Josh Benner

Tag: america

  • Feels like it was yesterday – 9/11 through the years

    IMG-0615
    It’s become somewhat of an annual tradition. I always watch a documentary about September 11 on the anniversary of that day. In American history, it’s still the most significant event to have happened in my lifetime. By far. It’s our “you remember where you were when you heard” moment.

    It’s interesting to watch the documentaries, to see the video at the time. I remember the day like it was yesterday but every year, the quality of the videos seems a little more dated, the outfits people are wearing seem a little more 90s.

    I remember it like it was yesterday, and so it’s crazy for me to consider that kids in school (aside from seniors) weren’t even born when this event happened. This monumental day that was a paradigm shift in American history is just that to kids, history. They learn about that day from what people tell them and from the same documentaries I watch.

    If you weren’t alive that day, and watch documentaries about 9/11, I think it’s hard to appreciate the chaos of September 11th. There’s a sense of fatalism in the documentaries. They almost always begin by contrasting the beauty of that morning against the pandemonium that was soon to burst forth. (more…)

  • The best book I read this summer: Where the Wind Leads

    41jq7UGENJL._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg
    I was born in Vietnam, but I was not Vietnamese; I was raised in America, but I was not American. I grew up Asian in character but American in culture, a citizen but always refugee. I had no lessons from the past to guide me, no right way to do things in the present, and no path to follow me in the future.

    -Where the Wind Leads

    Labor Day weekend is upon us, the unofficial end to the summer.

    The best book I read all summer was “Where the Wind Leads: a refugee family’s miraculous story of loss, rescue, and redemption” by Vinh Chung, published in 2014. Of the 674 reviews on Amazon, 98% give this book a rating of 4 or 5 stars.

    Chung came to America as a child from Vietnam. I won’t give any spoilers about the book (Vinh survives the journey to America….obviously…he did write the book).

    The book is basically in three parts, each was fascinating in its own right. The first third (roughly a third) of the book talked about his family in Vietnam, his larger-than-life grandmother and the tremendous struggles (and tremendous successes) that his family had faced in Vietnam. They had nothing, had it all, and then had nothing.

    The second third of the book deals with things getting worse in Vietnam during the years of war and Vinh’s family leaving Vietnam. He recounts their journey out of Vietnam and the harrowing experience that it was to ultimately be saved. This section could be a movie. It was that compelling.

    The last portion of the book (at this point, I honestly thought the story would be anti-climactic. The action was over). But I honestly enjoyed the last section just as much as the rest of the book. He talks of being a refugee in America, learning a totally new culture. It was inserting to see Chung’s perspective as someone who came to America as  a child. A Vietnamese family who was still very traditional but living life in America. There’s a lot more I could say but I don’t want to give spoilers.

    It’s a book that shows the providence of God, the love of family, and the value of hard work. Amazing book. One of those books that you wish wasn’t done because it’s so good.

    Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear what you think, and don’t forget to subscribe! 

    Josh Benner is the associate pastor at Cornerstone Evangelical Free Church in Fergus Falls, Minnesota and has a Master of Divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He enjoys writing about faith and culture. He lives with his wife Kari in Minnesota.

    Let’s connect!
    Facebook
    Twitter
    Instagram

     

  • Hypocrites in church isn’t the issue. Faithless pseudo-Christians are the issue.

    drama-312318_960_720

     

    Originally published June 27, 2017

    A lot of people don’t want to be in a church because?

    Because the church is full of?

    Hypocrites.

    Churches are filled with hypocrites. (more…)

  • What’s the greatest danger to the church?

    photo-1476455479340-25ee0cee09bf.jpeg
    There are 300,000 churches in America.
    There are many wonderful churches that boldly proclaim the gospel and faithfully teach the Bible every week. There is no perfect church in the world, because every church is full of members who are imperfect people.
    I think that the biggest issue the American church faces today is related to truth and love.
    Love that undermines truth and truth that doesn’t practice love. I’ll briefly explain what that means.
    Love that undermines truth 
    Love is important. The greatest command in scripture is to love God and to love people. God is love.
    But some churches can emphasize love to the point where it undermines truth.
    For instance, there is a temptation in some Christian circles to consider the love of God and reason that: “since God is love, his love extends to all people, whether or not they believe in God and whether or not they want or accept his love.”
    God is love. But that is just taking a slice of the character of God and acting as if that’s the whole pie. God is love. But he is also just, and righteous, and holy. He judges, he has wrath towards sin. God has all of those qualities at all times.
    God is love. But the idea of love is not only exclusive to what our culture defines love as.
    We tend to value acceptance and tolerance as what it is to love. And it’s true that God meets us where we are, but Jesus doesn’t save us to keep us the same. God is a perfecting God. We sin. We sin so much that we needed a savior, and the gospel is not a message that teaches us that we’re ok and we should just keep doing what we’re doing. We need to live for God and pursue him.
    Making love purely about acceptance and tolerance is not the full Biblical scope of what love is. And so it undermines the truth of scripture. And it runs the danger of undermining the inerrancy of scripture (taking the Bible as practical wisdom rather than the infallible word of God). And this view runs the risk of undermining the gospel itself.
    Assuming that love and  demand for justice are mutually exclusive.

    I observe this being the great risk in more liberal denominations.

    Truth that doesn’t practice love

    I think this is more of a danger in conservative and evangelical circles. We place a high value on the scripture and theology. And well we should because both of those are hugely important.

    But we can get so preoccupied with having the right answer that we lose sight of actually living out what we know. This is very similar to the failure of the Pharisees in the gospels. They were very well studied and trained in theology, but they missed the heart of the message.

    It can be easy to know the right answer but it’s difficult to live it out in practice.

    Truth and love. It comes down to belief and practice. We need both.

    Josh Benner is the associate pastor at Cornerstone Evangelical Free Church in Fergus Falls, Minnesota and has a Master of Divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He enjoys writing about faith and culture. He lives with his wife Kari in Minnesota.

  • Hypocrites in church isn’t the issue. Faithless pseudo-Christians are the issue.

    drama-312318_960_720

    A lot of people don’t want to be in a church because?

    Because the church is full of?

    Hypocrites.

    Churches are filled with hypocrites. (more…)