By: Pam Lau on April 3, 2024
As I sat in the library reading The Good Kill: Just War and Moral Injury by Marc Livecche I wrote a question in my notebook: What do Christian theologians say to the warriors who are morally, spiritually and psychologically injured as a result of war? I also wrote down the following questions: What is moral injury? What…
By: Kally Elliott on April 3, 2024
Last week, as he was home for spring break, I asked my nineteen-year-old business major son what he was thinking he might do after college. Assuming he’d say he would pursue an MBA, I was taken aback when instead he mentioned going into the military. (This, of course, was a fall-back idea in case his…
By: Tim Clark on April 3, 2024
I grew up in a denomination that began with a full-throated support for The United States. In the 1930’s and 40’s, the Foursquare Church, led by the Canadian immigrant Aimee Semple McPherson, supported patriotic musicals, sold war bonds, and prayed against the godless hordes the US seemed to be battling on every front.[1] In many…
By: Cathy Glei on April 3, 2024
I have never served our country as a Veteran. My dad was a Chaplain in the Vietnam War and my son-in-law served seven years in the military. My oldest son-in-law comes from a family of Army Generals (his dad and grandfather both served; frequently moving from base to base). Several of my close friends have…
By: Jonita Fair-Payton on April 2, 2024
This past week has been so peaceful and filled with so many joyful interactions. I love Holy Week; it is my favorite time of the year with Thanksgiving being a close second. I welcomed the week off from class, readings, and posts as I desperately needed the week to not be on a schedule. I…
By: John Fehlen on April 1, 2024
Remember back to when the “internet” first became a thing? We had AOL and the famed “You Got Mail” voice prompt.[1] MSN Messenger and Yahoo were kind of a big deal. Viral videos were just becoming something we talked about and shared via email on the internet; both things that in 1994 the hosts of…
By: Jonita Fair-Payton on March 28, 2024
“Baptism is the dramatic or episodic representation of the act or ritual of initiation-or, at least, stands midway between the entirely “unconscious” or procedural forms of initiation and their semantically abstracted symbolic equivalents. Baptism is the spiritual birth(rebirth) as opposed to birth of the flesh.”[1] I preached last month on Renewal, and as I…
By: Kim Sanford on March 27, 2024
I know we’ve often been advised to not only read the books we’re assigned but also read about the books we’re assigned. That is, we’re meant to read reviews and the like, but I can’t say I always do. This week, though, for whatever reason I decided to start with some reviews of Jordan Peterson’s…
By: Russell Chun on March 25, 2024
قبل ما تنطوي الصفحة” (qabl ma tantawi as-safha) – Before the page turns (Iraqi Arabic). Flashback Part 1 Peering into the topic Part 2 What others are saying Epilogue Flashback She’s dead. Dimitri repeated, “she’s dead.” Dimi a soldier from Ukraine spoke without feeling, his face frozen. I remember him teasing Nahla a few…
By: Dinka Utomo on March 23, 2024
And even if you’re a rationalist, say, and a cynic and a nihilist, and you say, well, nothing has any meaning, you still run into the problem of pain. Because pain undercuts your arguments and has a meaning. So there’s no escaping from the meaning, you can pretty much demolish all the positive parts of…
By: Cathy Glei on March 22, 2024
When I think about following Jesus, the word that encompasses my pursuit of Him as an apprenticeship. Apprenticeship is a method of training and on-the-job experience, developing a new generation of practitioners, often accompanied by some study and/or shared learning. Much of the training is done while working alongside an employer or instructor, who helps…
By: Jana Dluehosh on March 21, 2024
Here I come, you ready for it, I’m going to stretch myself here and go off my topic…Okay, no I am not, I’m going to talk about the meaning of suffering. Why not? I work right in the middle of it and it’s the human condition. Jordan B. Peterson is a psychologist who wrote a…
By: Todd E Henley on March 21, 2024
“Critical thinkers have an abiding interest in the problematic aspects of their own thinking, and they seek out these problem areas, target them, and change something about their thinking in order to reason more rationally, logically, and justifiably.”1 Thanks to this program and blogging every week, I am slowly, painfully, and finally learning how to…
By: Adam Harris on March 21, 2024
“In Judaism, we take a strong view on this, and we have now for 2,000 years and we say reading the Bible literally is heresy”.[i] This surprising statement was made by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, an orthodox chief Rabbi from the United Kingdom, in a lively debate with one of the most famous atheist and Evolutionary…
By: Jenny Dooley on March 21, 2024
I want to know Christ — yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death. Philippians 3:10 NIV I approached Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief by Jordan B. Peterson with anticipation and a weary brain. The academic writing style was dense and certain…
By: Mathieu Yuill on March 21, 2024
Navigating through Jordan Peterson’s Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief feels akin to embarking on a dense archaeological dig, where instead of unearthing fossils you’re discovering facets of human belief, through the unveiling of mythology, religion, and psychology. Peterson’s This book isn’t merely academic; it’s a deep dive into the collective human psyche, exploring…
By: Kally Elliott on March 20, 2024
My twenty-one-year-old son is agnostic. Or atheist. Or something else. He is not a Christian. Of that he is sure, but, if I understand him correctly, he doesn’t find religion relevant enough to his life to be defined by a specific belief or religious system. This young adult was baptized, raised and confirmed in the…
By: Pam Lau on March 19, 2024
The first time I heard the name Jordan Peterson was in 2018. Sitting in the back two rows of my Fall 2018 communication courses was a group of young men between the ages of 22-30 who found themselves enrolled in college after time serving in the military. Several weeks into listening to their responses to…
By: Russell Chun on March 19, 2024
Ztracen ve tmě. Lost in the dark – Czech Flashback Part 1 What my peers are saying Part 2 What Peterson taught me. Epilogue – New Map/Old Map Flashback Scene #1 – Steelpot jammed on his head, flashlight in hand – fighting the dark, wind threatening to rip the map from his hands, the 2LT…
By: John Fehlen on March 19, 2024
“Something we cannot see protects us from something we do not understand.” Jordan Peterson in Maps of Meaning When I read the opening sentence of Map of Meaning I instantly knew we were in for a doozy of a book. I’m somewhat familiar with Peterson’s more current writings, social media posts, podcasts, blogs, and YouTube…
