I’ve noted before that popular posts tend to be ones that incite. There’s a place for pushing people’s buttons if you want to encourage them to change their thinking or behavior, but I don’t think muckraking or demagoguery is healthy for either the writer or the reader, and there’s no shortage of bloggers these days eager to do that sort of thing for the clicks. That’s not me.

But I’ve found the personal discipline of writing 2 posts every week to be good for me—for my thinking processes, for my communication skills, for my character, for my soul. And I’ll confess that there have been some posts along the way that were good for me, and, I hope, good for the readers. Occasionally writers have the delightful experience of writing something that seemed to turn out better than they intended, or even better than they felt capable of.

Here are 10 of mine that I like, for various reasons, in no particular order.

• I Was Born That Way 
• Three Days with Hilaire
• Grateful for Grace
• It Is. And It Does.
• On Listening to the Designer
• The Music of the Sphere
• On Peace
• One Tiny Reason Why I’m Not a Secular Humanist
• On How You’re Remembered (Strategery)
• One Body

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Here at year’s end, it’s customary to list the year’s top ten blog posts. Here are mine:

1. On Deconversion
2. It’s Not Martyrdom If You’re Being Obnoxious
3. Respect (On Dr. Ed Panosian)
4. Christ Is Not His Name (brief series)
5. No Matter What
6. On Sleep
7. One Body (On African-American Olingers)
8. How to Parallel Park
9. On the Fruit of the Spirit (series)
10. On Living by the Loopholes

And here are the top ten for all time (since July 20, 2017):

1. The Great Sin of the Evangelical Right
2. Are We Doing Church Wrong?
3. On Deconversion
4. On How You’re Remembered (Strategery)
5. On Calling God by His First Name
6. I Was Born That Way
7. Pants on Fire
8. Freak Out Thou Not. This Means You.
9. What Jury Duty Taught Me about Comment Threads
10. On Civil Disobedience

In my final post of the year, I’ll list my favorites. My readers and I, it seems, have divergent tastes.

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Here at year’s end, it’s customary to list the year’s top ten blog posts. Here are mine:

1. On How You’re Remembered (Strategery)
2. On Civil Disobedience
3. On Well-Intentioned Viral Campaigns
4. On Uncertainty
5. On the Unruffled Passivity of Modern Evangelicalism
6. How Not to Have a Civil War
7. Memories of Merciful Teachers
8. Why Putting Bullets in the Stove Is a Bad Idea
9. On Retreating
10. “The Aeronauts”: A Case Study in Controversy

And here are the top ten for all time:

1. The Great Sin of the Evangelical Right
2. Are We Doing Church Wrong?
3. Pants on Fire
4. I Was Born That Way
5. On How You’re Remembered (Strategery)
6. Freak Out Thou Not. This Means You.
7. What Jury Duty Taught Me about Comment Threads
8. On Calling God by His First Name
9. On Civil Disobedience
10. On Sexual Assault, Due Process, and Supreme Court Confirmations

And here is a list of my personal favorites.

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As I commented last year at this time, I’ve noticed that rants get a lot of hits. I understand why that happens—it’s pretty much the same phenomenon as onlooker delay at traffic accidents—but I don’t really like to rant, and I don’t admire people who rant all the time, first, because if they’re genuine, they’re living under the burden of an angry spirit, and probably fear, and second, because if they’re not genuine, but just ranting to get hits, then I don’t trust what they write.

I don’t want to be that guy. You know, the Talk Radio morning host.

Some things deserve rants, but ranting isn’t much of a lifestyle, and a society that feeds itself constantly on it—like ours—is pathological.

Most writers like some things they write more than other things, and the order of like-itude usually isn’t the same as their audience’s preferences—especially if they’re not just writing for the money or the recognition.

So as a thought experiment, here’s a list of the posts, in no particular order, that I personally like the most—some for reasons of content, some for esthetics, and some just because.

• I Was Born That Way (This one made both my list and yours.)
• Cry, the Beloved Country
• Unbroken by a Broken World
• On Calling God by His First Name
• Three Days with Hilaire
• Grateful for Grace
• Groovier Than Thou
• It Is. And It Does. (As did this.)
• On Listening to the Designer
• The Music of the Sphere
• Grace
• 7 Stabilizing Principles in a Chaotic World
• On Peace

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In the tradition of bloggers everywhere, here are my top ten posts for this past year.

10. On Church, Part 1

• Biblical concepts about why Christians need to commit to and serve their local assembly

9. On Fear

• What we should fear, and what we shouldn’t

8. Top Ten List

• Last year’s list, making this year’s list …

7. On Coffee

• Or rather, how a simple beverage teaches us a lot about how we ought to treat one another

6. On White Nationalism, Part 1

• Let’s put this nonsense to bed.

5. On My Time in Jail

• Yep. Guilty.

4. “No Peeking!”

• I’ve learned a lot of theology since my kids were born.

3. On Cold-Call Evangelism and Cultural Appreciation

• Obeying the Great Commission effectively

2. It Is. And It Does.

• Meditation on the death of a friend

1. For My Angry Friends, Part 1

• Depolarizing

And just for good measure, here are the all-time top ten posts that aren’t already listed above, in ascending order.

• One Tiny Reason Why I’m Not a Secular Humanist
• On Calling God by His First Name
• Those Spiritual Gifts Tests? Maybe You Ought to Ignore Them.
• On Sexual Assault, Due Process, and Supreme Court Nominations
• What Jury Duty Taught Me About Comment Threads
• Freak Out Thou Not. This Means You.
• I Was Born That Way
• Pants on Fire
• Are We Doing Church Wrong?
• The Great Sin of the Evangelical Right

Since I’ll have one more post before year’s end, I’m going to use that one to list my ten personal favorites. Writers do have them, you know.

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Since it’s customary for bloggers to post a “top-ten” list at the end of the year, I thought I’d do the same. I didn’t do one last year, because I’d only been blogging since the previous July, and it seemed silly to do a top-ten list for less than 6 months’ worth of material. But so as not to leave those 6 months unaccounted for, I’m going to include them in this year’s inventory.

So here’s my all-time top-ten list, for what it’s worth.

10. On Calling God by His First Name. One of my personal favorites.

9. One Tiny Reason Why I’m Not a Secular Humanist. Confession time.

8. Those Spiritual Gifts Tests? Maybe You Ought to Ignore Them. Don’t put words in God’s mouth.

7. On Sexual Assault, Due Process, and Supreme Court Nominations. Wading into the fray.

6. What Jury Duty Taught Me about Comment Threads. My first post.

5. Freak Out Thou Not. This Means You. A common theme; worth a hashtag, I guess.

4. I Was Born That Way. Bringing biblical theology to bear on a controversy.

3. Pants on Fire. What ever happened to telling the truth?

2. Are We Doing Church Wrong? A biblical teaching that reoriented my life many years ago.

And number 1 …

1. The Great Sin of the Evangelical Right. Sacrificing the permanent on the altar of the immediate.

I’ve noticed a trend that doesn’t surprise me and won’t surprise you either. Rants get clicks.

I’m not going to pander to that.

Onward.

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