The Objectivization of Women

Are women better off in our society? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Last night while watching TV, my wife and I came across a sitcom we hadn’t seen before but within a few minutes, I saw the usual problem I see in many sitcoms today. The whole idea was one character had been introduced to some women and was trying to do everything he could to get them to sleep with him.

At this point, I told my wife that it was really sorrowful how our society has lowered to seeing women as nothing but sex objects. A few moments passed before I added a second point that I think it’s even sadder that the women themselves in these sitcoms seem to often have the same attitude and want nothing more than to immediately get naked for the guy and every woman is instantly available.

Let’s start out with some clear points on how sex is from a Christian perspective. Sex is something that is made to be enjoyable. A husband and wife are to thoroughly enjoy the passionate love of one another. Both are intended to get pleasure from the act. While it is normally seen that men have the highest libidos, women too can have libidos. There is nothing wrong with a woman wanting sex for physical pleasure any more than there is a man wanting to have sex to get some emotional closeness.

But in all of this, men and women are not just meant to be used for their bodies. A man is not to approach a woman solely for sexual pleasure and it is a shame that this can happen in marriages even where a man wants to have his wife around so he can get in his kicks and then when he’s done with her, he is immediately absent, as if he just got out a movie, book, or video game, and after he was done playing, put it away again.

A woman meanwhile is to honor her husband sexually as well and the great danger for women is that sex can be used to get something someone wants. In both cases, neither party is focusing on the joy of the other. There is nothing wrong with finding one’s own joy, but the true lover wants when done to know that he or she has done their part to please the spouse.

As I was thinking about this, I thought about shows I used to watch. Consider for instance, the Mary Tyler Moore show. This was a show about a woman rising up in the world seeking to take her piece of the pie. Nudity did not show up on the show. There was no doubt about how many men around Mary wanted her, but they would not have been as overt as they are today. The woman was still respected and you had to win her heart and treat her honorably. Mary was a woman who was going somewhere and a man would have to rise to the occasion in order to be worthy of her.

Meanwhile, on most sitcoms today, the woman meets the man and immediately she wants to take him back home and sleep with him. There is hardly any thought of STD’s, unplanned pregnancy, family commitments, or values of any kind, other than the value to have a lot of fun.

With that is gone any idea that sex could mean something greater than just a pleasurable time. It could also be a builder of commitment between two people who have formed a covenant with each other. It could be an ever-increasing way of actually getting to know the other person. For all we know, maybe it just might be that when you stay married to one person for life, you get to know that person exceedingly well.

Keep in mind that all this is happening in a society that is supposed to have got past the oppression of women that supposedly took place in its Christian heyday. Now we are secular and we have thrown off the shackles of the past. We have embraced abortion and thus given women control over their own bodies. Truly, women are free today.

And yet, for all their freedom, they seem to be treated as objects just for the purpose of sex. Is this an upwards move? Is this any more about launching careers or being incredible mothers? Is the highest aspiration a woman can reach in this life that of giving a man a really good time in bed?

This also has an effect on the way men are. Men can grow to expect women to always want sex. Women can grow to expect that men want nothing but sex. For the Christian, sex is an important aspect of a woman, but her greatest good is not in the pleasure of men but in the pleasure of God. The opposite is true for a man. A man’s greatest good is not in pleasing the woman, but in pleasing God.

Yet this is supposed to be the age where we are free from the shackles of religion that treated women as objects. Go look at how several skeptics speak of how women are treated in the Bible. Well now you have supposedly broken free of that and what can I see regularly on TV? Women being treated as objects of sexual pleasure on TV and no other redeeming factors are mentioned. The important part of a woman on the show is what her body looks like and how good she is in bed.

As a Christian man and as a Christian husband, I do believe women are better than that. In fact, the danger for us with lust is that we will lower our wife by thinking the other woman might be “better” and in doing so, we won’t just lower our wives, but we’ll lower all women by treating that as the standard. On the other hand, if a man wants to truly love the female species, the best way he can do that is by honoring his wife and forsaking all others.

And as a married man, I have indeed made a serious commitment that I intend to honor till death do us part. Part of that commitment is that I am to have sex with no one else but my wife. I have made it a point to honor my wife sexually so much that she thinks I can be paranoid around other women because I do not want to risk giving off a wrong idea or adding an image to the rolodex that men have in their heads.

What would happen on a sitcom if a woman in response to the invitation to sleep with the leading male actor said “No. I won’t. You have to marry me first. I just believe that sex is to be reserved for marriage.” Chances are in our society, she would be immediately a prude and part of the lead’s task then would be to rid her of this concept.

