The religious liberty implications of our culture’s moral transformation on homosexuality continue apace. The big news out of California yesterday is something that we should all take note of. I don’t know how else to view it except as a foreboding sign of things to come. Yesterday, the California Supreme Court ruled that state judges could no longer hold membership in the Boy Scouts of America. Why? Because the Boy Scouts allow gay scouts but not gay Scout leaders. As far as the California Supreme Court is concerned, the Boy Scouts discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, and that violates their code of ethics. The Los Angeles Times reports,
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Intellectual Dishonesty of Pro-Abortion Politicians
There are very few pro-abortion politicians willing to talk openly about the unborn. Most obfuscate with tropes about “choice” and “reproductive health” without ever addressing the fundamental moral question. Are we killing human beings when we abort unborn children? Pro-lifers insist that the humanity of the unborn is the primary consideration. Pro-abortion politicians say… well actually, those politicians generally don’t want to talk about that at all. And if you press the issue, they close their eyes, plug their fingers in their ears, and cry “Nah, nah, nah, I’m not listening to you, nah, nah, nah…”
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House GOP’s “mere flight and disgrace” on abortion
I just read the news that Congressional Republicans have decided to abandon plans to vote on a bill protecting unborn children capable of feeling pain. According to the report, these “pro-life” lawmakers have decided to forsake the unborn for the sake of political expediency. The going got tough, and they got going. It is the definition of what Proverbs 24:10-12 warns against: If you are slack in the day of distress, Your strength is limited. Deliver those who are being taken away to death, And those who are staggering to slaughter, Oh hold them back. If you say, “See, we did not know this,” Does He not consider it who…
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Super Bowl Party Stereotypes
Dude Perfect has nailed it on this one. They are Super Bowl Party Stereotypes. Do you recognize any of these? Watch above.
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The President’s Deeply Dishonest Statement about Life
Near the end of President Obama’s State of the Union Address, he said something deeply dishonest. I’m sure he doesn’t view it as dishonest, but it is nevertheless. In his own words: I want our actions to tell every child, in every neighborhood: your life matters, and we are as committed to improving your life chances as we are for our own kids. Does the President really want to tell “every child” that their life matters? That he wants to improve their “life chances”? How can he say such a thing when he actively supports policies that exclude a whole class of children from the human community? How can he…
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Douglas Moo’s essay on the NIV and Bible Translation
At last November’s ETS meeting in San Diego, I attended a dinner hosted by Zondervan celebrating the 50th anniversary of the commissioning of the New International Version (NIV). Doug Moo is the head of the committee that oversees that translation, and he gave an extended address on the NIV in particular and on Bible translation in general. Zondervan has made a PDF of that address available for free. You can download the booklet at right or at the link below. Douglas J. Moo, We Still Don’t Get It: Evangelicals and Bible Translation Fifty Years After James Barr, Presentation from the 2014 ETS Annual Meeting (Zondervan, 2014).
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A few thoughts about “American Sniper”
I saw American Sniper last night. Let me add my voice to the chorus of others saying that this is a great movie. When the credits began to roll at the end, every person in our theater sat in stunned, admiring silence. No one said a word. Eventually, we all began to file out with a lump in our throat and a full heart. The movie was hard to watch. It was very violent but successful in evoking in some measure the real horrors of war. And maybe more than anything, it portrays how wicked Al Qaeda in Iraq really was. Somehow that fact seems to have been lost on…
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Possible first-century copy of Mark’s Gospel discovered
In 2012, Dan Wallace dropped a bombshell during a debate with Bart Ehrman. Ehrman had pointed out that our earliest copy of Mark’s Gospel is dated 140 years after the gospel was first written. It’s a point often made by critics to show the unreliability of the New Testament. Wallace then revealed that he had knowledge that a first century copy of Mark’s Gospel had been discovered. He also revealed that the document would be published in a forthcoming volume by E. J. Brill. It was all very cryptic at the time, and Ehrman later complained that Wallace should not have brought it up in the debate. Ehrman argued that…
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How incest exposes the emptiness of “marriage equality”
I just finished reading an article in New York Magazine that I wish I could unread. It is an interview with a young woman engaged to marry her own father. I am not even going to link the interview here–it is just too vile and disturbing to share. You can read USA Today’s coverage of the situation here if you are interested. I mention the article because it raises some issues for the “marriage equality” movement. The sexual revolutionaries have been pushing to normalize any an all sexual relationships so long as they are between consenting adults. In effect, the only constraint on sexual morality is consent. Flowing from that,…
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Inside the Evangelical Fight Over Gay Marriage
Elizabeth Dias has a feature-length article in Time magazine titled “Inside the Evangelical Fight Over Gay Marriage.” The usual suspects are brought forth as evidence of a shift among younger evangelicals: Justin Lee, Matthew Vines, Brandan Robertson, etc. Nevertheless, I’m skeptical about the young “evangelicals” profiled in this piece. It is not even clear from the article whether we are dealing with bona fide evangelicals or those who are leaving evangelicalism. Can they in any meaningful sense be considered bellwethers for a movement defined by convictions that they have largely abandoned? I don’t think so. It is indeed telling that at Vines’s recent conference, “most of the panelists advocating change…