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As We See It

Thick Lives, Thick Theology

The question of this guest-edited issue of Perspectives can be asked in two ways. First, we are asking a broad question: How does Christian theology illuminate the weight and depth of our day-to-day lives, such that our lives can be experienced and shaped in accord with that weight and depth? As David Bentley Hart has recently claimed in “The Experience of God” (Yale, 2013), “We have, in fact, no direct access to nature as such; we can approach nature only…
Trygve Johnson and Keith Starkenburg
October 30, 2014
Essays

Coffee Cups and Lactaid Lattes

It was a summer of lattes. Every morning I woke at the crack of dawn, donned black pants and a green apron and drove in the semidarkness to a day full of coffee, sweet syrup, steamed milk and customers. These were good mornings, really. I liked the eerie quiet of my house at 5 a.m., the empty stillness of my neighborhood, the relative calm with a few semitrucks accompanying me on the six-lane highway. I liked walking into the travel…
Anna Visser
October 30, 2014
As We See It

Amazon, Octocopters and Advent

I was born and bred to loathe waiting. My father, with his background in the FBI and law enforcement, is an efficient and effective man – and always on time. All the time. On Sundays in my house as a child, Dad would preside in the foyer of our house, raise his arm, and jingle the car keys loudly. We all knew what the signal meant: In four minutes, he would go and sit in the car. One more minute…
Jared Ayers
October 30, 2014
Essays

Evangelism and Sacraments: Telling Well the Story

The Story cannot be told without reference to water: The waters of creation, the flood, the Red Sea, water from the rock, Jesus in the Jordan, the pool of Bethsaida, a basin for washing feet, bloody water from Jesus’ side, “the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne.” No, the story cannot be told without water, and all that water issues forth from a life-giving font, the baptismal font. Neither…
Sue A. Rozeboom
October 30, 2014
Essays

Like the Wideness of the Sea?

I remember the first time that I watched the synod of my (Christian Reformed) church in action. Synod met back then (late 1940s) in the reading room of the old Calvin College library and, since there was no separate gallery for visitors, some of us got to nestle close enough to the delegates to make us feel as if we were right there in the dugout with the real players. The delegates, as they looked to me, were, most of…
Lewis B. Smedes
October 1, 2014
As We See It

Revisiting a Landmark Statement on Homosexuality

The May 1999 issue of Perspectives contained an essay by Lewis Smedes, “Like the Wideness of the Sea?” that was among the most significant articles ever to appear in Perspectives. Like most of Smedes’s work, it is richly pastoral, drawing heavily on his experience in the church. He recalled the impassioned debates about divorce and remarriage in the Christian Reformed Church of the 1950s and then wondered about possible parallels to discussions about covenanted, monogamous same-sex relationships. Smedes met with…
Perspectives Journal
October 1, 2014
Essays

“Like the wideness of the sea?” 15 years later

Compelling Analogy by Steve Bouma-Prediger Lew Smedes was one of my esteemed teachers when I was a student at Fuller Theological Seminary in the mid-1980s. I vividly recall his stimulating class titled “Calvin and the Christian Life.” I had read his popular book “Sex for Christians” (Eerdmans, 1976) for a religion class as a student at Hope College in 1978 and read everything he wrote in the old Reformed Journal in the 1970s and 1980s. Lew was a larger-than-life person,…
David E. Timmer, Annie Reilly and Elizabeth Vander Haagen
September 1, 2014
Essays

God and the Seattle Seahawks

MAY/JUNE 2014: ESSAY by Matthew Kaemingk If we would know ourselves, the ancient Temple at Delphi advises, the study of sports in all its connections to the rest of art and life would seem to be an ideal quest for understanding of self and the world. —Simon Kuper, athletic anthropologist I am a rabid fan of the Seattle Seahawks. I am also a Christian theologian. When I claim to be a rabid fan, I mean what I say. Consider the…
Matthew Kaemingk
May 1, 2014
As We See It

Feeling Minnesota: The Art of Not Winning

MAY/JUNE 2014: AS WE SEE IT by Jason Lief "So who are you rooting for in the Super Bowl?" All week it was the same question. "I hope they both lose," is the response I gave. "Oh, but Peyton Manning—" Blah, blah, blah. Yes, great football player, even better Saturday Night Live host—his United Way skit is comedy gold. Still, I wanted him to lose. "But the Seahawks, come on, they've never won a Super Bowl. Surely you'll root for…
May 1, 2014
As We See It

Coincidence or Correlation?

MAY/JUNE 2014: AS WE SEE IT by George Brown Jr. What caught my attention that afternoon was the word "Rogue": someone dishonest, a nonconformist or playfully mischievous. The word shone out in bright chrome letters on the back of the SUV stopped in front of my car. While I waited for the traffic light to change, I thought "Rogue" was an apt name for the way the SUV had been driven the past few blocks. Perhaps in a hurry to…
George Brown Jr.
May 1, 2014