Tony Woodlief | Author

God

Hammering art

They say all great men have a morning routine, so I figured I ought to rush right out and get me one of those. I’ll belabor the elements of that routine while subtly flattering myself for it some other time; the point today is that it often includes listening to Writer’s Almanac while I make …

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Fair

I’ve been working on contentment, which mostly means I’ve been praying for God to help me be content in whatever circumstances I find myself, then griping at him when I face trials that might help me learn contentment. But I’m trying, I swear. Those of you who know me know that my life thus far …

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Thy kingdom come

I don’t think they love their children any less than I love my own, which tells me something about what their lives must be like, to send their babies away. Their children stream northward in droves—as many as 60,000 this year—and we don’t want them. We don’t want their skin lesions and their hungry bellies, …

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The scandal of the evangelical intellectual’s mind

A reasonable response to the accusation that the evangelical mind is insufficiently expansive is to ask to what dimensions its critics would like to see it expanded. That question springs to the lips when considering Biblical scholar Peter Enns’s contention that evangelical minds are not only confined, but are required to remain in confinement. “The …

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On the Virtue of Hemlock

In his recent Boston Review essay, philosophy professor Carlos Fraenkel manages the neat trick of advocating a sensible position — that high-school students should be taught philosophy — so ineptly that he ends up proving the opposite, namely, that while it may be the case that students should learn philosophy, this is quite independent from …

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Prodigal

Last night I had a drink with a friend, and he told me about his transformed life. He didn’t call it that, but there it is, and here he is, the prodigal son returned, the lost sheep brought home to the fold, the newly fitted vessel overflowing. He talked to me as if I know …

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Spot of grace

I stepped out onto the wet sidewalk this morning and looked up at the sky and tried to see whether the grey clouds were dissipating or gathering tighter, because sometimes on a dark day I just want to know whether the light is spilling in or fading away. I looked up to heaven and a …

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Awaiting hope

Somewhere between a speed too slow to get killed and too fast to get away, a grasshopper found himself clinging to my windshield wiper. He wrapped his thin wire legs around black metal and held on with that baleful, narrow-headed look grasshoppers have. I kept waiting for him to let go, to tumble and topple …

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On the facilitation of murder

Reading Bruce Falconer’s article in last month’s Atlantic, about Swiss suicide facilitator Ludwig Manelli, I was struck by a husband’s repeated employment of animal metaphors to justify his wife’s poisoning. “You wouldn’t leave your dog on the kitchen floor when it can’t walk, can’t eat, can’t go outside to the toilet. Transform one life form to another, …

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Blood and mystery

One of G.K. Chesterton’s arguments in Everlasting Man is that the ancient pagans never really revered their petty gods and spirits and magical tree stumps nearly as much as the modern humanist, overflowing with tolerance and reverence for any belief system that distinguishes itself by not being Christian, imagines they did. They knew there was …

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