Tag: homosexuality

The Failure of Bros

Is this due to “homophobia”? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I’ve seen on YouTube today a lot of talk about the failure of a movie called Bros. If you haven’t heard of this movie, it’s supposed to be a romantic comedy, but the lovers in this are a pair of men. This was the first of its kind and its fail was tremendous.

Billy Eichner, who is behind the movie, has sadly taken the lower path in handling this. Instead of looking at himself and looking at his movie and seeing why it is no one went to see it, he is instead blaming the audience. Why did it fail? It is because YOU must be a homophobe.

However, if that is the case, then even assuming everyone who saw the movie in America is gay, a lot of them even didn’t see it, so does that mean someone in the homosexual community is a homophobe? Eichner has also been on Twitter sending out regular tweets about this. Little tip here. If you want your audience to listen to you, it’s probably not a good idea to call them homophobes and anything else at the same time.

Well here are a lot of reasons most people didn’t go see this movie.

First, romcoms are normally meant for women. For the most part, men do not go to see romcoms unless their girlfriends or wives insist on it. Men would rather see an action flick of some kind. They want to see some fights, car chases, shootings, and something getting blown up. If they do go see a romcom, they want to at least see a beautiful woman in that movie.

A gay romcom has neither. No straight guy I know of wants to see two dudes getting it on together. Add in there are supposedly multiple orgies in this and we’re even less interested.

While men will go see action flicks wanting to be the man in the films, women go see romcoms because for the most part, they want to be romanced. They like the love story and it’s their kind of fairy tale. They are not interested in seeing two dudes either.

If you’re wanting men to go see your film, don’t make it a romcom.

Second, people don’t want to see something if they think they’re being preached to. Most people do not go to church for entertainment value and there’s a reason we’ve called a long message we don’t want to hear a sermon. There’s a reason we refer to a negative onslaught of what we ought to do as preaching. When people see a system they don’t want regularly put in their face, they lose interest. It’s the whole “Go woke, go broke.”

Consider how it is in superhero comics. Most people I know wouldn’t really care too much if someone wanted to make a gay superhero. What they don’t want is to take a traditional superhero who has never shown any inkling of being gay and then turning them gay to appeal to diversity. People go to comics for entertainment. They don’t go for politics.

Third, yes, a lot of people don’t agree with homosexuality, including myself, but it doesn’t do anything to call us all homophobes any more than calling non-Christians Christophobes is going to get them to repent or seriously examine Christianity. Instead of having any debate on the topic, instead, it is easier to just shout an insult at someone. It doesn’t help your side any.

That means when we go see a movie, we don’t want to see an orgy with a bunch of guys in it. That might appeal to the homosexual community, but not to heterosexual community. We also don’t care for a movie that tells us that we had a good run. You don’t tell us our time is done and then respond negatively when we choose to not show interest in you.

Ultimately, if people don’t like your work, no matter how passionate you are about it, you need to look to yourself. You will never have something that pleases everyone, but I have to do the same thing here. If people aren’t interacting with my content or taking it seriously, I have to look at myself mostly. Now there’s no harm in looking at my audience and asking what they want. I wrote about divorce for quite awhile, for instance, because I saw views were up on my blog when I did that. Give the people what they want.

If someone isn’t interested in my content, I can ask what I can do to make it interesting to them. I could look at my writing style or website presentation or anything else. The first place to start if someone doesn’t like my work is always with me. It is not with the audience.

So Billy, take a look at yourself. How passionate you are about the work doesn’t matter a bit. I can be super-passionate about selling overcoats, but it won’t work if I’m talking to people in the Middle East most likely. I can be super passionate about pork products, but it won’t work with Muslims or Orthodox Jews. Passion doesn’t equal success. Having a good product or service and then knowing your audience well and what they want does.

We just don’t want Bros. Time to accept that and move on.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Of Marriages And Diets

Is this a valid reason to abandon marriage? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

As I was writing yesterday’s blogpost, I had a number of people tag me on Facebook and ask “What do you think of this?” and this was the very picture I was writing about. Today, I’d like to tackle another one that has been making the rounds. It’s another one that sadly convinces me those on the left in this debate really don’t bother to listen to what their opponents say.

First off, the opening claim is just false. Even if you are a skeptic, it should be easy to accept that a redefined marriage of two men or two women is against someone else’s religion is a fact. That doesn’t say anything about the emotional state of the person who holds that religion. The anger is already imposed. (This happens all too often as those of us who are conservative are often accused of having hate towards the other side.)

