I snuck into pastoral ministry via the English department rather than the theology department. I wasn't planning on being a pastor, but you know how these things go.

There was a moment in graduate school (it was the late '70s) that I won't forget. Not the moment one of my freshman comp students (I had a teaching fellowship) told me he had trouble with spelling, so he wanted to turn in his composition assignments on cassette tape instead of on paper.

No, it was the moment I "got it" regarding a strange new school of literary theory, then associated with the terms "post-structuralism" and "deconstruction." A chill ran up my neck, and two thoughts seized me:

1. If this way of thinking catches on, the whole world will change.

2. If this way of thinking catches on, the Christian faith as we know it is in a heap of trouble.

I couldn't have articulated why these thoughts so gripped me back then, but my intuition was right, I think. I was "getting" ...