Paul’s Letter to Generation X

Paul writes in the Letter to the Philippians, “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is honorable, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (4:8). It’s a beautiful and inspiring piece of writing. One can imagine it printed on a Christian version of those motivational...

Good News, Bad News

I’ve been noticing something frightening lately. The idea of “good” and “bad” is rapidly disappearing from the public vocabulary. I don’t just mean in moral terms – though in fact the concept of “evil” has been at best trivialized or at worst abolished in public discourse, which leaves us, individually and collectively, stunningly vulnerable to the forces of...

Book Review: Can’t Buy My Love

Over the past few weeks I’ve been doing some reading on femininity, exploring different perspectives on the problem of being a healthy woman in our modern culture. So far, I’ve looked at Wendy Shalit’s A Return to Modesty and Laura Sessions Stepp’s Unhooked, each of which helpfully articulate some aspects of the problem. But as I read these and other books along similar lines, I found myself...

Book Review: Unhooked

Unhooked was one of the books I read recently as I’ve been exploring the question of “what does it mean to be a Christian woman?” As I remarked in my review of A Return to Modesty, the baseline question seems to be “what does it mean to be a woman in today’s culture?” In other words, I need to know where I’ve been and where I’m at now, in order to properly understand...

Book Review: A Return to Modesty

I used to think I understood who I was. I just didn’t like myself very much, most of the time. We’re talking self-hatred, not just low self-esteem here. I never really questioned that until I became a Christian, and I started to ask the question “What does it mean to be a Christian woman?” It didn’t take long for me to realize that the first question was “What does it mean to be...