I don’t go to bed at night steaming about homosexual couples. The issue matters to me, but I have many other things to think about. It’s on the other side unfortunately that if we are told we don’t agree, well here come the hounds out to shut down our businesses and demand our freedom to operate be taken away.

That’s only the start of the problem.

The majority of the real argumentation on the right is not going “The Bible says X, therefore Y should be forbidden.” Most of us are making arguments based on the nature of marriage and a natural law understanding of marriage. Yes. I am sure Pastor Bob down at the local Southern Baptist Church is getting up in the pulpit screaming about what the Bible says and doesn’t have a clue about these natural law arguments, but note I stated the real argumentation. I am not against the Bible, but if one side doesn’t believe it, it has no authority for them, at least in the sense that it doesn’t change their thinking.

Ultimately, when I have seen this debated online, it comes down to what a marriage is. It has always before been understood as two adults of the opposite sex coming together in a union generally with the goal of bringing about and raising children. Now we are told that it doesn’t matter what two consenting adults do.

But why should this be the case?

First off, consider the case of Armin Meiwes. He was a cannibal who was convicted for eating someone. Here’s the relevant part. This person wanted to be eaten. He fully consented to everything. Thus, we have an action between two consenting adults. To make this wrong, you will need another qualifier then. Two consenting adults is not sufficient.

Second, what exactly is an adult? In Biblical times, as was much of the world back then, as soon as the kids hit puberty, it was time to marry them off to someone else. Teenagers in the past would be forming families. Today, having a relationship with a teenager can get you hit with a statutory rape charge. There is nothing magical about the age of 18 that makes someone an adult. We’ve all known adults well over 18 who are essentially children and we’ve all known children younger than 18 who have been forced through circumstances to grow up early and practically function as adults. Also, consider how many children who commit crimes can be tried as adults.

Consent is also not good enough. This is supposed to protect it from applying to children as well, but we constantly make children do things without their consent that is for their good. They go to school, do chores, go to bed, eat healthy, and get vaccinations and medical treatment they don’t like, without their consent. Loving parents who genuinely love their children do this.

Third, we might as well ask about the number two. Why should marriage be limited to two people? The Mormons held to polygamy for some time and were brought before the government for that one. If we are removing the requirement that the people be of the opposite sex, it would be far easier to remove the number. Not only that, there is a much greater historical basis for polygamy than for the redefinition of marriage.

What is being asked is what marriage is and what is the purpose of it. It is not just a union for the happiness of two adults. It is a nation building institution in the sense that these people are the ones capable of bringing about the next generation. The state has all reason to want to promote that as it kind of needs new people to survive. Hypothetically, imagine how much damage we could do to China and Russia if we could launch a biological attack somehow over those entire nations that would sterilize everyone in those nations.

And if marriage is about the continuing of the species, then the state has an interest in promoting the type of union that can do that job. The state has no interest in promoting a same-sex couple as they can never do that. Marriage is not to be meant about the affirming of the people involved, but why the people are coming together in the first place.

Now suppose someone says “Well, Christians can really say that these are the reasons, but we know the real reason is what the Bible says!” Let’s suppose 100% that that’s true for the sake of argument. That doesn’t change the fact that the natural law based arguments are on the table. Those still have to be addressed.

Suppose someone makes a powerful argument to me for atheism and I don’t know how to answer it. It does not work to say, “You only make that argument because you want to be free to live your life sexually however you want.” That could even be 100% true. I am sure there are Christians who hold to Christianity just for the benefits they want to receive and I am sure there are some atheists who hold to atheism because of the sexual freedom.

The argument still has to be addressed.

This meme is not addressing any real arguments. It is not even making one. It is just pointing to motives and trying to read emotions into the other side.

It’s a shame so much has to be written to deal with something because so many do take it seriously.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

On The Military on Pride Month

What is the purpose of a military? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

“And when the SJW mob passes through your area, when they see the rainbow flag on your house or business, they will pass over, but if they do not see the rainbow flag on your house and business, they will unleash their fury to get you cancelled and they will show no mercy.”

Such is what I have on my wall for what a friend of mine calls “Liberal Passover.” I get up and pretty much everywhere I go I see Pride flags. I didn’t even see this much for Black History Month or for Women’s History or Asian History or even for my own Autism Awareness Month. Mine is the one I least expect to see it for. After all, we don’t go and form mobs and shut down people that refuse to endorse us.

