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
Christian Living, Culture, Politics
John Beeson
Uprooting Our Political Identity

Happy election day!

In 2016, data scientists Eitan Hersh and Yair Ghitza analyzed data among registered voters to determine how often Democrats and Republicans married. They learned that 9% of marriages had the spouses registered in the two parties. Over the next four years that meager number would drop precipitously, down to 4%.

 As Jonathan Haidt and others have successfully argued, the ideological disparity between FOX News and CNBC are child’s play compared to the engineered social media algorithms that create hermetically sealed echo chambers for our political views.

Uprooting Our Political Identity

Theology

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This Week's Recommendations

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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.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1. The COVID Vaccine Has 666 Written All Over It: But That Doesn’t Matter: Matthew Halsted provides helpful clarification for the context of the Mark of the Beast. He begins with the question, “[I]sn’t there enough evidence that the vaccine is the “number” of the beast, including a bill currently before the House of Representatives (6666) and the very letters “C-O-R-O-N-A” themselves?”

2. Why is There Only One Way to Heaven? This is such a great article by Tim Challies. He begins, “It is an audacious claim of the Christian faith that there is only one way to heaven. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” we believe. Not most, not some, but all. Since all of us have sinned, all of us are lost and in need of saving.”

3. The Teachable Will Lap the Gifted: Oh my are AW Workman’s words true! He shares, “The unassuming, the unpretentious, the ones who didn’t have to lead, but who eventually led anyway because of their steady faithfulness and consistency – these friends are the ones who quietly got started in ministry, have so far persevered, and are now harvesting righteousness (James 3:18).”

4. Grief Should Always Make Us Better: Tim Challies lost his son to unforeseen and unknown medical issues late last year. He’s had a number of powerful posts on the experience. If you like this one, you should read his other posts. Challies begins, “Death is the great interrupter. Death is the great interrupter because, far more often than not, it strikes when it’s least expected. When death comes it invariably interrupts plans, dreams, projects, goals.”

5. 11 Incredible Species of Insect in Flight: Most of these look fake. Remarkable!

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Jesus’ Birth Foretells His Death: the Magi

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Jesus’ Birth Foretells His Death: the Magi

God is the best author. He loves writing stories. One of God’s authorial devices is foreshadowing. He loves dropping clues about what will happen at the end of the narrative. If you have the eyes to see, you can see clues scattered about Jesus’ final days in his early days.

The intersection of the Magi and Jesus was years in the making. The backstory of the Magi is shrouded in mystery. By digging up clues from the text and what we know of Persian culture, we can piece together who these men must have been.

Searching Priests

The Magi were likely Zoroastrian priests, educated in astronomy, astrology, and theology. Like Jews, Zoroastrians were monotheists. Their god was Ahura Mazda. Zoroastrians believed that the forces of good and evil were in an eternal struggle. Unlike Jews, their god was limited by evil forces, which were led by Angra Mainyu, the angry spirit.

Zoroastrians were taught to pursue the truth's path and build their lives on good thoughts, good words, and good deeds. Like Jews, Zoroastrians also believed in a Messiah.

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And Heaven and Nature Sing! How Jesus' Birth Foretells His Death

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And Heaven and Nature Sing! How Jesus' Birth Foretells His Death

Merry Christmas! As we enter into a day of worship today, Scripture reminds us that God made his creation to worship himself.

Jesus’ birth was ushered in by nature. Jesus was welcomed into death by nature as well. Jesus’ birth foreshadows his death.

A star declared to those who had eyes to see that the King of the Jews had arrived.

The magi ask Herod, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him” (Matt 2:2). They then depart from Herod, “And behold, the star that they had seen when it rose went before them until it came to rest over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy” (Matt 2:9-10).

What was this star? We don’t know for sure. I find the explanation that the star was Jupiter's unique conjunctions with Saturn and Mars to be the most persuasive. These conjunctions occurred in the constellation of Pisces (the astrological sign of the Jews).

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How Jesus’ Birth Foretells His Death: the Shepherds

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How Jesus’ Birth Foretells His Death: the Shepherds

Jesus’ story begins with shepherds coming to him, the lamb of God. It ends with the Shepherd being struck down and the sheep scattering. And then there is a final twist.

The story begins with sheep being drawn to the lamb:

8 And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. 9 And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear. 10 And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. 11 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. 12 And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” 13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,

14 “Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”

15 When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.” 16 And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger. 17 And when they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child. 18 And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them. 19 But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart. 20 And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them. [Luke 2:8-20]

God loves shepherds. Abel, Moses, David, and Amos are all shepherds. In Psalm 23, God refers to himself as a shepherd. It’s no surprise that God would allow these nameless shepherds to be the first witnesses of the birth of Emmanuel.

