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

Seth Lewis

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. Candlelight: Scott Schuleit considers candlelight and Jesus’s birth, “And further back in the sanctuary, something was veiled, hidden—a single, tiny radiating spot of fire, a whisper from heaven, perfect convergence of candle and flame. The uniqueness of its presence swallowing up a sense of the vastness of space as if all eternity, the great weight of it, stood hushed, gazing.”

  2. Five myths about mental health: Tom Karel begins, “Mental illness. For many, that is a scary term. ‘You have a mental illness.’ This statement borders on terrifying! It brings up many unsettling thoughts and complicated fears in our hearts and minds. This subject is further confused by the many differing opinions swirling around the internet. Moreover, in the post-Christian era in which we live, Christians may wonder if the advice they find is true, scientific, or Biblical?”

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. Too busy for beauty: Paul Twiss asks us to consider how productivity can starve a soul. “We have trained ourselves in efficiency; we must also train our minds in the discipline of beholding in order to contemplate glory. For when the soul beholds beauty, it grows wings.”

  2. Ever Yours, Sin: Hannah Le Cras with a Screwtape-esque letter written from the perspective of sin, “Dear Soul, I am concerned that you have developed such a hostile attitude towards me of late. As you know, I have been with you all your life and always do my utmost to bring you pleasure. Yet you seem to have been persuaded that somehow I am out to destroy you! This grieves me very much.”

  3. Will my marriage ever be more? Ed Welch offers some very practical advice. “One reason we are hopeless in marriage is because there is nothing else we can do, so we resign ourselves and try to build a more independent life. But when we have confidence that the Spirit will use us, we become more resilient, creative, and engaged.”

  4. You cannot out-sin the cross: Jonathan Woodyard comments on Peter’s sermon at Pentecost, “Notice what Peter did not say. He did not say, ‘Well, it’s too late. You’ve messed up too much. You killed the Messiah. There is simply no hope. Your sin is too great.’”

  5. More than you can handle: Seth Lewis suggests that no, God does not “give us more than we can handle.” “If you belong to Jesus, you can rest assured that he will absolutely give you tasks that are far beyond what you can handle. An honest look at his commands will show you that he already has. Don’t worry about that. The size of your lunch, or your ability, or your strength, is never the point. Bring your insufficiency to Jesus, and take the next step into impossible obedience. He will do the providing. He can handle it.”

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. Every Day’s a Bad Day: How Ecclesiastes Taught Me to Enjoy Life: Carolyn Mahaney wants us to see Ecclesiastes in a new light, “Ecclesiastes has shown me the secret of enjoying life, even in the midst of trouble. It has rescued me from disillusionment when labors I thought were fruitful appeared to be for naught. When friends have turned their backs, Ecclesiastes has helped me guard against bitterness. It has cured me of setting my hope on a particular outcome, and protected me from becoming bewildered and disheartened by bad news.”

  2. Hannah’s Funeral: Oh my, get your tissues out for this touching piece by Seth Lewis about their daughter they lost during pregnancy 16 years ago.

  3. What Things? D. Eaton considers Jesus’s casual two word response on the road to Emmaus and invites us to consider their spiritual power for us, “It is only because Jesus can ask, “what things?” without further suffering that we can look at our sin and ask, “what debt?” without being thrown into an anxious or guilty state. In Jesus, we have no reason to re-experience the threat of wrath that once hung over us.”

  4. Not a Dinosaur: Mitch Leventhal makes a convincing case that Leviathan in Job is Satan, not a dinosaur. “Job cannot subdue the Evil One. Satan is untamable by man, like a multi-headed sea beast in the waters of chaos. But God can overcome Leviathan. According to Jim Hamilton, ‘the whole book is bracketed by Yahweh’s enticing Satan to do his bidding at the beginning, and by his putting a hook in Leviathan’s nose at the end.’ Yahweh rules over the deep. Evil will not have the last word.”

  5. More Than Jumper Cable Christianity: JA Medders explains, “We use jumper cables when our car’s battery is depleted, dead, and in need of a jumpfrom another battery to get going. We connect jumper cables to another car, get some juice, and then go about our day and way. I fear far too many of us approach “abiding” in Christ this way.”

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. Nietzsche was Right: In a similar vein as my post on Tuesday, Tim Keller reviews Tom Holland’s (not the actor) book on how Christianity revolution changed the world. Keller concludes, “In no way does [Holland] let the church off the hook for its innumerable failures. Nor will he let secular people live with the illusion that their values are just self-evident, the result of reason and scientific investigation.”

  2. What Has Been Most Helpful in Your Marriage? Ed Welch answers this question with wisdom.

  3. Beware of Pride: A Cautionary Tale: Lee Hutchings tells the story of how pride led William Henry Harrison to have the shortest tenure of any US President. He explains, “Such a tragic and ironic ending to an otherwise tenacious life is compounded by the fact that Harrison died, in all likelihood, of his own vanity and pride.”

