Spiritual Growth, Christian Living, Wisdom, Identity
John Beeson
The Power of Ownership

One of the many disappointing realities about the American political landscape is the lack of ownership. It’s not just politicians who shirk ownership – we all do. When my microphone sounds wonky, my mind immediately goes to the sound tech wondering if he will remedy his mistake, not to the more likely responsible party: myself. I probably moved the microphone or pulled the cord.

Of course we know that avoiding ownership usually backfires. Our esteem falls for those who dodge responsibility. But even still, the temptation to blame shift is strong in all of us.

The Power of Ownership
Identity, Biblical Studies, Christian Living, Death, Spiritual Growth
John Beeson
Our Desires Lead to Death

“I am what I feel” sums up expressive individualism.  Our culture frames identity around discovering what our deepest desires and longings are. To know our longings is to know ourselves.

 

In Billie Eilish’s 2023 song “What was I made for?” written for “Barbie,” Eilish reflects on the confusing journey to understand her feelings. It’s this journey, she assures herself that will lead to her happiness.

Our Desires Lead to Death
Spiritual Growth, Christian Living, Forgiveness, Wisdom
John Beeson
A Dire Warning for Me? Where?

“The end is near!” “Repent!”

Have you ever seen a statement of prophetic warning spray-painted on a wall or in a subway station? got to be honest, I don’t take much notice to such warnings. But what if those warnings were for me and for you?

A Dire Warning for Me? Where?
Identity, Parenting
John Beeson
Do You Have a Graduate in Your Life?

We are feeling all the feels. Our youngest, Soren, is about to graduate from high school. This has been a season of reflection for Angel and me and a season of preparation. In our children’s ministry hallways at New Life next to each age level we have containers that represent how many days of influence remain for you as a parent before your child launches. I recognize, of course, that there is no finish line for parenting, but one’s influence and role changes significantly in each season.

 As we look back on our parenting, the most important things we taught our children were who God is and who they were.

Do You Have a Graduate in Your Life?
Fear, Identity, Prayer, Spiritual Growth
John Beeson
Exchanging Intrusive Thoughts for God-talk

Intrusive thoughts are unwelcome and hard to control. I can remember having intrusive thoughts from the time I was a child. When we drove, I often felt the compulsion to press one foot down on the floor between the telephone poles (and yes, I also hopped over the cracks in the sidewalk). At other times, when walking alone, I remember the persistent thought, “He’s watching you.” I would search the bushes and trees for the one my mind told me was watching me.

Exchanging Intrusive Thoughts for God-talk

Nineveh

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Injustice: The Gratitude Snatcher

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Injustice: The Gratitude Snatcher

I pray you had a blessed Thanksgiving. I hope your heart entered into this past week with a spirit of gratitude and that your time with friends, family, and God only heightened that gratitude.

No one wants to walk in ingratitude, and yet gratitude can be so quickly snatched from us.

What destroys thanksgiving? There are many threats: envy, pride, and selfishness. But one sneaky snatcher of gratitude is injustice. When the earth quake with injustice, its tremors rattle our hearts and our trust.

When we experience injustice, questions swirl: Why would God allow this wrong to happen? Doesn’t God care about me? Won’t the wrongdoer be punished? Won’t the victim receive restitution?

Our hearts cry out: but why God? When the solid ground beneath us breaks in the earthquake of injustice, we can be left feeling uncertain, shaken, and fearful. In this broken soil, gratitude can slip away.

When the people of Nineveh repent and God forgives them, Jonah is dismayed. How could a just God let the Ninevites off the hook? They were a city of “unceasing evil” (Nah. 3:19), filled with violence, cruelty, sexual debauchery, and idolatry. Jonah is indignant.

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The Anti-Hero's Final Lesson: Love

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The Anti-Hero's Final Lesson: Love

Do you know what Jonah’s final recorded words were?

Were they words of repentance? Words of gratitude? Words of praise?

Nope. They were words of spite. The last words that Jonah speaks are, “Yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die.”[i]

Those are not words motivated by suffering or grief. Those are words that come straight out of the hateful heart of our anti-hero, a prophet who cannot bear that God would have compassion on a city he deemed worthy of destruction and upset that the God who provided a plant for shade for him would allow it to wither.

The compassion of God knows no bounds. He orchestrates the salvation of a city that every Jew would have longed to see the destruction of. A city that was not only a military threat to the Israelites, but whose pagan worship was a stench to those loyal to the one true God.

It is the Hero who has the final say in Jonah. These final words reveal God’s love and call us to this deep compassion:

“You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?”[ii]

The book of Jonah closes with a glimpse of the compassionate heart of God. Within the final verses of Jonah we see some incredible truths about the depth and power of God’s love:

God’s love is attentive:

Like a caring spouse or parent, no detail is left uncared for by our compassionate God. God’s compassion for his stiff-necked prophet is so deep, he grows a weed up over Jonah to shade him from the sun even as hatred boils in Jonah’s heart for those God loves. God’s love is for the big things (saving a city of 120,000 from destruction), but it also for the small things: Jonah’s discomfort in the heat, and even for the animals. Isn’t that final statement “and also much cattle” beautiful? God cares not just for the people of the city, but for the cattle of the city. God’s love extends to his creation.

