Gratitude, Prayer, Spiritual Growth, Suffering
John Beeson
Thankful in 2024

Have you had hard 2024? Are you looking forward to the page turning to a new year? I think of dear people in our family at New Life who have lost loved ones, who are battling cancer, mental illness, whose marriages ended, or who have lost jobs. I’m so sorry if 2024 was a hard year for you.

May I invite James to one of the open seats at your Thanksgiving table? Let me warn you, though, James is the uncle who shoots straight. You might not like what he has to say. But you know he always speaks truthfully and with a heart of love for you.

Thankful in 2024
Christian Living, Culture, Politics, Spiritual Growth
John Beeson
Vulgar Authenticity

Who is your favorite celebrity? Your favorite political pundit? Your favorite politician?

Why are you drawn to these individuals? Maybe it is their personality. Perhaps it is because you respect their convictions. Possibly, it is because of their unique style.

Taylor Swift might be the most beloved celebrity in the world. Many have commented that one of the reasons that Swift has cultivated such a devoted following is her accessibility and down-to-earth qualities, from what she wears to the love stories she writes about in her music.

Vulgar Authenticity
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

Christian Living

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Consuming Alone

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Consuming Alone

In this series we’ve tried to help pull us out of our fish tank and examine the water we swim in every day: the water of consumerism. We’ve examined how the waters of consumerism have impacted our experience with the local church and found that impact has been largely negative. The next two weeks we will talk about the way it has engaged our devotional life and worship life before closing by discussing how it has impacted our lives as stewards.

When growing up it was fairly common to talk about “your personal relationship with Jesus.” Salvation, similarly, was couched in very personal terms: “Have you asked Jesus into your heart as your Lord and Savior?” Those statements aren’t wrong, but they only begin to get at what the Christianity of the New Testament. In the gospels and the letters in the New Testament those who are invited to participate in Christianity are called into a new family, are asked to welcome a new kingdom, and are called to live in a radical new community. The invitation to salvation went far beyond one’s “personal relationship with Jesus,” inviting one into a new community, new way of life that was lived out in a new family.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

Americans’ Not-So Warm Feelings Toward Evangelicals: I think the biggest news here is that 20% of Americans say that they don’t know an evangelical. That is fairly significant news regarding our cultural retreat.

Types of Honor and Shame Cultures: This interesting article breaks down the earth into five basic types of honor-shame cultures.

Foolish and Slow of Heart: Chris Bruno asks: How does your life fit with God’s mission? “[T]heir stupidity was not rooted in a lack of intelligence. It was rooted in their inability to see how their lives fit with the story of the Bible.

9 Myths about Abortion: Kevin DeYoung on abortion myths, including myths about the availability of abortion historically, the number of deaths from back-alley abortions, and how mainstream our abortion laws are.

Visiting Famous Sites Via Google Earth: Thanks to Tim Challies for sharing this fun video.

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Consumers at Church, part II

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Consumers at Church, part II

We’ve been discussing the impact of the water we swim in in 21st century America – consumerism—on our spiritual lives. Last week I took a look at how unique our situation is in the context of 2,000 years of church history. The notion that you have any decision to make on the church you attend would be a completely foreign idea to the experience of two millennia of Christians around the globe.

The point of such an observation isn’t to shame our current context or even lament the fragmentation of the church (those would be discussions for another day). Rather it helps us see the strangeness of the reality that, for most contemporary American Christians, there is a lengthy period of shopping for a church that happens when one moves or, for most, if anything happens within their church context that upsets or unsettles them. The days of being buried in the church where you were baptized and married are long gone for most.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

Hawaii’s Lava Hose: This is the stuff kids’ dreams are made of.

How Shallow Are Most of Your Decisions? Phil Cooke shares stunning research from Princeton on just how shallow our decision-making is.

