Halting Toward Zion

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. This is the truth that sets the endeavor of Christian education apart from all other philosophies and disciplines: as Cornelius Van Til famously put it, "Two plus two is four and Jesus Christ is Lord." Through the preceding episodes of Halting Toward Zion, we've talked about the implications of God's character on sociology, politics, crimina...

After discussing Muppet adaptations of classic literature and film, we dig into history--why it's important, how to teach it, and who we are because of it. This Episode Features: Proposing Historical Hermeneutics; Muppet Adaptations; Paging God; This Story Is Our Story; Tom Bombadil; Pencils Down, Please; and Beer. Transcript: Coming soon Links: Citizen Kane (1941): https://amzn.to/3dCMzSl Princes...

In this second installment of our Cultural Transmission series, we take a look at "Social Studies": what is that section on standardized tests? Why does nobody know what it is? Well, partially because the people who came up with it weren't interested in telling us precisely what it meant. Today we'll dig a little bit into the history of social studies, and why its origins are a bit insidious as we...

Today we're kicking off a series on Deuteronomy, the last book in the Torah, and talking about cultural transmission: what do Christians pass on to their children? This Episode Features: Deuteronomy and Cultural Transmission; Star Trek And Muppet Babies; The Gospel; Keep It Simple; Punk Kids With Character Arcs; Insufficiently Bombastic Victorian Rebukes; Transcript: https://bit.ly/3waCJQg-htz-64...

Like us, the Israelites were prone to grumble, rather than being thankful to God in the midst of trials. Saying "thank you" might seem like a little thing, but Romans 1 shows us what's really at stake. Not only is thanklessness a sin for which we need Christ's forgiveness, thanklessness begets all sorts of other sins and confusions. After all, to be thankful is at root simply to acknowledge that G...

The Wilderness was a punishment for the Israelites, but that's not all it was. God had good purposes for His people even there--purposes that are fulfilled in Christ for us as well as for the Israelites. This Episode Features: A 40-Year Boot Camp; Homeless Former Celebrities; Scrub Brush And Cacti; TikTok To The Glory Of God; The Greater Good; Going To The Moon; and Calvin Was Not A Stoic. Transcr...

The God of the Bible is who He chooses to be--He has absolute and absolutely perfect freedom, and so is the source of all the derivative and analogical freedoms that we as creatures experience. So what does it mean for us to experience freedom? Correction: Emily mistakenly calls the actor Robert Hardy (Harry Potter, All Creatures Great and Small) by the name of a different actor, Tom Hardy (Incept...

God didn't actually expect the people of Israel to fight giants and win, did He? Well, He wasn't surprised by their faithlessness when they were too afraid to enter the Promised Land. Nor is He surprised by our faithlessness when we let our fears stop us from sharing the Gospel. And yet, He still intends for His gospel to go out and convert the nations, and His people are His chosen messengers. Th...

Last week we talked about the Hebrew liturgical calendar, and how the New Year celebration of Rosh Hashana came to be celebrated in the seventh month rather than, as one might have thought, at the beginning of the first month. Today we're talking some more about the message of Rosh Hashana--why celebrate a New Year's Day at all? This Episode Features: Rosh Hashana And The Liturgical Year; The New...

The Hebrew calendar was full of holidays--holy rituals, assemblies, celebrations--events that involved all the families of Israel in the worship and fellowship of God. Today we'll investigate how those rituals speak to us, especially in our celebration of the Lord's Day. This Episode Features: Calendars And Holy Days; If Your Life Was A Movie...; Why Does Everyone Try To Kill Princesses?; Ritual T...

How much does it cost to worship God? How much did it cost in the Old Testament? The answer seems to be something rather than nothing--it's not free--yet the precise cost might depend on various vagaries of weather and international trade. In short, the market solves, and God expected Israel to participate in it. This Episode Features: Sacrifice Means Killing Something; How Much For The Bull (Chin...

Now that we've covered the practices of the different Old Testament sacrifices, we're going to dive deeper into the function of the sacrifices, and the specific ways in which they testify to the perfect sacrifice of Christ. This Episode Features: The Old Testament Sacrifices In Under Three Minutes; Society, Community, And Communion; Representation; Individual And Collective Guilt (And Hornets' Nes...

This week we're starting to look at the sacrificial system in the Old Testament: we'll look at each of the five main types of sacrifice, and consider what they communicated to the Old Testament saints, as well as what they communicate to us now in light of the New Testament. This Episode Features: Hebrews 10; Ding! Gnosticism; Everyone Likes A Dead Animal, Right?; Levitical SparkNotes; Ritual Barb...

