By David Gushee Follow David: @dpgushee In a spring in my life filled with illness, dying and death, here are a few hard lessons I have learned. To borrow from novelist Ernest Gaines, let’s call them “lessons before dying.” Perhaps…
Antibiotics: When “cheap and now” turns deadly
By John Chandler In his 1945 speech accepting the Nobel Prize for discovering penicillin, Alexander Fleming proved himself to be a prophet as well as a scientist. While hailing the cure for diseases that killed scores of our ancestors, and…
As rockets fall
By Heather Mustain As I prepared myself for a recent family trip to the Holy Land, I made sure to do all the things which, as a missions minister, I preach to others preparing for any short-term experience: Study the…
Beware of the backfire effect
“Daddy long-leg spiders are one of the most poisonous spiders but their fangs are too short to bite humans.” “All vaccines are deadly to all children.” You may heard those statements, but those statements are not true. Despite facts that disprove popular myths, some folks…
Geeking out at a new hymnal
By Jerrod Hugenot Years ago, I remember watching Star Trek: The Next Generation where the Starfleet crew moved about the USS Enterprise with hand-held data pads (technically spelled “padds” on the show). From these pads, one could access the ship’s…
Know thy neighbor
The Wave Recently as I was driving into the neighborhood of the church I serve, I realized I was behind one of my church members at the stop sign. I waved furiously, hoping that he would look in the rearview…
Remember, new ministers — you’re incidental
By Amy Butler What’s the most important piece of advice you would give yourself if you could go back in time to your seminary graduation and have a conversation with your newly credentialed self? I had the occasion last week…
Latest ‘X-Men’ film sparks discussion of sin and human nature
By Michael Parnell The X-Men are unique in the superhero genre. They are hated and hunted, yet they do acts of heroism to save humanity. X-Men have powers because of genetic mutation. Some powers are concealed and the hero looks…
Is your denomination slowly committing suicide?
For decades we have known that persons who smoke multiple packs of cigarettes per day are slowly committing suicide. Many of these people did not want to commit suicide. Some claim they did not know they were committing suicide. At…