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
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

Nature

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1. They Don’t Know It, But Most Americans Are Unitarian Universalists: Jonathan Tjarks, who grew up as a Unitarian Universalist, is concerned for Americans, “Most Americans are Unitarian Universalists. They just don’t know it. Only 0.3 percent of Americans identify as members of the denomination, but its belief system has come to define our culture. The central message of the UU church is that you can believe anything you want—except that there are objectively right and wrong beliefs.

2. You Will Regret Giving In: Garrett Kell’s excellent post concludes, “You will not regret resisting sin. You will regret giving in. Choke temptation by taking refuge in Jesus and the means of grace he provides: pray to God, flee the scene, call a friend, and make a plan. As you begin to fight afresh, remember that what sin promises so much now will only steal your joy in God.”

3. Americans Finding Solace in Streaming, Not Scripture: Aaron Earls reports that while Americans’ engagement with the Bible had a bump in the early days of the pandemic, that interest has shrunk while Netflix only continues to grab more and more of our time.

4. Creating Defining Moments: My friend David Towne shares the story of how a lousy day at the doctor’s office turned into a moment of tearful gratitude of one of the nurses. I love this story.

5. The Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards: Some of these are sure to make you smile.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1. All 22 Pixar Movies Ranked:This is pretty fun. This list is pretty close to mine. I would go 1) WallE; 2) Up; 3) Incredibles. What are your top 3 favorite Pixar movies?

2. Christians, Please be Meek During this Year's Elections: Jason Carter puts forward this helpful proposal for Christians this election year: "If meekness in general is subordinating our passions and rights in order to love another (think: the example of Christ), then I’d argue that meekness on social media during a time of extreme political divisiveness might be subordinating our own political passions and rights (at least on social media) in order to preserve the priority of our witness to Jesus Christ to our unbelieving friends."

3. 5 Leadership Lessons from Jethro: What can Moses's father-in-law teach us about leadership? I appreciate Paul Alexander's reflection on how easy it is to become the lid of our own leadership.

4. Japan's Successful Nationwide Lost-and-Found System: Healthy systems can bring about radical changes in behavior. In Tokyo, 80% of wallets are returned to their owners (compare that to New York City's 10% rate of return).

5. The 2020 Audubon Photography Awards: Check out the picture of the Northern Jacana by the youth winner. Wow.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1. The Day My Foster Son Leaned into Me: Russ Meek shares the moment his three-year-old foster son began to trust him. He shares, "Andrew won’t remember this moment, and God willing his body will forget the scarring on his heart. But for these past three years he has carried the trauma. Tense, unwilling to relax even for a moment, and constantly on high alert, he’s carried in his body the wounds of abandonment, of exposure to places and things no child should see, and of the absence of a person to help him navigate this world wrought with danger and the unknown."

2. 5 COVID-19 Problems that Have Gotten Worse for Pastors: Aaron Earls begins with this stat about disunity, “In April, 8% of pastors said they were facing disagreement and complaints within their congregation. By July, that number had jumped to 27%.” The rest of the stats are just as discouraging.

3. Pastor, Don't Imply That Church is Optional: Trevin Wax with wise counsel for pastors. He shares, "When I was a student in Romania, American evangelists would come and preach, and they’d sometimes say things like, “I’m calling you to trust in Jesus, not to become part of the church.” The translators would always change that last part."

4. 7 Lies the Church Believes About Singleness: One of the most thoughtful writers on this subject, Sam Allberry offers his wisdom on the subject. His third misconception is that "Singleness means no intimacy." He explains, "Our culture (and often the church) has so conflated sex and intimacy that we find it hard to conceive of any forms of intimacy that are not ultimately about sex."

5. Explore the Alps: Stop what you're doing and immerse yourself in three minutes of God's glory.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1. Should Christians Use Recreational Marijuana? Kevin VanHoozer offers wisdom to Christians in a nation with broadening availability to recreational marijuana. VanHoozer explains that we need to have an understanding of what marijuana does as well as a biblical understanding of recreation. He says, "'Recreation' originally referred to the process of spiritual refreshment: the act of restoring or reviving the soul. Today, it usually refers to things people do to relax or have fun. Recreation is an activity of leisure—leisure being “free” time. It can be solitary or communal. In either case, it is formative, either spiritually or socially."

2. It's True! Stress Makes Your Hair Grey: Sometimes old wive's tales are real… and I’m living proof of this one! Jennifer Walter reports, "Scientists knew losing these cells in hair follicles robs hair of its luster, but they had yet to pin down the mechanism responsible for triggering the depletion of melanocytes. Now, scientists finally have an answer: the fight-or-flight response."

3. Marriage Was Never Meant to Fill the Empty Spaces: An excellent and intimate reflection by Lauren Washer. She reminds us, "Marriage cannot fill the empty spaces but it helps point us to the God who emptied himself so we could be filled up with the knowledge of him. As we continuously seek to fill ourselves up with the knowledge of God, through his word and through prayer, he fills us with everything we need for life and godliness."

