Josh Benner

Tag: Columbus

  • Moving day – one chapter closes, another begins

    IMG_1634 2.jpg
    Moving day today. I finished up my pastoral residency in Minnesota.

    I think of the places where I’ve lived. Columbus, Ohio, my hometown. The place that will always be home.

    Bowling Green, Ohio, where I went to college and had some of the greatest times of my life. So much of who I am today I attribute to my time in college.

    Deerfield, Illinois for seminary, just outside of Chicago, one of the greatest cities in the world. Even though I was there for four years, I still feel like I barely scratched the surface on all Chicago had to offer.

    Fergus Falls, Minnesota. Beautiful part of a beautiful state. Perhaps more than any of these other cities, Fergus Falls felt the most like an adventure when I moved there.

    Moving by myself hundreds of miles away to a town that I had never heard of until about three months before I moved there. When I told people I was moving to Minnesota, the response was always “MINNESOTA?! It’s so cold there!”

    The legends were true. It was cold. (Although not as much snow as you’d probably think). Although it was also fitting that as we packed up our last things into the truck, I spent my last few hours in windy, sub-zero temperatures. Felt like it was my final exam as a Minnesotan.

    It was the smallest place I’d ever lived, but it never really felt like that small of a town to me. I always thought there was so much to do. When I first moved there, I had just gotten into photography. On my days off, I’d find a forest in a different part of the state, drive there, taking pictures all along the way. I’d spend hours just taking pictures. Sometimes on a nice night, I’d go out and take pictures for a couple hours around town. Those are honestly some of the greatest times I had in Minnesota. I loved it. The county had over a thousand lakes. But the sunsets were just as awesome over the farmland.

    It was love at first sight. I always thought the area was breathtaking.

    It was the first place where I lived with my wife after getting married. She wasn’t from Fergus Falls either. But was just as enamored with the area when she moved there too. It was the first place we lived after getting married.

    As I think of all of the art things about the places where I’ve lived, more than anything, the things I enjoy most about these places is the people and the relationships. Everywhere I’ve lived I’ve loved. Because everywhere I’ve lived, I’ve met a lot of people I loved.

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

    Josh Benner  has a Master of Divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He has served churches in Minnesota and Illinois. He enjoys writing about faith and culture. He lives with his wife Kari in St. Louis.

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  • Severe storms rock Central Ohio

    Photo Courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons

    My thoughts and prayers are with my hometown of Columbus this evening. Over 100,000 people in Franklin county are left without electricity and tomorrow’s forecast calls for the continuation of sweltering heat, and the outages could last a few more days. I know some people in Columbus who are having their lives significantly affected by the current conditions and my heart really goes out to them. (more…)

  • Tonight’s storm: How the weatherman said it was, how it actually was

    A few weeks ago on Facebook, a number of people were posting those “this is what my friends think” pictures.

    I was reminded of those photos this evening when I was listening to some of our local weathermen in Columbus describe the severe thunderstorms that rolled through the city.

    It’s like “How the weather actually is:”
    (more…)

  • Controversial billboard raise questions about morality in atheism


    I saw a link to this article on Facebook this afternoon.

    A nationwide atheist organization called the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) has been posting billboards that focus on individual atheist’s own personal statements pertaining to how they can be moral without the belief in a higher power. The signs have been posted in a handful of cities throughout the country, including my hometown of Columbus, Ohio.

    Over the past couple of weeks, there has been controversy about a billboard that has been removed from two locations.

    The billboard (pictured at the top of this post) was originally removed last week, after a local church complained and insisted that it be taken down. The billboard was posted on property owned by the church.

    The sign was reposted in another Columbus location, and was removed on July 5, after a local business complained, according to FRFF.

    Supporters of the billboards are pointing to societal intolerance of the atheistic viewpoint. Dan Barker is the co-chairman of FRFF and stated through the organization’s website:

    “Probably the number-one myth we need to dispel about atheism is that people can’t be good without supernatural beliefs, rewards and punishments, that people who don’t believe in a god are incapable of morality. Nonbelievers know that it isn’t what you believe, but how you act, that makes you an ethical or unethical person.”

    Certainly an atheist can decide what he or she thinks is moral and virtuous and act in accordance with those beliefs. And, an atheist can act in ways that would be viewed as ethical by the much of our society; I think that very few Christians would disagree on that level.

    But the problem is that the atheists are doing this out of a Judeo-Christian ethic, and simply removing God. For people to try to say they don’t believe in God and that they are moral is appealing to a standard that exists with mankind because there is religion.

    Without a God, I think it is nearly impossible to establish an actually working ethical theory.

    Here are some questions to think about pertaining to morality in a world without God:

    • What makes something good? Maybe you could argue that things are good because they cause happiness, and are enjoyed, but why are those things good? What about the things that cause happiness and which are enjoyed but which society deems to be bad? Why are those things bad if they produce happiness and are enjoyed?

    • Why do we have rights? I think most of us like to believe we have certain rights, but why do we have them? According to whom? In America, are the rights that we have established as rights rights just because we’ve established them? What if the founders had judged differently? Then would we not have those rights?

    • For instance, why is murder wrong? Because it deprives someone of life? But then why is that wrong?

    • In some parts of the world, people don’t enjoy the same rights that we do, is that right or wrong? When people are mistreated in other countries what is it that makes the mistreatment wrong? Is there an intrinsic belief that they have some type of value because they are humans? But that’s just an opinion, some would disagree. Perhaps someone like Kim Jong Il would disagree with you. Who would be right, you or him? Who wins? How do you decide? What is ultimately moral?

    • Why are people like Hitler considered evil? Without a divine giver or objective morality and purpose, how were his actions bad? Was it because he was depriving people of basic human rights? In the grand scheme of things, how do those actions or those people even matter?

    I think Ravi Zacharias puts it very interestingly:

    “When you accept the existence of goodness, you must affirm a moral law on the basis of which to differentiate between good and evil. But when you admit a moral law, you must posit a moral lawgiver. That, however, is who you are trying to disprove and not prove. For if there is no moral law giver, there is no moral law.”

    jrb