Comic modified from Frank & Ernest by Thaves
(click to enlarge)
Thursday, November 15, 2012
Reviewing the Adventist Review
October 18, 2012
Vol. 189, No.29
http://www.adventistreview.org/index.php?issue=2012-1529
NOTE TO READERS:
WORLD NEWS AND PERSPECTIVES is an important section of each magazine. I don’t usually report on its contents because it is available at the online address I provide with every review.
GENERAL COMMENTS
This issue leaves the reader with a positive feeling that there will be greater honesty and generosity in the way we as Adventists conduct ourselves.
Bill Knott begins things with his editorial, HOLY CONVERSATIONS.
The way forward for an Advent people too easily divided by our differences in culture, language, history, and opinion is also inescapably dialogical, even when good dialogue requires the services of a translator or a mediator. A candid self-examination reminds me that not every preference of mine should be doctrine for my sister. Some ideas, however much I like them, are not central to the faith of Jesus. They must correctly be identified as in the negotiable margins that allow two different individuals to hold a civil conversation, talk about their common truths, and even agree to respectfully differ when necessary. Any faith community in which every opinion is sacralized ceases to be holy—or wholly Christ’s.
On the next page, Sandra Blackmer echoes Knott’s concerns.
We each choose how to respond to less-than-ideal circumstances, to criticism, to controversy. We determine whether to become defensive, to lash back, to make excuses, or to try to see the situation from the other person’s perspective and ask ourselves if there’s something we can do to improve things.
Joanne Davis, speaking at the GLOBAL MEDIA COMMUNICATIONS SUMMIT, argued:
Now is the time to make every change necessary to reach the world. And Greg Dunn echoed the refrain: “If ever there was a time to break out of the mold and to step up our game, it is now.”
Education, not doctrine, is celebrated with the LAUNCH OF THE CHURCH’S FIFTH MEDICAL SCHOOL IN PERU.
Clearly Cedric Vine was LISTENING TO THE SPIRIT when he wrote the following:
It is the theologians and administrators who play catch-up, seeking to interpret and understand the acts of the Spirit in light of Scripture…The preamble to the Seventh-day Adventist Church’s Statement of Fundamental Beliefs captures nicely the dynamic role of the Spirit in guiding the church: “These beliefs…constitute the church’s understanding and expression of the teachings of Scripture. Revision of these statements may be expected at a General Conference session when the church is led by the Holy Spirit to a fuller understanding of Bible truth or finds better language in which to express the teachings of God’s Holy Word… While Scripture remains a constant, our interpretation of Scripture may require further growth and development. This truth requires that as a church, whatever procedures we use to deal with internal issues, we must always surrender to the dynamic leadership of the Holy Spirit. He will lead us into “all truth” (John 16:13)—if we are willing to be led.
Honesty and humility triumph as Cliff describes the death of his parents in a DEATH IN THE FAMILY.
My father died this summer. He shot his wife in the head, crawled into bed next to her, put the gun in his mouth, and shot himself. He was 86, almost blind, had leukemia, emphysema (the man had smoked for 72 years), and such terrible shakes that he could barely put food in his mouth. (He had joked with his brother-in-law a few weeks before their deaths, “If I don’t do this soon, I’m going to miss.”) His wife of 34 years had, among other things, kidney failure, severe osteoporosis, and spinal cancer. Life had become miserable, even worse…
My dad’s ending wasn't an Adventist one. But he wasn't an Adventist, so what did I expect? How glad I am, though, that a loving God, with a compassion I can’t conceive, is judge, and that I will be able to say, “Yes, Lord God Almighty, true and just are your judgments” (Rev. 16:7), whatever His judgment on my father is.
RESPONDING TO THE CALL OF MINISTRY by Ashley Batiste. It is a MUST READ account of Christian service that is the definition of worldwide Gospel Ministry. The National Association for the Prevention of Starvation (NAPS) ministry doesn't stop at responding to national disasters. Instead, it goes beyond to bringing hope, love, and support to remote, less-known places.
Andy Nash asks an important question in MAX LUCADO’S CONFESSION: Would my own church leaders feel safe being this honest with their congregations—with their colleagues? Or is this honesty only for someone else?
It pains me to report that there is a canker in the rose of this excellent, generously Christian issue. THE INCOMPLETE GOSPEL by Andrew W. Kerbs discounts the life and teachings of Christ and is shockingly parochial. His argument: Without the fuller understanding of the work accomplished in the sanctuary, what happened at Calvary would be little more than a moving story of another murdered prophet.
