October 1, 2026

Recommendations, Culture, Gratitude

John Beeson

This Week's Recommendations

Two ways to worry about AI: Alan Noble begins, “If you’ve followed some of the news in AI recently, you might be feeling scared. Concerning stories have been coming from two leading AI companies this summer.”
What gratitude was never meant to do: Tracy Harper says, “We run into problems with gratitude, though, when we use it as a countermeasure to avoid the thoughts and emotions that disappointment brings to the surface. God was prompting me to sit with the deeper question of why this mattered so much to me, and I couldn’t use my list of blessings to avoid going there with him.”

September 29, 2026

Christian Living, Consumerism, Culture, Generosity

John Beeson

How Can I Excuse Myself

You’re running a day care center that closes at 5pm. You notice a handful of parents pick up their children late. Every time a parent arrives late it impacts you: you must stay late—family dinners and events are lost. What do you do? Realizing that your honor system isn’t cutting it, you start charging a fine for arriving late.

And then the unexpected happens: the number of late-arriving parents doubles.

This experiment was run by economists trying to help an Israeli daycare. The results confounded the researchers.

September 24, 2026

Recommendations, Culture, Biblical Studies, Nature, Prayer, Science

John Beeson

This Week's Recommendations

Three things stress reveals: Michael Kelley says, “And maybe you, too, know what that bursting feels like – it’s when something small that ordinarily shouldn’t have bothered you as much as it did just sets you off. And you find yourself overreacting to that single incident because of the accumulated pressure from the other circumstances.”
Seraphim may be flying serpentine creatures: Wyatt Graham challenges how we envision these angelic beings, “The word saraph occurs only seven times in the Hebrew Bible. Its verbal form means “to burn,”

September 22, 2026

Christian Living, Culture, Identity

John Beeson

Can We Choose Our Identity?

I was fourteen years old, 5’9” and 130 pounds. My backpack hung loosely over my shoulders and butterflies filled my stomach. It was the first day of high school. I navigated the path from my fourth period class toward the cafeteria in a sea of three thousand mostly new faces. Who would I sit with? I saw the group of guys I had hung around with in middle school: jocks who had made those three years fairly miserable for me.

I scanned the grass and picked out the groups: band kids, several kids playing chess, kids playing pick-up basketball. I saw one gathering playing Dungeons and Dragons.

September 19, 2026

Biblical Studies, Christian Living, Culture, Faith, Fear, Hell

John Beeson

The Mark of the Beast and The Mark of God

We are all familiar with the mark of the beast. Fear and confusion surrounding it seem to swirl around it. As a child, I remember hearing a preacher declare that the birthmark on Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev’s head was the mark of the beast. We were warned that Visa cards or barcodes might be the mark. Today, rumors abound that the mark is a QR code, a vaccine, or something connected to artificial intelligence.

Such speculation dramatically misunderstands John’s explanation of the mark of the beast in the book of Revelation.

The Mark of the Beast and The Mark of God

Froot Loops

John Beeson

October 1, 2026

Recommendations, Culture, Gratitude

This Week's Recommendations

John Beeson

October 1, 2026

Recommendations, Culture, Gratitude

Two ways to worry about AI: Alan Noble begins, “If you’ve followed some of the news in AI recently, you might be feeling scared. Concerning stories have been coming from two leading AI companies this summer.”
What gratitude was never meant to do: Tracy Harper says, “We run into problems with gratitude, though, when we use it as a countermeasure to avoid the thoughts and emotions that disappointment brings to the surface. God was prompting me to sit with the deeper question of why this mattered so much to me, and I couldn’t use my list of blessings to avoid going there with him.”