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

social media

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What Do Teens Believe?

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What Do Teens Believe?

Are you encouraged or discouraged about teens? If you’re a teen, what is your perception of your peers? Are you hopeful? Or pessimistic? Not long ago, One Hope released a massive global study on the state of teens worldwide. In the report, we find reasons to be encouraged and causes for concern. 

Spending time reflecting on what teens believe and do ought to help shape the way we pray for them and relate to them. I’ll process five sections of the report: Christian practice, struggles, social media, sexuality, and the meaning of life in teens’ lives and then draw some conclusions.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. Monk or missionary? These are the only options now. Ian Harbor explains how our relationship toward social media boils down to one of these two radical options. He explains, “If you are not in control of your social media, social media will be in control of you. And your life will be worse off for it. Why would you subject yourself to a worse life, poor mental health, weak relationships, and a number of other damaging factors just to watch a few mildly funny videos? Count the cost.”

  2. The hardest part of overcoming addiction: Brad Hambrick’s post is as simple as it is important. So, before you click: what do you think the hardest part is?

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. The danger of self-soothing through social media: Trevin Wax warns, “Just as perusing WebMD engenders false confidence when we quickly diagnose ourselves or our family members after a cursory look at medical symptoms, we’ve become overly trusting of the self-help gurus and self-proclaimed therapists online who give advice about various psychological maladies.”

  2. The epidemic of 2012 before the pandemic of 2020: Eric Geiger, “There has been a lot of talk about the pandemic’s impact on mental health deterioration. Stay at home orders and social distancing reduced both time with others and physical exercise, which adversely impacted mental health.

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The Danger of Ingratitude

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The Danger of Ingratitude

There is a deadly toxin that contaminates the air we breathe. It’s a poison that, if we are aware of it at all, seems innocuous to us both because everyone else is breathing it in, and as far as we’re aware of it, others are breathing more of it in than us.

The poison is ingratitude. And it is everywhere.

Everything (that I don’t have) is Awesome

Psychologists agree that social media has made us less happy. Why is that? Because the constant access into others’ lives taps into our propensity toward ingratitude. We are surrounded by neighbors with nicer cars, friends who take better and longer vacations, couples who are happier, and everyone seems to be fitter and better dressed than we are. And it’s all there for us to see tucked into that powerful, shiny rectangle in our pockets. Every minute of every day.

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The Seat of the Scoffers

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The Seat of the Scoffers

How loud are the voices of scoffers in your life? The mockers, the angry, the rude, the crass. How much ear do you give to those who tear you down rather than gently exhort or build you up?

Ours is the age of the scoffer. Hop on YouTube and type in anything remotely political and you’ll get a stream of scornful headlines:

  • Shapiro destroys feminist

  • Ocasio-Cortez slaps down Fox News

  • Jordan Peterson obliterates woke liberals

  • Whoopi Goldberg demands Meghan McCain stop talking

It’s not just YouTube. Briefly perusing popular shows over the past decade demonstrates just how harsh, dark, and biting our world is.

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The Best of the Bee Hive in 2022

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The Best of the Bee Hive in 2022

In 2017, I began The Bee Hive out of obedience to a call I knew God had on my life, but I wasn't sure who God would use my writing to shepherd. In my first year of blogging, I was encouraged to have 1,767 unique visitors to my website with 3,939 page views. I was glad that my writing was being read and hopeful that it blessed some. I was concerned that maybe after an acquaintance read the blog a couple of times out of curiosity or courtesy, the interest would diminish, and the impact would wane.

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Welcome to the Fishbowl

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Welcome to the Fishbowl

Not long ago, Southern Baptist Convention President Paige Patterson was ousted from his post at Southwestern Seminary.[i] The firing began not with a dramatic revelation, but with a public statement Patterson made some 18 years ago. In that statement, Patterson said that he had never counseled couples to separate or divorce.[ii] The trickle turned into a stream and then a torrent as other statements and counsel surfaced (including discouraging a female student from reporting a sexual assault on his campus). The external pressure from the mounting claims made Patterson’s firing all but inevitable.

I believe the outcome was just. Paige Patterson’s record is marked with ongoing abuses of power. And yet, there was a time not so long ago when he wouldn’t have lost his job. It is only in today’s world that the voices of those injured by Patterson or upset with the trustees at Southwestern Seminary would have been heard so quickly and had such an impact.[iii]There are benefits to the age of the fishbowl.

