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Exploring Calvinism’s Appeal

Saving Calvinism: Expanding the Reformed Tradition SAVING CALVINISM: EXPANDING THE REFORMED TRADITION OLIVER D. CRISP IVP ACADEMIC, 2016 $18 (PAPERBACK) 165 PAGES My initial response to the title of this book was, “Does Calvinism need saving?” Oliver Crisp, professor of systematic theology at Fuller Theological Seminary, thinks it does. His solution is to provide alternatives to what he considers unduly narrow or dogmatic positions taken in traditional Calvinism – for example, double predestination, total depravity and the bondage of the…
April 30, 2018
Inside Out

A Long-Lasting Pain: Reflections after Charlottesville

A holy privilege of the pastorate is that people trust us with their pain. For them, we are safe. Sometimes we are the only safe people with whom hurting people can bear to reveal the depth of the sadness and trauma they silently bear. When person shares his or her pain with me, I am the shepherd offering comfort and help as I am able, quietly bearing witness to that pain before God in prayer. When a community expresses their…
April 30, 2018
Poetry

Hosea, Single

Hosea 2:15 In January your keys keep the time, plink like antlers discarded in the foyer. House sealed tight as a covenant. I hold our truth with baby-fisted certainty, days stacked neatly as closed books on a calendar. Hours like the travel of the front porch rocker. In March, the month for war, you leave me. Reverse-alchemy. Gold, like youth, returned to dross. I start to date, trace the river after a hard rain mud-soak wash churning towards some lighted…
April 30, 2018
Poetry

Let Those Who Have Eyes See

On July 6, 2016, Officer Jeronimo Yanez killed motorist Philando Castile while Castile was belted in the seat of his car, accompanied by his girlfriend Diamond Reynolds and her 4-year-old daughter. On June 16, 2017, Yanez was found not guilty on one count of second-degree manslaughter and two counts of dangerous discharge of a firearm. The 12-person jury was asked to decide if the prosecution had proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Yanez had been culpably negligent. In a rare…
April 30, 2018
The Tech-Wise Family
Reviews

Making Technology a Servant

The Tech-Wise Family: Everyday Steps for Putting Technology in its Proper Place THE TECH-WISE FAMILY: EVERYDAY STEPS FOR PUTTING TECHNOLOGY IN ITS PROPER PLACE| ANDY CROUCH BAKER BOOKS, 2017 $13.99 224 PAGES Has your family tried the Dolmio Pepper Hacker? With a twist of the pepper mill, your home TVs, wi-fi and mobile devices shut down and family members engage with each other instead of their devices. Yes, it’s too good to be true, but the YouTube video creators behind…
April 30, 2018
Essays

Canada Geese and Gerasene Swine

I saw them across the water in the early morning, on our lake in Ontario, just beyond Paquin’s Point: a band of geese, maybe half a dozen. What I actually saw, just barely in the low-angled light, was a passing vision of long thin necks and heads upon the water, gliding behind the point and out of sight. I ran up to the cottage to get the binoculars, but I had to wait an hour to get a better view…
Daniel Meeter
February 28, 2018
Poetry

Almost Overhead

There was a caution in the air. A thin front of yellow yielded to heavy black layers of a disruptive sky crawling menacingly above. Thunder sounded from the hands of trauma, releasing repeated detonations. The calm surface air quickly became an unlikely opportunity for safety. Nature began to carve out its design of strength in impressive waves Roger Singer is a chiropractor practicing in upstate New York. Image: Marc Wieland on Unsplash
February 28, 2018
Reviews

Our Burning Streets

Race & Place RACE & PLACE: HOW URBAN GEOGRAPHY SHAPES THE JOURNEY TO RECONCILIATION DAVID P. LEONG INTERVARSITY PRESS, 2017 $16 (PAPERBACK) 208 PAGES The day I finished reading this book was the day 15-year-old unarmed Jordan Edwards was shot and killed by a policeman’s rifle. This death, like the long string of deaths of young black men (and women) that came before Edwards’, the current U.S. presidential administration’s executive orders regarding immi-gration as well as other policies focused on race and…
February 28, 2018
Essays

Theology in Bronze

T.S. Elliot wrote that at the end of all our journeying we will arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. For me, it took moving to Calvin College, in the heart of Dutch Calvinist West Michigan, to see the richness of the Lutheran landscape where I spent the formative years of my academic career. For 15 years, I trudged uphill to the bluff-top campus of Gustavus Adolphus College, my sights fixed on the soaring 187-foot…
February 28, 2018