Christian Living, Culture, Death, Fear
John Beeson
What Spooks You?

Across the street from our home is the holiday house. You probably have one in your neighborhood. They go all out for every holiday. On Saturday, cars stacked up on the main road leading into the neighborhood as families drove by slowly, taking in the massive display that must have cost the owners thousands of dollars.

 

Last week I drove by a home whose Halloween decorations weren’t as massive or ostentatious, but the lawn display was undoubtedly the eeriest I’ve ever seen. A life-like severed head hung from a tree limb. A decapitated corpse with a visible spinal cord jutting out between slumped shoulders sat underneath.

What Spooks You?
Christian Living, Culture, Fear, Wisdom
John Beeson
The Temptation of Temptation

In 2023, 46 horror movies were released. 75 million tickets were sold, and the industry made $798 million in domestic revenue alone. It’s been argued that horror movies remain a draw for many in the contemporary West because there is so little actual danger in most of our lives.

 

Atheist Steven Pinker in The Better Angels of Our Nature argues that we live in the most peaceful era of human existence: wars have decreased, human rights have expanded, and rates of starvation and lifespans have improved. Drawn to conflict, we now have access to global news coverage, which gives us the dopamine hit of feeling like we are in conflict.

The Temptation of Temptation
Christian Living, Fear, Spiritual Growth, Wisdom
John Beeson
Night

What attracts us so much to the dark?

In the story of Swan Lake, a ballet by Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Prince Siegfried falls in love with Odette (who has been cursed by the evil magician, Von Rothbart), after happening upon her at the lake one night during a hunting trip.  As a result of Von Rothbart's curse, Odette is human only at nightfall, for at daybreak she transforms into a swan.  True and faithful love is the only thing that can break the curse, and Siegfried aims to marry Odette, proclaiming such love, at a ball his mother is throwing for his birthday. 

Night
Christian Living, Death, Heaven, Religion, Spiritual Growth, Worship
John Beeson
How Changing Your View of Heaven Transforms the ...

In 2003, Bart Millard still mourning his father’s recent death, penned the lyrics for “I Can Only Imagine,” a song that would go on to be the most-played song in the history of Christian radio.

Can you imagine what heaven is going to be like?

There are lots of different views of heaven out there. A couple of decades ago a cottage industry developed, selling stories of those who said they had been to heaven while on death’s doorstep. We’re told of bright lights, lives re-played, and a warm glow. Others might daydream of harps and clouds, when asked to imagine heaven.

How Changing Your View of Heaven Transforms the Way You Live Today
Identity, Counseling, Culture, Spiritual Growth
John Beeson
One Year Old!

On October 17, 2023, we (my wife Angel and I) released our first book, Trading Faces. With around four million books published annually (one for every resident of Oklahoma!), an author can feel as though they’re contributing a grain of sand to a beach. And there is truth to that! As the Preacher wisely reminds us in Ecclesiastes,

Is there a thing of which it is said,
    “See, this is new”?
It has been already
    in the ages before us. (Eccl. 1:10)

One Year Old!

Delighting in the Trinity

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Life is Better Together

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Life is Better Together

“Wilson, where are you? Wilson! Wilson! I’m sorry! I’m sorry, Wilson. Wilson, I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Wilson! I can’t!”

If you’ve seen Cast Away, this scene is etched in your memory. Chuck Noland (played by Tom Hanks) is on his rudimentary raft trying to paddle to freedom when his beach volleyball companion falls off and begins floating away. Stranded on a deserted island for four years, the volleyball is Noland’s only friend. Your heart breaks as Noland’s inanimate friend drifts away.

Cast Away is a great movie not only about the triumph of the human spirit, but also about the reality that we are made to live in community. It can be watched as an extended meditation on God’s words in Genesis 2:18, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make a helper fit for him.” The very first thing our Triune God says is “not good” in creation is our aloneness.

GOD IS COMMUNITY

That isn’t surprising. God is community. Our Triune God has existed in community for eternity. Creation is an overflow of that love. Theologian Michael Reeves explains what it means that God is three-in-one, and not just one, “Everything changes when it comes to the Father, Son and Spirit. Here is a God who is not essentially lonely, but who has been loving for all eternity as the Father has loved the Son in the Spirit. Loving others is not a strange or novel thing for this God at all; it is the root of who he is.”[i]

When the apostle John says, “God is love” (1 John 4:8), he is speaking about the very nature of our three-in-one God. And so, when God creates us in his image, we are created to image this love. Theologian John Owen wrote God is “the fountain and prototype of all love… And all love in the creation was introduced from this fountain, to give a shadow and resemblance of it.”[ii] We were made to reflect the active love of God that has existed for eternity.

We need community to be who God has intended us to be.

Life is better together.

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My Favorite Books of 2019 and What I’m Looking Forward to Reading in 2020

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My Favorite Books of 2019 and What I’m Looking Forward to Reading in 2020

2019 was a heavy reading year for me. This year I read 101 books: almost two a week. I love learning and reading is of my favorite forms of learning. If you’re wondering how I read that many books, I’m going to reflect on that next week.

This year you could divide my reading into six (plus one) categories: Christian Living, Theology, Apologetics, Pastoral Ministry, Leadership, and Fiction. The plus one is in the fiction category. I got on a John Steinbeck kick, so I pulled out an extra Steinbeck category. If you’re interested in tracking my reading, getting fuller reviews (I review every book I read), and sharing with me your favorites, I use Goodreads and would be happy to have you friend me there. Here were some highlights for me in 2019:

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Delighting in the Trinity by Michael Reeves

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Delighting in the Trinity by Michael Reeves

Who is God? Michael Reeves asserts that the essence of the fullest answer to that question is “a Trinity.” Reeves believes that while the Trinity is something many Christians shove to the back corners of their minds when it comes to relating to God, or perhaps explore with a sort of mechanical interest, with clumsy charts and worse analogies, reflecting on the Trinity is something that should stir delight in us.

Reeves quotes Karl Barth, who once said, “The triunity of God is the secret of His beauty.” Reeves contrasts the Triune God with a singular conception of God (like the Islamic understanding of God), who has a very different relationship with creation. Reeves says that “Absolutely singular supreme beings do not like creation.”

In contract, “Everything changes when it comes to the Father, Son and Spirit. Here is a God who is not essentially lonely, but who has been loving for all eternity as the Father has loved the Son in the Spirit. Loving others is not a strange or novel thing for this God at all; it is at the root of who he is.” That is to say, the relationships within the Triune God are that which defines God himself. God is relational and loving in his very essence.

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