in Matthew 5:48 (NIV), which says, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father...