4. Respectable Sins of the Reformed World: Tim Challies offers an important critique of the sins that can go unchecked for Reformed Christians. He concludes his list with this doozy: “Impugning. To impugn is to dispute the truth, validity, or honesty of another person’s motives. And closely connected to disputing another person’s motives is suggesting that you know the truth behind them.”

5. Kangaroo Rats are Furry, Spring-Loaded Ninjas: As an Arizonan I particularly enjoyed these four-minutes. Our Creator has quite the imagination, don't you think?

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1. The World as 100 Christians: Fascinating breakdown of what global Christianity looks like today. The researchers report that, "A typical Christian today is a non-white woman living in the global South, with lower-than-average levels of societal safety and proper health care. This represents a vastly different typical Christian than that of 100 years ago, who was likely a white, affluent European."

2. The Economics of All-You-Can-Eat Buffets: How do all-you-can-eat buffets make money? What happens when someone tries to trick the system? It’s particularly interesting to read this during COVID-19. I wonder if buffets will ever come back?

3. What if Tolkien Lived in Middle Earth Too? I’m re-reading The Lord of the Rings right now, so I particularly enjoyed this analogy of the Trinity.

4. The 100 Most Spoken Languages: Loads of fascinating information in this infographic.

5. The National Parks Illustrated Based on Their Worst Review: This is pretty funny. "There are bugs...and they will bite you on your face." Ha!

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1. 8 Ways Temptation Actually Works for Our Good: Tim Challies shares eight ways that an old puritan speaks timely truth about our struggle with temptation. He begins with this truth, “Temptation works for good when it sends the soul to prayer.”

2. Critique Gently, Encourage Fiercely: Scott Sauls, who lives out what he says in this article. He begins with this interesting thesis, “This loneliness of ours is not a flaw. We aren’t lonely because something is wrong with us. We are lonely because something is right with us.”

3. The Sin of Racism: Timothy Keller with a thorough consideration of the Bible, race, and racism. He reflects on whether it is appropriate to talk about systemic, not just individual racism, “One of the greatest debates today about racism has to do with the question of ‘systemic’ or ‘structural’ racism. The claim is that there is deliberate, individual racism, but also there are social structures that are supported by the dominant racial group that exclude and oppress racial minorities even though the individuals sustaining the systems may themselves not individually hold or practice conscious racist views and behaviors. In this view, even if individuals are not personally racist, they bear corporate guilt and responsibility for not working to dismantle the structures that oppress.”

4. Where Will the Media Take Us Next? Seth Godin's short post packs a punch. You'll want to read his thought experiments where he compares the media to two classrooms.

5. One of World’s Top Nature Photographers Shares His Secrets: It’s amazing how much work goes into one photo.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1. Why I Stopped Playing Video Games: Reagan Rose explains, “Gaming had become an idol for me, so I had to smash it. For you, it might be sports, politics, social media, or something else. As Christians, we must be willing to lay aside anything that keeps us from full-hearted obedience to our Master, Jesus Christ, even especially if that thing is something we really love. For me, that was video games.”

2. “Obedience Will Make You Miserable”: Scott Hubbard reflects on this tired lie Satan loves to tell us. He shares that, “Like the elder son in Jesus’s parable, such people follow the Father’s rules with a sigh (Luke 15:29). Their holiness is all pursed lips and sober glances. “Such is the cost of righteousness,” they remind themselves. “We must relinquish pleasure on the path to heaven, you know. Holiness, not happiness, is the true good.”

3. Two Ways Every Christian Can Be Pastoral: My friend Benjamin Vrbicek offers two great ways every Christian can pastor. He concludes, "Paul writes that when each part of the body of Christ works properly, the body “builds itself up in love.” I often think of this as a beautiful reversal of the game of Jenga. When you play Jenga, as the wooden structure gets taller, the whole thing becomes less stable. But that’s not the way Paul says it should be in local churches. When each part engages in pastoral ministry, the church gets more stable, not less."

4. 4 Ways to Get Students to Be Ready to Be Adults in Church: Josh Hussung provides sound advice for a serious problem--young adults leaving the church after high school. He says, "I’m convinced that at least part of the awkwardness of that transition has to do with students not fully being integrated with the broader church body before they leave."

5. Building the Perfect Squirrel Proof Bird Feeder: Here is a twenty-minute (!) video of silliness that I loved. Mark Rober builds what amounts to an America Ninja course for squirrels. Rober’s delight and ingenuity is infectious.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1. My Son Did Not Live One Day More or Less Than God Planned: Erik Reed shares the powerful story of grieving over his 15-year-old son's death and holding onto the truth of God's sovereignty. He shares, "Before Kaleb existed in the womb, he existed in the mind of God. From the foundation of the world, God determined that Kaleb Reed be born on March 8, 2004. Not only is this true, but He wrote the days of Kaleb’s life in His book, before one single day came to pass. God wrote the days of his life in His book and He didn’t write it in pencil."

