Josh Bishop has a really helpful article at The Gospel Coalition telling how he and his family responded to the revelation of his sister’s transgender identity. He writes: Jessah is 19 years old, 12 years younger than I am. I was in the hospital when she was born. I spent my middle-school years changing her diapers. She beamed with pride and excitement when my then-fiancée Becca asked her to be a bridesmaid at our wedding, and during the ceremony she looked just as beautiful and twice as proud as the older girls. Becca offered advice when she was learning to put on makeup, when puberty arrived, when she first started…
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Stories of Freedom
“I urge, then, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for all people–for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. This is good, and pleases God our Savior.” -1 Timothy 2:1-3 (Video Credit: Igniter Media)
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Louis Zamperini, RIP (1917-2014)
The news just came out this morning that Louis Zamperini has died. Zamperini will be known to history as an Olympian and World War II hero, but his life was so much more than that. In fact, his story is larger than life, painted on a global canvas, encompassing the heights of human triumph and the depths of human degradation. In short, Zamperini went from juvenile delinquent to Olympian (who met Hitler!) to bombardier to lost at sea to abused POW to home again. The story is vast and incredible. Zamperini had been a prisoner of war for two years in Japan during World War II. No one ever wants…
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The Hidden Blessing of Infertility
If you have ever walked the painful path of infertility—or walked with someone who has—then you know something of the grief and anguish that many couples experience when they are unable to conceive. That is why I love Karen Swallow Prior’s recent essay in Christianity Today, “The Hidden Blessing of Infertility.” It is well worth your time to read and share. Here’s an excerpt:
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Correcting the Record in light of Sec. Hillary Clinton’s false statements
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton weighed-in on the Hobby Lobby decision yesterday (see above), and her analysis is so egregiously in error that I could not let it pass without some comment. She claims first of all that this is the first time that the Supreme Court has found that a corporation has religious freedom and thus that employers can impose their religious beliefs on employees. Now this is a curious characterization of yesterday’s opinion. Religious freedom does not give anyone—individual or corporate—the right to impose one’s beliefs upon someone else. Yet Clinton speaks as if the right of individuals to “impose their beliefs” has now been given to…
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Grateful but Sobered by the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby Verdict
I have said before, and I will say it again that Obamacare’s contraception mandate forces one of the most egregious violations of religious liberty in our nation’s history. It forces pro-life business owners to pay for insurance plans that cover abortion-inducing birth control methods. For this reason, there was much at stake today in the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision. That is why I breathed a sigh of relief when the Court ruled in favor of Hobby Lobby earlier today. In a narrow decision (5-4), the Court ruled that the federal government cannot run roughshod over the religious liberty of its citizens. In short, the Court found that the government…
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What’s at stake in the Hobby Lobby decision tomorrow?
Ross Douthat said something last week that sums up my feelings exactly: “Not ashamed to say that I fear only three things: nuclear war, carnies, and the Hobby Lobby decision.” It is a clever line that might have been funny if it weren’t true. There is so much riding on what the Supreme Court decides tomorrow morning. What is so alarming about our national debate, however, is that so few of our countryman seem to be aware of what is actually at stake. The court could do the right thing and protect our first freedom, or the court could end religious liberty as we know it. Is anyone paying attention?
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Sin infantilizes us
Profound wisdom here: “People whose lives are riddled with unrestrained sin act like rebellious children. Sin, when unrestrained, infantilizes a person. Here I had thought that I was so mature, so capable, so ‘important’ in the world, and the truth remains that I didn’t even know how to act my age! After conversion, I was surprised to discover how old I really was.” –Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, The Secret Thoughts of and Unlikely Convert, p. 108
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Is it cruel and harmful to acknowledge your baby’s gender?
Christin Scarlett Milloy says calling a baby a “boy” or a “girl” at birth is like playing Russian roulette with your baby’s life. Why? Because what if your baby grows up to disagree with the gender they were assigned at birth? Milloy says that such children grow up depressed and perhaps suicidal. Milloy’s argues, therefore, that we should not risk a child’s well-being by assigning him/her a gender at birth. Instead, we should just let them figure it out for themselves.
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The Wild Goose Festival wilder than ever
Readers of this blog know that I have written in years past on the annual “Wild Goose Festival,” which is taking place right now in Hot Springs, North Carolina. The yearly meet-up is a kind of Woodstock for progressive Christians. It features music, speakers, art displays and more. Many of the personalities there are disaffected evangelicals. In fact, Frank Schaeffer described it today as a place for “survivors of evangelical backgrounds.” He writes:
