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

love

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The Top Ten Ways to Lead in Your Home (and Organization, Too!)

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The Top Ten Ways to Lead in Your Home (and Organization, Too!)

In the past post we considered the biblical priority of leading in our homes before stepping into leadership callings outside of our home.

When I was asked to speak to our Mom’s Matter group on leading well in the home I was a bit intimidated. I felt far from equipped to speak as a man to women on the topic of leadership. And so, I did the only thing I could think of: I asked wise, godly women who were also great leaders. Starting with my wife, I began to listen to the advice my female friends offered on leadership in the home and beyond.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. The top ten fears in America: Chapman University finds, “The top 10 fears in the 2023 survey suggest that Americans’ fears center on five main topics: corruption in government (number 1), economic concerns (numbers 2 & 10), war and terror (numbers 3, 4, 8, & 9), the harming or death of loved ones (numbers 4 & 5), and pollution of drinking water (number 7).”

  2. As the outer is peeled away: Tim Challies reflects, “In the past few years, I have watched a number of dear friends grapple with terrible and ultimately terminal illnesses. I have watched people I only ever knew to be whole and strong fade until they were broken and weak.

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What Our Two-Year-Old Foster Child Taught Me About Care

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What Our Two-Year-Old Foster Child Taught Me About Care

With our daughter’s recent graduation, I’ve been thinking a lot about parenting and was reminded of this post that I wrote several years ago. I hope it’s helpful to you.

Valentijn was hand-in-hand with the Department of Childhood Services worker. Chubby Romeo snuggled in the crook of her arm. The aid had just driven the boys from the shelter, where they had spent three weeks. Cute roly-poly Romeo was ten months old at the time and well adjusted. It was two-year old Valentijn who had been impacted the most significantly. This was the third time Valentijn had been removed from his home. He was affectionate but fragile and without boundaries.

As the Department of Childcare Services Specialist filled out the transfer paperwork to make our foster care official, Valentijn sat on my lap and pulled out the decorative pine cones from the bowl on the table and chucked them to the ground, one by one.

Not knowing what it looked like to love and discipline him well, I sat there, frozen, and let him disassemble my wife’s handiwork. From that first moment, I knew parenting these two would prove to be a much different task than raising our two biological children.

Our first nights with the boys were a disaster. Accustomed to the environment of the shelter, Valentijn wanted the lights on and woke up often through the night. Learning how to put Valentijn to bed over the next months provided a crash course in how to care well. Learning how to care for this traumatized boy was a steep curve.

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The Anti-Hero's Final Lesson: Love

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The Anti-Hero's Final Lesson: Love

Do you know what Jonah’s final recorded words were?

Were they words of repentance? Words of gratitude? Words of praise?

Nope. They were words of spite. The last words that Jonah speaks are, “Yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die.”[i]

Those are not words motivated by suffering or grief. Those are words that come straight out of the hateful heart of our anti-hero, a prophet who cannot bear that God would have compassion on a city he deemed worthy of destruction and upset that the God who provided a plant for shade for him would allow it to wither.

The compassion of God knows no bounds. He orchestrates the salvation of a city that every Jew would have longed to see the destruction of. A city that was not only a military threat to the Israelites, but whose pagan worship was a stench to those loyal to the one true God.

It is the Hero who has the final say in Jonah. These final words reveal God’s love and call us to this deep compassion:

“You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?”[ii]

The book of Jonah closes with a glimpse of the compassionate heart of God. Within the final verses of Jonah we see some incredible truths about the depth and power of God’s love:

God’s love is attentive:

Like a caring spouse or parent, no detail is left uncared for by our compassionate God. God’s compassion for his stiff-necked prophet is so deep, he grows a weed up over Jonah to shade him from the sun even as hatred boils in Jonah’s heart for those God loves. God’s love is for the big things (saving a city of 120,000 from destruction), but it also for the small things: Jonah’s discomfort in the heat, and even for the animals. Isn’t that final statement “and also much cattle” beautiful? God cares not just for the people of the city, but for the cattle of the city. God’s love extends to his creation.

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So Much More Than “Sending Good Thoughts”

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So Much More Than “Sending Good Thoughts”

Your co-worker has just shared with you that her husband was just diagnosed with cancer. You press in and provide a listening ear. But as the conversation closes, what do you say? Nothing? That you will pray for her family? Or do you ask if you could pray with her right then?

I’ve done all three, and there are circumstances where all three are wise and godly responses. But usually praying for a friend with a request then and there is the best response. There have been far too many times when I have not prayed with someone who needed prayer or told them I would pray for them later when the most loving thing I should have done for them was to pray with them right there.

Offering to pray for someone in the moment can feel awkward. Your mind races: do they even believe in God? What god do they believe in? Are they going to be offended if I ask?

Why is it worth the risk to pray for someone in need? And how do you do it?

When we pray for someone, we demonstrate Christianity is so much more than mere platitudes.

One of the most frequent responses I’ve observed on Facebook from unbelievers when encountering difficult situations with others is their promise to “send good thoughts.” The statement itself concedes that it is nothing more than a platitude. What does it look like to “send good thoughts”? Will the one who promises to send them follow through? What happens when those “good thoughts” are sent? Will they have any impact? On all counts: no, and assuredly not. When we say “I’ll pray for you” for many non-Christians, they hear a promise as empty as “sending good thoughts.” By actually praying with them then and there, you are demonstrating that you are not just offering a sentiment, not just dropping an empty platitude, but you will follow through.