However, this is the first year I have seen the U.S. Military take this route and put up a statement for Pride Month on the first of the month.

So I did a search. Maybe I just missed something. I looked for Autism Awareness Month and the U.S. military. Nothing was coming up showing they celebrated it. I then replaced Autism Awareness with Pride Month and boom, it was right there immediately. Well, maybe people on the spectrum can’t serve. That was false also. There have been and are people on the spectrum in the military.

Now in a sense, I don’t really want the military to get involved. The military is not about raising awareness for causes necessarily. The military just needs to purely be America first. That is no longer happening.

My great concern with this? If the military can’t stand up to the SJW front, how on Earth can I expect them to stand up to our enemies? I can definitely assure you that the Russian and Chinese militaries are not spending their time making sure they’re supporting Pride Month or using proper pronouns or anything like that.

It’s also disappointing to see that if this is the case with Pride, then apparently the military is saying that the cause of Pride matters more than all those other causes, and this is part of the danger when it becomes political. Many of us on the right are very concerned that our military is becoming weaker because SJW causes are more important than the real point of the military, that of winning wars.

Do I still support the military? At the time, yes, but I am concerned about our future with this. I am more and more concerned that we are becoming a nation that is focusing on feelings instead of focusing on reality. I’m especially thinking about this after a great recommendation from someone that I read the book Strange New World. I have just recently started it and I am reading it on Audible and I definitely plan to review it as I am concerned about the Strange New World we find ourselves in.

I really hope the military returns to winning wars instead of political acceptance.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Sexuality and Shrimp

How do we handle the law today? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

This is not an easy topic as thousands of pages have been written on the topic of the role of the law in the life of the Christian. Much of the epistles in the New Testament is all about this problem really as Paul and others have to quote the Old Testament often to establish their points. Jesus Himself in the Gospels had to explain how the Old Testament was being misunderstood so it is not a shock that we today can struggle with it at times.

For instance, we have all these rules on sexuality, but then we have rules on not eating shrimp. What’s going on with that? Shrimp is an abomination and so are two men sleeping together. Why do we forbid the latter and yet happily go to a place like Red Lobster and dine our hearts out?

As I’ve said, I should not be expected to be the final word and answer all questions, but I do want to give some general guidelines.

First, we must always remember that the Law was given to Jews in a specific time and a specific place. The Law was never given to the church in the sense that God directly covenanted with the church through the Law. The covenant with the church is done through Jesus.

However, this does not mean that we dispense with the Law entirely. Paul tells us in the New Testament that everything that was written was written for our benefit. Even if we are not bound by it, we can still learn from it.

Second, the Law often had meanings behind the surface level. Paul uses this in 1 Cor. 9 where he quotes about not muzzling an ox while it’s treading the grain. God’s principle concern is not with the ox, but with the idea that one who works should get to partake in some fruit of the work.

Let’s consider another idea. What about building something on the roof of your house to serve as a barrier? In this case, this was done because the roof was often treated as a separate room and people would regularly go up there. You build a barrier to make sure no one falls off and suffers injury or death. We don’t do this today because we don’t use our roofs this way, but if you have an apartment complex with a balcony of some sort, there will be a barrier to prevent falling.

So what about mixed fabrics and clean and unclean animals? The animals could be because some of them contained a mixture of different locales in that they were creatures of earth and water or water and air or air and earth. We might not know the reason entirely, but they did. Mixed fabrics were to avoid a similar mixture and remind the Israelites of purity. We are to take this as having moral purity.

Third, most all of us follow the Law to some extent. Last I saw, many atheists are not going out and championing murder since the Bible says “Do not murder.”You can be an atheist and think the idea of “Love your neighbor as yourself” is a beautiful command and should be followed, but it comes right between Leviticus 18 and 20 with its sexual rules. Atheists accusing Christians of picking and choosing can be just as guilty. Both sides can easily use prooftexts for their own benefit.

Fourth, we can see how the New Testament handles this. While John 8 with the woman caught in adultery was not likely written by the author of John, I do think it shows a real event in the life of Jesus. In it, Jesus never questions the statement of the law that an adulterous woman should be stoned, but he does say that if you want to play that game, how many of you deserve a punishment as well?

