Advent, Christmas, Theology
John Beeson
Glory to God in the Lowest!

Last week on The World and Everything in It George Grant considered “The Wisdom of paradox.” He concludes his reflection,  that Christmas is “the greatest and most remarkable paradox of all is revealed: He who was infinite, was yet an infant; He who was eternal, was yet born of a woman; He who was almighty, was yet nursing at His mother’s breast; He who was upholding the universe, was yet carried in His mother’s arms. Thus, Chesterton exclaimed, ‘Outrushing the depth of the fall of man is the height of the fall of God. Glory to God in the Lowest.’”

“Glory to God in the lowest.” What a mind-bending truth.

Glory to God in the Lowest!
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

Bruce Ashford

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. The Universe Demands a Cross: This post by Samuel James is brilliant and moving. Please read it. Here is a taste, “The sterilized metaphysics of Western spirituality, the liturgies of eat-pray-love, are sieves when it comes to the bloodiness of reality. I could, if I chose, close my eyes and insist on believing in the inherent goodness of man, the brotherhood of all, and the common destiny of all but the worst people. But I could not close my eyes hard enough to un-see the blood of vaginal delivery. The blood does not merely sit there. It calls out, just as the blood of Abel cried “out from the ground.” It calls out for reckoning.”

  2. 200 People Left Our Small Church: my friend Benjamin Vrbicek asks, “How does a pastor keep his heart from growing cynical when, over 350 weeks of pastoring the same church, I have lost an average of one person each week? And why are these congregants leaving our church anyway? What role might I play, even unintentionally, in sending sheep to what they perceive to be greener pastures?”

  3. An Open Letter to Death: Cindy Matson begins, “Dear Death, I’m writing to you today with a simple message: Stop boasting. I realize that you have some reason for pride. You have had your way with nearly every human to ever live. (Do Enoch and Elijah keep you up at night?)”

  4. True Humanism: Jesus, Marx, or Jenner? Bruce Ashford considers the options to Christianity in contemporary culture, “[T]hese thought leaders often pose as anthropologists who find Christianity dehumanizing and as tea-leaf readers who discern in the anfractuosities of history a movement toward a more “humanized,” Christ-less future.”

  5. Tom Brady in Retirement: Football fans out there will enjoy this.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. The Universe Demands a Cross: This post by Samuel James is brilliant and moving. Please read it. Here is a taste, “The sterilized metaphysics of Western spirituality, the liturgies of eat-pray-love, are sieves when it comes to the bloodiness of reality. I could, if I chose, close my eyes and insist on believing in the inherent goodness of man, the brotherhood of all, and the common destiny of all but the worst people. But I could not close my eyes hard enough to un-see the blood of vaginal delivery. The blood does not merely sit there. It calls out, just as the blood of Abel cried “out from the ground.” It calls out for reckoning.”

  2. 200 People Left Our Small Church: my friend Benjamin Vrbicek asks, “How does a pastor keep his heart from growing cynical when, over 350 weeks of pastoring the same church, I have lost an average of one person each week? And why are these congregants leaving our church anyway? What role might I play, even unintentionally, in sending sheep to what they perceive to be greener pastures?”

  3. An Open Letter to Death: Cindy Matson begins, “Dear Death, I’m writing to you today with a simple message: Stop boasting. I realize that you have some reason for pride. You have had your way with nearly every human to ever live. (Do Enoch and Elijah keep you up at night?)”

  4. True Humanism: Jesus, Marx, or Jenner? Bruce Ashford considers the options to Christianity in contemporary culture, “[T]hese thought leaders often pose as anthropologists who find Christianity dehumanizing and as tea-leaf readers who discern in the anfractuosities of history a movement toward a more “humanized,” Christ-less future.”

  5. Tom Brady in Retirement: Football fans out there will enjoy this.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. What Do I Do When I Can’t Seem to Get Over My Grief? Alasdair Groves provides a nuanced answer. He asks, what do we do with “grief that just does not relent and it aches and I did not expect it to ache this long and it seems to still be aching and I’m not sure why. I cannot seem to get over it. I want to start by saying getting over it is maybe not the best way to capture the biblical response to grief.

  2. What is Dispensationalism? Keith Mathison with a helpful explanation of an influential theological camp in America. At the heart of the difference between dispensationalism and reformed theology is this, “Dispensationalism differs from Reformed covenant theology in a number of ways, but the most significant is this idea of two peoples of God.”

  3. You Might Be a Stingy Forgiver If… Cindy Matson begins with this, “Sometimes anger just feels so good, doesn’t it? In the moment we’re letting the other person finally get their comeuppance, we find pleasure, just as we do in all sins…”

  4. When You Feel Small, Look to the Cosmos and the Cross: Philip Yancey concludes, “A God beyond the limits of space and time has a boundless capacity of love for his creations, no matter how small or rebellious they might be. As it happens, that message is best expressed not from a whirlwind, or burning bush, or smoking mountain—but rather person to person, through Jesus and his followers.”

  5. Death and Taxes: I particularly appreciated the first half of this This American Life episode that focuses on hospice care.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. Don’t Date that Guy: Melissa Edgington shares sage advice she offers her 17-year-old daughter. “If I could offer one piece of advice to women who are dating, it would be this: don’t go on even one date with a man you already know you shouldn’t marry. Every marriage begins with a first date. Feelings of flattery can quickly lead to feelings to infatuation which can quickly lead to feelings of love.”

  2. Imagining Your “Well Done”: Reagan Rose reshapes advice from leaders about living a life directed toward what you want on your tombstone to living a life directed toward what you hope Jesus says to you. He says, “There’s one thing that always bothered me about the practice of writing your own eulogy. It emphasizes living a life motivated by what other people will say about you. When, instead, we should be living for an audience of One.”

  3. How to Spot Political Manipulation and Give it No Quarter: Bruce Ashford offers some helpful tools to go along with this assessment, “In the political sphere, manipulation seems to be the soup du jour. One might even conclude that some political leaders have elevated the logical fallacy to the level of their own literary genre. Thus, it is important for us to be aware of the ways in which our hearts and minds can be “stolen” by political manipulation.”

  4. As If God Ever Made an Atlantic Wide Enough: Tim Challies quotes Theodore Cuyler, who says, “There are some of us who have known what it is to drink bitter draughts of affliction, and to have the four corners of our house smitten by a terrible sorrow. At such times, how hollow and worthless were many of the stereotyped prescriptions for comfort!”

  5. Earthrise, Then and Now: Beautiful footage of the earth rising and setting on the moon.

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