Preemptive Strike
Yesterday my first issue came to me. I had let it run out a few years back and recently decided to subscribe once again. I was not disappointed with my choice, because just a few pages into the January/February 2012 Issue, was a short piece that stopped me dead in my tracks, and forced me to think and pray. It was a piece in the “Quodlibet” section, a segment that has short, thought provoking snippets by various authors related to Touchstone Magazine . The portion that hauled me up short was by Peter J. Leithart, titled “The War on Idols.” As Leithart is rehearsing the well known story of the 10 plagues, he reminds us that the plagues were God’s assault on the Egyptian hierarchy of deities. Then he identifies how the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob poured out some of the earlier plagues not only on the pagan Egyptians, but also on the long-enslaved people of Israel. As Leithart reasons with the “why” of this, he concludes that the cause was because the Israelites were idolaters as we...