Let us hope that our society will move past this stage where instead of reaching maturity, we are acting rather immature and realize the sacredness of sex and the sacredness of one another. If you ask the question “Is nothing sacred?” in a scheme without God, the answer has to be “No.” In the Christian system, the answer is all that is is sacred. The more something is like God, the more sacred it is, and thus humanity and our sexuality are incredibly sacred. Let us not treat them as cheap.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Marriage and Moving

So now that we have the big move done, what’s been learned since then? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

I’ve been told that it’s awfully popular whenever I write about marriage and now that we’re moved into a new house, there have come some changes in how we approach matters so let’s talk about it.

To begin with, we’re living next to my folks, seeing as it is my grandmother’s old house after all. We immediately decided that we would establish some boundaries. Naturally, my folks have some authority around our household, but they also know that the final decision comes down to myself. If I think they are incorrect with something that they are saying about my wife, I will say so. It may not be immediately. I might have to think about their perspective for awhile before I finally decide.

Finances are still tough for us. I’m still looking for another job and looking to raise up funds through Ratio Christi, but being as I’m very much Aspie, that aspect of speaking is difficult. Talking to someone about the evidence that Jesus rose from the dead and that God exists? Sure. Any time. Talking to someone about fundraising? Hard as can be.

We do have a whole lot more room now which means more places to walk around. My wife is turning our attic into her art studio, which is just fine with me since the stairs to the attic have always frightened me anyway and she’d be more comfortable up there. Meanwhile, since the house has two bedrooms and we only need one, the other one is for the time being my office, so as I write this, I am writing it in my office.

The office is quite nice to have. My wife hasn’t really liked the idea of being surrounded by books, but in our old apartment, I had to keep them all in the bedroom and she was surrounded. Now, my books have their own place, although she is still hopeful that someday I’ll get a Kindle. I wouldn’t mind it either, but I’ve heard the Nook allows for library check-outs, which might be better for me.

While we thought there’d be something awkward about living in my grandmother’s old house, so far there hasn’t been. Every now and then I do have a memory of things in this house with her, but by and large, we’ve established it as our house and I do know the history more of this house now and that several members of my family have lived here. My wife and I are just the latest in a long line of people in the family to take up residence and we hope we honor those who came before us and whoever will follow after us.

Sleeping is still difficult at times. Is it because we’re in my grandmother’s old house? No. It’s actually a quite different reason. For some reason, we don’t have a door to the bedroom and so every morning, our cat decides to let us know that he wants breakfast and comes in, usually around 6:30 whining for us to feed him. For me, once I get up around then, I can’t go back to sleep, but I’ve managed to adjust. I usually spend some time on the PSP or DS last thing before bed which actually helps calm me down. Or else it’s just that due to my being an Aspie, I like the familiarity and that’s what it takes for me.

My wife also has her dream kitchen here, which is a 50’s style diner. There’s several Coca-Cola products. I’m especially thankful in it for the new stove some generous friends of the family got us. Our stove automatically will heat to the temperature for us, tell us when it’s ready, and then has it’s own timer. I’m quite sure it’d shut itself off as well. Believe it or not for some of you, I can do some of the cooking around the house.

We also now live in the country. My wife hopes to be gardening more towards the summer. We can also go walking easily and there are no fast-food restaurants and such around so we more have to make sure that what we have lasts. The library, post office, and a place to get hair cut are all within walking distance.

I happen to love walking. I carry a walking stick with me every time not only for that awesome adventuring feel, but just for safety, especially since some people who live in our street own dogs and if I ever met a really vicious one, I want to be ready. I also walk reading a book at the same time and can get in several pages on a brief walk.

So living in a house really changes our approach. It has also come with lessons on marriage. Having my parents around means that we regularly interact with another married couple. My aunt and uncle live next door as well, and they even used to live in this house, and they are much older in age and so we hope to do our part to help take care of them. They have been married longer than my own folks have been around.

Looking for churches has been difficult. We want to find a church that is more contemporary in style, but I also do like to hear the old hymns some. We also want to make sure that this is a church that realizes the importance of the apologetics ministry and sadly, many don’t. I am regularly disappointed by the churches and realize how far we have to go in working on them.

There is also the division of duties. My wife loves the kitchen so that’s mainly her responsibility. Still, I try to do my part. When we make up the bed, that is a task for both of us to do together. I maintain my own office and as for the cat, I handle his litter box. Also, like all men out there, I have the tasks of taking out the trash and handling those vicious intruders that sometimes come in known as “bugs.”