In 1 Cor. 5, we have a man sleeping with his stepmother. The couple could have had a similar punishment, but this time Paul says to remove the man from the church. It’s worth noting in that day the man could not just go down the block to another church. The exclusion was to make him come to his senses.

Paul as a good Pharisee knows the law, but while he still upholds that sleeping with your stepmther is wrong, he doesn’t uphold the punishment of the Old Testament. It’s not because he’s opposed to the Old Testament. It’s because he sees things through the lens of Christ now instead.

Several times in the epistles, homosexual practice and sex outside of marriage is condemned. There’s no hint that these have changed. Yes. I have read some of the revisionists trying to say otherwise and I just find their cases extremely weak.

Let’s also return to Leviticus 18. In the final section, God tells the people that for these kinds of practices, the people are being driven out. This means that they should have known better.

In the same way, in Romans 1, Paul speaks about general revelation and says “Because of that, people should have known idolatry was wrong.” Why? Looking at the universe, you should be able to tell that it was made by something greater than something like an animal.

After a vertical error, he then moves to a horizontal one. Just like people got the nature of God wrong, they got the nature of God wrong and same-sex relations were his prime example. We should be able to look and tell that male and female go together and no other combination does.

These are just some general guidelines. Does this answer everything? Of course not. There are many books on these subjects. For homosexuality in particular, I recommend Robert Gagnon and books where he does take part in a counterpoint discussion are some of the best.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Homosexuality in Leviticus

What does the Bible say about this topic? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Now we get to this verse:

“Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable.”

For some reason in our culture, this is always a hard topic. My personal suspicion on this is that we live in a culture that wants to move away as far as possible from the Christian understanding of sex and in actuality, just make sex more meaningless and more of a hobby that people do together. If we give any essential qualities to sex, then we also have to have proper rules and morality for sex. It’s why I am sure bestiality and pedophilia is just around the corner. Time will tell if I am right.

Let’s state something upright. There are several works out there that are tempting to make the Bible not condemn homosexual behavior. They really don’t work well at all. This has been the standard interpretation for thousands of years and there is no new data around the text to have it say something different.

Now we could debate if some people are born with homosexual tendencies or not, but that’s not my purpose here. Even if we did grant that, many of us men are born with the tendency to pursue women and we have to control that impulse just as much. If any desire we have is condemned by Scripture, no matter how much it seems innate to us, we have to curtail it.

Also, contrary to what some people think, there are a number of people who struggle with same-sex attraction and yet marry someone of the opposite sex and it still works. Does it require a lot of work to make a marriage like that succeed? I am sure, but at the same time, that is the case with every marriage. All of them take work and that includes in sexual practice even with two people who are heterosexual.

One of the reasons is that gender really matters in the Bible. It’s not a social construct. At the same time, the Bible never says what makes a man a man or a woman a woman. Going back to Sam Andreades who I referred to yesterday, he does state that gender is best found in relationship. Women are the best at bringing out masculinity in a man and vice-versa.

Our bodies are different for a reason and come together the way that they do for a reason. Who we are is not an accident. The way we come together and reproduce is not an accident either. If anyone should have a thorough understanding of sexuality, it should be a Christian. Sex is not something that is outside of a Christian worldview and must be somehow grafted in. It is the idea of our creator and His invention. We have the Song of Songs in our book after all.

FInally, none of this is hatred of people who have homosexual tendencies anymore than speaking against adultery is hatred of people with heterosexual tendencies. On this end, I recommend Preston Sprinkle’s People To Be Loved.

And yes, we definitely need to show love to the homosexual community. We don’t approve of all they do, but we should celebrate their personhood. They too bear the image of God.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

The Sin of Sodom

What was the sin of Sodom? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

So we’re going back a bit because I was mentally going through Genesis recently and realized I had skipped this story and the next one. This starts in Genesis 13 which tells us that these cities wlil be destroyed and assumes its readers already know that. (Which tells you this had to be a most memorable destruction meant to stay in the minds of the audience.) We could picture it as if a person was telling about the history of New York City and said “This was before the World Trade Center towers were destroyed.”

When the story begins for Lot, he pitches his tent near Sodom. We don’t hear from him again until lo and behold, now he is living in Sodom. Lot’s first mistake here was not keeping his distance from a city that had a wicked reputation. How often do we fail to keep our proper distance from something or someone wicked when we should?

