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

, , , , ,

This Week's Recommendations

, , , , ,
This Week's Recommendations

1. How to Meet God at Your Lowest Point: Jane Marczewski guest posts over on Ann Voskamp’s blog. She has cancer and has been given only a 2% chance of survival. Jane recently auditioned on America’s Got Talent and received the golden buzzer. You’ll want to read her post and then watch her memorable performance. She writes, “I have heard it said that some people can’t see God because they won’t look low enough, and it’s true. Look lower.”

2. Not this Man, but Barabbas! Keith Mathison nails it here, “I hear and read Christians almost every day saying that their biggest concern is the direction in which the United States is headed. Or they are most concerned about the collapse of Western civilization. Granted, many people are concerned about these things because of their love for their children or grandchildren… The problem occurs when our main concern is fundamentally a political concern.”

3. 5 Cultural Shifts We Need to Know to Reach Our Neighbors: Mark Clark begins with this truth, “The highest good is now individual freedom and happiness.” All five are helpful in considering how to reach our neighbors with the gospel.

4. Romanticizing Death: A fellow Tucson pastor, Rod Hugen reminds us that to understand the power of Jesus conquering death we must come face to face with the ugliness of death. He concludes, “I live in the time when death is still the enemy, but with the sure knowledge that death is defeated and will one day be no more. It is an exhilarating time, freeing me to seize life and to take joy in the journey, knowing that Christ’s resurrection is a reality. Death defeated is far superior to death romanticized.”

5. PT Barnum’s 10 Most Famous Human “Freak” Show Attractions: If you’ve seen The Greatest Showman you’ll appreciate how this video humanizes the various people that Barnum promoted (and often exploited) in his show.

,

50 Books That Changed My Life (and Might Change Yours, Too)

,
50 Books That Changed My Life (and Might Change Yours, Too)

Books hold a unique power to change. Even the infrequent reader can remember the time when a book grabbed their heart. Whose eyes didn’t brim with tears as Wilson Rawls paints the picture of Old Dan’s sacrificial death in Where the Red Fern Grows? Who doesn’t remember the first time they went through the wardrobe into Narnia?

Through books we get to sit at the feet of some of the smartest and godliest men and women ever to lived and learn from them. Books have changed my opinion of myself and God. Books have taken me to places I’ve never been. I’ve grown in faith and empathy through what I’ve read.

Books have changed my life. Here are the fifty books I believe have changed my life the most. I offer them to you with the hope that they might change your life, too.

, , , , , ,

This Week's Recommendations

, , , , , ,
This Week's Recommendations

1. The Solution to America’s Theological Salad Bar: Paul Peterson deconstructs the 2020 State of Theology Findings that leave any astute reader scratching their head. How is it the case that 72% of Americans agree that “There is one true God in three persons: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.” And yet, “52% of Americans claim, ‘Jesus was a great teacher, but he was not God.” The results are baffling. Peterson tries to make sense of the mess. He explains that, “It helps to know what most Americans believe, but even more so, we must grasp how Americans believe, if we might engage them with the truth. Those cultural Christians who attend church on Christmas and Easter can select orthodox-looking statements about God on a survey. Still, their approach to knowledge prepares them to depart from Christian teaching further down the salad bar line. A culture that ingests “Be yourself” will also absorb “Believe yourself.””

2. How Much Money is Enough? (And Other Wisdom from Proverbs): We just finished a series on the book of Proverbs. There are some excellent little gems Geiger has in here we didn’t even get to!

3. The Wait of All Waits: Brittany Lee Allen reflects on waiting and then asks these convicting questions, “All of our waiting points to the wait of all waits. Jesus is coming back. We will see him face to face and leaving all this world behind us, we will live in eternity with our Savior. Do we yearn for that day as much as we do for earthly things? Do I long for Jesus to return more than I do for another baby? Sometimes I wonder if I hope to see his face more than I hope for healing from chronic pain?”

