Much has been written about the influence of J. R. R. Tolkien’s Christian faith on The Lord of the Rings and the entire canon of Middle-earth literature, so it may seem that there is very little left to be said. However, Donald T. Williams brings a fresh perspective to five different themes that echo throughout […]
“The Lord God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.’”[1]Just as it was not good for Adam to be alone, it is not good for any of us to be alone. Community, belonging, and companionship are not just luxuries; they are foundational human […]
G.K. Chesterton cherished human freedom; however, he did not believe that freedom ought to be exercised to fulfill all human desires. Rather, a man should willingly submit to moral law, established by God for the benefit of humanity, as a way to experience the true freedom that God intended. A lover of paradox, it is […]
Despite the modern commitment to avoid suffering and embrace pleasure at any cost, our world remains infatuated with dystopian tales that are specifically designed to show us a world permeated by suffering, injustice, pain, and hopelessness. While we are horrified when we hear about child abuse on the news, we spend millions of dollars to […]
Perhaps one of the most obvious characteristics of our world is that evil and suffering exist. No matter how hard we try to improve our condition, the forces of darkness seem to be right behind us, plotting our imminent demise. Yet despite this reality, there is something human about hope. We desire triumph, and we […]
Has our culture abandoned God? That is a difficult question, and it actually leads to an even more fundamental question. Is it possible for our culture to abandon God? Some might be eager to answer this question with a hearty, “Yes!” If God is just some type of survival mechanism created by our ancestors to […]
The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo: adventures, as I used to call them. I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of a […]
G.K. Chesterton defended the value of fairy tales as he wrote Orthodoxy. Specifically, he wrote, “Fairyland is nothing but the sunny country of common sense. It is not earth that judges heaven, but heaven that judges earth; so for me at least it was not earth that criticized elfland, but elfland that criticized the earth.”[1] […]
The Last Battle, CS Lewis’ beautiful conclusion to the Chronicles of Narnia, begins with the undermining of truth. Once the people surrender their beliefs in the actual objective truths in the world, the consequences are vast and dangerous. In The Abolition of Man, Lewis calls this set of real truths “the Tao” and explains what […]
Dear Reader, An Unexpected Journal is a labor of love. In a way, it is the natural outcropping of our collective education at Houston Baptist University where we all met as students in the Master of Arts in Apologetics program. Some of us attended class in person while others, myself included, took advantage of the […]
