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

disabilities

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The Unexpected Gift (part 2) by Anne Madhu Gammon

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The Unexpected Gift (part 2) by Anne Madhu Gammon

A note from John:

It’s my pleasure to share with you the story of my friend, Madhu Gammon. Madhu and her husband Keith attend Stone Hill Church in Princeton, NJ, where I served as a pastor for eight years. Madhu and Keith’s story centers around how God stretched their faith and joy in the midst of the difficulties of their son Ajit’s medical issues.

In God’s providence, Angel and I are, right now, in the home state of Madhu and Keith: Tamil Nadu, India.

I pray that you are as blessed by Madhu’s humble faith and irrepressible joy as I have been.

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Unexpected turn of Events

We had come on holiday to the USA in 2001 to see Priya. With less than a month left to return to India, a consultation for Ajit gave him a new anti-seizure medication in addition to his regular medication. This juncture is where everything turned topsy-turvy with a severe drug reaction. He was too weak to get out of bed, grew weaker, unable to tolerate food, and subsequently compelling us to change our return date to India. The scene had changed. It was staggering! And at this time, Keith’s mother had just breathed her last in Chennai and he had to return immediately.

When we come to the crossroads, we can often miss seeing the Cross. The words drawing us to “see, from his head, his hands, his feet, sorrow and love flow mingled down, did ‘er such love or sorrow meet or thorns compose so rich a crown.” Oh were it not for the Cross, we would not know that God understands the pain of suffering. Yet to now try and understand the Sovereignty of God and see Him articulate His Grace to us was to expect a miracle, a gesture of forgiveness and freedom.

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The Unexpected Gift (part 1) by Anne Madhu Gammon

, ,
The Unexpected Gift (part 1) by Anne Madhu Gammon

A note from John:

It’s my pleasure to share with you the story of my friend, Madhu Gammon. Madhu and her husband Keith attend Stone Hill Church in Princeton, NJ, where I served as a pastor for eight years. Madhu and Keith’s story centers around how God stretched their faith and joy in the midst of the difficulties of their son Ajit’s medical issues.

In God’s providence, Angel and I are, right now, in the home state of Madhu and Keith: Tamil Nadu, India.

I pray that you are blessed by Madhu’s humble faith and irrepressible joy as I have been.

 ————————————————————————————————————————————————————

Setting out with a bag and an umbrella is perfect for a walk in the park. We finally got there. It was an unexpected wait to get through the checkpoints. The Waiting Room was abuzz with swiftly changing scenes as we moved from the corridor to the elevator. The sounds of trolleys with their squeaky wheels rolling by were not particularly musical. It was the easiest thing to misunderstand the unrealistic questionnaire in the dim lit room, the questions like a frisbee whizzed all around me. Frankly speaking, what does it feel like to be faced with an unexpected diagnosis, ‘the baby has an increase in head circumference’?

We had started a journey into the world of unknowns! What is normal after all? “Normal is an illusion. What is normal to the spider is chaos to the fly.” The world of disability is a deep dark pit of foggy impressions until it comes to you and you are still in a fog.

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