2. Medical Ethics, Gender Identity, and Children: Robert George and Ryan Anderson weigh in on this complicated issue. They conclude, "Prudent legislation is needed to prevent adults from interfering with a child’s normal, natural bodily development. “Gender affirmation” procedures violate sound medical ethics. It is profoundly unethical to intervene in the normal physical development of a child as part of “affirming” a “gender identity” at odds with bodily sex."

3. Come to Me All Who Have COVID Weariness: My friend Benjamin Vrbicek with a timely and poignant post. He says, “The flowing current of COVID sadness can drown the strongest swimmer. You might already be gasping for air. If you feel this way, come to Jesus. Pray to him. Read his word. Belong to his church... Come and enjoy the freedom found in being loved by the Savior, not controlled by a harsh slave master.”

4. Navigating Different COVID-19 Recovery Convictions: I have felt the heat of different convictions and share Costi Hinn’s concern that “one of the ways the enemy will seek to divide our ranks within the church is tempting us to use our opinions against each other. IF the Devil has his way, we’ll be throwing stones of accusation from all sides, calling the cautious people ‘soft,’ labeling the optimists of being ‘reckless.’”

5. Do We Really Want to Go Back to Normal: Trevin Wax considers some of the ways he hopes that COVID-19 re-shapes us. He says, “What if this period of forced isolation can help us see the end result of radical individualism’s trajectory, so that in the end we come out of our enclaves and homes with a stronger commitment to our communities, our churches, and our country?”

6. Behind the Scenes of One of the World’s Top Nature Photographers: I love the combination of skill, creativity, and perseverance Yarrow demonstrates in his craft.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1. The Problem with 'Spiritual But Not Religious': This phrase actually masks what the person is trying to say, David Qaoud asserts. His argument is simple and helpful.

2. Think Maturity Rather Than Change: My friend John Starke offers wise counsel. He begins, "Many Christians want to change. We do not like what we are prone to do or the behavioral impulses we display. We long to be different. The New Testament gives us good reason to think we can. “Transformation” is the imagery it often uses."

3. Possibilities and Preferences as We Adjust Our New Normal: My friend Jeff Johnson tells the story of how the chicory root made its way into coffee and how that changed the taste of a long line of coffee drinkers. He concludes, “A crisis induces variation – which is the first step in a successful innovation process. Maybe necessity is not the mother of invention, but the mother of variation. It reshuffles the raw ingredients you have to work with, and the present crisis is doing just that. Not returning to the way things looked before, but to a better version, informed by what we’ve learned – we can hope that that becomes true along many dimensions of our society.”

4. The Handshake: A Eulogy: Tyler Grant believes that the handshake will be one of the victims of COVID-19: a social custom that may never return. He considers what a handshake meant, “There was an intimacy engrained in a handshake — one between people that was culturally acceptable, before now, and allowed you to look someone in the eye while skin-to-skin. This brief touch had always been instructive. Who exudes gravitas. Who projects safety. Who hasn’t worked with their hands.”

5. The Amazing Hummingbird: The engineering of the hummingbird defies the imagination.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1. Like Lovers, Parted by War: Rebecca McLaughlin compares the departure of an American soldier in WWII to the socially distanced church. She concludes, “While we’re forced to be apart, let’s long for the day when we come together again. Let’s long like Steve Vlaskamp longed for his wife, and like Captain Harville longed for his family. Let’s set our sights on the soon-to-come day when we’ll be back in church once more. And in this time of short-term deprivation, let’s long for the long-term: when we’ll gather from every tribe and tongue and nation to worship Jesus as one body together (Revelation 7:9), when the Lamb will be on his throne, and final peacetime will – at last – have come.”

2. Banning Plastic Bags Isn't Going to Save the Planet: Bjorn Lomborg with a controversial opinion about why this slogan doesn't deal with the actual issue.

3. How the Virus Got Out: This is stunning work by the New York Times that visually depicts the spread of COVID-19 from one seafood market in Wuhan to every corner of the globe. You need a NYT account, but can get one for free right now.

4. How Porn Kills Healthy Sexual Relationships: Tim Barnett begins, "Neuroscience is clear: porn affects your brain. But it does more than that. It also affects your heart. That is, it changes how we relate to other people... For instance, husbands who regularly use pornography have trouble connecting sexually with their wife."

5. 5 Signs Your Character is Slowly Imploding: Carey Niewhof shares that we need to be aware of the gap between our public and private life, "Character rarely implodes suddenly. Instead, there’s almost always a slow erosion until eventually your character implodes. Consequently, wise leaders keep an eye on any gaps between what they say publicly and how they live privately."

6. There Once Was a Farmer: Are you struggling with discouragement? This post by Christ Thomas is one of the best pieces of writing I've read in a while, and profound.

7. The Deep Sea: This interactive page is fabulous! You're going to love it.

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