Here is a wonderful essay by D.A. Carson, offering some preliminary guidelines to answer the question, “What parts of the Bible are binding mandates for us, and what parts are not?” He sets up the problem like this: “Greet one another with a holy kiss”: the French do it, Arab believers do it, but by and large we do not. Are we therefore unbiblical? Jesus tells his disciples that they should wash one another’s feet (Jn. 13:14), yet most of us have never done so. Why do we “disobey” that plain injunction, yet obey his injunction regarding the Lord’s Table? If we find reasons...

Arno was inseparable from Mr. Penguin. The little Haitian boy was almost three years old, and the plush penguin with the word “love” inscribed upon it was his most treasured object. The orphan and his penguin were always seen together. The boy had been given the penguin just after his birth. A Dutch couple was in the process of adopting him almost from the start of his life — they had been matched to him when he was only two months old. The penguin represented a promise. The process of adoption took two years — the length of time considered adequate to determine that no living ...

This entry is part 9 of 9 in the series Gay "Marriage" Is Wrong. Period.(HT Family Research Council) In 21 years, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, Judge Vaughn Walker “never made an issue of his sexual orientation.” Until yesterday. After two decades of criticism that he wasn’t gay-friendly enough, the 65-year-old judge paid back his skeptics with the most powerful rebuke against man-woman marriage this country has ever seen. Back in 1987, his impartiality on homosexual issues was so stunning that Democrats actually opposed his nomination to the court where...

This entry is part 8 of 9 in the series Gay "Marriage" Is Wrong. Period.(HT Heidelblog) In the 1960s it was common to hear American civil rights leaders appeal to natural justice and natural law in defense of the extension of civil rights to oppressed peoples, namely African Americans. Those arguments were compelling to Americans because they are fundamental to the nature of the country. Our founding documents, after all, appeal to “self-evident” truths among which is the truth that “all men,” including African Americans, “are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator wit...

This entry is part 7 of 9 in the series Gay "Marriage" Is Wrong. Period.(HT Denny Burk) Yesterday, a federal judge overturned California’s ban on gay marriage—a measure that was added to the state’s constitution through a 2008 ballot effort called Proposition 8. Federal district judge Vaughn R. Walker ruled that Proposition 8 was a violation of the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment (p. 109). The judge immediately stayed his own decision pending appeals, so gay marriages will not be performed until the issue is resolved in the higher courts. Read the dec...