Vol. 189, No.29
http://www.adventistreview.org/index.php?issue=2012-1529
NOTE TO READERS:
WORLD NEWS AND PERSPECTIVES is an important section of each magazine. I don’t usually report on its contents because it is available at the online address I provide with every review.
GENERAL COMMENTS
This issue leaves the reader with a positive feeling that there will be greater honesty and generosity in the way we as Adventists conduct ourselves.
Bill Knott begins things with his editorial, HOLY CONVERSATIONS.
The way forward for an Advent people too easily divided by our differences in culture, language, history, and opinion is also inescapably dialogical, even when good dialogue requires the services of a translator or a mediator. A candid self-examination reminds me that not every preference of mine should be doctrine for my sister. Some ideas, however much I like them, are not central to the faith of Jesus. They must correctly be identified as in the negotiable margins that allow two different individuals to hold a civil conversation, talk about their common truths, and even agree to respectfully differ when necessary. Any faith community in which every opinion is sacralized ceases to be holy—or wholly Christ’s.
On the next page, Sandra Blackmer echoes Knott’s concerns.
We each choose how to respond to less-than-ideal circumstances, to criticism, to controversy. We determine whether to become defensive, to lash back, to make excuses, or to try to see the situation from the other person’s perspective and ask ourselves if there’s something we can do to improve things.
Joanne Davis, speaking at the GLOBAL MEDIA COMMUNICATIONS SUMMIT, argued:
Now is the time to make every change necessary to reach the world. And Greg Dunn echoed the refrain: “If ever there was a time to break out of the mold and to step up our game, it is now.”
Education, not doctrine, is celebrated with the LAUNCH OF THE CHURCH’S FIFTH MEDICAL SCHOOL IN PERU.
Clearly Cedric Vine was LISTENING TO THE SPIRIT when he wrote the following:
It is the theologians and administrators who play catch-up, seeking to interpret and understand the acts of the Spirit in light of Scripture…The preamble to the Seventh-day Adventist Church’s Statement of Fundamental Beliefs captures nicely the dynamic role of the Spirit in guiding the church: “These beliefs…constitute the church’s understanding and expression of the teachings of Scripture. Revision of these statements may be expected at a General Conference session when the church is led by the Holy Spirit to a fuller understanding of Bible truth or finds better language in which to express the teachings of God’s Holy Word… While Scripture remains a constant, our interpretation of Scripture may require further growth and development. This truth requires that as a church, whatever procedures we use to deal with internal issues, we must always surrender to the dynamic leadership of the Holy Spirit. He will lead us into “all truth” (John 16:13)—if we are willing to be led.
Honesty and humility triumph as Cliff describes the death of his parents in a DEATH IN THE FAMILY.
My father died this summer. He shot his wife in the head, crawled into bed next to her, put the gun in his mouth, and shot himself. He was 86, almost blind, had leukemia, emphysema (the man had smoked for 72 years), and such terrible shakes that he could barely put food in his mouth. (He had joked with his brother-in-law a few weeks before their deaths, “If I don’t do this soon, I’m going to miss.”) His wife of 34 years had, among other things, kidney failure, severe osteoporosis, and spinal cancer. Life had become miserable, even worse…
My dad’s ending wasn't an Adventist one. But he wasn't an Adventist, so what did I expect? How glad I am, though, that a loving God, with a compassion I can’t conceive, is judge, and that I will be able to say, “Yes, Lord God Almighty, true and just are your judgments” (Rev. 16:7), whatever His judgment on my father is.
RESPONDING TO THE CALL OF MINISTRY by Ashley Batiste. It is a MUST READ account of Christian service that is the definition of worldwide Gospel Ministry. The National Association for the Prevention of Starvation (NAPS) ministry doesn't stop at responding to national disasters. Instead, it goes beyond to bringing hope, love, and support to remote, less-known places.
Andy Nash asks an important question in MAX LUCADO’S CONFESSION: Would my own church leaders feel safe being this honest with their congregations—with their colleagues? Or is this honesty only for someone else?
It pains me to report that there is a canker in the rose of this excellent, generously Christian issue. THE INCOMPLETE GOSPEL by Andrew W. Kerbs discounts the life and teachings of Christ and is shockingly parochial. His argument: Without the fuller understanding of the work accomplished in the sanctuary, what happened at Calvary would be little more than a moving story of another murdered prophet.
