Touchstone Magazine

As my most recent issue of Touchstone arrived a few days ago, I realized I had not yet written the post I intended on how much I enjoyed the April issue! This is really a great magazine, and I commend it to you. Let me point to three articles from the April issue to illustrate.

First, David Mills’ editorial, “Dwelling in Tentatives: The Gift of Christian Uncertainty,” is a great word for us. He addresses how Christian’s are so often expected to be certain about every issue and the sense that if we do not have certain answers to everything somehow that disproves our belief.

“It is a dynamic worth considering, because the Christian often finds himself outside the typical polarity, precisely because he is a Christian. We are constantly treated in the mainstream media as people who are unreasonably and dangerously certain, when in fact because we are certain about a few things, we can be uncertain about many others, while those who are uncertain about the few must be certain about the others.” (3)

“The Christian does not need to believe that almost every decision is obvious and crucial.” (3)

“The Christian does not have a final answer to all the practical questions of living rightly in a fallen world, if ‘final’ means completely or almost completely n this world. He does not have a final answer of this sort, yet because he believes in eternal mercy and justice, he does not have to pretend that there is one. He can do the best he can, confident that the Father, who loves suffering men infinitely more than we do, will in his own time and way make all things right.” (p. 4)

With echoes of 1 Peter 4:19, this is very solid, helpful counsel.

Time (and space!) is up. I’ll address the other two articles in a follow up post.