The Bible teaches that our current attempts to find happiness are like a bride taking her wedding ring, falling in love with the ring, and ignoring the giver of the ring! Church doesn’t exist to just boost your mental health, or release more happiness hormones. It’s where we can actually encounter God, who has sent Jesus Christ, his Son to be Saviour.

We recently carried out some street interviews on Ilford High Street for our church youtube channel. We asked shoppers: “what brings true happiness?”. People gave a range of off-the-cuff answers – from “going to the gym”, to “helping others”, to “family”, and “job security”. Clearly, all those things can make us happy. Scientists have discovered the hormone Oxytocin, which they called the “love hormone”. Simple activities such as exercise, singing with others, or even touch can release it inside us and give us good feelings.
But, according to Jesus, and (if we’re honest) our own experience, there is something short-lived about these experiences of happiness. They don’t last. Jesus asked the question: “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?” (Mark 8:36). I was particularly struck by one man’s honest answer to our question on the street. “True happiness”, he said, “I don’t know what it is”.
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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 11-20.

In 2022 The Aquila Report (TAR) posted over 3,000 stories. At the end of each year we feature the top 50 stories that were read.
TAR posts 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 11-20:

Rosaria Butterfield: “I Reject the False Teaching of Revoice/Side B Theology”

After we are justified by God, we can never return to Adam. What does this mean for someone like me who lived as a lesbian for a decade and believed I was gay? It means that homosexuality is part of my biography, not my nature. My nature is securely chained in Christ (Colossians 3:10-20). What does it mean if a Christian falls back into an old sin pattern? It means that he is acting against his true nature. How do we stop acting against our true nature in Christ when our flesh craves our old sin patterns? By going to war with our sin through the power of Christ’s blood.

Memorial Church Pastoral Staff Released From Missouri Presbytery At Their Request

At a called meeting on Tuesday, December 6, 2022, the PCA Missouri Presbytery voted to release the three ministerial staff members of Memorial Presbyterian Church in St. Louis, Missouri. The Presbytery voted to release Dr. Greg Johnson, Lead Pastor, Associate Pastor Keith Robinson, and Youth and Family Pastor Sam Dolby from the Presbyterian Church in America. The Presbytery acted under the provision of the Book of Church Order 38-3a.

“Whoever Looks at a Woman With Lust”: Misinterpreted Bible Passages

Instead of focusing on “lust,” if this passage is to be correctly taught, the emphasis should be placed squarely on the will: that is, “What is the proper response to sexual desire?” There are proper outlets for sexual desire, but it is the exercise of the sexual appetite outside these confines is the problem. Even prior to actually committing the act, once the will has turned towards illicit behavior, sin has already entered the heart and, once fully conceived, will bring forth death.

Johnson To The PCA: “Merry Christmas. Here Is A Lump Of Coal For Your Stocking”

There are several serious problems with Pastor Johnson’s reasoning here. First, his speech was highly biographical, emotive, and even prejudicial. He implied that anyone who disagrees with his position “hates” homosexuals. It equates traditional Christian sexual ethics with anti-gay bigotry. Second, he assumes that, except for his commitment to Christ, he might have taken a same-sex husband and had a family and that by not violating God’s natural and moral law thus he has made a great sacrifice for the sake of Christ and his kingdom.

Letter to Editor: From a Memorial PCA Member

Those who criticize Memorial often do so from beyond our walls. I write as one who worships weekly in her pews, who has walked with Greg Johnson through the last five years of controversy, who has seen the toll it has taken upon my leaders and the resources of our church– resources which should have been devoted to the care of the flock and the service of our community.

Abuse, the OPC, and the Psychologizing of Sin

Here is the real problem that I believe underlies the failure of those frequently using the term abuse to provide a clear, biblical definition: the preference of the term abuse dislocated from sin, moves abuse out of the moral and spiritual realm and into the psychological. In other words, it tends to shift the serious matters at hand from that which is properly clerical and refers them to the clinical.

The Vote Tally of PCA Presbyteries On Overtures 23 and 37

Thus far, 51 of the 88 PCA presbyteries have voted on Overtures 23 and 37. The remaining presbyteries will begin voting at their respective meetings beginning in January 2022, with 20 presbyteries voting during January; by then, a clearer trend will become obvious as to whether these amendments will receive the required 2/3 votes of the presbyteries.

