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

generosity

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The Bible's Strange Instructions for Opening the Giving Lock

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The Bible's Strange Instructions for Opening the Giving Lock

I worked for a few years in development and was trained in best practices for raising money. I was blessed to work for a Christian organization that was committed to raising money in a godly way, but the broader development industry doesn’t have many scruples in doing what they do best: separating people from their money. And they are clever! How does a development professional unlock the giving vault?

Secular Generosity

The secular handbook on getting people to give reveals a lot. There are three universal rules in development:[i]

1) Appeal to donors’ emotions, not their minds: tell a story that will move them;

2) Inflate a donor’s sense of importance and appeal to their interests;

3) Create urgency: donors need to feel as though the need is immediate and significant.

Christian Generosity

The Christian generosity handbook is very different. Having delivered his four strange reasons for giving. Paul is now going to five equally strange instructions for giving in his letter to the Corinthian church. Paul’s instructions contradict the development professional’s handbook at almost every turn. Paul tells us we should give this way:

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The Bible's Strange Reasons for Generosity: True Prosperity

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The Bible's Strange Reasons for Generosity: True Prosperity

The famous minister, Benny Hinn, is one of many who promises that if you are generous, God will reward you financially. “Divine prosperity is God’s will for every believer!” Hinn says, “All we must do to receive God’s blessings and abundance is to obey him.” How do we obey God? By giving. “Sow seed with great expectation of a powerful overflow in your life. Then get ready for it to be multiplied back to you abundantly. Yes, a seed may seem small in your hand, but when you sow seed in expectant faith, you release its God-given potential to produce a supernatural outpouring: ‘He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully’ (2 Corinthians 9:6).”[i]

The fourth reason Paul offers for giving is found here in 2 Corinthians 9:6, the promise that the one who “sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.” That’s a pretty wild promise. Are Hinn and the other prosperity preachers correct in asserting that God promises financial reward for those who give?

Open the Windows of Heaven

Malachi 3:10 certainly seems to echo this sentiment as well, “Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. And thereby put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need.”

The answer is that God does promise a blessing for those who give, but he does not promise a financial blessing. We must understand what God means when he speaks of blessing to understand what God is promising. God is no divine IRS agent, caught in his own loopholes, forced to dole out financial blessings against his will. To think that that we can manipulate God like a broken slot machine stuck on 7’s misunderstands the character of God and the nature of his blessings. God’s purpose is to shape us to look like him.[ii] God’s blessings, then, are given just as his discipline is given: to form us more and more in the likeness of his Son, Jesus Christ.

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The Bible's Strange Reasons for Generosity: Show them God!

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The Bible's Strange Reasons for Generosity: Show them God!

Why do we give? The first hit when you Google “why should I be generous?” is this article which lays out four reasons:

1) Giving frees you from the “burden of materialism”

2) Giving helps you “to feel better about yourself”

3) Giving makes you less self-centered

4) Giving helps make people like you.

Do you find those reasons compelling? Two of them (1 &3) have echoes of biblical truth in them. But 2 & 4 are shockingly empty reasons.

Paul also has four reasons for giving: none of which overlap with this list. Here is Paul’s list:

1) Give because giving is a grace

2) Give because it proves your love of Jesus

3) Give because Jesus first gave

4) Give because you will be blessed.

Give Because Jesus Gave

Today we arrive at the third reason on that list: give because Jesus first gave.

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The Bible's Strange Reasons for Generosity: to Prove

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The Bible's Strange Reasons for Generosity: to Prove

No one argues that miserliness is an admirable character trait. The national convention of Ebeneezer Scrooge urging Americans to be less generous doesn’t exist.

Many perceive one of America’s strongest virtues to be generosity. There is some evidence for this. News reports gushed that over $471 billion was given to charity in 2020, the highest recorded number on record in U.S. history. That’s a huge amount of money. But that number represents a mere 2% of the US’s GDP, which stood at $20.94 trillion in 2020.

2% hardly seems a number to hang on our wall. What about Christians? Unfortunately, we do little better, giving approximately 3% of our income to charity. And fewer than 5% of Christians tithe.[ii] Generosity isn’t graded on a curve.

