Fencing Bear at Prayer

It is difficult to describe the crisis I have been living through these past several weeks. The drawing by my office door Short version : Don’t call out the Devil if you aren’t ready to bout .  Alternative short version : “Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?” —1 Corinthians 1:20 There has been much bitterness. There have been feelings of betrayal. There have been feelings of being lied to while watching people whom I thought were my supporters fall away. Friends warn me about overreacting. At which I overreact. “Academic freedom means nothing if the faculty do not stand up for it.” I believed that. Someone whom I have trusted my entire academic career told me that. I still believe it—but do my colleagues? “Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from insanity.” I heard someone say that recently on his livestream. Someone whom my friends tell me I s...

According to the psalms that medieval Christians sang nightly in her praise , the Lord her Son was a great God and a great king above all gods in whose hands were all the ends of the earth . . . for the sea is his, and he made it, and his hands formed the dry land (Psalm 94:3–5).  His name was admirable over the whole earth, and his greatness was exalted above the heavens, for he made man and set him over all the works of his hands (Psalm 8:2, 5–7).  He made a tabernacle for himself in the sun and as a bridegroom came forth from it like a giant, making a circuit of the heavens in his heat; his judgments were true, more desirable than gold and many precious stones, and there was great reward for his servant in keeping his commandments (Psalm 18:6, 10–12).  All the earth belonged to him, for he founded it upon the seas and prepared it upon the rivers, and his holy place was upon the mountain, whose eternal gates he entered as the King of glory, strong and mighty, the...