Now move forward to Genesis 18 where God reveals that He is about to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah to Abraham. God gets to the point of saying that if he can find ten righteous people in that city, he will spare it. Unfortunately, those ten righteous people cannot be found.

So what was Sodom being judged for?

We go over to Ezekiel 16 and what do we see?

49 “‘Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.

Well, here you have it! They were prideful and thought only of themselves and didn’t help the poor and needy. That fully backs the inhospitable reading that we often see. Their sin wasn’t homosexual behavior obviously! It was not being kind to others.

Before we just dismiss this, let’s consider some matters. They definitely were inhospitable and that in the ancient world was a great sin. Also, all Christians should definitely agree that pride is a great sin. Lewis called it the greatest sin actually.

Yet if we stopped reading at that verse, we would miss out.

50 They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen.

The word for detestable is the same as used for the abominations in Leviticus 18 and 20 and does refer to homosexuality. We can then say that if it wasn’t the only reason for destruction, it was a big reason. Perhaps we could say pride was the main reason and this pride led to the inhospitality and to homosexual practice.

Such an idea might seem shocking to modern readers. Aren’t homosexual relationships all about love? In the ancient world, not necessarily. They were often a way of showing social dominance. We say the same today in some cases. We often say rape is not primarily about sex. Rape is about power and showing the dominance a rapist has over their victim, whatever sex the criminal and the victim are. Anyone could easily find someone willing to have sex with them, even if they had to pay money, but rape is not about that.

In these cases, a man would often be seen as feminizing another man by having homosexual intercourse with him. Such was the case going on with Sodom. There was no reason to think that strangers showing up in town were showing up to have sex with other men. Instead, the men want the men who visited Lot to come out so they can “know” them.

And yes, while know can sometimes refer to knowledge, in this and many other cases in the Old Testament, it’s clear it refers to sexual intercourse. This is clear when we see that Lot says his daughters have never known a man. Their Dad is there with them and they are engaged, so surely they know men, but they have never had sex with men.

By the way, there is also no defending Lot’s offer to them. Good guys in Scripture don’t always act like good guys. People make stupid mistakes in stressful situations, and your house being besieged by a personal army of angry men does count as such a situation.

Fortunately, Lot’s angelic visitors save the day. Everyone is given a chance to flee the town as destruction starts. Lot’s wife is the one who suffers since she looks back to the city as she was told to not do.

So why was Sodom destroyed?

Pride?
Inhospitality?
Immoral sexual behavior?

Yes.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Why This Series Matters

Why are we studying marriage in the Bible? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I was listening to a radio talk show yesterday with the host talking about what our enemies should do if they wanted to destroy America from within. I agreed with many of the statements that were made and think they are happening right now, but there was one glaring omission I was shocked didn’t make the list and that is what is happening right now. That omission is the destruction of the family unit.

Ultimately, the sexual revolution in this country was one of the worst things that ever happened. When the pill came, everything changed. No, this is not a blanket condemnation of contraception, but it is one of our lack of self-control. We actually believed in sex without consequences. The reason we did so was we had somehow already had a diminished view of sex and I do not know exactly where that began, but it started coming out a lot in the late 60’s.

It wasn’t a shock that the next step that came along was abortion. The most anti-feminine thing a woman can do is to have an abortion. It is an attack on the life of a human baby and it is an attack on her own body. Any woman who is truly a feminist should be 100% opposed to abortion other than saving the life of a mother in the case where the child will definitely die. Giving birth is one of the things that makes women completely unique, and that uniqueness is treated as a curse.

Around the time of Reagan, we had no-fault divorce come. This, unfortunately, made divorce even easier to come about and when people think marriage can be broken easily, they don’t treat it as seriously. Marriage was no longer seen as a permanent institution meant to be treated as till death do us part. There are too many divorces that don’t have biblical grounds. What happened to me is one such case.

Around this time also we had the GRID contagion spreading. You haven’t heard of that? Yes, you have. You know it as AIDS. It was originally called GRID, Gay-Related Immuno-Deficiency. The disease showed up primarily in homosexual men and in people using IV needles. Why change the name? Why, the original name would be offensive.

But this was the move being made. The book came out called After The Ball about how Americans will come to love and accept homosexuality in the 90’s. The playbook was followed perfectly. People didn’t even realize that their minds were being changed, but they were. Naturally, the media was the main methodology. I don’t just mean news stations. I mean TV shows, like Will And Grace.

