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

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1.       3 Reasons Your Church Shouldn't Be a Perfect Fit for You: Daniel Darling concludes, "Too often our fights aren’t good fights. They’re over preferences and an unwillingness to die to our preferences in order to give, serve, and love our brothers and sisters in the Lord. Not only should you have things in your church you don’t like, you should embrace the privilege of the opportunity to grow in a community that will be used by God to sanctify you."

2.       I'm So Glad Our Vows Kept Us: Jennie Cesario is a masterful writer. Here she reflects on the difficulty and beauty of marriage. Please read this in its entirety. Here is a taste: " Our hearts are so very tender toward one another now with the long years, softened to a sweetness hard-won."

3.       5 Questions to Discern God's Will: Juan Sanchez with sound advice: " [W]e don’t have to fear what God wills for us. And thankfully, God has revealed His plan and purposes—His will—by His Word (Deuteronomy 29:29). We’re not in the dark about what God desires."

4.       How to be an Appropriately Transparent Leader (Without Oversharing): Carey Niewhof packs in a lot in this helpful post. He concludes, "I find often that the speakers or writers who overshare are people who are processing something for their benefit, not for the benefit of their audience."

5.       12 Fascinating Archaeological Finds in 2019: The finds include a $26.8 million Renaissance masterpiece that was hanging in an unsuspecting French woman’s kitchen and a perfectly preserved 32,000-year-old severed wolf head found in Siberian permafrost.

6.       An Unexpected Duet: Wait until 74 seconds in for the "what?!"

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1.      An Adorable Duet: A four year old and her dad sing “You’ve Got a Friend in Me”... yup, it’s just as cute as is sounds.

2.      Don’t Let Satan Blackmail You: Tony Reinke: "In Christ we walk in the light of freedom that repels back into the shadow the greatest blackmailer this world has ever seen.”

3.      Which Degrees Are Create the Best Stewards? This fascinating study considered which degrees produce the best credit scores and the least amount of debt. Hint: that MBA isn't likely to help you out with your debt load! And hurrah for pharmacists!

4.      Boring Men and the Women Who Love Them: Ann Voskamp reflects on the real truth about romance and boring men.

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