Hearing God's inaudible voice
In the Jan. 17 edition of Chimes, writer Molly Delcamp pondered Barbara Brown Taylor’s response to queries concerning God’s care about our vocational choices. Taylor recounted a time when she asked God for a response, and God’s response was “I don’t care.” Molly appreciated Taylor’s desire to relieve the weightiness of choosing between good but multiple options. However Molly then asserted that God does care about the roles and means through which we respond as prime citizens of the kingdom. Since God made us, loves us, redeems us and loves his world, he cares. So Molly concludes that, like Buechner, every once in a while we hear a whisper from God’s wings that we’ve made a right vocational choice.
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CARTOON BY KOLK
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Truthfulness in faith: avoiding heresy
At the end of Stanley Hauerwas’ lecture my ears perked up. “We need to start coming out and really calling Willow Creek heresy!” he said. What? “I mean that’s truthful. I mean Bill Hybels has been quoted saying why he doesn’t have a cross in the church is it gets in the way of the gospel. Give us a break! What is Calvin doing?” said Hauerwas. “I mean that’s truthful. I mean Bill Hybels has been quoted saying why he doesn’t have a cross in the church is it gets in the way of the gospel. Give us a break! What is Calvin doing?” said Hauerwas. What? #8220I saw in one of the papers that you allowed Bill Hybels to advertise in the Chimes. Why? Surely you’re for censorship against those kinds of false and idolatrous forms of Christianity.”
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Honest Christian writing
To be considered a so-called “Christian author” and to write so-called “Christian novels” is somewhat of a curse among some Christian writers today. One does not have to think for very long about common conceptions of the Christian novel to realize from whence the stigma comes. Too many of the Christian novels we find on the shelves of our favorite bookstores (no doubt segregated into the Christian, or sometimes oddly enough, Theology sections) are either fictional books about sensational eschatological theories or didactic works, thinly disguised as perhaps an adventure story of some sort. So, why is it that Christian books, aside from the explicitly theological or philosophical works of non-fiction, generate so much suspicion from the literary world?
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A ditch digger and twenty gold-diggers
After criticizing my fellow “The Bachelor”-watching females for over a year now, I finally (and with some excitement, might I add) hunkered down two Mondays ago to watch the much-discussed new reality series being aired by Fox. I expected greatness: Fox, after all, is famous for delighting the American public with superb, high quality television, from last year’s family favorite “Temptation Island,” to the breathtaking and suspense-inducing plots of “Fastlane” to the up-and-coming new series “Married By America,” in which we the viewers decide who is compatible.
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Lecture doesn't do justice to MLK
I laughed out loud during the January Series lecture on Monday, but it wasn’t because the speaker told a joke. It was because, in a perfect moment, a resounding snore rose up from across the Fine Arts Center auditorium. The speaker, James Skillen, was delivering a speech titled “Creative Justice” and I, like many others, had been shifting around to keep myself awake. Unfortunately, the speech did not exhibit creativity (in its delivery or its discussion of justice) nor did it give the listeners much to think of in terms of social justice in contemporary society (much less inspire them to action). Instead it amounted to a dry history lecture on slavery, abolition and civil rights with some emphasis on the role of the church.
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