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

spiritual disciplines

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Spiritual Disciplines and Blogging

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Spiritual Disciplines and Blogging

Today I’m thrilled to announce that our audiobook for Blogging for God’s Glory in a Clickbait World has hit the virtual shelves at Amazon. My co-author, Benjamin Vrbicek and I have lowered the price of the audiobook and the regular book for the launch, so grab a copy and share the link with someone who might benefit.

Below is a portion of one of the chapters in the book: Spiritual Disciplines and Blogging. I hope it whets your appetite! (And check out the very end of this post for an opportunity to win a free audiobook.)

SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINES AND BLOGGING

I was told not to equate preparing for sermons with devotional Bible reading. There is truth in that encouragement. If we professionalize spiritual disciplines, then our spiritual life tends to become stuffy and transactional from expecting that clocking in yields certain results. On the other hand, I’ve learned if the posture of my heart in my sermon preparation isn’t devotional, then my preaching becomes dry and academic. If I am not growing spiritually through my pastoral ministry, I’m not pastoring as God intended. I would say the same thing to engineers, teachers, stay-at-home moms, and salespeople. I’d say the same thing to bloggers.

Blogging ought to grow us in holiness. When we blog for God’s glory, the discipline of writing becomes integrated into the web of our spiritual disciplines. We believe blogging can be cultivated as a companion to spiritual disciplines and even as a spiritual discipline in its own right. Before we consider this, we want to send up a warning flare: challenges for the Christian blogger abound.

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New Year's Eve Recommendations

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New Year's Eve Recommendations

1. Mental Health Declines Among Americans, Except Weekly Churchgoers: Fascinating study by Gallup that Aaron Earls explains. He says that, “Those describing their mental health as excellent has been between 42% and 51% since 2001. In 2020, that fell to 34%.”

2. Are We Experiencing Another Reformation? George Barna says that based on a new survey, “’American Christians are undergoing a post-Christian Reformation,’ says Dr. George Barna, Director of Research at the CRC. Unlike the Protestant Reformation was to return to the foundational teachings of the Bible, this modern movement is one where Americans are redefining biblical beliefs according to secular values.”

3. Should Christians Use the Enneagram? This is a well-balanced article by Tyler Zach, who shares some fascinating history of the Enneagram and concludes, “After decades of the church deploying reason-based apologetics, the door is wide open for us to use a self-awareness tool like the Enneagram to connect hearts and minds within a culture that has split itself.”

4. Pornhub Removes Majority of Videos: Fantastic news as the anti-trafficking ministry Exodus Cry has taken on the pornography giant. A recent expose by the New York Times revealed that, “Videos of assault involving underage girls, rape, and other exploitative content continue to be posted and reposted on the user-generated porn site, and the company is not doing enough to stop it.”

5. A Friend Who Sticks Closer Than… a Hobbit? Carissa Jones with a wonderful post on friendship and hobbits. She concludes, “We need those friends in our lives. Those who will carry us to the throne room when we are too weak and weary to take ourselves. We need to be those friends as well, sharing others' burdens when we can and lifting them up when we cannot. And when we've reached the end of our earthly journeys, may we look at our friends and proclaim, ‘I am glad you are here with me. Here at the end of all things.’”

6. The Gentle Tug of Spiritual Disciplines: Craig Thompson reflects on how the tug of spiritual disciplines is different than the tug of his dog, “Toby makes sure that he is the center of my attention when he needs something. The Lord tends to call to us in small whispers. Listen carefully. Your spiritual disciplines may never demand your attention. But they do promise rest and communion with the Lord if you will just slow down.”

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1. 11 Things You Might Think are in the Bible, But Really Aren’t: #11 is particularly insidious.

2. Bible Reading and Church Attendance Drops During COVID-19: Barna just released a report that confirms what I’ve been hearing anecdotally: many are spiritually floundering during this season. The reality is that 2020 has just sped up the decline in basic spiritual disciplines.

3. Let Bible Reading Get Back to Basics: To that end, Jen Wilkin suggests five basic tools that can assist your Bible reading. I particularly appreciate her suggestion to keep a Bible timeline.

4. Christian, You Are Able Not to Sin: Zach Howard turns to Augustine for advice when we enter this familiar place, “Sinning as a saint can cause two opposite (and equally) wrong reactions. On the one hand, we can respond with prideful presumption in our power to overcome sin. On the other hand, we can react with helpless despair in the face of our persistent sin.”

5. Were the Gospels Meant to be Taken as Historical Narrative? Do the gospels fail the test of providing historical attestation? Timothy Paul Jones responds to to Reza Aslan's accusation that the gospels, "are not, nor were they ever meant to be, a historical documentation of Jesus’s life. They are testimonies of faith composed by communities of faith and written many years after the events they describe."

6. Iceland: The Land of Fire and Ice: Who wants to take a trip with me?!

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For My Kids on the Occasion of My 40th Birthday

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For My Kids on the Occasion of My 40th Birthday

Tomorrow I turn 40. Lord willing, I’m about halfway done with this marathon we call life.

God has been so gracious to me. I have a godly wife who makes me laugh every day and two teenage children who grow daily in faith and wisdom. 25 and 27 years from now Camille and Soren will celebrate their 40th birthdays. This post is for them: it’s the hard-earned wisdom that I’ve accumulated over my years that I hope they can learn from. I hope it blesses you as well.

Here are the top ten truths I’ve learned in my 40 years:

1)     Seek wisdom

There is no end to foolishness in this world. Wisdom is a rare commodity. Run hard after it. Look to those whose character you admire. Listen to what they say and read what they write. When I was a kid, I was a sponge for sports trivia. I got a jolt in being able to know something someone else didn’t. In college I caught the bug for philosophical and theological knowledge. It took me until my later twenties and thirties to develop a stronger thirst for wisdom than knowledge. Accumulated wisdom is like the water of a river, it will smooth and shape the stones in its bed over time.

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A Laughing Marriage

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A Laughing Marriage

Angel and I laugh a lot. We laugh at ourselves. We laugh at each other. We laugh at life.

From time to time our family plays a game at our home where we each try to make up jokes on the spot. Angel’s nonsensical jokes are always the best. “What is faster than a cheetah and reads the Bible?” We prod for answers and then finally give up. “A nun.” The kids erupt in laughter although it doesn’t make any sense.

Outside of spiritual disciplines, I don’t think there is anything more important to the health of our marriage than laughter.  

And I’m not so sure that laughter isn’t spiritual. Here are five reasons I think laughter is a spiritual discipline:

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