Worldview Coursepack
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EQUIPPING AND CONNECTING THE NEXT GENERATION OF CHRISTIAN LEADERS worldview coursepack Published by CARDUS | www.cardus.ca worldview coursepack FOUNDING EDITOR Harry Antonides EDITOR Gideon Strauss ASSOCIATE EDITOR Alissa Wilkinson MANAGING EDITOR Dan Postma DESIGN Joy Harris, with files from Compass Creative Studio Inc. www.compasscreative.ca COMMENT | MARCH 2009 All Scripture references in COMMENT are from the English Standard Version, unless otherwise indicated. CONTENTS COMMENT Magazine is a quarterly print journal, and weekly online e-zine, published by Cardus—a North American public policy think tank based in Hamilton, Ontario. Cardus’ thought, research and policy weave through the integrity of the biblical story. This story is not a private story reserved for comment worldview coursepack the private delights of Sunday worshippers—it is a public story that touches the whole world. It is public truth—and it changes everything it touches. CARDUS XX Reading the Bible . and articulating a 45 Frid Street, Suite 9 worldview Hamilton, ON L8P 4M3 BY MICHAEL W. GOHEEN (888) 339-8866 Fax (905) 528-9433 Understanding our story within the story Email: [email protected] Becoming a thinking Christian Website: www.cardus.ca/comment XX BY TIMOTHY P. WIENS PRESIDENT “If someone asks about your Christian hope, always be ready to explain it.” Michael Van Pelt —1 Peter 3:15, NLT DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH Ray Pennings XX Making friends for life BY GREG VELTMAN SUBSCRIBE www.cardus.ca/comment | “I want to be tangled up . in the thorns of love” 905.528.8866 Asking big questions ©2009 Cardus XX Cover image by Jason Bouwman, BY GIDEON STRAUSS Compass Creative Studio What do I love? What do I believe? What is to be done? All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, XX Cultural influence: an opportunity for the church stored in a retrieval system, or BY GABE LYONS transmitted, in any form or by any Christians serving the common good have unmatched influence means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior XX Discovering what God loves permission of the publisher or the BY STEVEN GARBER Copyright Licensing Agency. A journey from duty to desire XX But now I see (part II) BY DON OPITZ With a Christian worldview, our daily work can transcend the grind and connect to a great purpose XX Sex is easier than love BY STEVEN GARBER Why sexuality is at the very heart of life and learning XX What is to be done . to understand our moment? BY GIDEON STRAUSS Every Christian is confronted by the question, What does God ask of me at this time? XX What is to be done . in the public square? XX In search of the happy BY RAY PENNINGS life Christian efforts in the public square BY DAVID K. NAUGLE are analogous to a pickup hockey game In disordered lives, we love things unintelligently, excessively, and XX MINE! unrealistically BY RICHARD MOUW Kuyper for a new century XX Making peace with proximate justice XX The flash of a fish knife BY STEVEN GARBER BY CALVIN SEERVELD Christians in politics must learn to There is a spirit in the store, hallowing accept some justice, some mercy lowly work into rich service XX Who am I? XX Why bother going to BY BOB ROBINSON church? Rooting your identity in the image of BY JOHN SEEL God Recovering the lost logic of church XX Why are there so many XX But now I see (part I) other religions? BY DON OPITZ BY RON CHOONG A crash course on worldview, and why They cannot all be correct, so why does it’s important God permit other religions to exist? INTRODUCTION GIDEON STRAUss COMMENT EDITOR elcome to the Comment Worldview Coursepack. We are delighted to present Wsome of the best pieces from Comment’s recent archive for this volume. What is Comment Magazine? It is a worldview journal for the next generation of Christian leaders. We are animated by a vision of preparing tomorrow’s leaders to “think Christianly” in every sphere of human activity, and it is to this end that we publish quarterly glossy journals, in addition to exceptional essays and artwork online each week. Comment is published by Cardus, a Christian public policy think tank based in Hamilton, Ontario. What follows is an excerpt from the 2008 Comment Manifesto, first published in December 2008. Comment is a journal of public opinion bringing Christian voices to the dialogue in the public sphere, seeking the common good. Comment is committed to honest, humble thought; clear, simple writing; and courteous, civil dialogue—inclined toward identifying and affirming what is good rather than courting controversy. A. Comment critically celebrates imaginative, skilful art work— literature and poetry, song and music, theatre and film, drawing, painting, photography, sculpture, and other forms—that expresses “with simple majesty the mixture of sorrow under sin in the world and joy at the presence of the Comforter,” as Calvin Seerveld writes in A Christian Critique of Art and Literature: art that will show “the hurt and the laughter, the thoroughgoing chiaroscuro to flowers and desires and prayers alike,” that “will let a childlike gladness of hope well up through the total groaning of all creation for the Great Day still to come.” Comment seeks in particular to recommend emerging artists to its readers, and to encourage and honour under- appreciated mid-career artists. 