T he Mo sa i c

Welcome to the MOSAIC -- the niche publication of the ACTS

(Associated Canadian Theological Schools) graduate school at Trinity Western
University.

Come frequently and observe how heavy theological study is soaking into our unique
vocational paradigms.

We are artists, philosophers, mystics and fighters, and have exhibited our down-to-earth
fruitfulness to provoke you to jealousy, inquiry, and devotion. See our purpose
statement here.
MOSAIC Purpose Statement:
We derive our purpose from the following fact:

JESUS gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and

some to be pastors and teachers PURPOSE>to prepare God’s people for works of
service, REASON>so that HIS body may be built up TERMINUS>until we all reach unity in
the faith1 and in knowing HIM2 TELOS>and in so doing become mature.
Ephesians 4:11-13

Our partnership is with Jesus in his restless fixation on forming (1) a restless fixation on
Himself within all disciplines and (2) agreement about His excellence among all
worshiping Christians, as long as it takes: we shall promote Him by soliciting works of
penetrating intellectual curiosity and unflagging interest in the beauty of what He has
made and what He has kept hidden, from among all those who study at ACTS.

Does this light. your fire? We could use your help! Volunteer assistant editors are much
needed for us to continue to solicit organize and publish quality materials.!
Email the editor directly at: nellermoe@gmail.com.
Letter from the Editor:

I’m proud of the excellent table the students at ACTS have been able to spread for
their fellow students in full view of and in spite of their enemies (relentless workflow,
dehydration and sleeplessness, and thick stacks of books by every kind of impenetrable
Sorbonne sophist, philologist, or psychoanalyst). Great work everybody. This Fall 2009
issue of the Mosaic solicited submissions falling generally under the following theme:

“Beatific Vision(s): Where do you see Him?”

The abiding goal of the MOSAIC is to showcase the deep, good work that God has
undertaken among the students here, as they sift True from False, puzzle over Paradox
and Beauty, and put themselves through the fiery trial of gaining Wisdom. We publish
once a semester. The stuff that has come in from the students this Fall is an excellent
representation of what I observe coming out the ACTS prism generally— put together,
I am pleased to present to you a collaborative work about “beholding” that is
polyphonic, interdisciplinary, multi-dimensional—by this last bit I mean that you won’t
be able to engage it without activating all your human faculties—“the pneuma of your
nous”— your imagination, your affections, and your spirit, but all together.

The writers and artists displaying their work here are active in various programs:
MDiv, DMin, MTS, MMAFT, and MLE. Our premiere space (theme independent, for
spotlighting indigenous academic writing from within ACTS) features an article by
Shawna Langridge on “Singleness”; (Shawna is presently receiving clients as a therapist
at! New Life Christian counseling in Langley and CARES in Abbotsford, where! she
interns.) The other pieces address this issue’s theme of “beholding” from different
angles:

(1) beholding Christ in the failed, but redeemed life-- from a pastoral perspective;
(2) an ironic challenge to the otherwise fluffy popular notion of “beatific vision”—a
meditation on the terror of God’s self-disclosure in response to Job’s demand for
vindication; beholding;
(3) original poetry from within the swirl of deep darkness;
(4) an enamored nod to Christendom’s best “beatific” vision;
(5) original art contributed by
(a) the spouse of one ACTS student
(b) a student from MOSAIC’s sister grad institution TEDS (Trinity Evangelical
Divinity School, Deerfield IL);
(6) an arresting reversal on the theme “beatific vision” for the closing article: Christ
beholding us.

We thank you for taking some time to explore the online MOSAIC, and invite you to
return for our next Spring 2010 publication in late February.

Managing Editor,
Jonathan Nellermoe, MLE
submitted by Shawna Langridge,
MMAFT
December 4, 2009
(full text available at http://therapystuff.blogspot.com/2009/11/singleness-
is-it-really-that-bad.html.)

