Christmas, Theology, Advent, Church, Hospitality
John Beeson
The Faithfulness of God of the Manger

Recently we had someone over and as the night came to a close Angel warmly offered, “Let’s do this again soon!” I wilted as I processed just how many things were on our calendar in the coming month. Just like Angel did, I wanted to be with them again and soon, but her invitation made me flinch.

 

My wife Angel and I are very different people. Angel brings light and life everywhere. People are drawn to her, and she is drawn to people. One of the many things I love about Angel is how she gets caught up in a moment with people. In that space, it’s not unusual that she shares hopes with those we are with of spending more time together. And she means it: there is no doubt of her genuineness.

The Faithfulness of God of the Manger
Advent, Christmas, Theology
John Beeson
A Humble God?

“I don’t compare myself with anybody, but nobody is better.” Michael Jordan

“They say the sky’s the limit, but I think my potential is beyond it.” Jay-Z

“I won’t be happy until I’m as famous as God” Madonna

“I won’t be a rock star. I will be a legend.” Freddie Mercury

“We’re more popular than Jesus now.” John Lennon

We tend to expect that greatest among us are also some of the most arrogant. And why wouldn’t they be? For many who make it to the top of their field, we can see how that arrogance can be a driving force for their greatness.

A Humble God?
Christmas, Forgiveness, Theology
John Beeson
The Just and the Justifier

God became flesh.

Let that sink in. Christianity asserts that God—sovereign, immutable, omnipotent, other—the eternal God who has no beginning and end—became a human being.

 Because many of us have had exposure to Christianity from our early years, it is easy to miss how massive the theological implications of the incarnation are. The incarnation lays the groundwork for a God who chooses to participate in his creation. The incarnation denies the existence of an abstract and distant God, unmuddied by his handiwork.

The Just and the Justifier
Advent, Christmas, Theology
John Beeson
The Theology of the Manger

“God did not, as the Bible says, create man in his own image; on the contrary, man created God in his own image.” Ludwig Feuerbach dropped this theological bombshell three years before Friedrich Nietzsche’s birth. Feuerbach, a name forgotten by most, but who influenced Nietzsche, wrote these words in his book, The Essence of Christianity (1841). He argued that human beings project their own attributes and desires onto an imagined deity, creating God in their own image. This for Feuerbach, is the essence of Christianity (and indeed all religions), the deification of our human ideals. “What man wishes to be, he makes his God… God is the outward projection of a man’s inward nature.”

The Theology of the Manger
Death, Gratitude, Prayer, Suffering
John Beeson
Go To a Funeral

We Westerners avoid death.

 

When was the last time you walked through a cemetery? When was the last funeral you went to? Our churches no longer have cemeteries, those who are older head to retirement communities and then to head to long-term care or assisted care facilities. The number of funerals held in churches has diminished. Death has become professionalized, antisepticised, and remote.

Go To a Funeral

Comedy

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. Many Americans are more consumers than contended: Lifeway research’s new poll offers some disconcerting news to Christians, “Religious service attendance is correlated to embracing a consumeristic mindset. Those who attend more than once a week are the most likely to say shopping makes them feel worthwhile (61%) and they know they are getting ahead when they have nice things (56%). They are also among the most likely to say they are driven to accumulate nice things (61%) and like to have the latest technology (55%).”

  2. Ministers of Loneliness: Jacob Crouch reflects on the world’s response to the problem of loneliness, “What the world offers to the lonely is merely an anesthetic. It merely numbs the pain and ignores the real problem. It attempts to provide new remedies for a problem that has an ancient solution.”

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. When you long to know the ‘why’ behind your sorrow: Tim Challies asks, “It’s very hard to see why it has happened. Why would God allow this unremitting pain? Why would God permit this distressing sickness? Why would God take that person I love? If God cares and God loves and if God ordains and God controls, why would this be his will? How could this ever make sense?”

