BY STEPHANIE CHIAO AND WHITNEY MORET

Dear Reader,

It’s easy to circumscribe the relationship between God and Christians with abstract spirituality, to relegate it to a realm somewhere beyond. But when we say “Amen” and unclasp our folded hands, we open our eyes again to a broken world. Our most transcendent spiritual aspirations are mediated through the constraints of physical existence, membership in a world of sin, and the demands of the human body. Continue reading “Letter from the Editors”

BY JOHN MONTAGUE Dr. Karen Hye-cheon Kim wants her patients to know two things, “God cares about your health and we cannot be healthy by our own strength.” Kim, an assistant professor at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, studies the relationship between religious beliefs and physical health, specifically obesity. She has also written articles about how faith can affect body image and mental … Continue reading Altar to a False Image

 BY WHITNEY MORET N ear the end of the Not For Sale Campaign’s recent Backyard Abolitionist Tour event, a young woman approached the campaign’s founder, David Batstone, for post-graduation guidance. Not For Sale is a movement directed toward fighting human trafficking, and Batstone’s inspiring talk encouraged students to use whatever skills they have to combat slavery. The woman expressed her struggle to find a way to … Continue reading Backyard Abolitionism

 BY WHITNEY MORET According to the various online incarnations of the Myers-Briggs personality tests I’ve taken, I am a “rational.” This is good news, and I’d be disappointed if I were anything else. I mean, wouldn’t that make me irrational? I, being rational, use logic to make the means I use fit the ends I pursue. The irrational person, I reasoned, bypasses the whole “thinking” … Continue reading Reasons for Passion

BY LUE-YEE TSANG I’m ethnically Chinese, but not Tai­wan­ese, nor mainland Chinese, nor as­si­milated American – I happen to be Cantonese with relatives mostly from Hong Kong. My concerns, then, are chiefly about neither Taiwan Straits issues nor the West’s interests. Given the prejudices on the field, I ask that the reader set aside for a moment what he believes that I think and ought … Continue reading Olympics, the Church & Critique

BY MATTHEW HORWITZ

Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears my word and believes him who sent me, has eternal life; he does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.
— John 5:24, RSV

Can we, as followers of Christ, be certain of our salvation? Or, put another way, are we assured eternal life in heaven by virtue of our Christian faith? Continue reading “Do We Have Assurance?”

BY HYUN LEE

 Suppose that in all history, there is only one sin to be forgiven. Does the forgiveness of this single sin require the death of God’s Son? Does he have to traverse the same difficult, bloody path up to Calvary? Even for a minor sin?

The answer is a resounding yes. St. Aquinas, the great medieval theologian, calls sin an infinite offense to God. Humans, who are finite, are unable to repay this infinite debt. Only Christ, who is both human and God, can repay it. Continue reading “The Gravity of Sin”

BY MELODY LIAO

My housemate, an adamant atheist, relentlessly searches for loopholes in Christianity but has never been able to convince me with his arguments. So it came as a shock two weeks ago when he formulated a thought experiment that shamelessly puts Christians on trial. It runs as follows: Continue reading “Thought Experiments & Snipers”