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

Outreach

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Why You Should Go on a Mission Trip

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Why You Should Go on a Mission Trip

I recently returned from a short-term mission trip to Senegal, Africa, where our church has had a partnership with a mission agency and a local village pastor for about five years. It was the twelfth short-term trip that I’ve participated in. Each has impacted me in different ways and they have collectively shaped me. I am significantly indebted to short-term missions. 

While there are all sorts of ways that short-term mission trip experiences can be tainted, whether by our own motivations, or by our expectations, or even by the planning of the trip itself, there is still an important place for these trips and good reasons to go on one.

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Why You Shouldn't Go on a Mission Trip

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Why You Shouldn't Go on a Mission Trip

In 1998 I went on a short-term mission trip to Honduras following the devastating impact of Hurricane Mitch. I still recall the stunning site of inches of mud caked over the entire cityscape of Tegucigalpa. Unbeknownst to me, sociologist Kurt Ver Beek was watching. He conducted a study surveying 162 short-term mission participants who, like me, traveled to Honduras in 1998. He later published a devastating report on these relief efforts.[i] Among his findings were that short-term groups spent $30,000 per home to build homes equivalent to homes built by local organizations for $2,000 apiece. There was no discernable difference between the homes or in the impact of them being built by short-term gruops. And perhaps, more disheartening, one year later there was no significant change in the generosity of those who had gone on the trips. Ouch!

Next week I’m going to tell you why you ought to participate on a short-term mission trip (full disclosure: I just returned from a short-term trip to Senegal). But today I’m going to explore why you shouldn’t go on a short-term trip.

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