  2. Six things women in your church wished you knew about pregnancy loss: Mary Holloman offers us some wisdom in comforting those who have suffered loss (Angel and I are among the many who have suffered the loss of a child in pregnancy), “The overwhelming majority of my brothers and sisters in Christ cared for me so well during that difficult time. However, I was shocked at the number of insensitive comments and platitudes I received from others

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. May a Christian Gamble? Jim Newheiser warns, “Gambling is an attempt to circumvent God’s way of gaining wealth. Even if you do not expect to become wealthy personally through gambling, you are participating in a system that undermines the work ethic of our entire society.”

  2. Public Trust in Pastors Falls to Historic Lows: Aaron Earls reports, “Trust in pastors fell for the third straight year and reached an all-time low. Around 1 in 3 Americans (34%) rate the honesty and ethical standards of clergy as high or very high, according to the latest Gallup survey.”

  3. Not Enough of Me to Go Around: Kristen Wetherel reflects, “I want so badly to “help [everyone] when [they want me to].” I have told my daughter that I’m not an octopus—but boy, do I wish I was. (At least in the sense of having eight capacities at once. I do not wish to become a sea creature with tentacles rather than arms…).”

  4. Why Should I Forgive? Guy Richards confesses, “Deep down inside, I don’t really want to forgive my wife, my son, or my co-worker—at least not initially. I want instead to hold on to my anger and pride, knowing that I really was right all along. I want to prop up my feelings of superiority and self-respect and to feel vindicated for acting the way that I did.”

  5. Local Man Crushing Bible-in-a-Year Plan After Switching to Jesus Storybook Bible: Funny stuff from the Babylon Bee.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. 7 Lessons I’ve Carried From ‘Narnia’: Kaitlin Miller begins with this lesson, “Grief is Great: In The Magician’s Nephew, Digory, in deep despair over his mother’s illness, is shocked when the great Lion bends down with such great shining tears that Digory felt the Lion may have been even more sorrowful.”

  2. Can You Share the Gospel with Sexual Sinners Without Sounding Like a Bigot? Alen Shlemon shares, “Part of the reason for expecting people to get upset by your convictions on sexual matters is that people closely connect their identity with their sexuality.”

  3. The Many Odd Uses and Abuses of Matthew 18: Keith Evans explains what Jesus’s important passage on confronting the sins of your brother means and doesn’t mean. For instance, “Jesus addresses public persons publicly. Recall his scathing condemnation of Herod (Luke 13:32), or his many public “woes” (i.e. “curses”) pronounced upon the pharisees (cf. Matt 23:13-39). We can almost hear the modern Christian retort: ‘Yes, Jesus, but did you confront all of them privately first?!’”

  4. When Self-Care Becomes Self-Absorption: Trevin Wax helps provide some perspective here on where generations can swing too far in either direction. He begins, “I saw a funny video recently that joked about the generational shift in how we view practices of self-care and therapy. In the old days: ‘You’re in therapy? What’s wrong with you?’ Today: ‘You’re not in therapy? What’s wrong with you?’”

  5. Painters who aren’t parents vs. painters who actually have kids: Ha!

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. FOBO: Gen Z’s FOMO: Jerry Riendeau explains, “What is FOBO? It’s the “fear of better options.” The average young person’s inner dialogue seems to have shifted from What if I don’t go and they have fun without me? to What if I commit now and regret it later?”

  2. When Were Christians First Regarded as Intolerant “Haters”: Michael Kruger explains, “this sort of accusation against Christians is, at its core, a moral objection. Rather than the standard historical or logical objections often leveled against the faith, this one is fundamentally about ethics. It is claiming that Christian behavior violates some moral standard that all should follow.”

  3. Lesson for the Church from the Barnes & Noble Turnaround: Trevin Wax begins, “Few analysts expected brick-and-mortar bookstores to survive, much less thrive, in the 2020s. If you were placing bets a few years ago, you’d think digital would be the way to go: Facebook, Netflix, Crypto, or Tesla. But… Not only is Barnes & Noble profitable and growing, but they’re also opening new stores, including in places where Amazon tried (and failed) physical bookstores.”

