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

pride

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Uprooting Our Political Identity

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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.

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Why Satan Wants You to Think You're Alone

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Why Satan Wants You to Think You're Alone

“I’m sure no one has ever told you this.”

“It’s so bad. You are going to think terrible things about me.”

“Everyone would hate me if they knew what I was thinking.”

“There is no one who loves me for me.”

I’ve heard each of these helpless words from those who sat on the couch in my office. They are raw, vulnerable, and heartbreaking confessions. The words leak their hearts’ crippling loneliness and fears that they are destined to remain alone.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. Outrage is not a fruit of the Spirit: Randy Alcorn with a timely reminder, “Outrage appears to now be a core value of some Christians. Righteous indignation is sometimes appropriate, e.g. when it involves the killing of children, or false doctrine promoted at the expense of the gospel. But when outrage/anger becomes our default, we lose all credibility and, in my opinion, become poor ambassadors for Christ.”

  2. Your holy deeds are not filthy rags: John Piper clarifies an oft-misunderstood verse. He says, “God does not despise the righteous deeds of his children done by faith. What verse 6 is referring to in calling righteous deeds “filthy rags” is the hypocritical works that flow from nothing.”

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. I will not forget you: Kathryn Butler offers hope in the midst of dementia, “Walking alongside Violet feels like watching death in slow motion. As the quirks and values and personality traits I’ve come to love about her fade away one by one, it’s as if I’m watching Violet herself dwindle and vanish.”

  2. Critical dynamics of criticism: Nick Batzig begins, “It is probably fair to draw the conclusion that there is a universal dislike for personal criticism and correction. Nothing reveals the pride that resides in each one of our hearts so much as being on the receiving end of criticism.”

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The Dust Mite and the Spider

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The Dust Mite and the Spider

One afternoon, the spider and the dust mite met in the cool underside of a misshapen pillow.

Greetings and pleasantries concluded, an awkward silence grew. Intimidated by the size of the spider, the dust mite boasted, “Have you ever noticed how similar I am to an eagle?”

“You? Like an eagle?” the spider questioned scornfully.

“Oh yes,” the dust mite responded, gaining confidence. “I am like an eagle. Like an eagle, I have a head and legs and lay eggs.”

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How to Waste Your Counseling

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How to Waste Your Counseling

I forgot that I knew him. Our pre-marital counselor sat behind his oak desk with a large smile peeking out from under his white mustache. His gentle eyes reassured me. Angel and I slid into the love seat, facing him. It was my first counseling session. Angel’s, too. We were here for pre-marital counseling.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. May a Christian Gamble? Jim Newheiser warns, “Gambling is an attempt to circumvent God’s way of gaining wealth. Even if you do not expect to become wealthy personally through gambling, you are participating in a system that undermines the work ethic of our entire society.”

  2. Public Trust in Pastors Falls to Historic Lows: Aaron Earls reports, “Trust in pastors fell for the third straight year and reached an all-time low. Around 1 in 3 Americans (34%) rate the honesty and ethical standards of clergy as high or very high, according to the latest Gallup survey.”

  3. Not Enough of Me to Go Around: Kristen Wetherel reflects, “I want so badly to “help [everyone] when [they want me to].” I have told my daughter that I’m not an octopus—but boy, do I wish I was. (At least in the sense of having eight capacities at once. I do not wish to become a sea creature with tentacles rather than arms…).”

  4. Why Should I Forgive? Guy Richards confesses, “Deep down inside, I don’t really want to forgive my wife, my son, or my co-worker—at least not initially. I want instead to hold on to my anger and pride, knowing that I really was right all along. I want to prop up my feelings of superiority and self-respect and to feel vindicated for acting the way that I did.”

  5. Local Man Crushing Bible-in-a-Year Plan After Switching to Jesus Storybook Bible: Funny stuff from the Babylon Bee.

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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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Why I Need Your Help to Be the Pastor I'm Supposed to Be

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Why I Need Your Help to Be the Pastor I'm Supposed to Be

Moses was crushing it. The people loved him. He had lines out the doors for those who were hoping to hear a word from God or a word of wisdom from Moses.[i] Then his father-in-law, Jethro, showed up and told him he was leading poorly, not well.

Moses had every reason to not listen to Jethro’s advice. There were no real indicators Moses’s leadership style wasn’t working. And yet Moses heard Jethro’s advice and humbly heeded it.

In his letter to the church at Ephesus, Paul makes it clear that this is no mere stylistic choice for a godly leader. Healthy leadership is characterized by “equip[ing] the saints for the work of the ministry.”[ii] Did you catch that? Healthy leadership isn’t characterized by doing “the work of the ministry” but rather by equipping the congregation to do the work of the ministry.

That doesn’t exempt pastors from doing ministry. In fact, part of the way that we equip is by modeling ministry. But it does mean that our primary responsibility is equipping others to do ministry. It means that part of every pastor’s role should be mentoring and discipling, equipping and deploying. That means that in Dustin’s role in charge of connections at New Life, his primary role is to equip others to connect in our congregation, not be the one-stop connection shop for our church.

When we are equipping, our congregations are healthier, more unified places. Paul says in Ephesians that the outcome of leaders equipping the saints is twofold: unity of heart and spiritual growth and maturity. Who doesn’t want their congregation to grow in unity and maturity?

And yet, almost every impulse of the pastor and of the congregant fights against this biblical model.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1. Woe is Me: Abigail Dodds reflects on the sin of self-pity and how to be free from it. She reframes the biblical story, “There is a sense in which the entire story of the Bible exists to wake us up from the stupor of deadly self-pity and cause us to receive the only pity powerful enough to save us — the pity of God.”

2. Autumn and the Beauty of Death for the Christian: Tim Counts with a beautiful piece reflecting on fall in New England. He concludes, “Winter can be long and bleak. After the leaves fall, our trees will be barren here for over 6 months. But lift your heads, brothers and sisters, because spring follows winter. It may be fall now, but springtime – and Resurrection Morning – is coming.”

3. What Christians Can Bring to Online Conflict: Greg Morse with an important reflection on the power of fire and our tongue. He concludes, “And instead of setting flame to everything it comes in contact with, it hopes, ‘May my teaching drop as the rain, my speech distill as the dew, like gentle rain upon the tender grass, and like showers upon the herb.’”

4. The Goodness of the Wrath of God: My friend Sarah Sanderson with a very helpful consideration as to why even God’s wrath is good news. She asks an important question: “Practically speaking, if you have a high view of God’s sovereignty (as I always believed that I had), it means, (or I always took it to mean) that whatever happens is whatever God wanted to happen. If God has the power to do anything, and the ability to control everything, then surely anything and everything that happens has been willed and controlled by God?”

5. Pride is Meant to Be Swallowed: My friend Anne Imboden shares about pride, humility, and love. She shares of the moment repentance breaks through her son’s proud heart, “When I hold my arms out to reassure him, the weight of sin is lifted and the freedom of humility releases his heart. Owning up to God first helps us own up to others, because we can approach them with a heart that has been humbled by God’s great grace.”

6. How to Stop Hating Yourself: Emma Scrivener’s piece is clear and important. Maybe you need to hear these truths today.

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