4. Congregations of Bruised Reeds: My friend Benjamin Vrbicek shares that we all are the bruised, but serve a God who sees our bruising. He offers this pastoral wisdom, “Over the last decade of pastoral ministry, I have learned the time required to heal from abuse and other trauma is always longer than I would have guessed.”

5. Shadows in the Sky: I’m a total sucker for videos that display a sliver of the breathtaking glory and power of our Almighty God. Don’t multi-task when you watch this one.

, , , , , ,

This Week's Recommendations

, , , , , ,
This Week's Recommendations

1. Why Was Jesus Crucified? Have you ever wondered why God ordained that Jesus would die by means of crucifixion? Here is a thoughtful answer by JA Medders. His four answers are that it was because of the shame of crucifixion, because of the criminal and legal ramifications, because of the public nature of crucifixion and because deaths were certified by Rome in crucifixion. It’s well worth the read.

2. Scholars Now Believe Job’s Friends Were First-Year Seminary Students: This satirical piece from Babylon Bee had me laughing out loud. “Scholars analyzed the level of annoyingness of the speech patterns of Job's friends and compared it with someone who just started studying the Bible, theology, Greek, and Hebrew.”

3. Faithful in Obscurity: Barbara Lee Harper asks us to identify who Bartholomew, James the son of Alphaeus and Thaddaeus, and Simon the Zealot were (do you know?). She then makes this admonition, “Don’t fret over whether your work seems “important.” Faithfully do what God has called you to do, for His honor and glory.”

4. Cohabitation Among Evangelicals: A New Norm? A discouraging report by David Ayers at the Institute for Family Studies. He says that, “cohabitation is a “new norm among young, professing evangelicals.” It is stunning that this has quietly come to pass among adherents to a form of Christianity that emphasizes radical obedience to an inerrant Bible, forbids all sex outside marriage, and emphasizes being distinct from ‘the world.’”

5. Weird Al Yankovic’s Weirdly Enduring Appeal: This is one of my favorite podcast episodes of 2021 (you probably need to already appreciate Weird Al to truly enjoy it, though). Sam Anderson claims Weird Al Yankovic is not just a parody singer — he’s “a full-on rock star, a legitimate performance monster and a spiritual technician doing important work down in the engine room of the American soul.” I loved learning more about Weird Al’s backstory.

, , ,

This Week's Recommendations

, , ,
This Week's Recommendations

1. The Fading of Forgiveness: Tim Keller reflects on a troubling trend. He says, “Today, after the renewal of the racial justice movement in the wake of George Floyd’s death, the emphasis on guilt and justice is ever more on the rise and the concept of forgiveness seems, especially to the younger generation, increasingly problematic. What are the influences that are making forgiveness problematic in our culture?” Later, Keller offers this insight, “When a society rejects the Christian account of who we are, it doesn’t become less moralistic but far more so, because it retains an inchoate sense of justice but has no means of offering and receiving forgiveness.” The article is long but well worth the time.

2. The Wastefulness of Beauty: Michael Rennier reflects on God’s invitation for us to step into creating with delight, even when what we create is impermanent. He concludes, “Make art. Make beauty. Toss it away. Trace your name in water. Cast beauty in your wake, a seed that may be forgotten and buried forever or, perhaps, to be retrieved at some future date by hot, warm nervous hands. Either way, it makes no difference. It’s all love.”

3. There’s No Such Thing as the Lizard Brain: Lisa Feldman Barrett undermines this and other myths on the brain explored. She says that research tells us, “What does all this mean for you? You’re not a simple stimulus-response organism. The experiences you have today influence the actions that your brain automatically launches tomorrow.”

4. How Religious Commitment Varies by Country: Africa, Middle East, and South Asia rank highest of countries with a high religious commitment. It’s telling to see the very low religious commitment in Canada, Europe, and China. The United States lands in the middle at 53% of those saying religion is important to them.

5. Iguana Chased by Nest of Deadly Snakes: Get out your popcorn and check your heart rate for these two minutes of adrenaline.