  4. Seeking Validation: Brianna Lambert with an excellent piece of writing, “Blocks teetered atop the carefully constructed tower. My five-year-old placed the final piece and stepped back to admire his masterpiece. “Mommy, can I show Daddy?” he begged. It’s a common question in my house. Whether my children have colored a new picture, constructed an intricate building, or built a sweeping railroad track, they inevitably seek to show it off to Daddy as soon as possible. Their sweet requests never seem fueled by pride so much as excitement and the nagging question: Have I done well? Their love and admiration for their father pushes them to seek his approval for all their hard work spent coloring, building, or cutting. Ultimately, they want to know if their time was worth something.”

  5. Man Pops Car Hood, Thus Exhausting His Knowledge of How Cars Work: Babylon Bee obviously wrote this about me: a low blow!

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. The Worshipper: Jeremy Walker begins a post that comes with a twist, “He is a worshipper. His life revolves around his worship. Nothing stops him.”

  2. The Serious Business of Laughing at Myself: Seth Lewis tells a very funny story about himself and concludes, “If I can’t embrace my own smallness, my own humiliations, and my total dependence on the God who made me, then my pride has grown out of control. That’s a serious problem.”

  3. Unborn Images Matter: Alan Shlemon begins, “Abortionist Dr. Joan Fleischman says she sometimes shows her patients the pregnancy tissue she removes after an abortion. She says that post-abortive women are “stunned by what it actually looks like,” and the women “feel they’ve been deceived.””

  4. 16 Passages to Read to Fight Lust: These are worth memorizing.

  5. A Spiritual MRI of the Heart: Warren Peel explains, “In Scripture, the word ‘heart’ is used more than 1000 times, but it almost never refers to the physical organ inside our chests. The Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament sums up all the usages of the term in this way: it is ‘the richest, most all-encompassing biblical term for the totality of a man’s inner nature.’ The heart is said to do a wide range of things in the Bible, but all its many activities fall into one of the three main faculties of the soul: the mind, the affections and the will. It includes the mind—our thoughts, imagination, fantasies, judgments and attitudes. It encompasses the affections—our emotions, our desires and longings, our revulsions. And it describes the will—our choices, decisions and motivations.”

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. Help! My Employer Celebrates Gay Pride and Pays for Abortion Travel: Miranda Carls steps into a conversation that impacts many. She wisely treads lightly, “Christian decision-making doesn’t rest squarely on the shoulders of human understanding. It doesn’t fit into a neatly organized decision tree of binary questions.”

  2. Harvesting Idols: Chris Thomas warns us, “Though I reason with myself that money is not the problem, but instead the love of it, the very presence of wealth is a danger to my soul.”

  3. Why the Church? HB Charles shoots straight, “’Unchurched Christian’ is not a biblical category. Ask Paul, John, or Peter what they think about unchurched Christians and they would have responded, ‘Why are you calling them Christians, if they are not a part of the church?’”

  4. Remember: Glenna Marshall reflects on a hard year, “I want to always remember. Pain teaches us to be thankful. Grief keeps us near the cross. Remembering recounts God’s faithfulness. While there are events people experience that cause levels of trauma that must be counseled and handled delicately, what I’m talking about are those significant sequences of suffering that the Lord draws us through that change us, sanctify us.”

  5. Comedy Wildlife Awards: I always enjoy these. How about that squirrel or the big cat’s face plant into the tree?

  6. It’s a Wonderful Telescope: A fun and beautiful connection between the classic Christmas movie and the James Webb telescope you probably didn’t know (I didn’t!).

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. Shame in the Public Arena: Stephen Freeman considers the sticky nature of shame. He urges us to stay far away from its use, “Shaming is easily justified by many. Whether it is doctrine, the Church, the state, the culture, whatever institution stands most in danger, shaming, like violence, is considered an effective tool in guarding the fort. However, it remains the case that shame cannot be used without causing damage to the one who uses it.”

  2. A Life on the Frontier: Chris Thomas tells his story about a conversation with his tattoo artist and a divinely ordained conversation. He shares, “My new friend proceeded to pour out her heartache. As she shaded in my arm, she filled in the gaps of yearning and seeking, of love gained and lost, of hopes she had, and anguish she lived with. And there, with this young woman holding a needle to my arm, I saw past the stereotypes and ink, and saw a frightened and broken girl who carries a fractured image of a God who formed and loved her.”

