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
Abortion, Christian Living, Culture, Politics
John Beeson
Protecting the Voice of the Voiceless

The tide of public opinion on abortion has ebbed dramatically over the past two years. On Friday, June 22, the Supreme Court handed down one of the most critical decisions in our lifetime: Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Forty-nine years of nationally enshrined abortion rights were pushed down to the states. The battle was not over, but had just begun. Pro-lifers who thought this was the beginning of a new pro-life era were in for a disappointment. The reaction from the pro-choice community was strong and their response led to a wave of support for their cause leaving many pro-lifers flat-footed.

Protecting the Voice of the Voiceless
Christian Living, Culture, Death, Fear
John Beeson
What Spooks You?

Across the street from our home is the holiday house. You probably have one in your neighborhood. They go all out for every holiday. On Saturday, cars stacked up on the main road leading into the neighborhood as families drove by slowly, taking in the massive display that must have cost the owners thousands of dollars.

 

Last week I drove by a home whose Halloween decorations weren’t as massive or ostentatious, but the lawn display was undoubtedly the eeriest I’ve ever seen. A life-like severed head hung from a tree limb. A decapitated corpse with a visible spinal cord jutting out between slumped shoulders sat underneath.

What Spooks You?

Lord of the Rings

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The Front Lines

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The Front Lines

In JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, two of Frodo’s hobbit companions, Merry and Pippin, get kidnapped by the orcs and eventually are rescued by the Ent, Treebeard. Meanwhile, the rest of the Fellowship prepare to confront Saruman and his forces at Isengard, attempting to weaken him so that Frodo and Sam can complete their mission to destroy the ring. In Peter Jackson’s movie adaptation, Merry and Pippin beg the council of Ents (called Entmoot) to make haste so that they can join their friends on the verge of war. They can’t bear to think of not being able to engage side-by-side with their comrades in a fight with such high stakes.

Do you ever feel like you are stuck at Entmoot, watching slow-footed and slow-tongued friends confused about the difference between orcs and hobbits, good and evil, and unsure whether a battle at distant Isengard has anything to do with them? It sometimes feels that we Americans are far from the front lines of the spiritual battle. We are slow-footed and lack urgency.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1.     Your Not-So Perfect Life Verse: This Babylon Bee (a satirical Christian website) had our family gut-laughing. My life verse? Job 19:18: “Even young children despise me; when I rise they talk against me.”

2.     Foolish and Slow of Heart: Chris Bruno asks: how does your Bible fit with God's mission? "[T]heir stupidity was not rooted in a lack of intelligence. It was rooted in their inability to see how their lives fit with the story of the Bible."

3.     True Beauty and Our God: "Imagine you could create a montage of every beautiful thing you have ever seen or wished for. Even so, you have not yet begun to comprehend the beauty of God. He is “the sum of all desirable qualities.”

4.     What Makes Lord of the Rings so Powerful? Tim Challies reflects on the fact that one of the things that makes the Lord of the Rings so moving is its connection with history. He calls for us to reclaim this lost art.

5.     What’s the Deal with National Splurge Day? Every day is a holiday! Where did all these crazy holidays come from? The Planet Money uncovers the history behind our fetish for strange holidays and how surprisingly old it is.

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