Vocation Vocation, from the Latin vocatio, can mean several things: “the proclamation of the gospel, through which human beings are called to be children of God,” the call to the divine office of teaching and preaching, and the work each one of us is called to do in our daily lives. Luther emphasizes this thirdContinue reading “Man Turned in on Himself, Excerpt 15”
Tag Archives: Sin
Man Turned in on Himself, Excerpt 13
Responsibility Despite our determination to separate pleasure from duty, it remains an inescapable fact of our anatomy: sex leads to babies and the responsibilities of child rearing. Just as sin has led us to make an end run around marriage, so, too, we have sought to avoid the responsibility intended to go hand in handContinue reading “Man Turned in on Himself, Excerpt 13”
Man Turned in on Himself, Excerpt 12
We have said that the primary curbs that support and enforce marriage have historically been sexual consequences and social mores. It is not hard to imagine that as individuals became more inclined to reject sexual purity for themselves, they were less interested in condemning impurity in others. Shame, “the emotion that reveals a culture’s moralContinue reading “Man Turned in on Himself, Excerpt 12”
Man Turned in on Himself, excerpt 11
If sin has been with us since the Fall, it would stand to reason that disordered patterns of marriage and sexuality would be somewhat predictable. Why, then, should Americans in the 21st century be overly concerned about the current decline in marriage? “The scale of marital breakdowns in the West since 1960 has no historicalContinue reading “Man Turned in on Himself, excerpt 11”
Man Turned in on Himself, excerpt 10
In Garret Hardin’s 1968 essay, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” he asserts that shared resources needed to sustain the life and livelihoods of a group have always been undermined—even to the point of elimination—by individuals acting in their own self-interest. Hardin’s premise is drawn from an 1833 pamphlet on medieval land usage which surmises thatContinue reading “Man Turned in on Himself, excerpt 10”
Heather Choate Davis 