, , ,

This Week's Recommendations

, , ,
This Week's Recommendations

1. How My Mind Changed About End-of-Life Care: Justin Taylor explains well the challenge of considering how to make end-of-life decisions. He shares that, “Many Christians—myself included—have assumed that being pro-life means extending life as long as possible. If, for example, a feeding tube can provide the food and water, or a ventilator can pump oxygen, then we should always use all the means at our disposal to preserve a human life.”

2. No Condemnation, but What About Consequences? Courtney Reissig reflects on her cervical cancer and concludes, “Sin is serious. Sin has consequences, sometimes deadly ones. But sin has a remedy. In him, it is finished. Shame has no place. There is no condemnation for those who trust in Christ—not now, not ever.”

3. How to Know You’ve Become a Pharisee: Randy Alcorn offers this parable. He begins, “Imagine yourself moving into a house with a huge picture window overlooking a grand view across a wide expanse of water enclosed by a range of snow-capped mountains.”

4. Save Me From Myself: My friend Anne Imboden transparently shares about her struggle with social anxiety, the fall-out of that struggle, and God’s transformative work in her heart. She begins, “There’s a big part of my story most people don’t know about. I don’t share it very often and when I do, the response is usually one of surprise. No, I’m not talking about my ten years of playing softball. Though really, why is everyone so dumbfounded that I have a history of athleticism? (Actually, don’t answer that.) I’m talking about depression and social anxiety; demons I faced for years in my early adulthood. “But you’re such an extrovert!” “I’d never have known! You’re so comfortable in a crowd!” “Really? You’re always so confident around people!” These things are all true, though my extroverted tendencies have been dialed back considerably since my recovery.”

5. Ouch!: If you like physical comedy, enjoy this 60 seconds of ridiculousness.

, , , , ,

This Week's Recommendations

, , , , ,
This Week's Recommendations

1. Growing My Faith in the Face of Death: Tim Keller reflects on his spiritual journey through his diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, “This change was not an overnight revolution. As God’s reality dawns more on my heart, slowly and painfully and through many tears, the simplest pleasures of this world have become sources of daily happiness. It is only as I have become, for lack of a better term, more heavenly minded that I can see the material world for the astonishingly good divine gift that it is.”

2. Is the World Getting Better or Worse? Yes. Colin Smith explains this question is at the heart of the parable of the weeds. He says, “You look at the weeds of evil in the world and you wonder: How can there be a God who is good when his world is in a mess like this? Is God really in control? Can I actually believe in a sovereign God in a world like this?”

3. Four Evangelical Approaches to Race, Politics, and Gender: I found this way of breaking down contemporary Christian perspectives on these hot button issues by Kevin DeYoung illuminating.

4. Four Barriers That Keep You From Being a Multi-Directional Leader: Trevin Wax’s thoughts on what he calls “multi-directional leadership” are significant for any leader today. He explains the difference between this and “one-directional leaders”: “One-directional leaders are skillful in spotting and thwarting threats to the sheep that come from a single direction of the field. But because they focus on fighting battles on one front, they leave the flock vulnerable to problems from other sides.”

5. 600 Drones Recreate VanGogh’s Famous Paintings: This is pretty fun.

, , ,

This Week's Recommendations

, , ,
This Week's Recommendations

1. Help! I Don’t Like the Music at My Church: Matt Merker deals with a struggle of many. He asks, “How do you feel about the music at your church? Are you ever disappointed by it? Why?” I appreciate this piece of advice, “Often we feel distaste at a style of music because we are less familiar with it. Take a music appreciation class. Ask friends for album recommendations. Try to understand why other people enjoy the music your church uses. It may not become your favorite genre, but you might be surprised to find that your tastes are more flexible than you once assumed.”

2. I Just Can’t: Excellent post on when we can’t, but Christ can. Susan Lafferty says, “So, today, when I hear myself saying, ‘I just can’t,’ it’s a signal for me to check. And ask. Am I piling a to-do list on my life without seeking Him first? Am I trying to do this all in my own strength? Am I willing to keep in step with the Spirit, learning from Him?”

