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Essays

Your Worst Life Now: Learning How to Die

Humans have an aversion to death, and rightfully so. Death is not our friend; it is the enemy. Unfortunately, death is also a familiar enemy, visiting every person sooner than later. Physically and biologically, we begin to decay relatively early in life. While 21st-century drugs and technology prolong life, the fight against death is ultimately a losing battle. This is not to suggest that death is something to which we must passively resign ourselves. Life is to be treasured. Thus,…
October 31, 2017
Essays

Judgment Day/Justice Day

I suppose everyone has a guilty pleasure. Mine happens to be 80s action flicks. Recently, on one of those rare evenings that occur roughly quarterly, when the house was still and the laundry caught up, I screened Terminator: Genisys. Though not technically an 80s film, I reasoned, as an attempted reboot of the venerable franchise, it fit the bill. Spoiler alert: it’s not a good film. But it does present a pretty compelling theological trojan. The narrative crux of the…
October 31, 2017
Essays

Crab Apple Trees and New Creation

The crab apple trees were in full bloom, pink and teeming with life. They were full of spring’s best promises: Winter had gone, and new life had come. I could see them below my fifth-floor study carrel at Western Theological Seminary’s Beardslee Library. The month of May in that second year of seminary meant final exams and turning in papers and projects. It also meant grief and, mysteriously embedded in it, a growing sense of call. The month of May…
October 31, 2017
As We See It

The Dust and the Glory

“I learned a lot of things in medical school, but mortality wasn’t one of them.” So begins the bestselling 2014 book by surgeon and Harvard Medical School professor, Atul Gawande. I suspect that many today could reframe this sentence in light of how they have been formed in Christian discipleship. “I have come to know and love much about the gospel in my years in the church community. But learning to die, or to be with the dying, isn’t one…
October 31, 2017
Essays

Where Are They Now?

Last year was difficult for the congregation I serve as pastor. While deaths and funerals are regular parts of congregational life, we suffered more deaths than most years and said goodbye to many saints as they entered the church triumphant. In this particular season, most were male, and many grieving widows remained. Sensing a need for ongoing pastoral care and support, I gathered these women to meet for conversation and prayer. During these conversations, we unearthed and explored a deep…
October 31, 2017
Essays

Toward a Recovery of Christian Dying: Ars Moriendi

There is a growing consensus among medical professionals, historians and theologians about a troubling trend: Modern Americans do not think about or reflect upon dying and death, nor do they see purpose, meaning or significance in suffering. In his recent best-selling book, Being Mortal, Harvard physician Atul Gawande points out the current medical profession’s inability to contend with its limits. While medical professionals might have increasing technological tools at their disposal, they are nevertheless usually incapable of dealing with death.…
October 31, 2017
Essays

What Will Heaven Be Like? Near-Death Experiences and the Promise of Life with God

When I was a boy, my grandmother told me stories of heaven. I remember her telling me in vivid detail about Percy Collett. His story, told through audiocassette tapes, of walking in heaven with Jesus for five-and-a-half days, became popular in Pentecostal and charismatic circles in the 1980s.  His fantastic account, including a geographic map of heaven, was simultaneously riveting and confusing to me as a young boy. The subject of heaven and the afterlife fascinates our modern culture. Every…
October 31, 2017
Essays

Evangelicalism’s Strong History of Women in Ministry

Women in public Christian ministry is a historic distinctive of evangelicalism. It is historic because evangelical women have been fulfilling their callings in public ministry from the founding generation of evangelicalism to the present day and in every period in between. It is a distinctive because no other large branch of the Christian family has demonstrated as long and deep a commitment to affirming the public ministries of women – not theologically liberal traditions, not Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodox…
August 31, 2017
Essays

The Wide, Wild World of Sex

In the dramatic opening scene of Disney’s Finding Nemo, parents Coral and Marlin anxiously wait for their offspring to hatch. Their mood is light and hopeful, but the music signals an ominous shift. As a barracuda approaches the reef, Coral rushes to protect their eggs. Marlin is knocked unconscious as he tries to protect Coral. When he wakes, Coral is gone, and Marlin finds a single egg remaining from their large clutch. The egg hatches, and Marlin names his only…
As We See It

Wrestling with Gender Identity in the Christian Community

The mutability of gender and identity causes consternation for many Americans. Christians in the United States have also wrestled with understanding correct gender roles. For historians, perceptions of gender as a key formation of identity is not a new issue. Often, the act of encountering a new people group revealed the socially constructed ideas of gender. Early European accounts of natives in what is now the United States demonstrated many of the ideals of gender held by upper class white…
August 31, 2017