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Lessons from an Anti-Hero: Speak

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Lessons from an Anti-Hero: Speak

Jonah doesn’t get much right. Not much at all. God called him to arise and go to Nineveh. Nope and nope. Jonah ran the opposite direction. But after God gets Jonah’s attention, Jonah ever-so-tentatively obeys God’s call.

The third call God placed on Jonah’s life was that he “call out against” Nineveh “the message that I tell you.” After being spit up by the fish and told a second time to “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you,” Jonah finally heads to Nineveh. We aren’t told what God tells Jonah to tell the Ninevites. The story moves ahead and we find Jonah wandering the streets of Nineveh, speaking these words, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.”[i]

We don’t know whether Jonah delivered this message once or multiple times as he walked through the city. The text is ambiguous about that. What was the tone Jonah delivered the message with? Was he compassionate? Fiery? Earnest? Certainly none of these. If we look ahead one chapter, it is clear that Jonah’s obedience isn’t whole-hearted. After he delivers the message, Jonah sits perched on an overlook, anticipating the destruction of the city. If there was any pep in Jonah’s step as he delivered his message, it was anticipatory malice. He hoped that God would bring destruction, that salt would be poured on the wound of Nineveh’s disobedience.

So let’s picture the scene of Jonah’s evangelistic walk through Nineveh.

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Jonah the Anti-Hero

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Jonah the Anti-Hero

The anti-hero is the new hero. Walter White, the mild-mannered chemistry teacher turned drug kingpin in Breaking Bad, pulled you in as he ascended the heights of the underground world. Don Draper had you rooting for him during his self-destructive descent over the course of Mad Men’s seven seasons. JK Rowling’s pen had readers’ jaws drop to learn that the villain Severus Snape had more to him. And, of course, which lover of The Godfather couldn’t help but root for the complicated Michael Corleone? But the first anti-hero came long before White, Draper, Snape, and Corleone.

Jonah was Walter White before Walter White was Walter White. And yet that’s not how most of us learn the story as children. Jonah is the hero of most children’s Bibles. I still remember hearing the sanitized story of Jonah as a kid. Jonah runs from God, experiences a conversion in the belly of the whale[i], and with newfound fervor converts the metropolis of Nineveh. The end.

The problem with that telling is that the book doesn’t end there at all.

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The Anti-Hero's Final Lesson: Love

, ,
The Anti-Hero's Final Lesson: Love

Do you know Jonah’s last words in the Bible?

“Yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die.”[i]

Those are not words motivated by suffering or grief. Those are words that come straight out of the hateful heart of our anti-hero, a prophet who cannot bear that God would have compassion on a city he deemed worthy of destruction and upset that the God who provided a plant for shade for him would allow it to wither.

The compassion of God knows no bounds. He orchestrates the salvation of a city that every Jew would have longed to see the destruction of. A city that was not only a military threat to the Israelites, but whose pagan worship was a stench to those loyal to the one true God.

It is the Hero who has the final say in Jonah. These final words reveal God’s love and call us to this deep compassion:

, , ,

Lessons from an Anti-Hero: Speak

, , ,
Lessons from an Anti-Hero: Speak

Jonah doesn’t get much right. Not much at all. God called him to arise and go to Nineveh. Nope and nope. Jonah up and ran the opposite direction. But after God gets Jonah’s attention, Jonah ever-so-tentatively leans into what God calls him to.

The third call God placed on Jonah’s life was that he “call out against” Nineveh “the message that I tell you.” After being spit up by the fish and told a second time to “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you,” Jonah heads to Nineveh. We aren’t told what God tells Jonah to tell the Ninevites, all we have are Jonah’s words: “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.”[i]

Just imagine what this must have looked like. We don’t know whether Jonah delivered this message once or multiple times as he walked through the city. The text is ambiguous about that. But it’s not ambiguous about how it must have been delivered. All we need to do is look one chapter further to see that Jonah’s heart was not at all in his message. After he delivers the message, Jonah sits perched on an overlook, anticipating the destruction of the city. In fact, if there was any pep in Jonah’s step as he delivered his message, it was that he was pouring salt into Nineveh’s terminal wound.

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Lessons from an Anti-Hero

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Lessons from an Anti-Hero

The anti-hero is the new hero. Walter White, the mild mannered chemistry teacher turned drug kingpin in Breaking Bad, pulled you in as he ascended the heights of the underground world. Don Draper had you rooting for him during his self-destructive descent over the course of Mad Men’s seven seasons. But the first anti-hero came long before White and Draper.

Jonah was Walter White before Walter White was Walter White. And yet that not how most of us learn the story as children.

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