Journalists also focus on unexpected changes or events that suggest something significant or noteworthy has happened. When journalists are faced with choosing between a story about a Roman Catholic priest accused of molesting children or a priest serving at a homeless shelter, we can guess which story will make the 6 o’clock news. The tendency is not necessarily a bias toward or against religion as much as it is a question of what journalists see as newsworthy.

We play balloon volleyball, for one thing. Mom, Dad, and kids smash power serves across the living room. If the balloon hits the ground, that team must answer a Bible trivia question. Sundays are a wonderful opportunity for families. I delight in the freedom of time to talk with my children about their Sunday school lessons, to build missionary houses with Legos, to sit together on the couch and read aloud the children’s version of Pilgrim’s Progress.

So many children are taught that excitement and boredom form the poles of the economy of how life is evaluated. Rather than teach children about the truths of the gospel, the condemnation of the law, the promises of the gospel, and blessings we receive through Christ and the Spirit, all too many children look to evaluate life the same way they would a theme park.

Between 50 and 70 percent of couples cohabit today. But only about 1 in 5 such relationships result in marriage. And the results are consistently pessimistic for those cohabiters who do marry

Since medication falls under dominion as an attempt to address the effects of the Fall, psychiatric drug use should seek to restore regular brain functioning. In cases of injury and underdevelopment, this could mean compensation for what is damaged or absent. In cases of uncontrollable excesses or deficiencies of neurotransmitters or hormones, it could mean stabilizing the brain's regulatory functions

(In) several books, including The Lost Soul of American Protestantism, A Secular Faith, and From Billy Graham to Sarah Palin, (Darryl) Hart has skillfully demonstrated the pietist post-millennial origins of both American evangelicalism and the social gospel, arguing that these groups have far more in common than most scholars would like to admit

The two self-help experts then elaborated on their ideas, with Osteen urging “activating faith,” because “faith is what causes God to work.” Later, he even spoke of “speaking to the seeds of greatness that God’s placed in all of us.”

Sometimes the Church can be so concerned with personal holiness that it breeds an oppressed community of terrified, isolated individuals who are made to feel like spiritual failures for saying, ‘I can’t do it on my own.’ Why wouldn’t people hide from that?

Embryo adoption would be problematic if the adoptions themselves became a further commodity in the buying and selling transactions of the reproductive technology business or if these adoptions were a widespread incentive for couples to justify the decision to “create” and freeze additional embryos

So I propose that wanting children, or wanting more children, is a legitimate reason to adopt. Christian couples might be God’s gift to orphans, sure, but these children are also certainly God’s gift to us. Let us give thanks