My daddy died on January 2, 2003. He was 94 years old. For the past three years he was a resident of the Van Andel Pavilion, a unit of the Holland Home system in Grand Rapids, Michigan that specializes in the care of those with Alzheimer's. Daddy's Alzheimer's was not advanced but was obvious: memory loss, especially short term, living in the past and confusion about the present. Occasionally he'd wonder, "Where am I?"--"What am I doing here?"--"Where's mother?" (meaning…
Neva EvenhouseJune 1, 2003
Many people who have investigated the relationship between theology and science realize that no single model is adequate to serve as a general description of this relationship. The manner in which these two fields relate to one another (or fail to relate, as the case may be) varies greatly from place to place. Hence, some writers from more mainline traditions have been known to declare with confidence that the days of conflict between people of faith and people of science…
Scott HoezeeJune 1, 2003
Reading the story of David and Goliath recently (I Samuel 17), I found myself wondering what the cheeses were all about. In the midst of an otherwise dramatic story, the narrator lingers over the homely details of Jesse's instructions to his son David concerning bread and cheese. David is to take an ephah of roasted grain and ten loaves of bread to his brothers who are camped with the Israelite army. That's understandable--it's hungry work fighting Philistines. But it is…
David I. SmithJune 1, 2003
It's a basic tenet of the Calvinist faith by which I was raised that those sinners who haven't plumbed the depths of their own darkness simply are not capable of comprehending the blinding luminosity of grace itself. I rather like that equation, but then I live on the Great Plains, where the Lord wrote the textbook on winter. Because out here we know winter, I'm willing to lay down hard cash that we know, therefore, more deeply the joy of…
James SchaapMay 16, 2003
You all need to know that on Monday evening, 15 April 2002, the President of your Seminary was arrested by the New Brunswick City Police on the charge that I did "purposely obstruct, impair, or prevent the administration of law or a governmental function, by means of physical interference or obstacle." I am required to appear in Municipal Court to answer this charge. It is my intention to plead not guilty. The story of the event is as colorful as…
Norm KansfieldMay 16, 2003
In a speech at the United Nations not long before the start of the war against Iraq, Nelson Mandela made a number of comments that many American found objectionable. At the end of the speech, however, he said something in frustration that got spontaneous applause from the audience present: the trouble with the United States President George W. Bush is that "he doesn't think properly." Mandela was in deadly earnest, but the British-sounding criticism was comic. It was easy to…
James LaGrandMay 16, 2003
Along with others, I have grown weary of the term postmodern as the blanket characteristic covering our time. The term simply carries along too much baggage, and each bag opens, as a postmodernist would say, on different meanings for different audiences. From spiritual and ethical positionings, from ways of perceiving the world, and from ways of holding all human products up to critical scrutiny, analysis, or distortion, postmodernism has settled like a dense fogbank on the scholarly imagination. One of…
John H. TimmermanMay 16, 2003
The events of September 11 have presented considerable spiritual challenges to contemporary culture. I would like to discuss one aspect of one of these challenges which, specifically, is how to engage persons of other faiths in a manner consistent with grace and truth. How do we honor their right to practice a religion different from our own, respect them as persons, love them as beings made in the image of God, and yet maintain the integrity of our own faith?…
Dean L. OvermanMay 16, 2003