For the last couple of weeks we've been talking about the Justice system in ancient Israel; today we'll put that in the broader context of Israel's civil government. There's a lot that God doesn't tell us about the mechanics of administering the government, but there's a lot that He does tell us--and much of it emphasizes the necessity of a populace that knows God and His word. This Episode Featur...

Garibaldi: "Oh, I'm an eye-for-an-eye, tooth-for-a-tooth kind of guy, Ambassador." Delenn: "So you support a system that would leave everyone blind and toothless?" Garibaldi: "Not everyone. Just the bad guys." —“Passing Through Gethsemane,” Babylon 5 (1995) This Episode Features: An Eye For An Eye; Babylon 5; When Musicians Fight; Demoted From Lounge Lizard; The Sword Is Not For Poking People; Rob...

Charles Dickens called the American prison system "slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain . . . immeasurably worse than any torture of the body." Who decided it was merciful to lock people up alone? Today as we look at the case laws of Exodus 21 and following, we see a system geared toward making things as close to right as possible so that the victim of a crime can move on with...

After reading some email about taxation (is it theft? Yes and no!) we dive into a discussion of the application of the law--who it's for, why we need it, and where it comes from... and how our view of prophecy, and our ideas of interpreting the Bible, influence our perspective on the law. This Episode Features: Taxation And Tyranny; Prophecy And Law; Stealing Gnostic Thunder; The End Of The World...

To celebrate our fiftieth episode, we've invited Kate Uttinger and Sam and Laura Negus (along with the usual suspects) for a roundtable on education and discipleship! Tune in for a lively discussion of parenting, teaching, the cost and the value of Christian schools, and the communion of saints. This Episode Features: Greg and Kate Uttinger; Sam and Laura Negus; Ecumenical, Non-Parochial Schools;...

Last week we compared liberalism (what Thomas Sowell calls the Unconstrained Vision) to the Ten Commandments; today it's time to turn the same scrutiny on conservatism (the Constrained Vision). What happens when conservatism, rather than the Bible, becomes our default authority? This Episode Features: Civil Religion; Rotten Oranges; Quacking Like A Christian; Suddenly, Scientology!; As Real As Bur...

Now that we've looked at each of the Ten Commandments, let's see how political liberalism--what Thomas Sowell calls the Unconstrained Vision of human nature--measures up. If human nature is basically good or improvable, what does that mean for morality, society, and law? This Episode Features: Thomas Sowell's "A Conflict of Visions"; Ye Shall Be As Gods; The Ongoing French Revolution; Transcendent...

Today we're looking at the Tenth Commandment, and the role of the heart--of strong desires, of love--in today's political landscape. This Episode Features: Liberal and Conservative Passions; Who Died And Left You God?; St. Augustine and John Piper; Lambs And Their Lil Fluffy Knees; Mud Pies; Boromir; and Tax Revolts. Transcript: https://bit.ly/339LL2Z-htz-47 Links: Romans 7: https://www.esv.org/Ro...

This week we're talking about truth, narratives (or as ordinary humans would call them, stories), and the Gospel. As Cornelius Van Til used to say, "There are no brute facts." But he wasn't denying the existence of absolute truth when he said that--he was pointing out that fact and interpretation go together. This Episode Features: Postmodernism; Global Warming; Your Affectionate Uncle Screwtape;...

"Thou Shalt Not Steal" necessitates the concept of property, so we'll be lobbing some critiques at socialism today. But because we're equal-opportunity killjoys, we'll start with the hyper-individualism of Ayn Rand and her misconceptions regarding property, and in the middle of our criticism sandwich we'll spread some delicious Biblical truth. This Episode Features: Ayn Rand vs. John Calvin; My Bo...

Today we're talking about marriage--or rather, the ultimate reality that marriage reflects. God is not arbitrary; His commandments follow from His perfect nature, as do many patterns in creation, and especially marriage. Marriage is one of the best earthly testimonies to what the love of God actually looks like... so in society as we lose marriage, we lose real love. This Episode Features: A Profo...

Last week we talked about life (and how we're not supposed to murder people). How are we supposed to treat non-human life? What exactly are animals, metaphysically speaking, and where do they fit in God's world? There's a lot the Bible doesn't tell us. But in this episode we'll look at a few of the things God does say about (and to) animals in His original creation... and in the new creation as we...