Most disappointingly is the self-deception of Christians. 17% of Christians report tithing despite the actual number of 5%. Worse still, 10% of those who claimed they tithe actually gave less than $200 to charity.[iii]

The Second Reason to Give

Paul would have something to say about this. In this series, we are exploring the reasons Paul says that we should be generous. The first reason was that giving is a grace; it is a gift offered to us by God.

Paul’s second reason is found in 2 Corinthians 8:8, Paul urges, “I say this [that you ought to participate in the grace of giving] not as a command, but to prove by the earnestness of others that your love also is genuine.”

Paul’s second reason for giving is that our giving proves that we love Jesus.

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The Bible's Strange Reasons for Generosity: Giving is a Grace

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The Bible's Strange Reasons for Generosity: Giving is a Grace

Our doorbell rang – an odd occasion –I got up from the dinner table and walked toward the door. My step hitched halfway to the door as I realized it was likely a child selling something… too late. I opened the door and a high schooler stood in front of me, fundraising for his baseball team.

Being asked for money makes me uncomfortable.

There is something reasonable about being uncomfortable when we’re asked for money. The pang might speak to whether we are giving thoughtfully. But the reality is that far too often that twinge of discomfort points not to the worth of the cause, but the grip our hearts have on our money.

In 2 Corinthians, Paul tells us that God doesn’t wasn’t uncomfortable givers, he wants cheerful givers. The way to cheerfulness isn’t by willing ourselves there, it’s by reshaping our affections. In this series we’re going to unpack four transformative reasons about generosity and then unpack Paul’s instructions for how we ought to give.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1. How Early Christianity Was Mocked for Welcoming Women: Michael Kruger reminds us that while only one-third of Rome’s citizens were women, women comprised two-thirds of the early church, “And it is this reality that sets the stage for the critics of early Christianity. If they were looking for a way to undermine this new religious movement (and they were!) then the involvement of women is an easy target.”

2. God is Not a God of Second Chances: Provocative article by Aaron Wilson. He begins by explaining, "A second-chance gospel reveals half of the good news—the half that says Jesus died for sins. The fact that God is merciful is a beautiful truth. But if Jesus only died to forgive sins, humanity is still in trouble."

3. Why Procrastination is About Managing Emotions, Not Time: Do you struggle with procrastination? You'll find this helpful. New psychological studies are revealing that, "The task we’re putting off is making us feel bad – perhaps it’s boring, too difficult or we’re worried about failing – and to make ourselves feel better in the moment, we start doing something else, like watching videos."

4. Homeschool Surge: Given the difficulty of online education, I’m not surprised that there is a big surge in homeschooling during this strange year. Esther Eaton at World reports, “A May survey found 40 percent of parents compelled to school at home because of COVID-19 said they’d be more likely to homeschool in the future.”

5. Who is Most Generous? Not Who You’d Expect: John Lee reflects on Barna findings that the three most generous cities in the US are located in one state. What state do you think it is? “Christians in these cities give on average $17,977 to charity annually.” Meanwhile, other cities give just over $3,300 a year. Lee then dives deep into what most powerfully motivates us to give.

6. How Presidential Debates Have Changed: A lot is packed into this six-minute video.

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Healthy Churches Multiply

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Healthy Churches Multiply

In the sixty-year history of New Life we’ve planted one church intentionally and at least three unintentionally. I’ve heard the unintentional church plant called a “splant”—a conflation of “split” and “plant.” If you’ve been a Christian for a while, you’ve probably lived through one. Maybe an associate pastor at your church started a church a few miles down the road without the elders’ blessing. Maybe a senior pastor was fired and then started a church nearby, or left and then returned to start a church. Sometimes church leadership retroactively calls these splits plants, and often not with any poor intent: they’re trying to be gracious.

I wonder if that one plant for every three splants is reflective of the average church. My hunch is that splants outpace plants. That is heartbreaking.

Obviously, there is often culpability on those who splant, but churches bear responsibility as well. Far too few churches are committed to God’s intention for them to multiply.

First, let’s confess: it’s hard to multiply. Planting churches is taxing on the mother church. It taxes time, energy, finances, and (most significantly) people. It’s painful. But it’s biblical.

