Christian Living, Biblical Studies, Religion, Spiritual Growth, Theology
John Beeson
The Faith of Unbelief

Bart Ehrman has perhaps done more to undermine the credibility of the Bible than anyone else in my lifetime. But his story didn’t begin that way. Ehrman is a New Testament scholar and skeptic. Ehrman grew up in a Christian home, attended a conservative Bible school, and then found his way to a liberal seminary where his faith in the God of the Bible unraveled. That seminary happens to be the seminary I would attend a couple of decades later.

For Ehrman, everywhere he looks he sees holes in the biblical story. The inconsistencies that he sees have led him to determine that he cannot trust in the God of the Bible.

The Faith of Unbelief
Christian Living, Culture, Spiritual Growth
John Beeson
Don't Numb Your Feelings

“Don’t listen to your feelings; remember what Jesus did for you!”

“Don’t be guided by your feelings; listen to what God commands you to do!”

In just the past week, I heard both of these warnings. Two very different Christian speakers urged their audiences to shut down their feelings. These admonitions resonate. They contain truth. It is correct that our feelings don’t override truth, nor do our emotions negate what God has done. Neither do our feelings give us an out for what God commands us to do.

Don't Numb Your Feelings
History, Spiritual Growth, Suffering, Wisdom
John Beeson
Lord, Reach Your Justice Down

I had outsized emotions as a child. Games, especially, would get the best of me, whether cards or boardgames or sports. In response to a stroke of bad luck, a hot surge of anger would erupt, followed quickly by tears and then embarrassment.

Emotions are God’s gift to us in many ways. They are one of his kind ways of showing us where our deep attachments lie.

Our son started his freshman year at the University of Arizona this fall. It’s been a great experience for him, but not without its adjustments. The climate of a secular school is quite different than the Christian school he graduated from

Lord, Reach Your Justice Down
Culture, Generosity, Nature, Relationships
John Beeson
Marshmallows and Friends

Most have heard of the famous Stanford marshmallow experiment. In 1970, psychologist Walter Mischel invited kids into his lab. A child was offered a marshmallow that they could eat, or, if they waited until the researcher returned, they were given a second marshmallow. About one-third of the kids waited approximately fifteen minutes for the additional reward.

The study then tracked those children over time and found that children who waited for the second reward tended to have higher SAT scores and lower body mass indexes. Later tests have challenged those outcomes, but it hasn’t stopped parents everywhere from running the experiment on their kids, often with humorous results.

Marshmallows and Friends
Christian Living, Culture, Politics
John Beeson
Uprooting Our Political Identity

Happy election day!

In 2016, data scientists Eitan Hersh and Yair Ghitza analyzed data among registered voters to determine how often Democrats and Republicans married. They learned that 9% of marriages had the spouses registered in the two parties. Over the next four years that meager number would drop precipitously, down to 4%.

 As Jonathan Haidt and others have successfully argued, the ideological disparity between FOX News and CNBC are child’s play compared to the engineered social media algorithms that create hermetically sealed echo chambers for our political views.

Uprooting Our Political Identity

Heaven

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How Changing Your View of Heaven Transforms the Way You Live Today

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How Changing Your View of Heaven Transforms the Way You Live Today

In 2003, Bart Millard still mourning his father’s recent death, penned the lyrics for “I Can Only Imagine,” a song that would go on to be the most-played song in the history of Christian radio.

Can you imagine what heaven is going to be like?

There are lots of different views of heaven out there. A couple of decades ago a cottage industry developed, selling stories of those who said they had been to heaven while on death’s doorstep. We’re told of bright lights, lives re-played, and a warm glow. Others might daydream of harps and clouds, when asked to imagine heaven.

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What I Read In 2018; What I’m Hoping to Read in 2019

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What I Read In 2018; What I’m Hoping to Read in 2019

I read 54 books in 2018: about one a week. I love learning and books are one of my favorite forms of learning. I tend to read five types of books: Christian Living, Theology, Leadership, General Non-Fiction, and Fiction. If you’re interested in tracking my reading, getting fuller reviews, and sharing with me your favorites, I use Goodreads and would be happy to have you friend me there. Here were some highlights for me in 2018:

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Heaven Won't Be a Picnic

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Heaven Won't Be a Picnic

The Garden of Eden was no picnic. When God created Adam and Eve, he placed them in the Garden not to vacation, but to work. Before sin ever entered the picture, God formed Adan and Eve in his image, and called them to exercise dominion in the Garden of Eve.

We are called to create order from disorder, to cultivate, and till, and build. Adam and Eve were placed in the Garden of Eden not just to sip Mai Tais and binge on Netflix (not that there is anything wrong with that!); they were put there for the sake of dominion. God wanted caretakers who would craft, build, and create order.

We were made for work. We were made for dominion.

There are some interesting studies that reveal the impact of not working. It has been well documented that there are significant negative mental and emotional outcomes for those who are unemployed.[i] Anxiety rises and self-confidence drops which leads to an increase in substance abuse and violence against self and others.[ii] Consider, for instance, the unhealthy of the lives of those whose profession is to be famous, like the Kardashians.

We were made to work.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1.      We’re Gonna Be Rich! This Snapple commercial makes me laugh out loud every time.

2.      The Five Biggest Little Ways to Improve Your Marriage. Shaunti Feldhahn shares ow the little things can transform your marriage.

3.      The Gospel in 140 Characters: My friend Benjamin Vrbicek shares the story of seeing a minivan with this message painted on its windows: "Heaven is for real, So is Hell! Jesus Christ is your only escape! Receive Him Today!!" He considers how that version of the gospel is deficient and suggests a better way to speak the gospel.

4.      I Don’t Think I Want to Be a Christian: How to talk to your teen who doesn't want to be a Christian any longer.

5.      The Pastor As Navigator: Stephen Calpine shares wise insights not just for pastors, but for Christians as well in walking through the tensions of extremes in the Christian life: “For just as Odysseus had to sail between the two great monsters, charting a course that minimised his losses, so too the pastoral task has to sail between competing extremes, that while good when sailed between, can threaten to crash ministry on their rocks if we sail too close to either side.”

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Surprised by Hope by NT Wright

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Surprised by Hope by NT Wright

I heartily endorse NT Wright's thesis: a robust doctrine of the bodily resurrection of Christ necessarily impacts our lives.  Wright spends much of his book firing shots across the bows of both the fundamentalists and the liberals.

Wright attacks the fundamentalists' belief in a non-corporeal resurrection, grounded in an implicit dualism.  It's an important attack.  This idea that the real part of us is our immortal souls which will, alone, live on in heaven, is not just non-scriptural, it's anti-scriptural.  Furthermore, as NT Wright points out, it has several deleterious effects: it undermines any urgency for the church to do her work here and now; it can create apathy to change unjust social institutions; and it can lead toward a truncated understanding of how we are to respect and appreciate the bodily existence God has granted us.

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