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

Jen Wilkin

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. Waiting pushes our limits—and that is part of God’s design: Mark Vroegop muses, “I think it’s safe to say that most people dislike waiting. Do you know anyone who celebrates it? “Oh good, we get to wait.” That feels weird or fake, doesn’t it? Imagine meeting a friend and asking about her weekend. What would be your immediate response if she said, “I spent three hours waiting on Saturday”? You’d probably groan, right? Waiting feels like a gap in time that’s annoying at best and aggravating at worst.”

  2. Savoring the moment takes time: Brianna Lambert with a lovely piece. “Maybe the older woman in the grocery store knows how precious this season is precisely because she’s had 10,000 more days to fully enjoy its memory.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. Knowing the Future Doesn’t Cure Anxiety: Jen Wilkin’s post is loaded with wisdom, “We reason that if we knew what tomorrow would bring, we would use that information wisely to make good choices. But the story of Peter’s denial warns us otherwise. Jesus tells him explicitly how anxiety will cause him to sin in his immediate future. He does not alter his course. Peter’s knowledge of the future serves not to correct him but to condemn him. Foreknowledge yielded neither repentance nor humility in Peter.”

  2. Three Questions to Make Sense of Anxiety: In a similar vein, Joe Hussung notes that, “Our intuition is to say that anxiety is all about what we fear, but in reality, it is deeper than that. Anxiety is actually about what we love.”

  3. What Jesus Saw When He Looked at Peter After the Rooster Crowed: Erik Raymond with another related post, encourages us, “How do you think Jesus looked at Peter? Was Jesus surprised? Frustrated? Ashamed? If you are a Christian, then your understanding of how Jesus looked at Peter is foundational to your perception of how he looks at you when you sin.”

  4. Gen Z Couples are Shacking Up at Record Rates: Unsurprising report from Bloomberg, that 11% of those aged 18-24 are living with romantic partner. The 3.2 million cohabitating are 650,000 more than the same age group pre-pandemic.

  5. America the Single: Again, unfortunately unsurprising. Erica Pandey explains, “Over the last 50 years, the marriage rate in the U.S. has dropped by nearly 60%.”

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. Should Christian Parents Send Their Children to Public Schools: I’ve appreciated all of these debates and this one between Jen Wilkin and Jonathan Pennington demonstrates humility, grace, and understanding.

  2. The Safest Place: Andrea Seaborn with an invitation, “When we live in His presence rather than imagining ourselves under His thumb, possibilities tumble in—frightening, exhilarating, wonder-filled or painful, but meaningful. Purposeful. Real.”

  3. Be Slow to Pull the ‘God’ Card: Will Anderson says, “When the conversation turns from concrete biblical revelation to promptings, senses, urges, spontaneous thoughts, and claims of “God told me so,” it can feel squishy and prone to abuse.”

  4. Telling the Truth: Brenda Pauken directs this to counselors, but the importance of learning to dig to be honest with oneself is important for all of us, “Many of us tell ourselves untrue things that make us feel better in the moment but don’t serve us well in the long run. Consider, “Yes, that was hard, but I’m fine,” or “It wasn’t a big deal.” These statements, along with “I had a happy childhood,” prevent us from facing the reality of our lives and hearts.” The second part of this piece is also well worth reading.

  5. World Nature Photography Awards: Wow! That croc eye! And check out that Preying Mantis taking down a lizard.

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I Hope your Advent is In Tents

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I Hope your Advent is In Tents

Our girl arrived home for Christmas last night. Everything feels better when we are all together. Camille headed off to college in Southern California this fall, and we have felt her absence. We missed her laugh, her hugs, and her quiet presence in the house, crafting on a quiet Sunday afternoon. But now she’s home! My heart swells to be able to squeeze her, to wake her up with a kiss on the forehead, to listen to her laugh at my dad jokes. Even in an era where we have technology like Facetime, there is nothing like being face-to-face. I feel joy to worship with her this Christmas Eve and look forward to having our family whole, enjoying cinnamon rolls and coffee in our pajamas on Christmas day, unwrapping one another’s gifts, and squeezing each other in thanks.

God concurs.

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What I Read in 2022 (and perhaps some books you might want to read in 2023)

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What I Read in 2022 (and perhaps some books you might want to read in 2023)

How much would you pay to meet your favorite celebrity? $100? $1,000?? $10,000??? The number isn’t insignificant, is it? Listening to the stories and wisdom from those we trust is worth quite a bit, isn’t it?