  3. Encourage and Be Encouraged: A great word from my friend Cassie Watson. I love her observation that we are to be those are called not only to encourage, but to be easily encouraged. She concludes, “Let’s be on the lookout today for the encouragement that God has prepared for us, so that his glory may abound among his people.”

  4. Tim Keller’s Wisdom on Navigating Social Media: Keller explains the sociological and psychological dimensions of new public square of social media. He concludes with advice that is so important for every Christian. His final point is, “Loosen the links between your ideas and your identity.” This post is indispensable for any Christian with a social media account.

  5. The Man on the Middle Cross Said I Can Come: Alistair Begg’s description of the thief’s welcome at heaven is funny and makes the gospel clear.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1. Why Was Jesus Crucified? Have you ever wondered why God ordained that Jesus would die by means of crucifixion? Here is a thoughtful answer by JA Medders. His four answers are that it was because of the shame of crucifixion, because of the criminal and legal ramifications, because of the public nature of crucifixion and because deaths were certified by Rome in crucifixion. It’s well worth the read.

2. Scholars Now Believe Job’s Friends Were First-Year Seminary Students: This satirical piece from Babylon Bee had me laughing out loud. “Scholars analyzed the level of annoyingness of the speech patterns of Job's friends and compared it with someone who just started studying the Bible, theology, Greek, and Hebrew.”

3. Faithful in Obscurity: Barbara Lee Harper asks us to identify who Bartholomew, James the son of Alphaeus and Thaddaeus, and Simon the Zealot were (do you know?). She then makes this admonition, “Don’t fret over whether your work seems “important.” Faithfully do what God has called you to do, for His honor and glory.”

4. Cohabitation Among Evangelicals: A New Norm? A discouraging report by David Ayers at the Institute for Family Studies. He says that, “cohabitation is a “new norm among young, professing evangelicals.” It is stunning that this has quietly come to pass among adherents to a form of Christianity that emphasizes radical obedience to an inerrant Bible, forbids all sex outside marriage, and emphasizes being distinct from ‘the world.’”

5. Weird Al Yankovic’s Weirdly Enduring Appeal: This is one of my favorite podcast episodes of 2021 (you probably need to already appreciate Weird Al to truly enjoy it, though). Sam Anderson claims Weird Al Yankovic is not just a parody singer — he’s “a full-on rock star, a legitimate performance monster and a spiritual technician doing important work down in the engine room of the American soul.” I loved learning more about Weird Al’s backstory.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1. How My Mind Changed About End-of-Life Care: Justin Taylor explains well the challenge of considering how to make end-of-life decisions. He shares that, “Many Christians—myself included—have assumed that being pro-life means extending life as long as possible. If, for example, a feeding tube can provide the food and water, or a ventilator can pump oxygen, then we should always use all the means at our disposal to preserve a human life.”

2. No Condemnation, but What About Consequences? Courtney Reissig reflects on her cervical cancer and concludes, “Sin is serious. Sin has consequences, sometimes deadly ones. But sin has a remedy. In him, it is finished. Shame has no place. There is no condemnation for those who trust in Christ—not now, not ever.”

3. How to Know You’ve Become a Pharisee: Randy Alcorn offers this parable. He begins, “Imagine yourself moving into a house with a huge picture window overlooking a grand view across a wide expanse of water enclosed by a range of snow-capped mountains.”

4. Save Me From Myself: My friend Anne Imboden transparently shares about her struggle with social anxiety, the fall-out of that struggle, and God’s transformative work in her heart. She begins, “There’s a big part of my story most people don’t know about. I don’t share it very often and when I do, the response is usually one of surprise. No, I’m not talking about my ten years of playing softball. Though really, why is everyone so dumbfounded that I have a history of athleticism? (Actually, don’t answer that.) I’m talking about depression and social anxiety; demons I faced for years in my early adulthood. “But you’re such an extrovert!” “I’d never have known! You’re so comfortable in a crowd!” “Really? You’re always so confident around people!” These things are all true, though my extroverted tendencies have been dialed back considerably since my recovery.”

5. Ouch!: If you like physical comedy, enjoy this 60 seconds of ridiculousness.

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