Reviewing the Review: Feb 12
Reviewing the Adventist Review
February 12, 2009
Vol. 186, No. 4
GENERAL COMMENTS
This issue is generally readable and informative. My comments include one Bouquet.
Mark A. Kellner earned the Bouquet for his editorial, We’re All Lubavitchers Now, and his beautifully written article, Going the Distance: Oakwood’s Delvert Baker Hits Antarctica’s Ice for Fund-Raising Marathon.
Kudos’ to Dorothy Eaton Watts for her reflection, Make Me a Butterfly. Her ongoing struggle to survive cancer is an inspiring account of survival and joyous living.
Clifford Goldstein, I was cheering you on until you used one word in the second-to-last sentence of your essay, The Good News? You said, “All we can do is marvel before the little that language allows us to grasp, and then seek to live our pathetic lives in relation to [the Gospel]. Because if you believe it, what else matters?” The word is “pathetic”. If the human race is “so inadequate as to be laughable or contemptible”, Jesus wouldn’t have created us or taught us how to live as his friends.
I Don’t Wanna Be a Pop Christian by A. J. Church was an OK first draft, but additional editorial assistance should have been supplied. The piece lacks a clear message, the writing lacks discipline, and the organization is confused.