2022 PCA General Assembly Preview

One former moderator of the General Assembly characterized this year as the “Pitchfork Assembly,” because of the outrage in the pews related to some of the events of recent years in the PCA. This is both cause for prayers of thanksgiving (i.e. that people in the churches are willing to sacrifice to send their elders to the Assembly and that God has raised up elders willing to do the work of the church) and prayers for peace (i.e. that God will pour out a spirit of humility and grace even as we contend for the faith once for all delivered to the saints so we may be united in truth and love).

12. Lessons Learned? Allegations at the OPC General Assembly

The major lesson from this assembly on this matter is that we need to double down on our Presbyterian principles. Witnesses and evidence with biblical process for those who are guilty and vindication for those who have been falsely charged. This has always been the Presbyterian way and is doubly necessary in the negative world.

An Assessment of the New Revised Standard Version: Gaywashing in the Translation

There is absolutely no doubt, based on extant evidence, that the term arsenokoitai in 1 Cor 6:9 is correctly translated as “men lying with a male.” If any updating of the NRSV were to be done on 1 Cor 6:9, it should have been done in the direction of translating arsenokoitai as “men lying with a male.” The previous NRSV translation of “sodomites” was not the best translation because “Sodom” is not part of the stem of this Greek noun…. What the NRSVue translators have done is to conform the biblical witness to their own ideological biases, biases that mitigate against the overwhelming evidence from morphology and historical context.
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Perhaps the most important thing to say about race, in the typical American sense of the word,[1] is that it does not exist. Unlike sex, it has no biological reality, and unlike ethnicity, it has no cultural reality. The human community simply is not divided into half-a-dozen (or whatever) racial groups united by distinct genetic markers or a common culture. Let me explain this claim. The idea that race exists did not originate in Scripture. Scripture speaks of all human beings descending from one man, and thus the only “race” it knows is the one human race. Scripture distinguishes among humans, but does so in terms of people-groups. 