But there are dangers of fishbowl living as well. We live in a day and age where every statement is public and permanent.

Every word is public.

Every word is permanent.

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The Not-So-Insignificant Danger of Ingratitude

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The Not-So-Insignificant Danger of Ingratitude

There is a deadly gas that contaminates the air we breathe. The toxic gas appears unthreatening because everyone appears to breathe it in and breathe it out as harmlessly as oxygen.

The poison is ingratitude. And it is everywhere.

Everything (that I don’t have) is Awesome

Psychologists agree that social media has made us less happy. Why is that? Because the constant access into others’ lives taps into our propensity toward ingratitude. We are surrounded by neighbors with nicer cars, friends who take better and longer vacations, couples who are happier, and everyone seems to be fitter and better dressed than we are. And it’s all there for us to see tucked into that powerful, shiny rectangle in our pockets. Every minute of every day.

“Hamilton” came to Tucson this week and I watched as my Facebook feed was filled with pictures of those who gushed over the show. We were blessed to attend and so my heart was guarded against jealousy. But where will my heart be in the spring when I am unable to attend a show I was really hoping to go to because I have a scheduling conflict?

The Ancient Beginnings of Ingratitude.

The story of how it all fell apart is a story you’ve heard. God’s perfectly ordered creation and Adam and Eve’s response of gratitude lasts all of two chapters. God creates man and woman. He invites them to live alongside himself in perfect peace. He names them as king and queen over this paradise and grants them great latitude in their reign.

He creates a tree in the garden, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and he says “Everything is yours for taking and enjoying except this one. This one you need to stay away from.”[i] Will they be content with the 99.9% of what they were given, orwill they be discontent with the .1% they weren’t given? Will ingratitude set it? That .1% was the sliver Satan slid through.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1. When to Confront Another’s Sins: Brady Goodwin’s post is loaded with wisdom on this difficult question. He begins by sharing the importance of discerning the other person’s motivations, “If you are unsure of a person’s motivations, seek to cover their offense with love wherever possible. Extend grace, wait with patience, pray for insight and understanding, and strive to love them as Christ does.”

2. Nearly There: My friend Chris Thomas with a moving reflection on his son’s birth and recent departure from the faith. He says, “Two decades later and my son is gone. No gravestone marks his death, or memorial service to recall in our grief. Instead, my son lives apart from us. His path, he said, forked away from faith, and as he walked that wide way, it lead him away from us.”

3. Where and How Progressive Christians Differ from Jesus: I appreciate not just the content of Colton Hinson’s post, but also the tone. He says, “Most of the progressives I met were genuinely compassionate people who love Jesus (or at least their idea of him) and the Bible.”

4. 3 Crises Churches Must Address to Meet the Next Generation: Charles Holmes begins with the challenge of social media. He says, “We’ve often thought that providing students with better Christian media is the solution to winning their attention amid the barraging media of the day. But what if a better way wasn’t us trying to compete with secular content (in which, if we are honest, we will lose every time) but transcending it?”

5. Beautiful Numbers: Need some encouragement today? This is a reminder that, in spite of all of the challenges in today’s world, so much progress has been made (thank you God for your mercy to us, the undeserved!)

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The Social Dilemma

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The Social Dilemma

Are you old enough to remember retrieving the newspaper in the morning? My dad would crack the front door every morning, stroll out to the driveway, grab The Arizona Daily Star, tuck it under his arm, and bring it to the kitchen. He would sit at the breakfast table, bowl of granola in front of him, with the news of the day spread out on 15” x 22” of grey paper.

Today, most of us get the news before we reach the kitchen. Sitting on the toilet, we scroll our 3” x 5” devices and the news of our friends and the world is piped into our palms via Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

This change is not neutral. While there are many ways we can point to social media as a benefit (connection with friends across the world, and providing a voice for those who wouldn’t have had the ability to speak to larger groups, for instance), it doesn’t come without a cost.

Netflix’s The Social Dilemma[i] raises the alarm about the cost of social media. What are the dangers of social media? Most of us have a nagging suspicion that all is not well with our relationship with social media. But what is it precisely that we should be concerned about?

The ex-employees and leaders of various social media platforms put their finger on what some of those issues are in The Social Dilemma. These employees point out that Google, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Tik Tok, and the rest are leveraging the work of psychologists to capture their prize: an ever-increasing slice of our attention. They’ve weaponized our neurological rewards systems against us.

Let’s examine four specific dangers of social media:

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