Novelist John Updike may be at his best when describing the loss of faith. He seems to understand the reality all too well. When the Reverend Clarence Arthur Wilmot is described as losing his faith in early twentieth-century America, Updike traces his collapsing faith to the historical-critical method of studying the Bible — treating the Bible as nothing more than ancient Near Eastern literature. As Updike describes the moment of Wilmot’s fall into unbelief in In the Beauty of the Lilies, he writes of the pastor sensing “a visceral surrender, a set of dark sparkling bubbles escaping upward.”

Is the world of fashion the implacable enemy of modesty in dress? Pia Catton considers this question in a most interesting essay published in the current edition of In Character. In “Dressing for the Occasion: When is Allure a Fashion Slip?,” she argues that modesty has been sacrificed in a head-long rush to emulate youth culture.

Should Christians seek cosmetic surgery? That is a pressing question that gets to the heart of our current cultural moment. As a society, we have corrupted the vision of beauty to the extent that some persons have procedure after procedure, entailing medical risk and using finite resources.

I knew this would be a hot topic, and so it was. On Tuesday’s edition of The Albert Mohler Program we dealt with the issue of modesty as related to the dress of women (especially of brides and bridesmaids) at weddings. My special guest was my wife, Mary, who is the author of Modeling Modesty.

You know the times are getting strange when a business known as “fertility tourism” makes the major media. The Guardian [London] reports that Britain’s new law requiring the identification of egg and sperm donors has led (surprisingly enough) to a big fall-off in donors. Added to this, several European countries place ethical and legal limits on reproductive technologies, unlike the United States. In the U.S., the limits are more financial than legal.

The big news out of Britain today is the announcement that a 63-year old psychiatrist is pregnant, thanks to a donor egg and the services of the controversial Italian fertility specialist, Dr. Severino Antinori.

My commentary for today concerns Hugh Hefner and his 80th birthday, which he marked on Sunday. As I argue there, few individuals have made such an impact on their times. Hugh Hefner is the perfect parable of the pornographic lie — that the good life consists in hedonistic pleasures.