I want to thank all of you who have read and interacted with this site over the last year. For those of you who are interested, I give you the top 10 blog posts from 2014. This blog is a combination of content creation and content curation, which means that I sometimes write original material and that at other times I pass on to you items that I find interesting from elsewhere on the interwebs. Both kinds of posts appear on this list, but the vast majority are original pieces. Drum roll, please.
1. What Macklemore got wrong…and right – This was my commentary on Macklemore’s song “Same Love,” which he performed at the Grammy’s last January.
2. They asked whether I was prepared to die as a Christian – This is the heroic testimony of a Nigerian Christian who was shot by Boko Haram terrorists for refusing to renounce his Christian faith. His name is Habila Adamu, and he was attacked by the same group of terrorists who had abducted 200 Nigerian school girls. The terrorists broke into his home, shot him, and left him for dead in full view of his wife and son. It’s a miracle that he is alive. It’s even more a miracle that he stood.
3. The video of Lecrae on Jimmy Fallon – Lecrae is officially the most popular boy in school.
4. A resolution on transgender for the SBC – Andrew Walker and I drafted a resolution on transgender for the 2014 annual meeting of the SBC. In this post, we introduce the resolution and the rationale for it.
5. Wheaton students protest Rosaria Butterfield – It’s no surprise when students on a secular university campus stage a public protest against Butterfield. But it is quite surprising when about a hundred students demonstrate at an evangelical bastion like Wheaton.
6. Was the Apostle Paul married? – This post is three years old, but it still got a lot of traffic in 2014. My conclusion is that Paul probably was married and then widowed.
7. Dr. Kent Brantley releases statement from hospital bed – I am grateful that the Lord spared this good man’s life. He’s a hero. Time magazine went on to name the Ebola doctors “person of the year.”
8. Southern Baptists pass resolution on transgender – This one goes with number four above. The SBC’s resolutions committee took-up our proposal, modified it, and brought it to the floor of the convention for a vote. The messengers voted overwhelmingly in favor of the resolution. I didn’t see a single ballot raised against it.
9. A response to Jen Hatmaker on the World Vision announcement – I still feel strongly that World Vision was profoundly wrong to change their policy and profoundly right to reverse themselves. After I wrote about it here, Jen Hatmaker disagreed with me in a long post in which she was unclear on what she believed about homosexuality. She later clarified her views.
10. Donald Miller’s prescription for spiritual suicide – Donald Miller wrote that attending church was something he didn’t do very often, claiming that it didn’t fit his learning style. In my response, I argue that standing aloof from the weekly gathering of God’s people is a recipe for spiritual suicide.