Matt Kaufman

My mother’s been going through my father’s papers lately, and she came across some things my father wrote in his 20s and 30s (before I was born): his reflections, his self-analyses, that sort of thing. Reading them, I was struck by how much alike my fa …

The other day I posted some of C.S. Lewis’ thoughts on “The Dangers of Friendship” from The Four Loves. But of course, friendship is meant to be a blessing, and he had a lot to say about that in the same book. Lewis celebrated the freedom of friendship …

One of the things that’s so valuable about C.S. Lewis is his knack for warning us against spiritual dangers that we’re apt not to notice. Case in point: Last night, while leafing through a book of his quotes, I came across some from The Four Loves unde …

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Hum …

“E-mail tends to rudify all communication,” says the character Rat in Sunday’s Pearls Before Swine strip. “Makes nice people sound rude. Makes rude people sound ruder.” Sure does. And sometimes, I might add, it not only makes us sound ruder, but become …

  …I thought I should say something, since an event this important shouldn’t pass unremarked. Frankly, though, it was giving me a headache. Judge Vaughn Walker’s ruling pretending to discover that somewhere in the Constitution — unsuspected by …

Actually, my question is more specific than that — too specific to fit in a headline. But we’ll get to it in a moment. First, some context. As the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) has moved toward endorsing pastors who practice homosexual …

One thing about not working on a Monday: It makes it easier to hold onto what you just heard on Sunday. On a normal Monday, you roll into your activities so fast that the sermon you just heard the day before sometimes seems very distant. (If someone as …