In the past, if a movie had a “sex scene” it was a man and a woman going into a room and you’d hear a click as the door locked. You knew what was going on. Now, they have to show nearly everything. The internet has also increased the spread of pornography, one of the most dehumanizing things ever if not the most dehumanizing thing, even above slavery itself.

The homosexual movement keeps going and what do we have coming on then? We have to change what our idea of marriage is. Unfortunately, if you can change marriage to mean anything, then marriage essentially means nothing. People didn’t think enough about what made sex special and in turn, they didn’t think about what made marriage special. Marriage has become all about me and my happiness and not about the future of humanity and for Christians, the spread of the Kingdom.

As soon as that battle was won, the shift came immediately to transgenderism. After all, being a man and being a woman can’t mean anything either. If we say there is something objective about men and women that makes them different, well that hurts equality. We can’t have that. I get absolutely astounded today that I have to defend the fact that men and women are different.

Any time there’s a story about a boy causing trouble in a girls’ locker room, I am not surprised a bit. This is what happens. Unfortunately, you’re the bad guy if you point this out. Parents cheer when a boy is allowed to use the girls’ locker room, ignoring that the girls are absolutely terrified, and who can blame them?

I won’t deny there’s a personal element in this for me. Divorce hurts. It’s been the most hurtful thing I have ever been through and it causes me some pain every single day. Yes. I am recovering and yes, I have come a long way, but there is always healing to be done.

This is also to answer questions people have for me about remarriage. I plan on it. Is it biblical? I am convinced it is, but I am also pointing out my reasons for this. I also hope to stop more unbiblical divorces from taking place and to help those who have been unbiblically divorced, especially my fellow men who are often faced with pressure in a culture that says “Believe all women.” (Which is also very subjective depending on who the woman is.)

The family unit is a threat to anyone who wants to control society. It is a unit that is dependent on no one else save God alone. It is its own private little society. It doesn’t need the backing of the government to exist. It is separate from the state.

I want to see that unit protected and defended. I want to see it again embraced as a lifelong man-woman unit. I want to see the end of abortion and even the end of pornography. I want to see the honoring of marriage and unbiblical divorce condemned and those who are the victims being given comfort and grace. Too many men have told me that even years later, they are treated like they have committed an unpardonable sin.

The family is a unit created by God Himself and we should treat it that way. The family is meant to mirror the holy trinity. We mess with it only to our own peril.

That is why this matters.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth.)

Sins We Don’t Speak Of

Is the church really taking holiness seriously? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Yesterday when I was in Sunday School, I don’t know how it got started, but we started talking about secret sins. These are the sins that you never really hear anything about in church. Right now, our pastor is getting ready to go through the Ten Commandments with us so it’s my hope that we’ll be hearing more about these kinds of sins.

The deal with these sins is that we don’t really like to talk about them because they hit so close to home. They are what we all struggle with. One that came to my mind immediately was gluttony. We all know of pastors who are quite rotund who are getting up telling us how to live our lives, but you can be sure too many of them are not talking about this sin.

We just went through Gay Pride Month. Now many people think the church talks way too much about homosexuality, which is odd because I honestly hardly hear anything about it from the pulpit, but when was the last time you heard something about pride from the pulpit? This is considered the chief sin many times. This is supposed to be the sin that made the devil, the devil. Do you hear about it often?

But speaking of homosexuality, our leader also gave us a statistic. I don’t know the source for it as I didn’t get to ask in class, but he said 15% of Christians in the church struggle with same-sex attraction. Even if that number is too high, some do. There is nothing said from the pulpit to help these Christians who could want to get rid of these attractions even.

Along those lines, what about pornography? It’s been said that 1 in 3 men in the church struggle with this. A large number of pastors even struggle with pornography. It’s not just a man’s problem either. More and more women are struggling with pornography. When do you hear anything about it?

It’s amazing really how many of our sins are sexual in nature. We need to talk about abortion and not just that it’s wrong, but that there is mercy and forgiveness for those who have gone this route. A number of women in the church have had abortions and some people will go to the church seeking solace after having one. We need to be able to say that abortion is wrong, but that yes, there is forgiveness available.

