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

whale

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Jonah the Anti-Hero

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Jonah the Anti-Hero

The anti-hero is the new hero. Walter White, the mild-mannered chemistry teacher turned drug kingpin in Breaking Bad, pulled you in as he ascended the heights of the underground world. Don Draper had you rooting for him during his self-destructive descent over the course of Mad Men’s seven seasons. JK Rowling’s pen had readers’ jaws drop to learn that the villain Severus Snape had more to him. And, of course, which lover of The Godfather couldn’t help but root for the complicated Michael Corleone? But the first anti-hero came long before White, Draper, Snape, and Corleone.

Jonah was Walter White before Walter White was Walter White. And yet that’s not how most of us learn the story as children. Jonah is the hero of most children’s Bibles. I still remember hearing the sanitized story of Jonah as a kid. Jonah runs from God, experiences a conversion in the belly of the whale[i], and with newfound fervor converts the metropolis of Nineveh. The end.

The problem with that telling is that the book doesn’t end there at all.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1.       Sea Lions, Sharks, Dolphins, and a Whale take on a Shoal of Sardines: This is incredible to watch.

2.       How to Ruin Your Teens for Life: Eleven ways to make sure your teen is not prepared for the future by Tricia Goyer.

3.       Entertainment and Worship: Joe Thorn with a nuanced perspective on entertainment and worship: "The nineteenth-century pastor Charles Spurgeon said, “The devil has seldom done a cleverer thing than hinting to the church that part of their mission is to provide entertainment for the people, with a view to winning them.” It may not be new, but it is increasingly popular, especially in light of our entertainment-driven culture."

4.       Will We Be Married in Heaven? Randy Alcorn responds to what he says is the most frequently asked question he gets about heaven: "there will be one marriage in Heaven, not many. That marriage will be what earthly marriage symbolized and pointed to, the marriage of Christ to His bride. So we will all be married—but to Christ... However, I do envision that people who’ve had important roles in each other’s lives will continue to be friends—and that would include a lot of people who’ve been married. So although married couples’ relationships will look different in Heaven, that certainly doesn’t mean that earthly marriage is unimportant and that God doesn’t use it in our lives in profound ways."

5.       What if There are More Categories Than Creation vs. Nurture? Justin Taylor explores the idea of creation nature, sin nature, sin nurture, and grace nurture. It's a very helpful way to think about this issue from a gospel perspective. 

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Lessons from an Anti-Hero

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Lessons from an Anti-Hero

The anti-hero is the new hero. Walter White, the mild mannered chemistry teacher turned drug kingpin in Breaking Bad, pulled you in as he ascended the heights of the underground world. Don Draper had you rooting for him during his self-destructive descent over the course of Mad Men’s seven seasons. But the first anti-hero came long before White and Draper.

Jonah was Walter White before Walter White was Walter White. And yet that not how most of us learn the story as children.

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