"No frills, no spin, no soul patches"

Someone asked me recently why I seem so alienated from what appears to be the cutting edge in American conservative evangelicalism.Frankly, I have stopped regarding myself as an evangelical over here, in a way that I do back home. Why? Well, at a time when Christian leaders in the USA are apparently writing explicit sex books, when there are confused signals on the Trinity, when art and cultural transformation and social justice are increasingly the talking points and the kind of themes and priorities I learned from Drs. Packer and Lloyd-Jones are at best assumed, at worst eclipsed by such things - frankly, it is very hard not to feel alienated, and an alien, in such circumstances.

Re-reading Packer and Lloyd-Jones is a delight. Just basic Christian priorities laid out with no frills, no spin, no soul patches, no Barnum and Bailey pyrotechnics. For someone well into his forties, such reading perhaps provokes the occasional Charlie Kane 'Rosebud' moment; but it is a delight nonetheless. Almost thirty years on, I still have an awful lot to learn from these men, and my debt of gratitude can never be repaid.

As you age, starting to sound like your dad is bad enough; sounding like your grandad is even worse, but here goes: I am glad I am not young today. Who knows what I might be told to read?