The thing that drives me crazy about Christians, is the fact that we are so fast to judge, and so slow to discuss. Nothing encapsulates this more than the issue of homosexuality that is growing to an unavoidable point in our culture. We, of course, still have the immensely ungraceful crowd that are quick to condemn, but the rest of us just avoid the topic entirely. What are we so afraid of? That if we talk about something without knowing the answer, sexual immorality will just run afoot, killing us all? Or are we just so scared that maybe the world isn’t as black and white as we thought it was? If we had started from a position of grace rather than judgement, we would have never run into these problems in the first place. And guess what, these issues are not going away by us pretending they don’t exist.

So the reason I bring this up is because I want people to talk about this, and I figured all the massively intelligent people that read my site would be the perfect kind of people to do that.

A very good friend of mine Dave Ellens, who is an immensely intelligent and passionate man, recently wrote a response to an article featured in the Chimes Newspaper, Calvin College’s on campus newspaper. Though they did publish his response in their Perspectives section under the title A Closer look at CRC Policy, they edited quite a bit of it without informing him, completely changing the tone of his article (despite claiming that the article was printed “in full”). So with my blog power, I’m posting his article in full (really) here as I feel it is tremendously well thought out and well written and inspires discussion and perspective. I’m also encouraging you to complain to the Chimes for editing his article without permission or warning. You can do so here. It’s a form you have to fill out, but here’s some template complaints you can copy and paste there:

– I’m very disappointed to read that while you claim that your “perspectives” articles (specifically “A Closer Look at CRC Policy”) have been printed in full, they in fact are not, and have been edited without permission nor acknowledgement. I would expect an apology to not only the author but to all of your readers, and anything less is very irresponsible and disappointing.

– Though you may feel that taking out a few needless words in an article can save space, it can also severely alter the tone of a piece, and should be at least permitted by the author. That has not been the case in your recent “perspectives” article, and I believe you owe not only the author but also your readers an apology, and an immediate reprinting of any articles that were edited without permission in full.

– So by “in full” did you mean “not in full.” Maybe you got a little caught up in your own editing that you edited the “not” out too?

– You wanna go?!

If you have other good complaint templates, post them as a comment.

Big thanks to Dave for letting me post this.

Read Dave’s Article Here