When we pray for someone, we demonstrate we have really heard our friend.

Praying out loud with your friend shows that you have really heard them. As you ask God to intervene in the situation and you echo back specifics they mentioned and reflect to God emotions they may not have even stated out loud, your friend can hear your attention to them.

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6 Things You Should Do Before You Leave Your Church

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6 Things You Should Do Before You Leave Your Church

So, you’ve decided to leave your church: you’re moving, or you’ve come to a doctrinal impasse, or there has been conflict that you’ve tried to navigate, but the church has been unwilling to biblically walk through a peacemaking process to bring about reconciliation.

As a pastor, every person who leaves the church hurts. As a pastor of ten years, there have been hundreds that have left the churches I’ve served at and I can only think of a very small handful that I was glad to see go. Every goodbye is painful.

But, as we discussed last week, there are times to say goodbye (although a lot fewer than we are encultured to believe). When you say goodbye, say goodbye well. Sadly, in today’s culture, most of us say goodbye very poorly (usually by not saying goodbye at all, just slipping away). We’re called to say goodbye in a harder, but better, way.

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The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God by DA Carson

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The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God by DA Carson

DA Carson is one of the clearest and deepest thinkers in the Reformed evangelical world. In The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God Carson tackles what is perhaps the most difficult issue for Reformed thinkers to grapple with: if the God of the Bible is sovereign, can he really be loving?

Before making his case for what the love of God looks like, Carson grapples with the distortion of the love of God. In Carson’s words, “The love of God has been sanitized, democratized, and above all sentimentalized.”

Carson spends the first two chapters parceling out the love of God. First, Carson lays out what is his most significant contribution in the book: a layered understanding of the love of God. In doing so, Carson comes to grips with the multitude of ways God is talked about scripturally. For instance, how does one reconcile God’s love of the world with his love of the elect? It is a surprisingly difficult task that Carson has an elegant solution for.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1.      How America Grew Bored with Love: This is a damning indictment by David Masciotra: " It has become the stuff of cliché to read “cutting edge” cultural critics deconstruct popular love stories like Pretty Woman and Say Anything, reimagining them as predatory tales of women surrendering to sexual harassment. Never mind that the largest audiences for these films were always and will likely remain women."

2.      Are you Middle Class? Helpful little chart.

3.      Confessions of a Glory Hoarder: Cassi Crowley talks about the painful sanctification of motherhood: " Not surprisingly, motherhood threw a wrench into my self-glorification. I haven’t received nearly as much glory as I’ve been accustomed to in previous seasons. In the academic world, you get grades and diplomas. In the professional world, you get performance reviews and promotions. In the social world, you get friends and influence. In motherhood, you get dirty diapers and sleep deprivation."

4.      A Hundred Year-Old Reflection on Self-Forgetfulness: BB Warfield concludes, "Only, when, like Christ, and in loving obedience to His call and example, we take no account of ourselves, but freely give ourselves to others, we shall find, each in his measure, the saying true of himself also: “Wherefore also God hath highly exalted him.” The path of self-sacrifice is the path to glory."

5.      The Earth Below: Beautiful time lapse. Makes you want to pick up Genesis 1, doesn't it?

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Shining Idols: Uncovering and Uprooting Them

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Shining Idols: Uncovering and Uprooting Them

What are the idols of your heart? What are the ways in which you have allowed your heart which is intended to worship God, to worship the golden calves that surround us?[i] There are several ways to diagnose our hearts. Ask yourself the question: what keeps me up when I’m trying to sleep? What do I fear? What do I think about? What do I daydream about? What gets me most excited in life? What do I give myself to? What do you use your time for?[ii]

Often what we will first uncover are the superficial idols. Maybe it’s pornography or adultery, or maybe it’s alcohol, television, or shopping. Or maybe it’s fitness, sports, work, patriotism, or family. Everything can be turned into an idol. And these gods are rarely solitary.[iii] Gods open doors for gods. Culturally, we are often taught therapeutic methods to deal with these idols, often exchanging one idol with another seemingly “good” idol. We exchange pornography for patriotism, alcohol for fitness, television for family and think that we’ve fixed ourselves, but we haven’t. We are still worshiping a god. There are many churches out there who preach the good news of these better gods: family and patriotism and financial security. But these are still gods, and while they are good gifts from the Giver, they are still just gifts.

But there are deeper idols that lurk behind these superficial idols. The enemy is quite content to have us replace these superficial idols with "better" idols that serve the same function in our lives. What lies deeper? What are you trying to get when you crave coming home and collapsing on the couch and watching TV? What need are you filling when you shop?

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The Drama of Marriage

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The Drama of Marriage

In pre-marital counseling, you can almost see couples wince when I bring up Paul’s admonition to wives in Ephesians 5. Paul’s instructions to married couples begin with those fated words, “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.” That phrase has bothered many modern Christians. Those are words that denominations have divided over. And they are words that have been misunderstood by most.

Recently we were studying Ephesians 5 in our connection group. We had a rich conversation about the passage that hinged on the two most important truths in the passage. Each of those truths is grossly neglected in contemporary conversations around Ephesians 5 and each deserves to be re-examined.

First: Paul argues in Ephesians 5 that marriage is a God-ordained drama that points to something bigger than us. Again and again in the passage, Paul tells us that our marriages are a play that God has designed to point to his relationship with the church. Would you re-read the passage with me and look for all the times Paul likens the wife to the church and the husband to Jesus in this drama?

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