6 COMMENT worldview coursepack Comment respectfully encourages world-loving, both individualism and collectivism, Comment wisdom-seeking academic work that revels with resolutely campaigns for an accurate recognition delight in God’s glorious ordering of creation, and protection of different spheres of human reels with horror over the human evil that life, with the application and limitation of vandalizes the good creation, and searches for political power to the administration of justice ways of following Jesus’ repair of the broken (known as the principle of sphere sovereignty world. or differentiated authority), and the appropriate assignment of political authority, with a B. Comment is glad to profile prudent businesses preference for the more local authority where that steward the wealth of the world with possible (known as the principle of subsidiarity). enterprising innovation, patient investment, frugal management, skilful collaboration, and D. Comment cherishes the enjoyment of the playful fair exchange. Comment hopes to contribute delights and everyday comforts that offer to the cultivation of human societies in solace in solitude and enliven our common life: which economic markets flourish without simple food grown and prepared with care and overwhelming other spheres of human life. imagination, well-designed clothes worn with élan, streets and boulevards that invite walking Comment endorses responsible technical and cycling, board games and ball games that invention and cultivation that delights in the test the players and amuse the onlookers, and materials and forms of things, discloses and table conversation that is on occasion witty, rich, conserves the possibilities embedded in creation, deep, and lively—all to celebrate what it is to and enables a rich diversity of human ways of be human, with gratitude for the good gifts of a life, while carefully questioning human neglect loving Creator who delights in his creatures. and exploitation of creation. C. Comment affirms that politics is only one dimension of our multi-faceted, common, public life and culture that is most deeply defined by religious beliefs, and informed and enriched by civil mores, intellectual opinion, artistic products and popular culture. Yet political life does possess power to define and to influence—for better and for worse—our common public life and culture. Comment esteems statecraft, the defence of peace, and the rule of law, and denounces anarchy, brigandage, and tyranny. Against 2009 7 BY MICHAEL W. GOHEEN ll of human life is shaped by some story. I say?” The psychotherapist says, “Oh, anything at Alasdair MacIntyre offers an amusing story all.” Or again he is Soviet spy who has arranged to Ain After Virtue to show how particular events meet his contact at this bus stop. The code that will receive their meaning in the context of a story. He reveal his identity is the statement about the Latin imagines himself at a bus stop when a young man name of the duck. The meaning of the encounter standing next to him says: “The name of the common at the bus-stop depends on which story shapes it: wild duck is histrionicus, histrionicus, histrionicus.” in fact, each story will give the event a different One understands the meaning of the sentence. But meaning. what on earth is he doing in saying it in the first place. This particular action can only be understood It is likewise with our lives. In his The Gospel in a if it is placed in a broader framework of meaning, Pluralist Society, Lesslie Newbigin writes in that “(t) a story that renders the saying comprehensible. he way we understand human life depends on what Three stories could make this particular incident conception we have of the human story. What is meaningful. The young man has mistaken the the real story of which my life story is a part?” What man standing next to him for another person he Newbigin is referring to, here, is not a linguistically saw yesterday in the library who asked “Do you by constructed narrative world that we fabricate to any chance know the Latin name of the common give meaning to our lives, but an interpretation of duck?” Or he has just come from a session with his cosmic history that gives meaning to human life. psychotherapist who is helping him deal with his N. T. Wright says in that a story is “the best way of painful shyness.