Foster Care As the Way of Christ: Darren Carlson's thoughts echo some of our experience with foster care. “Foster care can be a part of dying daily. When we think of denying ourselves and taking up our cross, many of us do not think that mundane life is what Jesus had in mind…. Surely [Jesus] knew that included changing diapers with gloves to avoid infections, lying awake with a meth-addicted baby, signing up your children for fewer activities because of visitations… receiving other questions wondering if you are sacrificing your own children in the process, and more.”

How to Study the Bible: Simple and helpful method by my friend, Benjamin Vrbicek: O-I-A: observe, interpret, apply.

The Importance of Teachability: A thoughtful reflection by Nicholas Batzig on why a commitment to teachability is so critical.

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Consumers at Church, part I

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Consumers at Church, part I

We have been exploring in this series the impact of how our identity has been shaped as consumers in 21st century America. Last week we reflected on Jamie Smith’s profound book, Desiring the Kingdom, and his insights into how consumerism shapes who we are. In the next two posts, I will apply those insights into how we engage the local church. In today’s post I want to consider just how strange our current posture of selecting a church is in an historic context. That statement might not naturally draw you in, but it’s only when we are able to see how alien and strange our current reality is that we can begin to consider how to diagnose our condition and, Lord willing, be cured.

The notion of “church shopping” first becomes a possibility in 20th century America.

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The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan

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The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan

I first read Bunyan's masterpiece in college. It was lost on my youth. Being groomed by some thoughtful literature professors who had an allergic reaction to allegory I found the book dull on every level. I thought it was trite, preachy, simplistic, and I didn't connect with it on an emotional level.

I picked up the book again because of a nagging suspicion that it was me, not Bunyan that failed in our first meeting. I'm so glad I did.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations
  1. Long Hours and Laziness: "Sometimes we work long hours because we're lazy." Insightful reflection by the always good Andrew Wilson.
  2. The Future of Christian Healthcare Sharing: Healthcare prices continue to dramatically outpace inflation. In its wake, there has been a growing alternative of health care sharing (our family is part of Medishare). 
  3. How to Discover Your Calling and Hope in the Workplace "My work station is my worship station." Ken Costa, investment banker, and one of the founders of the enormously impactful organization, Alpha, talks with Carey Nieuwhof.
  4. Tucson drone video: A beautiful video that captures some of the beauty of Tucson.
  5. The Art of Neighboring by Jay Pathak: Everyone believes we should love our neighbor. But do we?

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Consumers at the Mall

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Consumers at the Mall

Jamie Smith’s profound book, Desiring the Kingdom, lays out a captivating description of the shopping mall as seen through the eyes of a Martian. In doing so, Smith gives us new eyes to see the ways in which the mall speaks cultural truths.

Smith exposes three truths that the mall tells us about ourselves as consumers and I’ve added a fourth:

1)      “I’m broken, therefore I shop.” The mall latches onto our own sense of deficit and insecurity; it creates desires and offers fulfillment for those desires, whether it is a PS4 or a new wardrobe or a salty soft pretzel coupled with a tart and sweet lemonade.

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The Art of Neighboring by Jay Pathak

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The Art of Neighboring by Jay Pathak

A book on how to be a good neighbor? Seriously? What next? A book on how to pour a bowl of cereal?

But we need it. As simple and intuitive Jesus's simple command: "love your neighbor as yourself" seems, there is a huge gap between us agreeing with it and us living it out. That has certainly been the case for us. Of the eight places my wife and I have lived in our sixteen years of marriage, four of those locations we were flat out bad neighbors -- completely absent, and only two of those locations I can say we've been good neighbors.

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We are Consumers

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We are Consumers

Like it or not, we are consumers. Just as a peasant in feudal 13th century Normandy was inextricably a farmer, so we, 21st century westerners, are inextricably consumers. That isn’t to say the 13th century farmer or the 21st century consumer is reduced to that identity, but it is undeniably a part of how the farmer or the consumer thinks, feels, believes, and acts.

That consumerism, then, profoundly shapes the way we view the world and our faith. We can’t help but view our faith with the eyes of consumerism. That might feel like an off-putting statement. I realize that consumerism is thrown around as a dirty word and our natural impulse is to distance ourselves from it.

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