In all the change, we are still husband and wife and that means learning to love the right way. How is it that a man is loved by Christ? He is to love his wife the same way. In our society, too many people often think the grass is greener on the other side of the fence and thus don’t take care of their own marriage.

Little tip guys, and also for you women who are abandoning marriage. If the grass is not green for some reason, have you ever considered that maybe you need to be a better gardener? In fact, this is what Ephesians tells us to do. We are to present our brides before Christ and maybe we’re not taking that position as seriously as we ought sometimes. The wife and I often talk about how we can improve things since we can regularly hear the statistics even in churches. I think part of the problem is we don’t have the foundation of marriage. We just have the ethics but not a basis and the ethics are floating in the air.

The basis for the faithfulness is the covenant system in the NT. For those who hold to eternal security, this should have any more weight seeing as you believe Christ is faithful even when you are not. Whenever one has a disagreement with the spouse, it is wise to look at yourself and say “How am I treating Christ?” It can be quite amazing to find out you’re not much better.

We also learn that we need to have some of our own time. There are times I just want to be in my office working on my material alone. There are times that she wants to be on her laptop. There are times I go walking and it’s just me and I’m find with that. We do have special together times such as visiting my family or watching something on the TV. I’ve been surprised to find out that she quite likes the Waltons, a series I’d never seen before.

For together times, for many of my friends, something needs to be said about how sex fits into all of this. For the men, it’s not a secret that we usually have strong libidos. Consider the joke that has been made about the Muslim version of Heaven. When a man gets there and finds 70 women waiting on him, that’s heaven. If a woman got there and saw 70 men wanting her, that’d be hell.

I do have a distress I often see amongst young men who are not married and are asking me now “What’s the big deal about waiting till marriage?” Sometimes, these are Christian men and it’s very sad that I have to ask now when counseling some men who are interested in women “Are you planning on waiting until marriage?”

Most couples don’t realize the explosive force that they’re unlocking when it happens and it is something that will forever change your relationship. You will never look at each other the same way again and you will forever have to watch the way that you look at the opposite sex.

Christians. Be on guard with how you handle this area prior. Watch the attitude you have towards the opposite sex. For we men for instance, we can constantly have that rolodex of women we knew before and we have to do what we can to banish that from our minds. My wife often thinks I’m being paranoid, but I make it a point to not look at other women because I don’t want my mind to wander. This is especially true when watching TV or a movie as my wife will often have to tell me when I can look again.

Now I have often said preachers preach too much on the negatives and not on the positives. Let’s get some positives. Enjoy this aspect of marriage very very much. I often look forward to my friends getting married so they can get to experience the great gift of marriage. It is a great gift and remember that God made it to be enjoyed.

We Christians can sometimes be so prudish at times on sexuality that we make it a difficult for a couple to switch positions once they’re married. Before marriage, we are rightfully told to avoid sex. After marriage, we are rightfully told to enjoy it. The problem is we’re not given a reason why to avoid and then not given a reason why to enjoy.

The reason you avoid is that you are not yet in a covenant and in a position of total trust. If you think you are in that position, then at least be willing to go get married immediately. If that seems like a big step to you, then you are definitely not in the position to be having sex. You are wanting the pleasures of covenant without the commitment of covenant.

Why enjoy it? Because you are in that covenant. There’s no reason not to. God made the system and He made it for you to enjoy it. Why is it enjoyable? It’s because God designed it that way. The union that is that of husband and wife is meant to be an image of the union between God and man one day. If the shadow is God’s incredible gift, we can’t help but wonder how awesome the reality will be.

But for those who are single, do not despise your virginity. Instead, enjoy it as a badge of honor that you are being faithful for your special person and one day, if you get married, the other person will be very grateful and you can truly say that you two have only ever known each other.

Once again, marriage is a gift and where we live now is also a gift. There is much more to learn I am sure, but I hope what I have said has been helpful to those out there.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

It’s Easter. So what?

Does the resurrection make that big of a deal? Let’s talk about it today on Deeper Waters.

Every apologist and their mother today is writing about how we know the resurrection happened I am sure. That is an important topic. That is a topic I have written on. That is something I am not going to write about today. Instead, I would like to not ask the question of “Did Jesus rise?” but rather “Why did Jesus rise?”

I got the idea of doing this when a Facebook group I’m a part of had the question asked of “If Jesus’s death was a sacrifice, why did he stay dead for such a short time?”

