Hemmeke Blog
3.17.2025
Saint Patrick's Breastplate - a Defense
3.15.2025
Pride and Prejudice
3.12.2025
A Defense of Lent
3.04.2025
Lake Wobegon Summer 1956 - Review

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Garrison Keillor is an excellent storyteller and writer. He knows how to compellingly paint a scene and depict a person or a community with all their foibles and qualities.
Sadly, he also has an anti-Christian perspective. He makes you feel so good about rejecting basic truths. He weaves in some deep truth with lots of lies.
Here's what he gets right. He vividly describes temptations to sin. Pious Christians can learn something from this, as we tend to avoid admitting the reality of it. And he shows how people can respond to sinners graciously. Pious Christians often want to condemn and reject scandalous sin, getting as far away from it as possible, when we need to find our way to communal forgiveness and acceptance of outsiders and sinners, as they take a better and more godly path.
Here's what he gets wrong. His conclusion is that sin is normal and we shouldn't be so revulsed by it. Shame and a guilty conscience is always a bad thing. The church and its leadership are misguided in how to handle sin. The solution to sin isn't the cross of Jesus, but people who accept and love you for who you are.
Keillor gets all this across without ever being preachy, just telling a compelling story that is deeply true to life. This makes it all the more insidious. He appeals to common experience to argue for the truth of his assertions. A cranky, fundamentalist father. A sexual temptation. A first job that launches you into the world. An out of wedlock pregnancy leading to a marriage. "This is my life, my family," thinks the reader. But in the end, his solution is not God's grace in Jesus, but other people who won't condemn you.
I cried at some points, the story was so good. I read a lot out loud to my wife and kids. But I had to edit out the R-rated sentences. (Don't give this book to your kids. Ironically, one of my kids gave it to me for Christmas, without having read it all!) Keillor knows what it is to be human, and he's been influenced by Christianity, but he misses the main point of life: to pursue righteousness according to God's Word. He understands grace on a horizontal level - person to person and within a community. But he doesn't seem to think God has any grace or relevance for us in this life.
5 stars for writing. 1 star for message.
View all my reviews
3.02.2025
Genuine Christian Fellowship
An Author for Women (and Men) to Read
Her best known book recounts the missionary effort of a group of young couples, in which her husband and most of the men were martyred.
She also has some very good books on the particular virtues godly men and women.
She had a radio program for years, always opening with this Scripture: "You are loved with an everlasting love, that's what the Bible says, and underneath are the everlasting arms."
Paul, Provocation, and Persistent Persuasion - Acts 19
3.01.2025
Giving Sunday Rest
2.25.2025
Jesus Hears John Was Beheaded
2.10.2025
Against Pro-life Abolitionism - part 1
In politics, the main goal is to propose policy that will
pass, that is as close to your worldview as possible.
In theology, the goal is to articulate as biblical a
worldview as possible.
Both of these are good stewardship of differing vocations.
But they sometimes don’t play well together.
Theonomists want there to be a single goal, same in politics
and theology, but that’s absurd. Do lawyers
and doctors have the exact same calling, besides the generic, “to help people”?
I’m not advocating for a radical division between the two
kingdoms (R2K). It’s not theonomy or
R2K. There are different spheres of
activity with differing specific aims (Kuyper).
Say no to pro-life abolitionism. They are currently fighting against and
defeating pro-life bills that would outlaw SOME abortions, just because they
don’t outlaw ALL abortions.
Their zeal to call for repentance directly in political life
is admirable, but then you have to do the work of making a law with many in the
room who do not repent. Do we just take
our ball and go home and leave them to write their ungodly rules for us, or
work to get our nation as close to godliness as we can? Are we anabaptists, now, who drop out of
society when they don’t meet God’s standards rigorously enough for us?
Should I not go to work tomorrow because I know I’m not
going to do my job perfectly?
Perfectionism in theological sanctification wreaks all kinds
of carnage on people.
Abolitionist perfectionism will do the same.
Working for the possible politically is not compromise, but
courage. It’s actual engagement with the
culture, instead of demanding all or nothing like a toddler throwing a tantrum.
Abolitionists overly confuse the theological and
political. Of course we want to apply
God’s truth to the public square. But we
don’t quit and work against people and legislators accepting SOME of it, if
they refuse to accept ALL of it.
1.27.2025
Things I Never Noticed in the Bible - Genesis 50
1.26.2025
Things I Never Noticed in the Bible - Genesis 49
1.25.2025
Things I Never Noticed in the Bible - Genesis 48
Jacob did a lot of bad things in his life. Tricking his brother out of the inheritance. Favoring one son over the others. At the end of his life, he acknowledged God was his shepherd through all his faults.
1.21.2025
Things I Never Noticed in the Bible - Genesis 44 - Judah's Intercession
1.20.2025
Things I Never Noticed in the Bible - Genesis 42-43 - Joseph with His Brothers
Time may not heal all wounds, but it can bring a more sober judgment. Joseph seems to propose a poetic-justice-type plan after 3 days.
Joseph serves Benjamin 5 times what the others get. He is testing them. Often the best way to determine if one recognizes their guilt in the past, is to see if they act differently in a similar situation now. The brothers seem to pass this test, so Joseph will next force them to protect Benjamin, interceding for him, instead of the opposite they did to him.