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

Trevin Wax

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. When borders change, stay settled: Trevin Wax offers, “The descendants of Spanish settlers remain in New Mexico. Over the centuries, the borders have shifted over their heads, putting them under the rule of New Spain, or France, or Mexico, or Texas, or the United States. While the boundary markers changed, the settlers continued with their unique cultural attributes, their Spanish dialect, their old buildings and landmarks, their traditions and artifacts. There’s a lesson here for the church in unsettled times. Boundaries may shift, but we remain settled because of enduring truths.”

  2. Who was ‘i’ without my iPhone? Luke Simon shares, “As I aged, I never grew more comfortable with myself. Instead, I spent more and more hours each day as luk3simon. It was easier that way.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. The Lord sees: Trevin Wax shares, “’El Roi’ is a name given to God in the Old Testament, a source of comfort and peace in times of distress. It first falls from the trembling lips of Hagar, the enslaved woman driven into the wilderness after being caught up in the sinful designs of her master and his wife. There she kneels, despondent and despairing, ready for life to come to an end. And there in that desert of sorrow, the Lord sees.”

  2. How to be an elder on Sunday morning: Great advice for elders… and for all of us. David Gunderson says, “Elders provide fatherly leadership, care, and protection for God’s family. Thinking like a father on Sundays should warm your heart, clarify your focus, and make you more alert as you care for God’s family.”

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. Why the world’s greatest athletes don’t get paid like it: Most Olympic athletes truly do it for the love of the game. Mark Dent reports, “26.5% of the surveyed athletes had a total income of less than $15k per year, and another study from the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee found 59% of Olympic hopefuls make less than $25k during Olympic years.”

  2. How to counter the forces that malform your soul: John Mark Comer explains how spiritual formation happens in this brief video.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. Does Bach’s music prove the existence of God? Trevin Wax thinks so, “The inconsolable longing we feel when we encounter true beauty, when the soaring symphony swells toward a melody’s resolution, is the window to another world, whispering to us, singing to us, ‘There is something more.’”

  2. Lessons from a Job season: Travis reflects, “Whether you have suffered more, suffered less, or your suffering is still to come, none of us lives a life free from the difficulties that are part of a world marred by sin and curse. Sometimes the troubles seem unexplainable, uncontrollable, and unending. Like Job, we may relentlessly call out to God, and, like Job, we may not receive quick relief or quick answers.”

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. I will not forget you: Kathryn Butler offers hope in the midst of dementia, “Walking alongside Violet feels like watching death in slow motion. As the quirks and values and personality traits I’ve come to love about her fade away one by one, it’s as if I’m watching Violet herself dwindle and vanish.”

  2. Critical dynamics of criticism: Nick Batzig begins, “It is probably fair to draw the conclusion that there is a universal dislike for personal criticism and correction. Nothing reveals the pride that resides in each one of our hearts so much as being on the receiving end of criticism.”

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. The world cannot be gender blind: Trevin Wax, “One of the strange ironies of our times: a significant segment of the left pushes back forcefully against the idea of “color blindness” regarding race but demands what amounts to “gender blindness” regarding sex…”

  2. Violent pornography’s assault on the marriage bed: A very sobering read from Joe Carter, “Because these images are being fed to him when his personality is still being formed and his sexuality is developing, he begins to confuse his desires with those he sees in porn…

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. A sickness in pursuing health: Trevin Wax considers some of the excesses of the movement toward long and healthy living. “If this life is all there is, then the pressure to optimize your body and extend your life as long as possible makes sense. But if there’s more to life than this existence and more to “making the most” of life than physical prowess, then the pursuit of longevity and health can sabotage itself.”

  2. When God takes his time: I love everything Glenna Marshall writes. This is so filled with wisdom, “The problem is this: we rarely assume that God is purposeful and kind in his long game.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. Who would I be if I was happy? Trevin Wax warns us, “Many young people are increasingly drawn to establishing and expressing their identities through their psychological maladies.”

  2. Wherever he leads, I’ll go: Glenna Marshall shares a story I bet you might identify with, “In young, untried faith, I nearly invited him to test me, telling him in a long, journaled prayer that wherever he led, I would most certainly go. I banked on my obedience. I would be stalwart, no matter what came. But life came. And the Lord led me to places I longed to escape from: decades of infertility, disease, chronic pain that battered my body for years on end.”

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. The internal contradiction in transgender theories: Trevin Wax explains, “It doesn’t take long to recognize the internal inconsistency between these two narratives. The first depends on maleness and femaleness being something real, for a binary must exist for it to be transgressed or transcended. The second questions reality altogether, falling for a radical skepticism that reimagines the world in terms of linguistic power plays.”

  2. Tasting heaven now: Casey McCall asks, “But what if I told you the Bible presents the resurrection as something you begin experiencing now in this life?

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. The danger of self-soothing through social media: Trevin Wax warns, “Just as perusing WebMD engenders false confidence when we quickly diagnose ourselves or our family members after a cursory look at medical symptoms, we’ve become overly trusting of the self-help gurus and self-proclaimed therapists online who give advice about various psychological maladies.”

  2. The epidemic of 2012 before the pandemic of 2020: Eric Geiger, “There has been a lot of talk about the pandemic’s impact on mental health deterioration. Stay at home orders and social distancing reduced both time with others and physical exercise, which adversely impacted mental health.

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