This year Angel and I worked hard to bring our first co-written book entitled Substitute Identities to publication. Right now it is in the hands of our publisher’s copy editor, and we can’t wait to share it with you. The process of pouring our hearts into this book makes me reflect on just what gifts books are. While we might be willing to pay exorbitant sums to sit at the feet of the world’s best thinkers, it only takes $10-$20 to listen to these spinners of tales. Isn’t that amazing?

So, however many books you read in 2022, maybe you might be blessed to read a few more in 2023, and perhaps some of my favorites might point you to a few gems.

In 2022 so far, I’ve read 110 books and hope to read a handful more before the year closes. I’ve been blessed to read a wide variety of good books this year. I’ll begin with my four favorite books of 2022, followed by the entire list of books I read. I hope you find some gems for you in this.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1. 11 Things You Might Think are in the Bible, But Really Aren’t: #11 is particularly insidious.

2. Bible Reading and Church Attendance Drops During COVID-19: Barna just released a report that confirms what I’ve been hearing anecdotally: many are spiritually floundering during this season. The reality is that 2020 has just sped up the decline in basic spiritual disciplines.

3. Let Bible Reading Get Back to Basics: To that end, Jen Wilkin suggests five basic tools that can assist your Bible reading. I particularly appreciate her suggestion to keep a Bible timeline.

4. Christian, You Are Able Not to Sin: Zach Howard turns to Augustine for advice when we enter this familiar place, “Sinning as a saint can cause two opposite (and equally) wrong reactions. On the one hand, we can respond with prideful presumption in our power to overcome sin. On the other hand, we can react with helpless despair in the face of our persistent sin.”

5. Were the Gospels Meant to be Taken as Historical Narrative? Do the gospels fail the test of providing historical attestation? Timothy Paul Jones responds to to Reza Aslan's accusation that the gospels, "are not, nor were they ever meant to be, a historical documentation of Jesus’s life. They are testimonies of faith composed by communities of faith and written many years after the events they describe."

6. Iceland: The Land of Fire and Ice: Who wants to take a trip with me?!

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1.      When Pot is Legal, What Do We Say?  Ben Tertin navigates this tricky issue that is on our doorstep. "When a pastor's advice on a moral issue fails, the usual culprit is oversimplification. I feel this keenly on the pot question, having fought on both sides."

2.      I Want My Child to be an Alien: The pressure is strong to raise children who are popular. Jen Wilkin pushes against that impulse, " Sweet child, study the way you are feeling today. Because I love you, I ask this of you: Lean into your “otherness”—learn the contours of its face, feel out the steady grip of its hand. Because I intend it to be your lifelong companion. It is a truer friend than those who surround you now. More than I want your comfort, I want you to be an alien and a stranger."

3.      Was Gnosticism Tolerant and Inclusive? Contrary to public perception, Michael Kruger responds with a resounding "No." "After all, it is argued, traditional Christianity was narrow, dogmatic, intolerant, elitist, and mean-spirited, whereas Gnosticism was open-minded, all-welcoming, tolerant and loving.  Given this choice, which would you choose?"

4.       The Consequences of Gendercide: For years China and India have been aborting millions of baby girls. Gene Veith reports on the devastating consequences, "Today, China has 34 million more men than women, which is equivalent to the population of California.  India has 37 million more men than women... Both countries are experiencing an upsurge in sexual assaults, including rape, and human trafficking."  

5.      The Deepest Dive in the Antarctica Reveals a Sea Floor Teaming with Life: Wow. What a Creator.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1.       Spring arrives at Central Park: perfectly orchestrated breathtaking short video.

2.       How to Raise Your Children as Best Friends: I was so grateful my sister was my best friend growing up and have been so blessed to watch our children grow up as each other's best friends. Jen Wilkin has a helpful reflection on how to cultivate that friendship.

3.       Living the Victorious Christian Life: Michael Bird on what victory in Christ looks like, "Remember, when Jesus hung upon that cross, he did not feel victorious, he felt abandoned, he felt betrayed, he experienced the full extent of human misery. And yet that is where we are told God has won his victory, his triumph, where he conquered the world, the flesh, and the devil."

4.       Schools Kill Creativity: this Ken Robinson TED talk has been watched over 45 million times and you should watch it too. I love his point that, because of our fear of being wrong, we grow out of creativity.

5.       Six Things You Need to Know About God's Wrath: Colin Smith tackles this difficult but important topic: “ At the core of the human problem is that we are sinners under the judgment of God, and the divine wrath hangs over us unless and until it is taken away.”

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