The problem is that one assumes that unless a condition one enters is permanent, there is no sacrifice. Let us take an example such as surrogate motherhood. I am not interested in discussing the rightfulness or wrongfulness of the action, but using it as an example. If one woman offers her body to raise a baby for a woman who can’t for some reason, that woman will not stay permanently pregnant, but do we deny that she has made some sort of sacrifice? 

So at the start, I consider the objection to be flawed. We could ask how long did Jesus have to stay dead before it was a sacrifice? Would it have been a week? three weeks? A year? A decade? Exactly how long? What would be the criteria whereby one could even establish that such an event was at that point a true sacrifice?

Let us now suppose that we ask if there is any relevance to the fact that Christ came back and for that, we can ask why is it that nothing else came back. Why is it that when an animal was sacrificed, that it never came back. Why is it that when the ancients sacrificed their own infants, that those infants never came back. Why?

The answer is that all of those were subject to a system of death and decay. They were trapped in the circle and by their own power could not escape the circle. They were included in what is called the curse in Genesis 3 and part of the whole system described in Romans 8, particularly in verses 18-27.

Now we have Jesus here who is outside of the system due to being fully God as well as being fully man, but since He is fully man, He is able to enter the system as well and take it on. The hypothesis I am wanting to put forward is that Jesus came to undo the damage done to the creation due to sin. Let us call that force He took on “Uncreation.”

So in the God-Man, creation and uncreation together meet and face off. The question is, which is going to be stronger? Can the creator take on Himself that which was unleashed on His creation? Can He face the intruder and win? Keep in mind throughout the gospels, that Jesus speaks of going and fighting against the devil. This is not an accidental inclusion in the gospels. This was the reason for His mission. This was not just the redemption of our souls, but the redemption of the cosmos.

Jesus’s sacrifice was not about how long He remained dead, but more about what His death did. Why did He stay dead until Sunday? There’s a powerful statement there due to the creation narratives. Jesus dies on the sixth day of the week, the day that is about the creation of man. Jesus stays dead on the seventh day, the day that God rested. Jesus arose on Sunday, the start of the new week, to show that Jesus is the start of the new creation.

Because Jesus took on uncreation, He is able to restore the creation. Think of the analogy that is used in “The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe.” It is the counter of Deep Magic from the Dawn of Time by Deeper Magic from the Dawn of Time. Jesus being a man could enter and be put subject to the rules of the creation as a man. Jesus being divine however and fully God could take on all of that and defeat it. Jesus was not inherently bound by the system. Jesus could reach in from outside the circle and set us all free and Jesus did just that.

Thus, it is not just that Jesus gives us eternal life. Is it that He brings a Kingdom we can Have life in. It’s not just that He forgives our sin, but that He renders sin powerless. It’s not just that we can be freed from death itself one day, but that death itself will be bound. It’s not that He has made the way for us to go to Heaven, but that He has made the way for Heaven to come to us.

The resurrection is the ultimate reversal. It is the ultimate healing to all of the cosmos and the message of the gospel is to join in this redemption as Jesus brings it about through his rule. 

Yes. He is risen and thank God He is! We have hope not just of life, but hope of everything else as well because He is risen.

In Christ,

Nick Peters

Creation and Easter Saturday

What is it like in the in-between time? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

If there’s something that can often frighten us, it’s the future. In fact, everything we fear is in some way future-based. We fear what will happen if X is true. If we have a disease, we fear for our future. If we are going to a job interview, we fear whether we will get the job or not. The future is the big unknown.

The in-between time between what we have anxiety about and where we are can be a difficult time. I, like many young men, was quite nervous the day before my wedding and I am sure I only got one hour of sleep that night. There’s also a picture of my bride before the wedding downing a 5-hour energy drink. I believe she had a similar problem. It was a really big step and we were both nervous. The unknown was looming ahead.

Before we moved to Knoxville, I was quite nervous. I didn’t know what was going to happen and in my mind, I was undergoing all the disaster scenarios. As we’ve got here, I’ve found out that most of those have not happened. Of course, I still have some anxiety, mainly over how are we going to pay all those bills that keep coming in?

We can often think of the unknown from the perspective of the apostles. There their leader had been crucified and who was going to be next in line? They would. They were hiding out away from the danger. There was no desire any more to be identified with Jesus.

That’s a fascinating topic and something to look on and indeed, I have looked on it before. However, let us suppose that we were to personify the creation and look at it the way it is presented in Romans 8:18-27. What would it mean to the creation when it looks at the death of Jesus supposing that somehow it could know what was coming?

Romans 8 tells us that creation does look forward to being set free from bondage. Israel already knew they were in bondage. They had been in slavery in Egypt and here after their captivity, they were still in bondage in that the rule had not been restored to Israel and the pagans were the ones in charge.

