Christian Living, Spiritual Growth, Wisdom
John Beeson
Don't Avoid the Dark Room

As I sit at our dining room table, a black-and-white photograph of bananas hangs next to our fiddle leaf fern. My wife shot and developed the photo for a college photography class. Angel didn’t know it then, but she was in the waning years of film photography. Much of her class was spent teaching students to develop film properly.

Developing film required the use of a dark room. One would go into a room that had no light. Even the most negligible levels of light can destroy a negative. The film cassette was opened, the film was removed and placed into a reel. That reel was placed into a film tank, covered with liquid film developer at just the right temperature, and agitated periodically.

Don't Avoid the Dark Room
Leadership, Vocation, Wisdom
John Beeson
A Career of Leadership Lessons

Nearly two years ago my mom retired as Department Head of Speech and Hearing Sciences at the University of Arizona.. My mom is one of the most skilled leaders I’ve had the chance to learn from.  Here is my interview with her on leadership lessons she learned over the decades.

When did you first think of yourself as a leader?

The first leadership position I had was serving in student council in junior high. I didn’t think of it as much as leadership as the fact that I got involved. I cared.

A Career of Leadership Lessons
Recommendations, Finance, Identity, Relationships, Wisdom
John Beeson
This Week's Recommendations

  1. How much money do I need for retirement? A helpful article from Life Institute no matter how old you are.

  2. Sin causes anxiety, too: Casey McCall with a helpful article reflecting on connection (sometimes) between sin and anxiety, “Christians today would do well to consider sin as a possible cause of mental illness even as we follow Murray’s advice to avoid pinning all mental illness on sin.”

This Week's Recommendations
Biblical Studies, Spiritual Growth, Theology, Wisdom
John Beeson
David's Worst Sin

What was David’s worst sin? Every Sunday School child knows the answer to that question: his adultery with Bathsheba and murder of her husband Uriah (2 Sam. 11-12).

There’s no doubt that David’s double sin against Bathsheba and Uriah is heinous. Following David’s sin, his family begins to implode. David’s son Amnon rapes his daughter, Tamar, Absalom murders Amnon in response and then attempts to overthrow his father and is ultimately killed. David’s sin was a direct violation of two of the most sacred moral laws: adultery and murder, and his family or reign would never be the same.

David's Worst Sin
Recommendations, Family, Marriage, Relationships, Religion
John Beeson
This Week's Recommendations

  1. Faithfulness in an inside-out world: This is a good one from Andrew Noble, In today’s age, people are to find out what’s inside first, and then they are to express it outward. Charles Taylor describes this as “a culture of authenticity.”

  2. Fight brain rot by reading books: This one is written to Gen Z, but applies to everyone. Luke Simon writes, “What surprised me most was how different reading was from scrolling. My phone had trained me to skim, to consume quickly, and to expect instant gratification. Books demanded something deeper: focus, patience, and the willingness to sit with ideas that don’t immediately resolve.”

This Week's Recommendations

History

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1.       9 Questions to Ask Yourself to Prepare for 2018: Scott Slayton with a thoughtful list. I like especially his questions: “What are my roles?” What two changes will make the biggest difference,” and “What two things do I need to stop doing?”

2.       How Your Husband Defines Romance: Thoughtful advice from Dennis and Barbara Rainey, "When a man is rejected often enough, he typically internalizes his anger, his hurt, and his disappointment until such time when the rejection drives him to one of several reactions—none of them are good." This ought not to be taken as license from men who feel rejected, but as good advice for wives who want to love their husbands well.

3.       Why Being Tough as a Leader Fails: Kerry Patterson is excellent on leadership and conflict. He reflects, "“I yell at my employees because it’s the only thing that works,” say a surprising number of leaders I’ve consulted with over the years. Parents often take a similar path with their kids. “They only respond to threats. So, I mostly threaten them.” Of course, when you interview the employees or the kids, they don’t subscribe to Hunter Thompson’s theory of leadership. That is, they don’t believe that the newest and hottest motivational tools are fear and loathing. They prefer respectful reasoning."

4.       Six Times It's Time to Quit Your Job: Jeff Gilmer at Vanderbloemen asks, " How do you discern whether this is just a season, or if it’s a bigger sign that you should be looking for your next opportunity?"

5.       Protecting Children from Abuse: Tim Challies interviews  Boz Tchividjian about his important new book, The Child Safeguarding Policy Guide. He begins the interview sharing this heartbreaking statistic, " Research has consistently found that approximately 1 in 4 females and 1 in 6 males will be sexually victimized before their 18th birthday. With 75 million children in the United States, this translates to almost 15 million children who will be sexually victimized over the next 18 years!"