  4. Love is a Skill: Seth Lewis comments, “It’s interesting that Jesus never mentioned how the Good Samaritan felt about the man on the road. He only tells us what he did for him. Evidently, Jesus does not consider love to be primarily about how we feel, but more importantly about what we do.”

  5. Can Cancer be God’s Servant? Randy Alcorn considers hard truths in the face of his wife’s recent death. “When our ministry posted Nanci’s words, “My cancer is God’s servant,” someone responded, “WHAT? God does NOT give people cancer. Jesus bore our sicknesses and carried our pains on the cross.”

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. The Worshipper: Jeremy Walker begins a post that comes with a twist, “He is a worshipper. His life revolves around his worship. Nothing stops him.”

  2. The Serious Business of Laughing at Myself: Seth Lewis tells a very funny story about himself and concludes, “If I can’t embrace my own smallness, my own humiliations, and my total dependence on the God who made me, then my pride has grown out of control. That’s a serious problem.”

  3. Unborn Images Matter: Alan Shlemon begins, “Abortionist Dr. Joan Fleischman says she sometimes shows her patients the pregnancy tissue she removes after an abortion. She says that post-abortive women are “stunned by what it actually looks like,” and the women “feel they’ve been deceived.””

  4. 16 Passages to Read to Fight Lust: These are worth memorizing.

  5. A Spiritual MRI of the Heart: Warren Peel explains, “In Scripture, the word ‘heart’ is used more than 1000 times, but it almost never refers to the physical organ inside our chests. The Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament sums up all the usages of the term in this way: it is ‘the richest, most all-encompassing biblical term for the totality of a man’s inner nature.’ The heart is said to do a wide range of things in the Bible, but all its many activities fall into one of the three main faculties of the soul: the mind, the affections and the will. It includes the mind—our thoughts, imagination, fantasies, judgments and attitudes. It encompasses the affections—our emotions, our desires and longings, our revulsions. And it describes the will—our choices, decisions and motivations.”

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. What Have Theologians Said About the Fall of Satan? I don’t love the title of this article, as there is quite a number of challenges in the passages cited, including the fact that several clearly first reference human beings (they might also reference Satan). But Dustin Benge does a good job of laying out the way many theologians have constructed the story from what we have.

  2. Three Times Jesus Told Us He Was God Without Saying It: Rebecca McLaughlin is always so good. She says, “What does it mean for us that the Creator God became a man in Jesus Christ? It means that you and I are fully and completely known. It means we’re known more fully than a mother knows her baby, than an artist knows his paintings, than a novelist knows her imaginary world.”

  3. Seeds and Sunflowers: Seth Lewis invites us to wonder, “Imagine showing someone who had never seen a sunflower that tiny seed in its tiny shell and trying to describe to them what would happen if they planted it in the ground. Imagine being the person that had never seen a sunflower, and trying to get your head around the idea that the little grey nothing in your hand could transform so completely into something so impressive and colourful. If all you knew was the seed, how could you ever guess the flower?”

  4. Beware the New Seeker Sensitivity: Trevin Wax takes this post in a direction I didn’t expect at all from the title. He begins, “For decades now, I’ve heard pastors, preachers, and theologians preach against ‘seeker sensitivity’ as a ministry philosophy…It’s ironic, then, to see some of the same voices become known as much for their political punditry as their gospel proclamation.”

  5. 8 Ways We Normalize the Abnormal: Paul David Tripp asks us to consider those things which have become normalized that the Christian should fight against. For instance, emotionally-driven and self-righteous responses.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1. 5 Truths Those with Jobs Need to Hear: Daniel Darling’s post is loaded with important truth. He says, “The gospel changes the way we see our work. It adds a newfound significance. It elevates us from hum-drum, cynical employees to servants of the King. Every day may not feel like heaven, but every day at the job matters in heaven.

2. Wade in the Water: Seth Lewis offers insight on the priests wading in the waters of the Jordan before God parted the river. He says, “the feet of the priests were still wet. They were wet because they had to “wade in the water” before God “troubled the water” for them. They had to obey before they saw the provision.”

3. How to See Mt. Ranier: Rick Conrad with a great little illustration about seeing the Bible as God’s Word, “And so, if you do want to see the glory of Mt. Rainier (and I do recommend it), there are two things that need to happen. First of all, God needs to remove the fog. And secondly, you need to be standing in a place where, if the fog is lifted, you will have a view of the mountain.”

4. Take Time to Be Unproductive: Kelly Kapic’s article hit me between the eyes. He starts his post with this thought, “Søren Kierkegaard, a nineteenth-century Danish theologian and social critic, once wrote in his journal, “The result of busyness is that an individual is very seldom permitted to form a heart.” We sense in our souls he is right. Unrelenting busyness — running here and there, late and in haste, always with more to do than we have time for — stifles the life of the heart.”

