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Aaron Rand and the Negative World January 19, 2022

Introduction.

In a recent article at First Things, in a piece entitled The Three Worlds of Evangelicalism,

Aaron Rand does an admirable job hunting for the black box that will explain for us

what happened just before the airplane of Evangelicalism crashed in that mountainous slope

in a remote wilderness location.

In fact, he found that box and filed his report with the FAA, which was then published in First Things.

The problem was that we had three pilots, not two, and one of them was high on math and going woke.

The second was fighting with the one who was high on math and going woke, and the third one

thought that the woke pilot had made some good points that were at least consistent with human flourishing.

Anyhow, into the mountain they went.

Aaron didn't use that metaphor, of course.

He was writing for First Things for pity's sake, even though I would have given him that metaphor for free

if he had only called me.

The fact that I would have given him that metaphor for free is probably why he had sense enough not to call me.

The article is a fine analysis of where we Evangelicals have been, how we got here, and the nature of our divisions.

And so I commend it to you.

I have a yeah but that could be inserted here or there, but in the main, it is good, solid analysis.

At the same time, it made me think of a few other things, and hence this post.

PG Woodhouse once said that some minds are like the soup in a bad restaurant, better left unsteered.

So this is not so much a rejoinder to his article, as it is a display of some of the vegetables that have floated to the top of my mind as a consequence of his article.

...