People who remain single can rally have their work cut out for
them. Even in present day, “settling down,” getting married and
having children remains the gateway for achieving true adult status
in our society, implying stunted development for those who
experience an extended singleness period. Those who remain single,
either through choice or circumstance, have a plethora of negative
views surrounding them and why they have not married, and
significant pressure upon them to remedy the situation. Singles may
be marginalized in our couple-minded society and even in their own
families of origin, where their “unusual” life course creates unique
needs and pressures on the development of the whole family. That
said, singleness is not uncommon, with Stats Canada (2006)
revealing nearly one sixth of Canadians remain partnerless into their
mid-40s, though these numbers are substantially lower among
Christians.
! In reality, singles are not the miserable “crazy cat ladies”
postulated in pop culture. It is in fact more than possible for a single
life to be vibrant, creative and fulfilled, especially for women. Never
marrying for women is associated with higher intelligence,
education, professional success, and upward mobility, better mental
and physical health, and better coping in later life singleness than
those who married. Most single women report extensive contacts
with relatives or a special circle of life-long friends, which serve as a
non-traditional family that may provide even more love, intimacy,
support than a traditional marriage would. Clearly, marriage is not
the only path to happiness and fulfillment.
One of the primary disadvantages of singleness, however,
involves the stigmatization and marginalization of these women as
tragic figures, rejected and living lives devoid of love, who are
unable to fulfill their socialized mandate to the all-important duty of
being wife and mother. These stereotypes are heightened within
church culture, with its current tendency to “canonize the (largely
mythical) 1950s suburban nuclear family as traditional, normative,
and the only legitimate expression of Christian living.” This attitude,
along with common church culture myths such as the “gift of
celibacy” and the perception that God desires all to marry,
exacerbate the normal struggles that singles face in regards to their
alternative lifestyle. The attitude itself is largely a reaction to the
disintegration of morality and “family values” in society at large, and
from Reformation equation of singleness with the sexual immorality
committed by the mandated-single Catholic priests. The theology of
singleness, however, does not show the negative picture of
singleness that many Christians struggle with. Against the backdrop
of Jewish culture, Jesus revolutionized life by insisting that salvation
was not found in the legacy of children, or the temporary state of
marriage, but that our dignity and personhood was to be found in
the new and eternal family of God. It was the church itself who
provided the option for singleness against the cultural mandate of
marriage. Because allegiance to Christ is more important than any
human relationship, singles are thus no less whole people for lack of
a partner. While Adam and Eve were married, Jesus and Paul were
single, demonstrating that both states are equally valid ways to serve
God; both need to be honored equally without disparaging one or
the other for a truly Christian view of life. In fact, singleness is
perhaps preferable if one wants to devote oneself to ministry
whole-heartedly (1 Cor 7:28-34) as it allows an individual to have
their primary identity as a follower of God rather than divided as a
spouse or parent.
It is clear that our churches require an attitude adjustment
towards our singles. Singleness is not a curse or a problem to be
solved but a valid lifestyle of varying length that may or may not be
chosen. As representatives of Christ’s heart on earth, it is thus our
responsibility to welcome, validate and support singles as whole
people with both unique struggles and unique abilities to serve
Christ.

