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

Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1.     Red Octopus vs. Swimmer Crab: Thanks to Tim Challies for sharing this cool video that ends in an unexpected way.

2.     When Your Child Confesses They’ve Watched Porn: It’s everything a parent fears. How do you react?

3.     Visual Jewish calendar: What are all of the Jewish holidays? And when do they happen? This is a great visual calendar.

4.     Why Shel Silverstein’s Classic The Giving Tree Makes Us Cry: Anthony Ford with a poignant article reflecting on loss and the fact that we can never return to what once was.

5.     The Far Reaching Impact of the TV Dinner: The TV was born out of World War II military rations and has had an enormous impact on women in the workforce and our diet.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1.     Your Not-So Perfect Life Verse: This Babylon Bee (a satirical Christian website) had our family gut-laughing. My life verse? Job 19:18: “Even young children despise me; when I rise they talk against me.”

2.     Foolish and Slow of Heart: Chris Bruno asks: how does your Bible 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."

3.     True Beauty and Our God: "Imagine you could create a montage of every beautiful thing you have ever seen or wished for. Even so, you have not yet begun to comprehend the beauty of God. He is “the sum of all desirable qualities.”

4.     What Makes Lord of the Rings so Powerful? Tim Challies reflects on the fact that one of the things that makes the Lord of the Rings so moving is its connection with history. He calls for us to reclaim this lost art.

5.     What’s the Deal with National Splurge Day? Every day is a holiday! Where did all these crazy holidays come from? The Planet Money uncovers the history behind our fetish for strange holidays and how surprisingly old it is.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1.      Watch the World’s First Roller Coaster: The fun history of the roller coaster.

2.      The Common Yet Neglected Problem of Burnout: Some excellent infographics on burnout. 80% of Americans say they have experienced burnout. 26% of men and 31% of women experienced burnout for longer than one year.

3.      Why God Will Disappoint You, and Why That’s Good: Zach Barnhart reflects on the powerful thought that "God loves us enough to disappoint us." 

4.      8 Ways God Works Suffering For Our Good: Tim Challies on how God beautifully and purposefully uses suffering in our lives.

5.      Where Atari and Chuck E Cheese Came From: The same man founded Atari and Chuck E Cheese. This is his fascinating story. 

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1.      The Rescue Begins: The story of Easter begins long before Jesus arrives on the scene. I love The Gospel Project’s videos.

2.      Learning Styles are Bunk: Joy Pullman on the research that has debunked "learning styles" and why continuing to use this framework is counterproductive.

3.      Is My Desire Sour? Melissa Kruger gives us helpful questions to help analyze whether our desires are godly or not. The last question, "What is my desire while I wait?" might be the most important.

4.      Rules Without Reasons: Mike Leake: "If I’m being honest, there are some things in the Scriptures that I simply do not get. Some positions which I believe are biblical still make me a bit uneasy. At times, I simply do not understand why God set these things up the way that He did. But I’m asked to obey them nonetheless."

5.      The Science of Creating High-Performing Companies: Paul Zak is a neuroeconomist. Yup. I guess that's a thing. This is an interesting podcast where he talks about the impact of trust on an organization. 

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1.      The Fight Between a Volcano and Life: Footage of new growth struggling to survive in an otherworldly landscape at the foot of Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano.  Thanks to Tim Challies for pointing to this cool video.

2.      How to Raise Empathetic Kids. Rebecca Randall with a thoughtful reflection on the impact of parents on their kids: “The students’ values seemed to echo what they thought their parents and teachers valued more: When asked, 48 percent chose achievement as their top value, 30 percent chose happiness, and only 22 percent chose caring as a top priority.”

3.      The Hardest Walk: Taylor Brenner reflects on what makes foster care so difficult and so rewarding.

4.      You Don’t Have a Communication Problem: Tony Morgan reflects on the difficult truth that as leaders we probably don’t have a communication problem, we probably have a vision, complexity, or systems problem.

5.      Professor Joe v. the IRS and Turbo Tax: The UShas the most complicated tax system in the world? Why can’t we make it simpler? How one man took on the system and why he failed.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1.      An Adorable Duet: A four year old and her dad sing “You’ve Got a Friend in Me”... yup, it’s just as cute as is sounds.

2.      Don’t Let Satan Blackmail You: Tony Reinke: "In Christ we walk in the light of freedom that repels back into the shadow the greatest blackmailer this world has ever seen.”

3.      Which Degrees Are Create the Best Stewards? This fascinating study considered which degrees produce the best credit scores and the least amount of debt. Hint: that MBA isn't likely to help you out with your debt load! And hurrah for pharmacists!

4.      Boring Men and the Women Who Love Them: Ann Voskamp reflects on the real truth about romance and boring men.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1.      5 Secrets of Superior Decision-Makers: Craig Groeschel was an acquired taste for me, but it’s stuff like this that has won me over. He packs an incredible amount of helpful content into these 26 minutes. You can watch via this link, or you can also listen via podcast.

2.      To Be a Diaper Changer: Nick Batzig reflects on the daily grittiness of being a real world changer.

3.      How to Love God and Your Neighbor through Your Work: We work well because we first love God and we then love our neighbor. James M Hamilton Jr. offers this reflection.

4.      Time Audit: Where do you really spend your time? JD Grear with this helpful resource on how to analyze where we are spending our time. 

5.      State of Inquiry: On this TED Radio Hour a number of speakers explore what it looks like to ask good questions. I particularly appreciated Eric Haseltine’s final session where he compares knowledge to an anchor that can hold us in the harbor. He quotes Isaac Asimov: “The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discovers, is not, ‘Eureka! I’ve found it,’ but ‘That’s funny!’”

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1.      Alpine Adventure Video: Gorgeous Alpine footage taken in Europe.

2.      Advice of Two Older Saints: JI Packer and John Stott's advice from near the end of faithful Christian lives.

3.      The World and Everything In It: My go-to daily news podcast from a Christian perspective. Some of my favorite segments are the Legal Docket where they report on cases before the Supreme Court and Culture Fridays with John Stonestreet.

4.      5 Ways Porn Lies to You: Every sin speaks lies. Tim Challies verbalizes the dangerous lies porn tells us.

5.      Why Does Everything Have to Be Politicized? A timely post by Trevin Wax on consumerism and how signals we send out to prove who we are. My series on consumerism will conclude with a post that makes similar connections.

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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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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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