The church has a stigma when it comes to divorce as well. This is even the case when divorce could be justified and the right thing to do, such as in cases of adultery and/or abuse. If someone is divorced, negative thoughts are assumed about them, which is our natural tendency. Imagine going through a parking lot and seeing a car with damage on from an accident. You might assume the person was a bad driver, which is my tendency. Maybe they came in contact with the bad driver. You don’t know until you ask. Again, we need grace and mercy here.

Why don’t we talk about these sins? Are we afraid of offending people? Then we’re not really walking as Jesus did. However, if we don’t talk about them, we don’t get to have people come to the cross if it is something they have done wrong to receive mercy and forgiveness and grace, or we don’t get to give them healing from pain that has been afflicted to them in their lives.

Too many of our sermons really feel good messages to help us feel better about ourselves. Sometimes we should feel miserable about ourselves. We should so that it will drive us to repentance, which will bring us an even greater joy. If we want to be like Jesus, we need that repentance as well. The church does not do anyone any favors by neglecting the topic of sin. It’s easy to talk about the sins everyone else is doing and how bad the world is. We need to remember to clean up our own house first.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Happy Liberal Passover!

How shall we celebrate June? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

When Autism Awareness Month started in April, I ordered some bracelets that say Autism Awareness on them and started wearing them. For you, my readers, I blogged on an insider’s perspective on what it’s like to have Aspergers, a subset of Autism. I did an interview on the topic for a Christian podcast as well.

I barely remember seeing one ad, I think on Hulu, about Autism Awareness.

Yesterday was June 1st, the start of Gay Pride Month.

Already, the day before Words With Friends 2 has a theme going on this week about gay pride with a bonus yesterday if you played the word “pride” and today if you play the word “trans.” I saw WatchMojo released a video on top LGBTQ+ characters in video games and I am sure more such vids are coming. I saw ads from companies like LinkedIn and others celebrating. I saw numerous people on Facebook posting messages for Gay Pride Month.

Now these businesses and people have a right to do what they want with their business. However, where was this support for the Autism community? After all, if we say we care about the people involved, does this mean that most companies today don’t care about people on the spectrum? I don’t want to think that, so perhaps there’s something else going on.

Have you seen what happens if you disagree with the LGBTQ community? You get blacklisted and “cancelled” and often sued. Is it a shock then that so many businesses are putting up rainbow images? Imagine if we changed Exodus 12 to this idea.

And the LGBTQ community said, “And we will pass through your social media accounts, and when we see the rainbow avatar, we will not destroy, but if we come to any business account that does not have a rainbow account, we will bring all our forces on you to show you are against diversity and inclusion and you’re a bigot and we will destroy you in our fury.”

Keep in mind that a few years ago, these were the people telling us we need to be tolerant. As is expected, when such people get into power, tolerance is not a virtue that is cared about anymore. It was useful for the time, but you can be sure there won’t be tolerance for evangelical Christians and others who disagree, except perhaps Muslims since we don’t want to be killed.

So as this Liberal Passover goes on (I wish the name was original to me, but a friend came up withit), other communities can be expected to be ignored as is common. I didn’t even see this much last month when it was for Asians and Pacific Islanders. Of course, that’s also because Asians likely won’t sue you if you say nothing about them.

So then for all those businesses who are treating this month like it’s the most awesome thing ever, where was the “love” when it was the month for Autism? Where was the celebration of diversity and inclusiveness? After all, I think it is pretty firmly established that we’re born this way. I don’t think many of you want to go with the idea that vaccines cause Autism since we have heard enough condemnation in Covid about the Anti-Vax community.

So let’s see. We are born this way and we have a known disability and we’re not even asking for pride. The month for April is not Autism Pride Month. It is Autism Awareness Month. I do celebrate that I am on the spectrum, but I know it’s not because of anything that I did so pride isn’t fitting. What criteria do we not fit that we get people to talk about our month?

Once again, as a Christian, while I do oppose homosexual behavior, I also support the freedom businesses have to do what they want. If you want to support Gay Pride Month, that is your choice, and if you don’t want to support Autism Awareness Month, that is also your choice. At the same time, if someone doesn’t want to support a business for their choices, that is also their choice. That’s the way freedom works after all.

I just would like to have some consistency and I would delight in hearing from businesses. Why is this month something you want to shout out about, but April was met with cold silence? Is it hatred or disapproval of the autistic community? Are we just not worth it? Why the silence?

