Top Ten Posts in 2006

Here’s a list of this blog’s top ten posts in 2006, as measured by statistics on specific pages that were viewed this year.  (The number-one posting was a surprise to me.) 

The percentages listed below total 100%.  I’ve made a couple of observations at the end of this post.

# 10  Hmm — "The Apostles’ Teaching" Didn’t Seem to Include a Divine Jesus …., May 16, 2005 (6.7%).  I posted this on Pentecost of this year, noting that the earliest apostles taught that Jesus was a special man, an anointed one who had been designated by God for an earthshaking mission, whose most impressive supporting credential was God’s having raised him from the dead.  These men — who actually knew Jesus in life, the men who (the church claims) were inspired by the Holy Spirit — did not seem to have taught that Jesus was God himself.

# 9  My Favorite Theological Question: "How Do You Know That?", June 16, 2005 (6.8%).  In science and law — two of humanity’s greatest engines for seeking truth — the question, "how do you know that?" is absolutely fundamental, acquiring its importance from long and sad experience.  It speaks volumes (but nothing good, I’m afraid) that this question so often gets short shrift in theology.

# 8  The Empty Tomb: Another Possibility, Oct. 30, 2005 (7.9%).  I offered a conjecture that seems to fit the available evidence:  After the Sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea retrieved Jesus’ body from the new tomb (his own) where he had temporarily placed it after the Crucifixion, and reburied it somewhere, without deigning to tell the Eleven.

# 7 Four Short, Responsive Prayers Every Episcopalian Should Memorize,
May 24, 2005 (8.3%).  I’m convinced that when we say a familiar prayer
together in call-and-response form, it helps promote a sense of
community and shared heritage, far more so than when one person prays
whatever happens comes to his or her mind, and everyone else just
stands around and listens.

# 6  How Do We Know There’s a God?,
Oct. 14, 2004 (8.5%).  This summarizes (not very well, I’m afraid) why
I’ve become intellectually persuaded that there’s a Creator, a
persuasion that has fostered a trust that in the end all will be well.

# 5   Christianity’s Elephant in the Room,
April 28, 2006 (8.7%).  Here I argued that attendance data remind us of an elephant in the room:  Educated people have plenty of reason
to be skeptical of the dogmatic claims that traditionalists insist on making.  From a purely-marketing perspective, this damages the church’s
credibility as a bringer of truth.   Over the centuries, Jesus’s good
news has become covered with doctrinal mold that needs to be stripped
away so that people can be attracted again by the basics that he
taught.

# 4   Putting God First Means Facing the Facts,
Nov. 28, 2004 (9.3%).  In this post I responded to a commenter at a
traditionalist blog who had challenged me to describe my ‘worldview.’
My take on life is grounded on some fundamental facts, such as:  Human
knowledge is limited; change is a constant; we still must make judgment
calls; we’re going to make bad calls on occasion, but we have the
ability to learn.  Facing those facts puts God first, but it requires
us to accept that all our beliefs are necessarily provisional.  Facing
those facts also goes hand in hand with putting our trust in God; and it can
lead to metanoia, usually translated as repentance but literally meaning a change of mind and heart.

# 3   Can You Still Be a Christian if You Don’t Believe Jesus was the Son of God?
May 26, 2005 (13.2%).  I recounted a late-night phone call from the
teen-aged daughter of some good friends of ours.  My bottom line:  Yes,
someone who doesn’t believe Jesus was God the Son can indeed be a
‘Christian.’

# 2   Serious Inconsistencies in the New Testament Writings: Six Reasons for Skepticism About the Traditionalist Account,
Oct. 14, 2004, updated July 2006 (14.1%).    I reviewed several specific
examples of inconsistencies that make it impossible for me to accept
traditionalist Christology and soteriology at face value:  (a) The
disciples certainly didn’t act like Jesus had foretold his
resurrection.  (b) It’s exceedingly peculiar that many of Jesus’s most
influential friends and followers evidently didn’t ‘sign on’ with the
early church.  (c) If the stories of Jesus’ birth and childhood were
true, you’d think his cousin John the Baptist, to say nothing of his
siblings, would have been far more involved in his ministry.  (d) If
Jesus really did direct his followers to baptize in the name of the
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, they appear to have ignored that part of
his instructions.  (e) Peter, preaching at Pentecost, seems to have
baldly misrepresented his scriptural source. (f) Other minor
discrepancies raise additional concerns about how much the New
Testament authors knew what they were talking about.

And The Questioning Christian’s number-one most-viewed posting in 2006:

# 1  The Difference Between Christians and Jews,
Feb. 2, 2005 (16.4%).  I was surprised this got the number-one spot.
My basic take on the issue was this:  Anyone who tries to follow the
Great Commandment and Summary of the Law, be he (or she) Christian,
Jew, Muslim, or even Hindu, should be regarded as a good ‘Christian.’
After all, Jesus himself reportedly said that if we will but follow
those commandments, we will gain eternal life.

*  *  *

Some Observations

It’s interesting that only one of the ten most-viewed individual pages were posted in 2006 (and another was updated in 2006).  Most of the rest were from 2005.  Maybe that means I’ve stopped writing things anyone’s interested in reading …. 🙂

The
overwhelming majority of specific page views (as opposed to views of
the main site and hits by automated feed readers) come from Google
searches.   

Quite a few specific page views come from people clicking on postings listed in the left-hand column.

The site gets a fair number of referrals from other blogs, for which I’m grateful.