6.       The Spread of Christianity: A shocking visual representation of the spread of Christianity around the globe.

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Always Being Reformed

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Always Being Reformed

Today we celebrate the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. But unlike the work of Christ on the cross, this side of heaven, God’s work on his church will never be finished. We celebrate the Reformation, but, by the power of God, we are always being reformed.[i]

1500 years after Christ had called to the church to a radical resurrection-faith, the church had sold that cruciform grace for a religion that was more about moral conformity, more about earning your way into God’s favor, than it was about the transformative grace that flowed from a Savior who died and was resurrected that we might be multiplied into his children.[ii] We are always in danger of missing out on what God is doing with us. But reformation is always one open heart away.

The year was 1516 and a 33 year old professor was teaching a class on the book of Romans[iii] at a small university in the small town of Wittenberg, Germany: population 2,000. He was pierced by these truths: that salvation was a gift of God, secured by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The shocking truth that we must be righteous to be saved, but that righteousness could only come from God rocked this monk’s world.[iv]

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This Week's Recommendations (Reformation Day Edition)

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This Week's Recommendations (Reformation Day Edition)

Next week we celebrate the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther nailing his 95 theses to the door of the Wittenberg church. This event set off a series of events that would culminate in the Protestant Reformation and the church as we know it today. This week's recommendations point us to those events.

1.     How the Protestant Reformation Started: This is a great summary of the transformative events of 500 years ago in Germany, " You probably know at least one thing about Martin Luther: that he nailed the 95 theses to a church door and defied the Roman Catholic Church. This was Luther’s declaration of independence from Rome. The truth is, this is historically inaccurate. Yes, October 31, 1517, would turn out to be the first hint that the Western world was about to be turned upside down. But Luther’s act on October 31, 1517 was not an act of rebellion. It was, in fact, just the opposite. It was the act of a dutiful son of mother church."

2.     A Brief History of the Father of the Reformation: Vance Christie shares the beginning of Luther's story, "October, 2017, marks the 500thanniversary of the igniting of what became known as the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther is generally considered the father of the Reformation. Luther’s nailing his “95 Theses” to the Castle Church door in Wittenberg, Germany, on October 31, 1517, is commonly cited as the event that sparked reformation fires. While there had been other reformers and reformation efforts before Luther, he certainly was the leading human instrument in the much fuller reformation movement that God brought about in Luther’s era."

3.      John Wycliffe: The Morning Star of the Reformation: Vance Christie shares the story of John Wycliffe, who lived a century before the Protestant Reformation began and who, in his life, paved the way for the work of the Reformation. Christie reports, “Wycliffe challenged a wide range of medieval beliefs and practices: pardons, indulgences, absolutions, pilgrimages, the worship of images, the adoration of the saints and the distinction between venial and mortal sins. He gained the greatest opposition by rejecting the doctrine of transubstantiation, the belief that in Christian Communion the bread and wine (or juice) become the actual body and blood of Christ. Wycliffe believed, rather, that the bread and wine are symbols of Christ’s body and blood, that Christ is present in the communion elements sacramentally but not materially.”

4.      The Reformation PiggyBackers: And now for a smile: Luther was having a splendid Reformation Day. Until those pesky other protestants start trying to improve his Reformation.

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Jesus and the Eyewitnesses by Richard Bauckham

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Jesus and the Eyewitnesses by Richard Bauckham

I have thumbed through this book many times before, skimmed chapters, and recommended it to many people. It's about time I finally dove in and worked through this masterpiece. And it really is a masterpiece. Bauckham's Jesus and the Eyewitnesses is jaw-dropping in its scope and the force of the argument Bauckham puts forth.

Bauckham's thesis is fairly simple: the four gospels represent a compilation of eyewitness testimony of the life of Jesus of Nazareth and as such need to be taken seriously as we consider the Jesus of history. To the conservative such a thesis might seem rudimentary while to a liberal such a thesis might seem untenable. Both audiences shouldn't dismiss Bauckham quickly, though.

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Consuming Worship

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Consuming Worship

Last week we took a more positive turn as we considered how our identity as consumers impacts our devotional lives. We continue in that positive direction as we consider our experience as corporate and individual worshipers in today’s consumeristic environment.

Throughout this series I have tried to provide a broader comparative historic context. The inclusion of songs in worship was present from the earliest days of the church. Paul incorporates what appear to be familiar songs in his writing, John shares songs in Revelation, and of course the Psalms provided a hymn book for the early church. The earliest house church discovered in Syria dates to the early 3rd century AD and is covered with beautiful frescoes. The church from the very beginning was worshiping artistically.

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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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Bad Religion by Ross Douthat

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Bad Religion by Ross Douthat

I was really surprised by this book. I wasn't expecting something as thoughtful and constructive in tone, but should have known better given Douthat's strong portfolio.

The first half of the book is a post-WWII history of American Christendom. In dealing with such a broad scope (Douthat carefully divides the history into three camps: evangelical, mainline, and Catholic) in such a small space, Douthat has to make some choices in winnowing the story down. There are some that I took exception to, but overall, I he writes a compelling history and even in his editorializing, he usually hits the target.

In the second half of the book Douthat takes on various heresies that have crept into all three of the camps in various ways (the gnostic gospel, the prosperity gospel, the gospel of self, the politicized gospel, etc).

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