Thursday, November 8, 2012
Reviewing the Anventist Review
October 11, 2012
Vol. 189, No.28
http://www.adventistreview.org/index.php?issue=2012-1526
NOTE TO READERS:
WORLD NEWS AND PERSPECTIVES is an important section of each magazine. I don’t usually report on its contents because it is available at the online address I provide with every review.
GENERAL COMMENTS
There is a fascinating juxtaposition of theological differences in the editorials that appear across from each other on pages 6 and 7. On page 6, Mark Kellner argues that LOVE ISN’T ALL YOU NEED. On page 7, Stephen Chavez opines that EVEN OUR ADVERSARIES will know that we are followers of Christ by the way we love and serve each other.
This theological difference of opinion raises an important question. Are Adventists Seventh-day Adventist Christians or Christian Seventh-day Adventists? In other words, which is more important, being a Seventh-day Adventist or being a Christian? How important is our trademarked “brand” of Christianity when it comes to issues of community welfare and self-renouncing love?
When FLORIDA ADVENTST HOSPITAL’S COLLEGE BECAME THE NEWEST DENOMINATIONAL UNIVERSITY, university officials said that they added the word “Adventist” to enhance the school’s reputation as one with a Christian mission. One has to wonder about the efficacy of this “official” reasoning given that the Adventist hospitals in Florida, part of the Adventist Health System, face an impending federal lawsuit contending that routine billing fraud occurred in the emergency departments from 2001 to 2008 and possibly longer…This new allegation "fits like a glove” with the original complaint…filed in July 2010, claiming that Florida Hospital used improper coding from 1995 to 2009 to overbill Medicare, Medicaid and Tricare, all federal government payers, for radiology services. The suit also alleges that the hospital routinely overbilled for a drug — octreotide — used to enhance MRI scans by billing for larger doses than were actually administered. It also alleges that bills were issued for computer-aided-detection analyses that were never performed. Orlando Sentinel, Wed. Oct. 17, 2012
In THE GIRL WITH DIRTY BLOND HAIR, Jimmy Phillips puts “Christian” before “Seventh-day Adventist.” I don’t know about you, but my ultimate goal is not to further a political agenda. My mission is not just to win friends, but to win people for the kingdom. Lately I’ve realized that criticizing others and creating controversy—even when I’m technically right—doesn’t work toward that end.
“TRUST IS THE FOUNDATION OF UNITY” is clearly a “Seventh-day Adventist” before “Christian” piece. Bill Knott’s interview with Artur Stele, along with an historical review of Adventist policy regarding the ordination of women, is informative but nowhere in the four-page spread do the words “Christ” or “Christian” appear. “God” is also a nonexistent word.
Lael Caeser’s “FIGURING OUT CHRISTIAN” is a poorly written, jingoistic definition of “Christian” that seems to place “Christian” before “Seventh-day Adventist,” but his willingness to lump people living in regions of the United States and members of other faiths as somehow inferior of character and intellect, challenges the usual definition of the word.
"Christian” is not so because sociologists apply it as a label. Nor is it so because interviewees so self-identify. Jesus, recorded and reported in the Word, Jesus, reproduced in the witness of word and life among His followers—that is Christian. “Christian” has no further need of definition.
Against today’s cringing apology for the weakness of the gospel before New York’s materialism, or California’s narcissism, or India’s mysticism, or Tibet’s Buddhism, Aristides contends that there is no way of missing the gospel’s power.
PROVIDENCE by Dixil Rodriquez is a magical story of faith restored in an embittered old woman. It’s definitely in the “Christian” before “Seventh-day Adventist” category.
Sandra Blakmer’s BULLYING IN ADVENTIST SCHOOLS? is clearly a “Christian” before “Seventh-day Adventist” interview with Debra Pershing, and a MUST READ for everyone working with young people in Adventist schools.
The INBOX features letters to the editor regarding Herbert Blomstedt’s essay on appropriate church music “Present Truth in Music" (July 12, 2012) and Andy Nash’s “The Missing Story in ‘Seventh-Gay Adventists,’ ” (July 19, 2012). The Review is to be congratulated for encouraging a dialog on these controversial issues.
Finally, a personal suggestion. The Review’s paid readership averaged 22,600 for the past 12 months. (p. 25) This is the “flagship journal” for 1.1 million Adventist members in the North American Division. This means that less than 3% of NAD members subscribe. The question is, “Why?” Editors, researching this question might prove instructive.
Thursday, November 1, 2012
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)