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A Roadmap for the Church’s Mission

The Story that Chooses Us THE STORY THAT CHOOSES US: A TAPESTRY OF MISSIONAL VISION GEORGE HUNSBERGER EERDMANS PUBLISHING, 2015 176 PAGES $17.78 In his book The Story that Chooses Us, George Hunsberger reaches back in time and chronicles the evolution of the mission mindset as we have grown to understand it today. In doing so, Hunsberger prompts us to imagine a roadmap that reveals where we are headed. It becomes evident that if the church in the Western context…
April 30, 2016
EssaysScience

Genesis 1 within the Faith-Science Debate

What are we going to do with Genesis 1? I have heard that question throughout my career, first as a pastor and then as a professor. I understand the urgency behind it, but the question itself needs serious revision. For Christians, a more important question asks what Genesis 1 is going to do with us. Or, to put it differently: How does God want to challenge and nurture the church through Genesis 1? Obviously, in order to arrive at an…
April 30, 2016
As We See ItScience

Lunar Stories: The Violence of Creation

THE FORMULAS AND EQUATIONS THE AUTHOR USES IN HIS MOON RESEARCH. Tales of the moon’s creation abound in myth, legend, history and science. Given its conspicuous brightness and nearness, we should not be surprised that the moon has captured the imagination since the dawn of human consciousness, variously treated as a deity or a vessel of the divine (such as J.R.R. Tolkien’s lunar Isil, guided by the reckless Tilion) or in a significant departure from other ancient Near East cosmologies,…
April 30, 2016
As We See It

Integrating Science and Faith

A 2015 Pew Research poll indicates that 59 percent of Americans believe that science and faith are “often in conflict.” Sadly, an even larger percentage (73 percent) of nonreligious Americans believes that science and faith are “often in conflict.” These data suggest that Christians are not doing a very good job of helping people understand the proper relationship between science and faith within or outside our faith communities. In this issue of Perspectives, you will hear from scientists and theologians…
April 30, 2016
Essays

Wrestling with Miracles

As a scientist, I find reading Scripture can sometimes be difficult. I believe that the Bible is the living word of God, a text written for me, even if it is not written to me. But when I encounter stories about a man who walks on water, spit that gives sight to the blind or a crowd who walks through the Red Sea, I sometimes squirm with discomfort. I have the opportunity to teach the miracles of God’s creation every…
April 30, 2016
Poetry

Tornado

Fir needles like rattling bones. The air a myth that has been told and retold, fading from emerald to onyx. My skeleton soft like honey, I am a bowl at the edge of the table, waiting to be spilled. The bold silence. Fallen water pooling over asphalt. Fear so absolute it must be forgotten. Heather Cadenhead graduated from Union University and is the mother of two boys, one of whom is on the autism spectrum. She writes at frayedflowers.com. Image…
April 30, 2016
Essays

Let Us Behold

In his monograph Called to the Life of the Mind, Richard Mouw recalls teaching his first philosophy class, which included the thought of the philosopher Anaxagoras of Klazomenai. He mentions (via Josef Pieper) that Anaxagoras, “while engaging in catechetical exercise, answered the question, ‘Why are you here on earth?’ with the stark reply ‘To behold.’” In Only the Lover Sings, Pieper applied the comment to artistic endeavors, while Mouw expands the context to “all that we encounter in our scholarship.”…
April 30, 2016
Poetry

Before My Son’s Autism Diagnosis

Nine months of darkness, then the sound of scissors and we separate. I thought I’d love you because you were part of me, feathered limb of a sumac— but it was like falling asleep. Something I did without fear of consequences. That first night, you made the house ache with your sadness. Open mouth of a baby bird, longing. But you took nothing, the thing I begged you not to take. Something I didn’t know how to give. Heather Cadenhead…
April 30, 2016
As We See ItScience

Science and Faith: My Personal Journey

For most of my life, I have been a carefree young-earth creationist. Because I had no reason to believe otherwise, I assumed the creation of the world played out precisely as described in Genesis 1 and 2. That’s what my teachers seemed to believe, that’s what my parents seemed to believe, and that was, apparently, the only real Christian way to approach the matter. The theory of evolution was reserved for poor heathen atheists who because they refused to acknowledge…
April 30, 2016