References:
http://ezproxy.student.twu.ca:3022/ehost/detail?
vid=29&hid=8&sid=88eaa6ef-385e-44df-8580-e85c8ccd8beb
%40sessionmgr4&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d - bib4upChoi, N. G.
(1996). The never–married and divorced elderly: Comparison of economic and health status,
social support, and living arrangement. Journal of Gerontological Social Work, 26, 3–25.
Gordon, P (2003). The decision to remain single: Implications for women across cultures.
Journal of Mental Health Counseling, 25(1).
Hicks, S & Anderson, CM (1989). Women on their own. In M McGoldrick, CM Anderson &
F Walsh (Eds.) Women in families: a framework for family therapy. New York: W.W Norton
& Company, Inc.
Hsu, AY. (1997). Singles at the Cross-roads: A fresh perspective on Christian singleness.
Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
http://ezproxy.student.twu.ca:3022/ehost/detail?
vid=29&hid=8&sid=88eaa6ef-385e-44df-8580-e85c8ccd8beb
%40sessionmgr4&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d - bib21upMarks, N.
(1996). Flying solo at midlife: Gender, marital status, and psychological well-being. Journal
of Marriage and the Family, 58, 917–932.
McGoldrick M. (2005). Becoming a couple. In B. Carter & M McGoldrick (Eds.) The
expanded family life cycle: Individual, family and social perspectives (3rd ed.). New York:
Pearson.
Statistics Canada (2006). 2006 Census of population. Retrieved Sept 2, 2009 from http://
www12.statcan.gc.ca/english/census06/data/topics/RetrieveProductTable.cfm?
ALEVEL=3&APATH=3&CATNO=97-552-
XCB2006007&DETAIL=0&DIM=&DS=99&FL=0&FREE=0&GAL=&GC=99&G K
=NA&GRP=0&IPS=97-552XCB2006007&METH=0&ORDER=&PID=88997&PTYPE=88
971&RL
=0&S=1&ShowAll=&StartRow=&SUB=&Temporal=2006&Theme=67&VID=&VNAMEE
=&VNAMEF
Stein, PJ (1981) Understanding single adulthood. In PJ Stein (Ed.). Single life: unmarried
adults in social context. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
submitted by Pastor Bill Versteeg, DMin
December 4, 2009
I will never forget a certain mother, her arthritic hands deformed into nothing but
knuckles, raising her fist and crying out “He was baptized! He was baptized!” At the time
I was not sure if her fisted cry “He was baptized!” was not more than a
misunderstanding of baptism, an expression of anger at God, or words of desperate
hope that God, whose Word writes mystery, was making sure his Word would not
return to him void.

She was crying for her son George, who had been a normal young teenager, faithful in
coming to church, faithful in hearing the story, the Word, but then he got into the
wrong crowd. Quickly he was trapped by the anesthetizing lure of alcohol, and his life
went from bad to worse. Most regarded him as a lost cause except his mother. With his
wife, who in wisdom left him, he bore two children both of which hated him. Their
dysfunction was so deep that his own son, in anger, stabbed him with a knife severing
important nerves to his left side, disabling his arm completely and hindering his ability to
walk from then on. I even called crime stoppers on him in the hope of curbing his
drinking and driving. He had swindled pension money from his own mother. “He was
baptized!” his mother’s trembling fist would cry.

My connecting with George was sparse until the week he entered the hospital, his body
a skeleton, his skin jaundiced, his belly bloated, his cirrhotic liver failed.

In the hospital I experienced mystery. I talked about God, he talked about talking to
God. Words, family words, community words, heard when he was young were words,
even in all of his brokenness, that resonated through the emptiness of his fractured
heart, the Word he had eaten and the Word he drank while young had become part of
him, and that same Word accomplished its purpose, he talked to God. I buried him
according to the words of Isaiah

A bruised reed he will not break,

and a smouldering wick he will not snuff out. (Isaiah 42:3)

Listen, I will tell you a mystery. “He was baptized!”

