In keeping with the journalistic tradition of looking back at the recent past, we present the top 50 stories of the year that were read on The Aquila Report site based on the number of hits. We will present the 50 stories in groups of 10 to run on five lists on consecutive days. Here are numbers 31-40.
In 2015 The Aquila Report (TAR) posted over 3,300 stories. At the end of each year we feature the top 50 stories that were read. The top story this year had over 112,700 hits.
TAR posts about 8 new stories each day, on a variety of subjects – all of which we trust are of interest to our readers. As a web magazine TAR is an aggregator of news and information that we believe will provide articles that will inform the church of current trends and movements within the church and culture.
In keeping with the journalistic tradition of looking back at the recent past, we present the top 50 stories of the year that were read on The Aquila Report site based on the number of hits. We will present the 50 stories in groups of 10 to run on five lists on consecutive days. Here are numbers 31-40.
Because identical twins are always genetically identical, homosexuality cannot be genetically dictated. “No-one is born gay,” he notes. “The predominant things that create homosexuality in one identical twin and not in the other have to be post-birth factors.” Dr. Whitehead believes same-sex attraction (SSA) is caused by “non-shared factors,” things happening to one twin but not the other, or a personal response to an event by one of the twins and not the other.
Your husband did not make this choice because you weren’t pretty enough, available enough, submissive enough, talkative enough, quiet enough, sporty enough, or smart enough. He did not make this choice because you’ve spent the last five years pregnant or breastfeeding. He did not make this choice because you’ve been in the throes of hot flashes or because your skin hangs in wrinkles around your neck and bags under your eyes. He did not make this choice because you were not enough. He made this choice because he was not enough.
I maintain that at the heart of this case is Linda Carrick and her disability and chronic illness and that we cannot, we must not forget that. When an event like this takes place, we bear a responsibility to seize the opportunity to stop, to reflect on and to reform our attitudes towards fellow believers and towards those whose souls we aim to claim for Jesus.
So often, I say to my wonderful husband (David), “No one has ever done that for me before . . . ” And he looks at me with love mixed with mercy mixed with pity. He says something like, “No one has ever filled up your gas tank?” I remember my Daddy doing that a few times but it had been years. David fills up my tank on a regular basis and acts like that is normal. In fact, he delights in it. He is always surprised when I over-thank him for normal acts of kindness that should be part of the every day Christian marriage. It has made me think about how little I knew of “normal” for such a long time.
What is it in Dr. Hobbs’s report that evokes such loud cries and such harsh criticism? Dr. Hobbs’s thesis was that the language used of the defendant’s wife throughout the trial, as well as the treatment Dr Hobbs herself experienced, underscores the Church’s refusal to consider, much less value, the unique perspective of someone whose physical, mental, and emotional experience is at variance with established norms regarding how Christian men and women ought to think and behave.
When I was a student of theology at Pittsburgh-Xenia Seminary over half a century ago I wondered why God did not inspire one of his apostles to settle this issue once and for all with a simple statement — one way or the other — either that ‘children of believers are to be baptized,’ or ‘children of believers are not to be baptized.’ But I now realize that this was no mistake but quite the opposite.
In brief, it is no longer possible for churches to provide tax-sheltered reimbursements to their pastors or other employees for individually purchased health insurance coverage. The churches may assist employees by increasing taxable compensation that can be used for anything (though they cannot increase with provision that the increase must be used for health insurance), but under the ACA, it will be reported as taxable income. This change does not affect group coverage plans.
Let’s also recognize that if we’re right about marriage, and I believe we are, many people will be disappointed in getting what they want. Many of our neighbors believe that a redefined concept of marriage will simply expand the institution (and, let’s be honest, many will want it to keep on expanding). This will not do so, because sexual complementarity is not ancillary to marriage. The church must prepare for the refugees from the sexual revolution.
Thus it is with Tullian Tchividjian’s fall and rise. All of the celebrity conventions are there: The use of a well-known counselor brought in specially, the faux intimacy of the twitter feed, and now a slick podcast on coming back after a fall– less than two months since his confession that he betrayed his wife and broke his marriage vows. There are even the predictable fans out there who seem to think that Tchividjian is essential to the gospel, as the message clearly depends upon his return to the pulpit ASAP. I confess, I have no idea why he has this compulsive need to make the whole of his life a public performance or why people fall for it.
And, to put it bluntly, Keller is the transformationists’ best shot today. It does not matter how often we tell each other that our celebrity transformationists are making headway, such claims are only so much delusional hype. A Broadway play and a couple of nice paintings do not help the man who cannot rent space to worship on the Lord’s Day. Indeed, I wonder if any of these transformationists have ever asked themselves whether what we are seeing are not in fact transforming inroads into the culture but the modern equivalents of bread and circuses designed to gull the gullible….
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