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

race

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1. Growing My Faith in the Face of Death: Tim Keller reflects on his spiritual journey through his diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, “This change was not an overnight revolution. As God’s reality dawns more on my heart, slowly and painfully and through many tears, the simplest pleasures of this world have become sources of daily happiness. It is only as I have become, for lack of a better term, more heavenly minded that I can see the material world for the astonishingly good divine gift that it is.”

2. Is the World Getting Better or Worse? Yes. Colin Smith explains this question is at the heart of the parable of the weeds. He says, “You look at the weeds of evil in the world and you wonder: How can there be a God who is good when his world is in a mess like this? Is God really in control? Can I actually believe in a sovereign God in a world like this?”

3. Four Evangelical Approaches to Race, Politics, and Gender: I found this way of breaking down contemporary Christian perspectives on these hot button issues by Kevin DeYoung illuminating.

4. Four Barriers That Keep You From Being a Multi-Directional Leader: Trevin Wax’s thoughts on what he calls “multi-directional leadership” are significant for any leader today. He explains the difference between this and “one-directional leaders”: “One-directional leaders are skillful in spotting and thwarting threats to the sheep that come from a single direction of the field. But because they focus on fighting battles on one front, they leave the flock vulnerable to problems from other sides.”

5. 600 Drones Recreate VanGogh’s Famous Paintings: This is pretty fun.

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The Dividing Wall of Hostility

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The Dividing Wall of Hostility

I hope you had a meaningful Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Among the many challenges in 2020, the issue of racism reared its ugly head again. Sparked by the deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and others, the conversation around racism heated to a boiling point.

As citizens of the Kingdom of God, the issue of racism ought to be personal to each one of us. The early church struggled over the issue of racism between Jews and Gentiles. We can trace the challenge through the book of Acts as well as Paul’s letters. Paul tells us that in Christ, the “dividing wall of hostility” has been “broken down” in Jesus Christ, who is “our peace” (Eph 2:14). John shares with us a multi-racial picture of the new heavens and the new earth, where those “From every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” gather in worship at Jesus’ throne (Rev 7:9). Our ethnicity will not dissolve in heaven, but rather, God will delight in our ethnic diversity gathered before him in praise.

The events of 2020 challenged me to consider how I can participate better in Christ’s reconciling work. With a heart toward growing in understanding and empathy, I spent a significant amount of time listening to various voices: some Christian, some not. While I learned from everyone, I was particularly grateful for Christian brothers and sisters who have written on this area.

What I have discovered traces the following path: learning, navigating hurt, creating gospel friendships, and working to undo injustice.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1. 4 Distinctives of a Christian View of Race: Jesse Johnson argues that, “A distinctly Christian view on race is critical because it brings clarity to our thinking about conflict in our world, and it brings hope to individuals as they seek to live in peace. And a Christian view of race is unique—it makes us stand apart from the evolutionary thinking that has gripped most of the world on this issue, and it separates us from the cultural Marxism that has forced its way into America’s current racial dynamics.

2. The Goodness of the Wrath of God: My friend Sarah Sanderson with an absolute knock-out article on why it is a mercy that our God is wrathful. She concludes, “It is good news, all of it. It means we are loved. It means that God roars over all of us, charging fierce in the face of evil, ‘Get your hands off of them. They’re mine.’”

3. 8 Prayers for the Online Dating Journey: Margot Starbuck begins, “When single folks like me—who on many days would prefer to be partnered—talk to God, our prayer life can sometimes sound a bit demanding.”

4. 8 Reasons I Stopped Stressing About Losing My Salvation: Eric Geiger begins, “The question “Can I lose my salvation” is one of the biggest questions I wrestled with when I first became a Christian. I loved Jesus but still struggled with so many things and because I struggled with so many things, I wondered if my struggles would take me outside of God’s grace.”

5. God and Mathematics: William Lane Craig’s organization with a consideration of how the laws of mathematics point to the existence of God.

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Why Don’t You Preach More About…?!

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Why Don’t You Preach More About…?!

What topics does your pastor avoid? When was the last time you heard sermon dealing with depression? Sexuality? Race? Immigration? I’ve been part of more than a few conversations with congregants who have complained either that we don’t preach enough on a particular topic (ironically, this often occurs right after we preach on that topic), or that they hope we will not be like their old church that never preached on a particular topic.

Christianity Today puts out periodic issues which focus on particular issues. In those issues, they often have polls where they report how often respondents say their pastors speak about that particular issue. Unsurprisingly, the polls always show severe neglect of the given topic. I’m grateful for Christianity Today—they do great work and I benefit from their excellent writing and reporting. But I’m wary of the criticism that pastors don’t preach often enough about any given issue for a few reasons:

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