Race and racism are obviously controversial issues. Writing on the subject is a thankless task, bound to provoke accusations that an author is enthralled by some nefarious ideology and insufficiently enlightened by a better one. This essay has no agenda either to call out the church for racism or to strike the death blow against wokeness. It simply offers reflections on race and racism intended to help Reformed Christians work through these matters in humble, wise, and Christ-honoring ways. Five basic ideas guide these reflections. (A terminological note: I use “antiracist” to refer to scholars and activists who use this term to describe themselves, not as a general term for all people who think racism is immoral. Although antiracists differ amongst themselves on some issues, they share many core convictions addressed below.)
1. Race Does Not Exist, although Racism Does.
Perhaps the most important thing to say about race, in the typical American sense of the word,[1] is that it does not exist. Unlike sex, it has no biological reality, and unlike ethnicity, it has no cultural reality. The human community simply is not divided into half-a-dozen (or whatever) racial groups united by distinct genetic markers or a common culture. Let me explain this claim.
The idea that race exists did not originate in Scripture. Scripture speaks of all human beings descending from one man, and thus the only “race” it knows is the one human race. Scripture distinguishes among humans, but does so in terms of people-groups. Egyptians, Babylonians, Israelites, and dozens of others had different customs and religions, but they were not different races. The geographical theatre in which the biblical story unfolded, at the crossroads of Asia, Africa, and Europe, ensured that biblical writers were familiar with people of dark skin, light skin, and many shades in between, yet they gave no hint of regarding Cushites and Galatians (Celts) as racially separate.
Contemporary genetic science comes to the same conclusion. Mapping the human genome is one of the most amazing scientific accomplishments of recent decades. By studying the genetic information of living humans and comparing it to DNA from human remains of past millennia, genetic scientists have been able to reconstruct the migration of peoples and their inter-breeding with other peoples in ways hitherto impossible. Data is still coming in and scientists will undoubtedly modify their reconstructions, but one basic conclusion is clear: the modern conception of race has no genetic basis. People around the world are related to each other in complex and often counter-intuitive ways. Who would have thought, for example, that Western Africans are more closely related genetically to Western Europeans than to Eastern Africans? Population-groups have certain genetic markers distinguishing them from other population-groups, but this does not translate into anything corresponding to the “races” of modern mythology.[2]
Furthermore, race has no cultural reality because, unlike ethnic-groups, modern races (“black,” “white,” “Asian,” etc.) do not share a common culture. Rather, they consist of a multitude of groups with often very different histories, languages, and the like.
I do not know how many contemporary Reformed Christians believe that race is a biological and cultural reality, but they would be well-advised to abandon such a spurious notion.
Race, instead, is a figment of the human imagination. One way to put it is that race is a social construct.[3] Certain people in a certain historical context developed the notion of distinct human races. Although social constructs are not necessarily bad or unhelpful, this one was pernicious. Europeans constructed race in conjunction with the colonization of the Americas and the African slave-trade, and they used it to justify the subjugation of non-Europeans and the elevation of Europeans as morally and intellectually superior.[4]
This explains why racism exists even though race does not. (I take “racism” as treating and judging people not according to what is true about them but according to their racial categorization.) Social constructs can be powerful. Often what we imagine to be true shapes our thoughts, feelings, and behavior more strongly than what is actually true. Christians should understand this. Scripture emphasizes that there is no God but one. Yet idolatry exists and it is seductive. Baal was a construct of the human imagination, but it inspired people to dance around altars cutting themselves and provoked Israel to forsake the living God who redeemed them from bondage. Race is something like a conspiracy theory. Conspiracy theories are based on fabrications, yet they can powerfully re-shape the lives of those who buy into them. They scare people into moving off the grid, rejecting life-saving vaccines, or hording gold coins under their mattress. Likewise, race is based on lies, but the idea became very important to those who believed those lies and forced others to live as if they were true.[5]
2. The Interests of Truth and Peace Call for De-Racialization.
If race is a fabrication of the sinful imagination, there seems to be one fundamental and necessary response: Deal with the idea as the lie it is. Stop acting as though race is real. Stop treating and judging people according to what is false. As people are unlikely to escape Baal-worship until they cease to think and act as though a powerful deity named Baal exists, so people are unlikely to escape racism until they cease to think and act as though race exists.
Some of what this entails is obvious, even if easy to overlook. Most of us have become aware of racial stereotypes and made efforts to give them up, but we all need to stay alert and keep striving to put them aside. Most of us have been warned about the hurt caused by racist jokes, although many people still tell them privately now and then, thinking no one is harmed. But whether in public or private, that is acting as though a destructive lie were true. Or consider some people’s habit of mentioning a person’s racial categorization when it is irrelevant: the European-American, for example, who relates a funny incident at the grocery store and describes one of the people involved as an “Asian guy,” although it has no bearing on the story. Perhaps she intends nothing malicious, but she perpetuates racial thought-patterns that have wrought profound harm.
Recognizing the myth of race calls for de-racialization. That is, to live by truth and at peace with all our fellow humans, we ought to (continue to) strip our minds of racial categories and treat our neighbors without respect to them.
What I just wrote is highly controversial. Its most prominent opponents, however, are not unrepentant racists but antiracists. For antiracists, the preceding paragraph promotes color-blindness, the idea that we should not see other people’s race. They believe this is a terrible thing that impedes racial justice and reconciliation rather than promotes it.[6] Progress, they argue, requires seeing racial tensions and dynamics everywhere. When “whites” do not see race, it manifests their dominant place in society and their privilege over others. “Whites” need to become increasingly cognizant of their “whiteness” and hence remain aware of others’ different identities.[7]
These antiracists have legitimate concerns. If wrongs have been done in the name of an imaginary concept, it is surely impossible to rectify wrongs and change course without mentioning that concept. To return to a previous analogy, the Old Testament prophets did not pretend as though they had never heard of Baal or ignore the seduction of idolatry. Likewise, battling racism throughout de-racialization should not mean that we simply stop talking about race and hope that this clears things up. Antiracists are also rightly concerned about an alleged color-blindness that sees the world only through the lens of one’s own cultural assumptions. Ceasing to judge people according to racial categorization should not mean making one’s own culture the universal standard. Cultural diversity is generally a good thing.[8] Finally, antiracists correctly oppose a color-blindness that evaluates all formally identical racial statements identically. For example, an African-American who says “black is beautiful” and a European-American who says “white is beautiful” make formally identical statements. But in the context of American history, they obviously do not communicate the same thing.[9]
These concerns should keep us from a simplistic color-blindness, but if we are concerned about truth and peace, our goal ought to be the elimination of thinking and acting in racial terms. The best strategy for getting there is open for debate, but it is far-fetched to think that the concept of race might disappear by demanding that people see all things through the lens of race.
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