Encouraging a Thinking Faith

My dad recently cleaned out a closet piled with magazines he had been planning to read in retirement. I’m not sure that ever happened, but he hated to get rid of them. They were mostly old copies of His Magazine from Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship and a complete collection of  Christianity Today. It took two trips to the recycling center to get them all there. Several years ago he offered the magazines to us for a theological school, but the cost of shipping would be prohibitive, and these days the whole collection could be easily searched on a CD.

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I couldn’t blame Dad for not wanting to get rid of those magazines. There was so much wonderful content there. Founded in 1956 by Billy Graham and first edited by Carl F. H. Henry, Christianity Today has long been a mouthpiece for a faith that engages the mind as well as spirit. Today it has expanded to a whole group of publications including Books and Culture, Leadership Journal, Men of Integrity, and several others. 

Print copies of Christianity Today have been piling up on my coffee table for months. I know I want to read them cover to cover; I know they are full of good things I don’t want to miss. I asked my husband the other day if he had seen the article on the King James Version of the Bible in the issue that had just come.

“Oh, I already read that on-line,” he said.

So where was I? Turns out he gets an e-mail message every week with links to new articles. He just clicks and reads the articles that most interest him without waiting for the print version to turn up in the mailbox. 

I have signed up for the same. Last week there was a link to an article on Christian romance. Is it nothing more than emotional porn? I discovered a whole CT blog called Her-meneutics, written for Christian women who want to think more deeply about their world. They have a half dozen other blogs from entertainment to politics.

This week there is an article on the DNA code and the implications for an historic Adam and Eve. Scientific evidence points to homo sapiens arising from a population of around 10,000. How important is a single common ancestor to the gospel? I love that the article presents a number of points of view and raises issues without saying, “If you are born again, this is what you must believe.”

If you go to the site, a window pops up and asks if you want to subscribe to CT Weekly, their free newsletter. I highly recommend it. You will probably find that you click on so many articles you want to subscribe to the magazine.  (The print version fits more easily on the bedside table or in the bathroom. And no, this is not a paid promotion! I just like Christianity Today and think we need to see more solid thinking about our faith.) I don’t agree with everything I read there, but it invariably makes me think.