To top it off, God promised that the Messiah would be a Shepherd-King.[i]

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How Jesus’ Birth Foretells His Death: Herod

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How Jesus’ Birth Foretells His Death: Herod

The end of Jesus’ story is found in the beginning. Every detail of God-made-flesh in the manger points to the crucified Savior on the cross.

Today, we consider Herod and Pontius Pilate, two heads whose rule was threatened by the coming King: Jesus. Their political savvy could neither outmatch nor outmaneuver the true King of the Jews.

Herod the Great was raised as a Jew with ties to the Roman government. Herod’s father, Antipater, was entrusted by Julius Cesar to care for the public affairs of Judea. Familial relationships with Rome already established, Herod rose to power by cozying up to Sextus Caesar, the acting Roman governor of Syria.

The Rise of Herod

In his twenties, Herod established himself as a darling of Rome by turning Galilee into a cash cow for Rome with his successful procurement of taxes. That led to Herod’s promotion to tetrarch by Mark Antony. But all was not well. A challenger Antigonus took the throne by force and Herod was forced to flee to Rome to plea for intervention. Herod utilized every ounce of his political skill to garner the Senate’s support.

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How Jesus' Birth Foretells His Death: Mary

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How Jesus' Birth Foretells His Death: Mary

A great author tells the beginning of the story to prepare the hearer for the end of the story. Charles Dickens famously starts A Tale of Two Cities with the line, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” The reader knows that the saga that follows will entwine the strands of joy and sorrow, of righteousness and evil.

We shouldn’t be surprised, then, that God foreshadows the end of the gospel accounts at the beginning. As we examine the beginning of Jesus’ life closely, we beginning to see the end of his life as well.

In the coming weeks of Advent, let’s look together for crucified Emmanuel in the créche.

Today, we start with Mary.

Gabriel and Mary

“Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!”[i] Gabriel says to the young betrothed woman. Mary responds appropriately to the heavenly creature: with fear. Gabriel explains, “You will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”[ii]

Mary asks the reasonable question, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?”[iii]

Gabriel answers, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God.”[iv]

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1. There are Not Enough Atoms in the Universe to Model Your Brain: Gene Veith responds to this, “Elon Musk, our real-life Tony Stark, plans to announce this week the progress of his company Neuralink, whichi s dedicated to developing a Body Machine Interface; specifically, implanting a computer connection into the human brain.” In response, he shares this incredible fact, “There aren’t enough atoms in the universe to build a full model of what every cell is doing [in the brain].” Wow.

2. Five Ways God’s Anger is Not Like Ours: Colin Smith says that the theme of God’s wrath “is so interwoven with the hope of our peace with one another and with God that, if we lose our grasp on the one, we lose our hope of the other.” He goes on and explains why God’s wrath isn’t like our own. I love his conclusion.

3. Can I Trust the Bible? Timothy Paul Jones answers this question with four clear proofs.

4. 6 Ways to Ruin Your Children: Jeff Robinson’s article is simple and important. He shares, “I am at my worst as a father when I assume the role of sinless savior. That place belongs to Christ alone. When I say things like, “I didn’t act that way when I was your age” (a lie if ever there was one), then I confuse them as to why they need the gospel in the first place. And I become a whitewashed tomb.”

5. What John Piper Thinks About the Election: Piper on the challenging decision for the Christian. He concludes, “I will not develop some calculus to determine which path of destruction I will support. That is not my duty. My calling is to lead people to see Jesus Christ, trust his forgiveness for sins, treasure him above everything in this world, live in a way that shows his all-satisfying value, and help them make it to heaven with love and holiness. That calling is contradicted by supporting either pathway to cultural corruption and eternal ruin.”

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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. 4 Distinctives of a Christian View of Race: Jesse Johnson argues that, “A distinctly Christian view on race is critical because it brings clarity to our thinking about conflict in our world, and it brings hope to individuals as they seek to live in peace. And a Christian view of race is unique—it makes us stand apart from the evolutionary thinking that has gripped most of the world on this issue, and it separates us from the cultural Marxism that has forced its way into America’s current racial dynamics.

2. The Goodness of the Wrath of God: My friend Sarah Sanderson with an absolute knock-out article on why it is a mercy that our God is wrathful. She concludes, “It is good news, all of it. It means we are loved. It means that God roars over all of us, charging fierce in the face of evil, ‘Get your hands off of them. They’re mine.’”

3. 8 Prayers for the Online Dating Journey: Margot Starbuck begins, “When single folks like me—who on many days would prefer to be partnered—talk to God, our prayer life can sometimes sound a bit demanding.”

4. 8 Reasons I Stopped Stressing About Losing My Salvation: Eric Geiger begins, “The question “Can I lose my salvation” is one of the biggest questions I wrestled with when I first became a Christian. I loved Jesus but still struggled with so many things and because I struggled with so many things, I wondered if my struggles would take me outside of God’s grace.”

5. God and Mathematics: William Lane Craig’s organization with a consideration of how the laws of mathematics point to the existence of God.

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