Churches, like people, are intended to be streams not ponds, highways, not cul-de-sacs. The book of Acts shows us a healthy church multiplying itself across the Roman Empire and beyond. Paul is a church planter. Paul’s letters to Timothy and Titus are coaching documents for these elder-pastors. If you pick up any of Paul’s other epistles, Paul is training the city-churches at Ephesus, Philippi, Colossae, etc. Many forget that these letters weren’t letters to a single church. They were written to one city church, a network of churches in the city. These churches were so connected that Paul could write one letter that would be read by all of them. These were multiplying churches.

It is estimated that only 2% of churches in the United States are multiplying and less than .1% are involved in a multiplying movement. Isn’t that disheartening?

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1. Kids Spending 500% More Time in Front of Screens During Quarantine: James Lang suggests that, “The trouble with excessive screen time is that it eclipses healthy behaviors that all children need.”

2. Will Hell Really Last Forever? This is a thoughtful and thorough response by Greg Morse. I find this part of his argument most persuasive: "The answer is clear enough in Revelation 16:8–11, where people under God’s judgment 'gnawed their tongues in anguish and cursed the God of heaven for their pain and sores. They did not repent of their deeds.'”

3. 4 Disturbing Trends in Global Persecution: Please pray for Christ's church. The fourth in Aaron Earls's report is, "Christianity is on the verge of disappearing in Iraq and Syria. The presence of terrorist groups and conflicts in both Middle Eastern countries have led to the rapid decline of the Christian populations. Before the extended conflicts began, Iraq and Syria had 3.7 million Christians. Now that has dropped to around 946,000, according to Open Doors."

4. Here come the Skinny Cows: Mark Deymaz and Harry Li with a disturbing forecast of dramatically decreased giving to churches in the coming years. They explain four factors that might lead to a decline of up to 30% drop in giving. One of the four factors is a decrease in giving to religious institutions, "Individual giving in general is trending down, the report said, but religious giving is being hit by other factors like the growing disaffiliation of Americans with religious groups."

5. 4 Principles for Talking to Your Kids About Sex: Julie Lowe’s short article is on point. Her final point is, “Fourth, talk soon. Be the one who shapes your child’s view on sex and sexuality. It is far better to proactively inform your child’s view on a subject, than to have to go back and debunk an inaccurate view.”

6. Hawaii's Forest Eater: Stunning up close footage of the devastating 2018 volcano in Hawaii.

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Paul's Strange Instructions for Opening the Giving Lock

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Paul's Strange Instructions for Opening the Giving Lock

I worked for a few years in development and was trained in best practices for raising money. I was blessed to work for a Christian organization who was committed to raising money in a godly way, but the broader development industry doesn’t have many scruples in doing what they do best: separating people from their money. How does a development professional unlock the giving vault?

Secular Generosity

The secular handbook on getting people to give reveals a lot. There are three universal rules in development:[i]

1)      Appeal to donors’ emotions, not their minds: tell a story that will move them;

2)      Inflate their sense of importance and appeal to their interests;

3)      Create urgency: donors need to feel as though the need is immediate and significant.

Christian Generosity

The Christian generosity handbook is very different. Having delivered his four strange reasons for giving. Paul is now going to five equally strange instructions for giving in his letter to the Corinthian church. Paul’s instructions contradict the development professional’s handbook at almost every turn. Paul tells us we should give this way:

1)      Thoughtfully

2)      Not reluctantly

3)      Not under compulsion

4)      Cheerfully

5)      Through the power of Christ

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Paul's Strange Reasons for Generosity: True Prosperity

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Paul's Strange Reasons for Generosity: True Prosperity

The famous minister, Benny Hinn, is one of many who promises that if you are generous, God will reward you financially. “Divine prosperity is God’s will for every believer!” Hinn says, “All we must do to receive God’s blessings and abundance is to obey him.” How do we obey God? By giving. “Sow seed with great expectation of a powerful overflow in your life. Then get ready for it to be multiplied back to you abundantly. Yes, a seed may seem small in your hand, but when you sow seed in expectant faith, you release its God-given potential to produce a supernatural outpouring: ‘He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully’ (2 Corinthians 9:6).”[i]

The fourth reason Paul offers for giving is found here in 2 Corinthians 9:6, the promise that the one who “sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.” That’s a pretty wild promise. Are Hinn and the other prosperity preachers correct in asserting that God promises financial reward for those who give?

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