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David G. Myers

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Children of the Living God: A Reply

My thanks to Wendell Karsen for so thoughtfully and substantively engaging the "dialogue and discernment" process encouraged by our shared denomination, the Reformed Church in America. It is in that ever-Reforming spirit that Letha Scanzoni and I have offered our brief contribution to the free marketplace of ideas, and welcome others' ideas as well. We wrote our book hoping to bridge the great divide between traditionalists, who feel passionately about the need to support and renew marriage, and progressives, who…
David G. Myers
September 5, 2014
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Enabling Ears to Hear: The Church Leads

Anyone up for a good news story--of the church leading the culture in a direction we can all, across our differences, applaud? Prepare to smile. In 1999, I had an amazing experience while worshiping at Scotland's Iona Abbey. As a person with hearing loss, I could understand virtually none of the spoken word as it reverberated around those ancient stone walls. Thankfully, my wife noticed a hearing assistance symbol on the wall indicating a "hearing loop" system that could magnetically…
David G. Myers
May 1, 2013
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Responses to Kent Van Til

David G. Myers, Ralph Blair, Marilyn Paarlberg In his forthcoming book No Condemnation! (Wipf Stock), Lutheran scholar Gary E. Gilthvedt observes that "there is nothing about homosexuality in the earliest ethical codes of the Hebrews, the Ten Commandments; nothing in the Prophets; nothing in the sayings of Jesus in the four gospels of the New Testament; nothing in the great majority of New Testament Epistles. Integrity suggests appropriate regard for the fact that, simply put, 'Homosexuality is not a prominent…
David G. Myers, Ralph Blair and Marilyn Paarlberg
January 1, 2013
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The Church’s Future in a Gay-Supportive Age

AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2012: ESSAY by David G. Myers "Here are five reasons Christians should continue to publicly and winsomely oppose bestowing the term and institution of marriage upon same-sex couples: 1. Every time the issue of gay marriage has been put to a vote by the people, the people have voted to uphold traditional marriage." Kevin DeYoung, "Five Reasons Christians Should Continue to Oppose Gay Marriage," May 10, 2012, thegospelcoalition.org/blogs In the Reformed Church in America, a simmering cultural war has…
David G. Myers
August 1, 2012
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There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy

"Homosexuality is a burden that homosexual people are called to bear, and bear as morally as possible, even though they never chose to bear it" (229). So wrote Lewis Smedes in his 1994 revised edition of Sex for Christians. Last year was the tenth anniversary of Smedes' powerful Perspectives essay, "Like the Wideness of the Sea" (May 1999), which lamented his (Christian Reformed) church's one-time marginalization of divorced people, and similarly of gays and lesbians. Whomever Paul had in mind…
David G. Myers
May 1, 2010
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National Secularity, Individual Religiosity, and Human Flourishing

When I first read the Dawkins/Harris/Hitchens "new atheist" argument--that all religions are "dangerous" (as well as false)--I thought: these guys are ill-informed. To counter their stories of religion's horrors we have stories of religion's heroes--from the anti-slavery movement's leaders to the founders of universities, hospitals, and hospices. Moreover, we now have massive new social science data showing religion's associations with human happiness, health, and helpfulness. And thus was born the impulse to pen A Friendly Letter to Skeptics and Atheists:…
David G. Myers
August 1, 2009
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Changing Sexual Orientation? A Look at the Data

An affirmative answer to Reinhold Niebuhr's famous prayer begins with the wisdom to distinguish what we can change from what we cannot. Some traits, it's now clear, are naturally predisposed and not amenable to change; other characteristics lie within our control. Our temperament is one trait that we receive rather than choose. From womb to tomb, some people tend to be excitable, intense, and reactive; others are easygoing, quiet, and placid. People may mellow a bit with age, but the…
David G. Myers and Letha Dawson Scanzoni
April 16, 2005