Abortion, Christian Living, Culture, Politics
John Beeson
Protecting the Voice of the Voiceless

The tide of public opinion on abortion has ebbed dramatically over the past two years. On Friday, June 22, the Supreme Court handed down one of the most critical decisions in our lifetime: Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Forty-nine years of nationally enshrined abortion rights were pushed down to the states. The battle was not over, but had just begun. Pro-lifers who thought this was the beginning of a new pro-life era were in for a disappointment. The reaction from the pro-choice community was strong and their response led to a wave of support for their cause leaving many pro-lifers flat-footed.

Protecting the Voice of the Voiceless
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

Scott Hubbard

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. Biblical Archaeology’s Top Discoveries of 2022: I missed several of these. The monument to Hezekiah is really neat. And so is the new magnetic dating technology.

  2. In the End, There are Yellow Tulips: Madelyn Canada’s post is stunning. Don’t miss this one. ““You look beautiful in ‘lellow,’ Ms. Madelyn.” She was in my arms, had put her little hands on my face and said it with the deepest sincerity. I chuckled and thanked her, setting her back down on the floor so she could join her other friends playing with baby dolls.”

  3. The Five Not-Points of Calvinism: Speaking of TULIP(s) ;), Scott Hubbard shares, “The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) once described Calvinism as a lamb in wolf’s skin: “cruel in the phrases,” but “full of consolation for the suffering individual.” The words unconditional election, for example, can feel rough on the surface; they can seem to snarl and bare their teeth. Yet as countless Christians have discovered, beneath Calvinism’s wolfish exterior is the softness of a lamb.”

  4. Nurturing Emotional Well-being: Betty-Anne Van Rees begins, “One of the great misunderstandings about the human experience in our era is the idea that our emotional state is something that happens to us; that we are powerless to impact it. The truth is we make choices throughout our day that profoundly impact our emotional and mental well-being.”

  5. 5 Things a Leader Always Gets Right: Carey Nieuwhof is right on with this. “Knowing how to handle failure well is essential to success in leadership. But do you know what is harder? How you handle success. You would think success would be harder, but it is, and I’ve seen far more leaders blow success than I have leaders blow failure. Failure is, by nature, humiliating. It crushes pride. Success does the opposite. It naturally inflates a leader’s pride. It’s intoxicating.”

  6. Visualized: the World’s Population at 8 Billion: I love looking at these sorts of infographics. The world just hit 8 billion people: how does that break down over across the globe?

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1. To All the Girls Told They’re Intimidating: Phylicia Masonheimer begins, “You’ve been told you’re too much: Too much education, too much though, too much boldness, too much confidence, too ‘together’. Too much to date. Too much for men. Too much for women. Too much for the church.”

2. 3 Ways the Modern World Destroys Your Joy, Hope, and Faith in Everything (and How to Fight Back): Carey Nieuwhof distills a lot in this post. Choice, for instance, serves to debilitate us. He says, “When faced with the illusion of infinite choice—in our careers, relationships, etc.—we hold onto the false hope that perfection is waiting just around the corner. We mourn choices not made and roads not taken because we’re more aware of life’s possibilities and alternative branches.”

3. The Good We Can’t Let Go: How to Guard Against Subtle Sins: This post by Scott Hubbard oozes wisdom. For instance, he encourages us to be on the lookout for our emotions, “Our emotions are never just givens; they are ambassadors of the heart, sent to tell us what’s happening there. Negative emotions like worry, anger, and sorrow tell us that something we care about is under attack.”

4. Nipping Gossip in the Bud: Jared Wilson encourages us to be on guard against this slippery sin, “One reason gossip can be so difficult to define is that it so often masquerades as something more mundane, perhaps even beneficent. I’m sure you have witnessed plenty of prayer requests shared on someone’s behalf that seemed to include unnecessary details or salacious information. You’ve probably heard your share of “words of concern” that bordered on insinuation or improper speculation. Maybe you’ve offered such words yourself. I know I have.”

5. Astronomy Photographer of the Year: Holy moly, these are incredible! I could spend all day on this one post.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. What Was Paul’s Thorn in the Flesh? Dane Ortlund shares, “The presence of God will sustain Paul; the power of God will strengthen him. What we must not miss is that it is not Paul’s strength but God’s. Paul’s contribution is weakness. But this is not a concession; it is precisely what God needs. This is the mystery, the wonder, the glory, of apostolic Christianity: our weakness attracts, not repels, God’s own power. Our lowness and incapacities, which we naturally fear and flee, are precisely where God loves to dwell.”

  2. 22 Vital Stats for Ministry in 2022: This is a loaded post. I’ll be thinking about many of these. This is one important data point, “Few American adults identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (5.6%), according to Gallup, but the numbers are much higher among younger generations (15.9% of Gen Z). Almost every Christian student will have an LGBTQ friend or classmate, so church leaders must speak on issues of sexuality with truth and love.”

  3. Endangered Attention: Scott Hubbard reminds us that, “When we give someone our full attention — our patient, focused, self-forgetful gaze — we look a little like God.”