5. Be Still: Lee Hutchings confesses, “I never made a conscious decision to avoid or keep away from quiet. But as I evaluate my regular habits and routines, I am startled to observe that most of my day is filled with continuous screens, sounds, and other noise, which in and of themselves can be wonderful and advantageous. I suspect I'm not alone.”

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. Which Sins are Feeding Your Sin of Lust? David Powlison talks about how important it is to press into the sin behind the sin of lust. He shares a breakthrough with one client, “Look what we just found out: another movie was playing in a theater next door. Suddenly we were not only dealing with a couple of bad behaviors: viewing pornography and masturbating. We were dealing with anger at God that was driving those behaviors. What was that about?”

  2. How to Give (and Receive) Repentance: Blake Glosson begins with this fun question, “Imagine you’re on Family Feud and Steve Harvey gives the following prompt: “We asked 100 sinners, ‘Name one reason why you do not repent of your sin to one another.’ The top seven answers are on the board.” What do you think the most common answers would be?”

  3. Don’t Always Be Efficient: If you’re like me, you might need this word from Seth Lewis. He asks, “Who wants an efficient friendship? Or marriage? Who would want to visit an efficient park, or art museum? Who prefers drive-through fast food to a slow evening meal where the conversation lasts longer than the courses? It’s great to be efficient, but it’s not always great.”

  4. Even the Darkness: Meredith Beatty shares, “As a child I was afraid of the dark, afraid that something sinister lurked under my bed just waiting to grab the stray toe hanging off the edge. But as an adult there’s a different kind of darkness, not literal, but just as scary. It’s one no one seeks and can descend upon us at any time. An uninvited blackout that clouds our hearts and brings despair.”

  5. Naturalism is Nonsense: The late RC Sproul doesn’t mince words in this short clip.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. Why Are So Many Kids Rejecting Christianity? Look at Their Parents: Pamela Danzinger considers on what startling new survey data tells us, “The Cultural Research Center (CRC) is out with a new study comparing the number of American parents of children under age 13 who hold a biblical Christian worldview with those who adhere to competing secular alternatives. The results are a damning indictment of Americans’ rejection of or simple indifference to a biblical worldview. Across all parents of pre-teens, only 2 percent hold a biblical worldview, which is defined as “consistently interpreting and responding to life situations based on biblical principles and teachings.” Those with a biblical worldview believe the Bible is the inerrant word of God containing all moral truths.”

  2. Why ‘Consent’ Isn’t Enough for a Sexual Ethic: I think Trevin Wax’s observation here is important. He begins, “Perusing various magazines and news sites in recent months, I’ve noticed a growing number of commentators who recommend we reexamine our society’s norms surrounding sexuality. Casual sexual encounters bring more misery than happiness, they say, and “consent” isn’t a high enough standard to bring about sexual fulfillment and freedom.”

  3. 40 Random Pieces of Advice for the Christian Life: Tim Challies loads tons of wisdom in this post. I love this one, “Open your home to other people often. Help foster a culture of hospitality within your local church by being the one who invites people over on a regular basis. The living room is one of the best contexts in the world for friendship, discipleship, and evangelism.”

  4. Zombie Sins: My friend Chris Thomas consider zombie movies and sin, “Zombie sins thrive in darkness, like the Orcs of Mordor they gather in the gloom beyond the Black Gates. To fight them in the dark watches of the night, alone against the throng, our hopes fade. But we look to the East.”

  5. Well, THAT was Magic! Seth Lewis shares the story of his three-year-old son’s amazement at the automatic doors. In response he asks, “Somewhere along the way, we seem to have picked up the idea that once we can explain how something works, the magic and wonder disappear. But why should that be?”

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1. Americans Aren't Sure They Can Trust Pastors: Aaron Earls begins, "In a Pew Research study of Americans’ views on institutional leaders, religious leaders are often in the middle of the pack among groups like police officers, public school principals, journalists, and leaders of tech companies. Almost 7 in 10 U.S. adults (69%) say religious leaders act unethically at least some of the time, with 10% saying they do so most of the time."

2. When Self-Preservation Becomes Our God: My friend Benjamin Vrbicek reflects on Peter and an issue that is ever-present for us all.

3. The Day the Phone Rang Out: Seth Lewis with a simple but powerful story.

4. The Beauty and Abuse of Empathy: We don’t typically think about empathy as something that can be misused. Abigail Dodds offers valuable insight for those with the gift of empathy and warns us of its potential misuse through isolation, cowardice, and manipulation.

5. How the Chair You See Everywhere Came to Be: I had never thought about the ubiquity of this plastic chair and why that was.

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