3. A Typesetting God: Melissa Edgington with a “it just so happened” story of God’s abundant goodness.

4. When It’s Time to Leave A Church: I wrote a series on this topic a couple of years back that I’m thinking about refreshing because it’s a significant issue right now, in the meanwhile, HB Charles offers solid advice on how and when to leave a church. I appreciated this point, “Consider how your transfer will affect others. Christianity is not about you. It’s about Christ and others. If your heart is right, you will feel the weight of how your potential move will injure or influence others. If you can leave without affecting anyone, you were not a good member.”

5. Transient 3: 6 months of storm chasing in a jaw-dropping 3 minutes.

, , , ,

This Week's Recommendations

, , , ,
This Week's Recommendations

1. What Is the Unforgivable Sin? How to Know if You’ve Committed It: Clear and concise explanation by Murray J. Harris. Harris compares the two different references to the unforgivable sin. He concludes, “In sum, blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is unforgivable, not because God is unwilling to forgive but because the repentance that is the necessary precondition for God’s forgiveness is absent. The heart has become so hardened that no need for repentance is recognized, and so no request for forgiveness is offered.”

2. Why Sexual Immorality is a Big Deal: Darryl Burling begins, “Western society argues that the human body is insignificant. We are told that our bodies are of no value in determining identity and that sex is purely a physical need—of no significance to our personhood.”

3. Only the Christian Faith Begins at the Top: Tim Challies with an astute observation, “A plumb line hangs from a point that has been fixed above it. As long as the laws of gravity remain intact, that line will always hang perfectly straight so that whatever parallels it will be equally straight…But imagine if the builder of that tower had taken that same line and anchored it below instead of above.”

4. What Do You Pick Up From Your Pastor’s Preaching? It’s true, isn’t it, that you pick up on what stirs your pastor’s heart? What do you pick up from my heart?

5. How to Respond to the Problem of Evil: In this brief video Greg Koukl illuminates why the existence of evil supports the existence of God.

Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

, , , , , ,

This Week's Recommendations

, , , , , ,
This Week's Recommendations

1. Meant to Be: How a World War II veteran cheated death four times to find love. Bonnie Allen’s story on Reg Harrison is absolute perfection. It begins, “Reg Harrison slides his leather wallet out of his pocket and removes a weathered black-and-white photo of a beautiful woman. ‘I've been carrying that since 1946,’ said the 98-year-old. ‘Our love story? I think it was meant to be.’”

2. iGeneration and iDentity: Kyle Borg with a sobering warning to Generation Z on what the impact of them being formed by social media will mean: “Young people aged 8 to 12 spend an average of six hours a day on technology, and teenagers aged 13 to 18 spend an average of nine hours a day streaming videos, looking at pictures, listening to music, and playing games. That's more social time in a given day than is spent with parents, peers, or sports teams.”

3. Americans Less Optimistic About Race Relations: Aaron Earls reports, “A new study from Lifeway Research conducted prior to the 2020 election finds U.S. adults are less likely now than in 2014 to agree with the statement “We have come so far on racial relations.” Today, 46% say we have made worthwhile progress—28 points fewer than in 2014 when 74% said the same.”

4. Just Keep Going: David McLemore urges us forward. He encourages us, “But God is not letting up on us because he’s not giving up on us. His call is not to take it easy when it gets hard but to press in all the more, especially when it’s hard. The Lord loves us deeply, but he doesn’t coddle us, and he won’t let us coddle ourselves either. He knows the cancer that time is to our zeal, but he has fresh mercies every morning.”

5. In Defense of Um, Er, and Like: Such an enlightening video on why we have verbal hesitations and how they can, like, help.

Sign up to get The Bee Hive delivered to your inbox and receive a free 50 Books That Changed My Life (and Might Change Yours, Too) download!