Most of us here today were baptized, we were baptized into a community, into a Savior,
into the Word, the living enduring Word of God. And we are called to finish well. But
the wonderful reality is that even on our all too often failing journeys, we eat that same
spiritual food and drink that same spiritual drink and the Word becomes us...
submitted by Jeff Chan, MDiv
December 4, 2009
I often wonder what it will be like to see the Lord face to face.
In Job, we find a man who is “blameless and upright; he feared God and
shunned evil,” (Job 1:1). Furthermore, “He was the greatest man among all the
people of the East”, (Job 1:3). The story goes that Job, this esteemed man of
God, begins to suffer the worst ordeals that can happen to a man: his family is
slaughtered; his property is destroyed; his wealth is plundered; and finally his
health is robbed of him. A lesser person would turn to God in anger and blame.
Yet it is recorded that “in all this, Job did not sin in what he said”, (Job 2:10).
We see a distraught, grieving man call out to the Lord in deep sorrow, asking
for understanding, comfort, and vindication from the accusations of his friends.
When the Lord answers Job, it is not a voice of comfort; God does not
answer Job’s accusations nor does He seek to reply to Job’s queries. Rather, we
see the Lord answer Job out of the storm (Job 38:1). Instead of words of
comfort, God levels Job with a single question: “Who is this that darkens my
counsel with words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man; I will
question you, and you shall answer me”, (Job 38:2). Beginning with this
response, though Job is an upright man blameless before the Lord, God displays
to Job the awesome power of His might, the magnificence of His reign, and the
glory of His will, such that Job too is reduced to trembling silence before the
Lord (Job 40:4,5).
Yet, the answer of the Lord is more than enough comfort for Job. The
answer that God gives is vindication against false accusations and justice for the
suffering Job has endured. The answer is the revelation of God Himself – God,
the Creator of all existence, Sovereign over all, magnificence beyond compare.
Before Him, even the greatest man of the East, this holy and blameless man, is
brought to repentance “in dust and ashes”, (Job 42:6). For Job’s perspective is
changed. His eyes are opened to a greater reality. He is reminded, even as he
himself spoke, “The fear of the Lord—that is wisdom and to shun evil is
understanding”, (Job 28:28). Job’s blessed experience of God is one in which He
is made to know his own humanity, frailty, and sinfulness in light of God’s
absolute and sovereign, perfect and holy being.
This beatific vision of the Lord is the answer for Job, as it is the answer for
us today. When I seek to see the face of the Lord, to know Him and to
understand my own life, I will be confronted with this beautiful and glorious
vision of God. That is, I will be humbled by the mere sight of Him. His answers
to me will bring me to my knees in worship. I will be leveled, and my pride will
be stripped away. And, I will be in the presence of the almighty God.
submitted by Karen Olson, MLE
December 4, 2009
Call of the Deep

Deep calls to deep

yet in the shallows I sit
hesitation clinging to me like slimy
strands of seaweed.

To enter the deep waters

means to exchange the safety of the
sandy sunshine beaches—

for what?

Cold, black darkness—

or undiscovered life and sunken

treasures?

Beyond the gentle shallows

deep currents whirl and pull
carrying unknown secrets.

This stirring in my deep—

is it faith

or simple irresponsibility?

I take a tentative step forward—

then look back, like Lot’s wife—
then stop and listen once again for
music from the deep—

Yet all I hear now

is waves
crashing against the shore.

Paralyzed curiosity and agonizing

comfort wage war within me.
I taste the sting of seawater and salt
tears
as the tide begins to recede.

I fear the whirling waters

the fierce sea monsters
being sucked down,
buried alive,
suffocating under metric tons of liquid
death—

Yet I also fear the shallows:

being tossed forever
in the usual cycle
like a predictable spray of foam.

So slowly
I fling off the seaweed
Stumble into the deep
Submerge myself beneath the rolling
waves.

The currents surge with formidable

power
and I am dragged down deeper, deeper
and further, further from shore.

Yet gradually I realize that the waters

have lost their terror
and I swim
in a sea of fearless freedom.

For now I know

that You are the ocean.
And how can I drown in love?
submitted by the Editor
December 4, 2009
“Beatific Vision”, or “How I Stopped my Worrying about Love, and Started Looking at Beatrice.”