I think I already know the answer and it’s the one I gave above, but if I’m wrong, let me know.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Why Christians Lose Culture Wars

Do we even bother trying anymore? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Remember years ago when Duck Dynasty was pulled from a network and Christians got together and protested? There was an organized effort and a Facebook page. We made sure the world knew what we wanted. We were going to not take no for an answer. When Cracker Barrel joined in by removing Duck Dynasty gear from their gift shop, we went after them.

Eventually, the cable company and Cracker Barrel both relented.

And Christians immediately put down their arms and went back to watching their TV show.

Way to go, team!

So let me get this straight. When a voice on TV is silenced because he disagrees with homosexuality and his TV show gets canceled, Christians think the main thing to fight for is the TV show? It’s not the freedom to state what one believes? It’s not our constitutional rights to free speech and freedom of religion?

We know we can do this the other way also and we did it again when someone was the target of attacks due to speaking on homosexuality. That was Chick-Fil-A Day. Any counter movements like a Kiss-In Day didn’t even make a ripple in the pond. Christians shattered records for fast-food restaurants that day.

Christians. Do you need to be reminded, and apparently you do, that we form a very significant portion of the population? People claiming to be transgender are probably not even 1% of the population and yet now when I take an online survey, I get more than two choices when selecting gender multiple times. If we went by the standards of those on the left, homosexuals make up 10% of the population. I highly question that as I think it’s much less, but look how much change they brought about.

Why? Because they got up and let their voices be heard and refused to let people walk all over them. They also got people outside of them to recognize the validity of their cause. Today, we are seeing ourselves moving more and more towards what many of us think is a mountain that we are going to crash into.

I have stopped saying the world can’t get any crazier because any time I have said that I have been proven wrong. Many of us have been amazed. Gone With The Wind is temporarily pulled from streaming for being racist. The Muppets Show now needs to have a disclaimer. Mr. Potato Head is now being named just Potato Head.

Well, sometimes Christians post something on Facebook about it.

Congratulations.

We need to do more than that. It’s understandable if some of us do go and essentially boycott some companies, but that’s not enough. Efforts like this need to be concentrated. They need people to come together for their common cause and let it know they are working together. We have several of us doing something individually, but we need to do something together in a group.

After all, there’s no sign that this slippery slope is stopping with what we’re doing. It’s almost as if the other side believes their message more than we believe in the message of Jesus. Sadly, my fear is that may be true, especially since that message has been watered down so much that it’s just about how we can be “nice people” and to receive counsel for our feelings. I am not saying there isn’t a place for that, but that isn’t the message of Christianity.

The original Christians were persecuted and they still kept on going. We aren’t anywhere near being persecuted like they were and most of us have already laid down our arms. We’ve even seen many of our own churches, consider the Methodist Church for example, going the way of the world.

What’s it going to take? We’re going to have to get in our heads first off that Christianity is true and Jesus is really Lord. That will mean teaching the church good apologetics and good theology.

Also, much of the confusion in our culture is around issues of sexual ethics. The Christian church needs to be talking about sex a lot more. Think about it. When was the last time you went to church and heard a message about sex. Now compare this. When was the last time you turned on a TV show or movie or even a radio and got a message about sex, not necessarily a sermon with something explicitly taught, but the show or song said “This is what we believe about sex.”

Christians need to have better thinking on this which means we need to know how sexuality fits into a whole worldview. If we see the matter the way everyone around us does, we won’t make any difference. If we learn to think about this topic better than everyone else, we will.

We could also bear in America to learn more about the history of our country and what we went through. In the American Revolution, there were bounties put on the heads of preachers by the British. Our preachers should see getting up into the pulpit as something dangerous.

In Communist China or in Middle Eastern Muslim countries, being a Christian can be a death sentence. However, we see churches growing over there. Why? Because those Christians know it’s a death sentence and they take it seriously. This isn’t a light-hearted commitment. People are saying they know Jesus Christ is worth dying for.

Is He worth living for?

Is He worth anything at all?

If you don’t want to see our country and our world go this way, then what are you doing about it? Let’s give the left this. They at least go out and contend for what they want. They refuse to be beaten down.

We could learn something from that.

We are really nowhere near what Christians faced in the first century and yet they did a lot more and they sure didn’t have the tools that we have today. If we want to see change in our world, we have to bring about that change. Yes, Christ is behind us, but He already gave us our marching orders in the Great Commission and in Acts 1 and He’s not going to do the work for us.

Will we do the work for Him?

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)
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