  4. Shall We Cancel the Theologians? Carl Trueman asks how we should respond to the fact that many Christian heroes have significant sins: Jonathan Edwards owned slaves, Martin Luther hated Jews, and Martin Luther King Jr was a womanizer, for instance. He asks, “The question—and it is a very legitimate question—is whether we should continue to take seriously such men who failed so signally to conform to moral positions that we now regard as self-evident and, indeed, a consistent application of the Christianity into which they both had such signal insights. Should we cancel them?”

  5. We Just Wanted to Be Bad Guys: This kid. Hilarious.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1. Why I Stopped Playing Video Games: Reagan Rose explains, “Gaming had become an idol for me, so I had to smash it. For you, it might be sports, politics, social media, or something else. As Christians, we must be willing to lay aside anything that keeps us from full-hearted obedience to our Master, Jesus Christ, even especially if that thing is something we really love. For me, that was video games.”

2. “Obedience Will Make You Miserable”: Scott Hubbard reflects on this tired lie Satan loves to tell us. He shares that, “Like the elder son in Jesus’s parable, such people follow the Father’s rules with a sigh (Luke 15:29). Their holiness is all pursed lips and sober glances. “Such is the cost of righteousness,” they remind themselves. “We must relinquish pleasure on the path to heaven, you know. Holiness, not happiness, is the true good.”

3. Two Ways Every Christian Can Be Pastoral: My friend Benjamin Vrbicek offers two great ways every Christian can pastor. He concludes, "Paul writes that when each part of the body of Christ works properly, the body “builds itself up in love.” I often think of this as a beautiful reversal of the game of Jenga. When you play Jenga, as the wooden structure gets taller, the whole thing becomes less stable. But that’s not the way Paul says it should be in local churches. When each part engages in pastoral ministry, the church gets more stable, not less."

4. 4 Ways to Get Students to Be Ready to Be Adults in Church: Josh Hussung provides sound advice for a serious problem--young adults leaving the church after high school. He says, "I’m convinced that at least part of the awkwardness of that transition has to do with students not fully being integrated with the broader church body before they leave."

5. Building the Perfect Squirrel Proof Bird Feeder: Here is a twenty-minute (!) video of silliness that I loved. Mark Rober builds what amounts to an America Ninja course for squirrels. Rober’s delight and ingenuity is infectious.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1.       10 Ways Leaders Shape Their Teams: Eric Geiger with excellent advice to each of us leaders. His tenth is "Sacrifice of the leader, sacrifice of the team. Leaders who make sacrifices for the mission of the team have credibility to invite others to do the same. And the others are often inspired by the leader to make sacrifices themselves."

2.       The BBC Reveals 100 Genders: Stephen McAlpine's opines, " I’m tempted to just get out the popcorn and sit and watch the train-wreck, but it’s too sad for that.  It’s just a sign of the cultural/intellectual suicide we’re seeing in a society that has no base other than the individuated self.   The bodies – whatever gender they deem themselves to be  – will start to wash up on our cultural shores at some stage.  I just hope there are enough people willing to care for these broken, confused souls."

3.       Why God Made Your Mouth: Scott Hubbard begins, " The average person speaks at least 7,000 words a day, or about 50,000 words a week — the length of a short book. We are authors, all of us, publishing 52 books a year from this printing press called the mouth."

4.       The Reward of Sin: This is a short but powerful analogy about our relationship with sin.

5.       The Most Beautiful Natural Wonder in Every State: What a beautiful nation we live in! This will do just fine as a travel itinerary ;-).

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1.     Just How Big is the US Economy? This visual chart is a reminder of just how big the economies of the US and China are. Wow.

2.     5 Misconceptions About Heaven and the Afterlife: This is quite the read, with a lot loaded in here, but if you enjoyed my series on heaven last year, I think you will enjoy this more academic version. J. Richard Middleton's has several pointed moments including this one: "For many decades now I have been asking my students—whether in Bible studies, Sunday School, or in my college and seminary courses—to find even one biblical passage that clearly says that Christians will live in heaven forever (or that heaven is the eternal destiny of the believer). I have even offered a reward for success. So far no one has ever found such a passage."

3.     Why God Delights to Forgive: Scott Hubbard shares this wonderful news with us, "[D]eep down, where roots sink into soil, we wonder if God is really that happy forgiving us. Our suspicions easily replace the Bridegroom’s pleasure with pursed lips, the Shepherd’s song with a lecture, and the Father’s robe with the elder brother’s hand-me-downs. If we are going to feel and not just confess that God delights to forgive those who come to him through Jesus, we will need to grasp why he forgives."

4.     Don't Downplay Your Suffering: Regan Rose with a counter-intuitive admonition: " One of the biggest mistakes believers can make when facing a tragedy is to minimize it. I think so many of us do it because we are lacking a robust theology of suffering. So, our first reaction to a tragedy is to try and explain it away. “Hey, it could be worse!” “Everything will be okay.” “This is just a season.” Like a doctor slapping a smiley face sticker over a cancerous tumor, all some Christians know to do in the face of true calamity is to pave it over with platitudes."

5.     Crowder's Happy Day: How can you not smile when you watch this?

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