Allow me to let you into my poetic universe a bit. You see, there’s this poem—it’s rapidly
becoming my favorite. Its meaning is soaking into my bones over the four years since I first
encountered it. It takes 15 hours to read aloud (3 nights to be exact) and is claimed by its author
to be the greatest poem ever written in praise of a woman. Still reading? It’s that good. The
“Divine Comedy” was written by Dante Alighieri in the early 1300’s when at the height of his
colossal vanity, a divine vision made him to cease and desist all poetry, all bombast—a vision of
paradise vivid enough to make him abandon his living infatuation with his deceased belle, Beatrice
until he had properly immortalized her memory in a work of deep penance. This work he would
dedicate to God. That’s the context for Dante’s greatest poem, which he wrote himself into as
the principal figure— in need of rescue, and zealous to behold his beloved Beatrice.
The “Divine Comedy” is Dante’s upwards journey towards Beatrice, his once poetic goddess
now turned heavenly rescuer. If I am to summarize: The promise of an encounter with her
inspires him heroically through all the dangers of hell, and the mundanities of Mt. Purgatory; more
than once he had lost sight of the golden crown of seeing her on account of all the profound
disturbances that fill such a journey. But at their climactic rendezvous Beatrice has only the worst
combinations of heat and ice for Dante. She rebukes him for his weak and idolatrous love— in
life, he thought her earthly body so fair because it was so spiritually illuminated; yet as soon she
dies and her spirit is made even more glorious in the presence of the Lord, Dante lets his heart
drift in forgetfulness towards other “fair flesh”. Beatrice’s fiery words dash Dante’s self-
estimation of the seriousness of his personal devotion, and he repents and in epic style is
drowned by Beatrice in the river Lethe.
Let me tell you of the wonders that follow repentance: how Dante is led upwards into and
within the empyreal rose of God by her eyes, her gaze which moves him to reach and strain to
know, and as his intellectual curiosity is formed and his boldness to form questions increases the
two ascend higher and higher into the heavens and nearer to the stars. The poet is beyond his art
at this point: the brilliance of the light from her eyes grows as they draw nearer to the dwelling
place of the Lord. Dante cannot bear to lock gaze with Beatrice— it’s as if he were to behold the
sun directly. But his capacities for receiving grace and her gaze is growing, growing. He marvels at
Beatrice, so that his past praises of her are annihilated by this clear and rapturous vision of her
beauty. He sees who she is, more than he ever before when he idolized her in her earthly life, as
he gazes upon her eyes. Yet Beatrice lifts Dante’s eyes to behold the Lord Jesus, who in perfect
beauty sits enthroned on the praises of his saints and the shouts of every circling seraphim.
Beatrice, having succeeded in her long heavenly errand, disappears altogether from the narrative
to assume her proper place therewithal.
This is THE original “Beatific Vision”, Dante’s exalted vision of Beatrice, as she herself beholds
the Lord. In many ways the literary potency of this image—Dante’s mediated gaze upon the Lord
through Beatrice— is the origin and explanation for this edition of the MOSAIC. The same God
who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness’, and made his light shine in our hearts to give us the
light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ” also transforms the worst of our
idolatries into living stones that speak and breath and point to us, shouting “BEHOLD HIM!”
submitted by Stephanie Carroll, MTS spouse
December 4, 2009
submitted by Lucas McFadden, TEDS student
December 4, 2009
submitted by Melissa Gratz, MLE
December 4, 2009
Some think Heaven will be a time when we will be
transformed into our glorious bodies, but I think it will be
more than that, more like the journey to Emmaus. The
disciples walked along this road with a stranger – not
recognizing it was Jesus. They didn’t see him even though he
was walking and talking beside them. They didn’t recognize
him for who he was, until He revealed himself to them.
Then the disciples saw Jesus. The point in this passage lies in
the fact that the disciples saw Jesus, and also realized that
Jesus saw them and knew them all along. Their identity was
found in knowing that they are friends of Jesus- found
resting in the gaze of God.!

My cry for you, at this present time, is that you not only
rip off your facades, but that you see How He Sees You. I
promise you: it will make you uncomfortable, awkward, and
real. But it will produce in you a quality that reflects his
nature and His Glory. He hears our cry. He knows we want
to be wanted. He knows we want to be seen – And He sees
us. He sees us for who we really are and who we want to
be. I truly believe that God wants us to see how He sees us
- as we reflect his glory for his Glory.! Walk with him, and
discover who he is.