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E n g l i s h • F r e n c h • P o r t u g u e s e • S p a n i s h Religion faces atheist fundamentalism Minding your moral conscience Ellen G. White and mental health Can faith and science be divorced? Vo1 l u m e 2 1 REGIONAL REPRESENTATIVES EAST-CENTRAL AFRICA DIVISION P.O. Box 00503, Nairobi, KENYA CONTENTS Hudson E. Kibuuka [email protected] Mulumba Tshimanga [email protected] EURO-AFRICA DIVISION ESSAYS Schosshaldenstrasse 17, 3006 Bern, SWITZERLAND 5 Religion faces atheist fundamentalism Roberto Badenas [email protected] Faith in the Creator God does not interfere in a person’s serious Corrado Cozzi [email protected] engagement in scientific enterprise EURO-ASIA DIVISION by Roy Adams Krasnoyarskaya Street 3, 107589 Moscow, RUSSIAN FEDERATION Minding your moral conscience: Branislav Mirilov [email protected] 9 Peter Sirotkin [email protected] Lessons from Huss and Jerome INTER-AMERICAN DIVISION An examination of the conflicts experienced by Huss and Jerome invite P.O. Box 830518, Miami, FL 33283-0518, U.S.A. us to better understand our own conflicts, our world, and the purposes Moisés Velázquez [email protected] Bernardo Rodríguez [email protected] of God NORTH AMERICAN DIVISION by Duane Covrig 12501 Old Columbia Pike, Silver Spring, MD 20904-6600, U.S.A. 12 Ellen G. White and mental health Larry Blackmer [email protected] by Merlin D. Burt James Black [email protected] Gary Councell [email protected] 16 Can faith and science be divorced? NORTHERN ASIA-PACIFIC DIVISION A layman argues that science got its roots and flourished in the soil of P.O. Box 43, Goyang Ilsan 411-600, KOREA Chek Yat Phoon [email protected] Christian thought, and that there’s much in common between the two Joshua Hee Shin [email protected] by Gary B. Swanson SOUTH AMERICAN DIVISION Caixa Postal 02600, 70279-970 Brasilia DF, BRAZIL Carlos Mesa [email protected] DEPARTMENTS Otimar Gonçalves [email protected] SOUTH PACIFIC DIVISION EDITORIAL LOGOS Locked Bag 2014, Wahroonga, N.S.W. 2076, 3 Stealing past watchful dragons 29 Our lives, our work: What kind of AUSTRALIA by Lisa M. Beardsley influence do we exert? Barry Hill [email protected] by Halvard B. Thomsen Gilbert Cangy [email protected] PROFILE Francisco Badilla Briones SOUTHERN AFRICA-INDIAN 19 ACTION REPORT OCEAN DIVISION by Ruben Sanchez-Sabaté 31 Adventist students gather in P.O. Box 4583 Rietvalleirand 0174, SOUTH Argentina AFRICA Cynthia Prime 22 by Heide Ford by Rocío Mendoza and Iván Ellah Kamwendo [email protected] Escobar Eugene Fransch [email protected] BOOKS OPEN FORUM SOUTHERN ASIA DIVISION Armageddon at the Door Post Box 2, HCF, Hosur 653 110, Tamil Nadu, 24 by Jon Paulien 32 Work out your salvation? INDIA by John M. Fowler Nageshwar Rao [email protected] Reviewed by Ikechukwu Oluikpe SPECIAL SECTION Lionel Lyngdoh [email protected] 25 The Life You’ve Always Wanted by John Ortberg 33 Faith and Acceptance SOUTHERN ASIA-PACIFIC DIVISION by Ellen G. White P.O. Box 040, 4118 Silang Cavite, PHILIPPINES Reviewed by Adelina Alexe Mike Lekic [email protected] INSERT Jobbie Yabut [email protected] 25 Amerika: Mit Gewalt in den Gottesstaat The art of TRANS-EUROPEAN DIVISION Francisco Badilla Briones 119 St. Peter’s St., St. Albans, Herts, AL13EY, (America: Theocracy by Force) ENGLAND by Gerhard Padderatz Daniel Duda [email protected] Reviewed by Ekkehardt Mueller Paul Tompkins [email protected] FIRST PERSON WESTERN AFRICA DIVISION 22 Boite Postale 1764, Abidjan 22, IVORY COAST 27 My Brook Cherith: Chiemela Ikonne [email protected] When life dries up on you Emanuel Nlo Nlo [email protected] by Sally Lam-Phoon 2 DIALOGUE 21•1 2009 EDITORIAL This international journal of faith, Stealing past watchful dragons: thought, and action is published three times a year in four parallel editions (English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish) by the Communicating with Committee on Adventist Ministry to College and University Students (AMiCUS) of the postmodern mind the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists. Volume 21, Number 1 Copyright © 2009 by the AMiCUS C.S. Lewis is perhaps one of the most Committee. All rights reserved. successful Christian apologists of our time. Although he was not a theologian Dialogue affirms the fundamental beliefs of the Seventh-day Adventist Church and or a clergyman, his works contain pro- supports its mission. The views published in found arguments for the truthfulness this journal, however, are the independent of Christian claims and the meaning thoughts of the authors. of Christian life. Yet he abandoned the Editorial Board apologetic approach of theological argu- Editor-in-Chief Lisa M. Beardsley ment after losing a public debate with Editor John M. Fowler Associate Editor Gary R. Councell the philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe at Managing Editor Susana Schulz a meeting of Oxford’s Socratic Club. It Copy Editor Beverly Rumble was not that he “lost the argument,” but International Editions Susana Schulz rather, that he saw the limits of debate International Copy Editors Monique Lemay (French) and propositional arguments to com- Guilherme Silva (Portuguese) municate the really big ideas of spiritual Susana Schulz (Spanish) truth. He recognized that debate is Editorial Correspondence reductionistic, that disputation awakens Dialogue the “watchful dragons” of defensiveness, and that meaning is sacrificed in the fray 12501 Old Columbia Pike between assertion and counter-argument. Silver Spring, MD 20904-6600 U.S.A. Telephone 301-680-5073 So the eminent author turned to story telling as an instrument to convey great Fax 301-622-9627 spiritual truths. He saw storytelling as helpful in “stealing past watchful dragons” E-mail [email protected] such as skepticism, defensiveness aroused by debate, and the familiarity with things AMiCUS Committee religious that leads one not to take them seriously. Chair Ella S. Simmons In order to arouse the imagination of readers to eternal realities, Lewis employed Vice Chairs Gary R. Councell, C. Garland fantasy in the Chronicles of Narnia. Likewise, his colleague and friend J.R.R. Tolkien, Dulan, Baraka G. Muganda Secretary Lisa M. Beardsley experimented with mythic story in Lord of the Rings. Recognizing the limits of logi- Members Lyndelle Chiomenti, Gary cal arguments as an apologetic device for making a case for faith, they tested whether Councell, John M. Fowler, Clifford they might slip past the “watchful dragons” by the use of stories. Said Lewis, “I Goldstein, Linda Koh, Kathleen Kuntaraf, wrote fairy tales because the Fairy Tale seemed the ideal Form for the stuff I had to Dionne Parker, Gerhard Pfandl, Roy Ryan say.”1 What Lewis calls fairy tales and children’s stories belong to the general genre of Circulation Inquiries should be “romance” and include literary forms like myth, fantasy, quest, and adventure that addressed to the regional representative call for the reader to engage his or her imagination. located in the area where the reader resides. See names and addresses on page 2. Lewis’s own “baptized imagination” played a key role in the creation of Narnia. He says that all seven of the Narnian books “began with seeing pictures in my head” and Subscriptions US $13 per year (three issues, airmail). See order form on page 6 he wrote: “At first they were not a story, just pictures. The Lion all began with a pic- for details. ture of a Faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood. This picture had Web site http://dialogue.adventist.org been in my mind since I was about sixteen. Then one day, when I was about forty, I said to myself: ‘Let’s try to make a story about it.’’’ 2 Dialogue has received correspondence from readers Our culture is awash in pictures from the media. Some of those pictures tell a in 118 countries around the world. story, and others clutter or pollute our minds and society. Blockbuster films, MTV, Continued on page 4 DIALOGUE 21•1 2009 3 LETTERS Appreciation Editorial Greetings in the name of our Lord Continued from page 3 and Savior Jesus Christ. I am very happy and grateful to you and your College and University Magazine digital media, and the iPod have replaced books and debate as vehicles to communi- staff for producing such a high- cate and persuade. The satellite dish or the corner video shop is the library that forms quality thought-containing articles. and expresses the ideas of today. We can hardly escape the onslaught of stories, songs, Thank you, and pictures, whether from our cell phones or the seatback monitor of an airplane at Yours sincerely 30,000 feet. Robinson R. Kujur The postmodern mind readily devours these images, with few filters. It accepts Ranchi – INDIA cultural relativity and the power of story and personal truth(s) and rejects the notion of absolute truth. As a result, the time-honored Adventist approach to proof-text an Pleasant surprise unbeliever into conversion has limited power to influence the postmodern mind. I write from Villarrica, Paraguay. But by means of storytelling, Adventist theology can be hidden in a Trojan horse left As I was surfing the Internet, I was behind enemy lines. Commenting on one of his science fiction stories, C.S. Lewis pleasantly surprised by this magazine wrote in a letter to a friend, “Any amount of theology can now be smuggled into website. I thoroughly enjoyed it. You people’s minds under the cover of romance without their knowing it.”3 cannot imagine how beneficial these Jesus Himself used storytelling to communicate truths of ultimate reality and materials are for us.