Israel’s problem was that for a number of them, they were looking at only themselves. Did God plan to set free Israel? Of course. He was not thinking of doing it however in conquering Rome. There was a greater power that held Israel bondage and that was the power of sin.

This power held the world in bondage. Indeed, it held creation in bondage. The accuser had done his work and Jesus throughout His ministry showed that He was going on a battle against the devil and was going to defeat Him and bring about the Kingdom of God.

Creation watches on Easter Saturday then and sees the Son of God in the tomb but realizes that surely the journey is not coming to an end. Surely at this point in the story there will not be a let-down. The very Son of God has come down. Is that the way it’s going to end?

We today are in a similar position, though afterwards. We have seen the resurrection and as we live, the story is going on, but there is a part of us that says “This story is reaching its conclusion isn’t it?” We do await the return of our Lord and the resurrection when evil will be totally removed from the world. Creation itself waits and while there is rejoicing that Christ rose, we rejoice not just because of what happened in the past, but because of what we know is to come in the future.

When we celebrate Easter tomorrow, let us remember that we are not just celebrating that Christ rose and we shall be with Him. We are celebrating that the Kingdom has come and that Christ is Lord and He has demonstrated that by rising from the dead. We are looking forward to the final fruition of the Kingdom on Earth and living our lives aware that the King is going to return someday. We are seeking to be found to be good servants for when He returns.

Easter is a time to celebrate indeed, but let us not forget we celebrate not just for a past reason, but a future one too.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Good Friday

What does this day really mean? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

My wife and I lately have been watching biblical movies on the Gospel Music Channel. I don’t really care for Gospel Music any more, and frankly I don’t care for much Contemporary Christian Music either, but by and large I find the movies can give an interesting look, though I regularly do state that a lot of liberties are being taken with the text.

The great danger that can happen with the movies is often we will see something like Moses parting the Red Sea and think “Wow! Isn’t that fascinating!” and go on our way. We can think it an act of special effects much like the X-Men or Iron Man performing an action. The film crew makes it look so real that we do in fact often lose sight of the fact that it is real.

If we watch a movie like “The Passion of the Christ” we can often forget that what we are watching is in fact history. This really happened. When we see something on TV, it often does not impress on us the way that it really should. For an example of this, which do you think would be more striking in your mind. Seeing 9-11 happen on television or if you had been in New York City and saw it happen yourself?

Our images we have of the crucifixion cannot do it justice. I recall being in a chat room on AOL when the Passion was about to come out and some one came in who was saying they were upset because they made the crucifixion so graphic. (Apparently, they saw a preview of the film) I replied that in reality, they could not show the crucifixion the way it really was. This person was astounded and in disbelief.

We often see Jesus on the cross and the skin is still well intact on His body. It would not have been so in reality. Chances are you would have very easily seen the internal organs of our Lord. It would have been a sight that would have made the bloodiest horror film of our day receive only a G rating in comparison. This was an action so vile most in society would dare not even mention its name. It was the most shameful act that could be done to someone who opposed the Roman Empire.

And yet, we call today “Good Friday?” One can think of the small child immediately who would ask “Why would you say the day Jesus died is good?”

The child is entirely right to ask the question. The sad reality is that the adult usually doesn’t bother. In our society, we have our holidays mixed up. People start shopping months in advance for Christmas. We have Christmas music and Christmas stores and Christmas vacations and people going back and forth from state to state to celebrate Christmas.

On Easter, we have very little. There is little exchange of gifts and Easter vacations are not common.

Biblically however, Easter is the most important of the holidays. Of course, you could not have Easter without Christmas, but if all we had was the birth of Jesus and no resurrection, we would not even be celebrating the birth of Jesus at all. It would have been a failure. Chances are, no one today would know who Jesus was if He had not risen from the dead.

We must look at who Jesus was in His time. I will not argue for this now as other blogs of mine have done such, but Jesus was the divine incarnation of God Himself living amongst us and bringing about the Kingdom. He was the Messiah sent to redeem the world from what had happened to it and restore it to the Father.

Now when we see Jesus in this way, we can only see the crucifixion in one of two ways which makes Jesus so extraordinary. The first way is that Jesus was a wicked blasphemer and as C.S. Lewis would say, the very devil out of hell. If that was the case, then the crucifixion was the most righteous act of all that put to death the most wicked man who ever lived.

Suppose instead we orthodox Christians are right. Jesus was the second person of the Trinity visiting His people. The people He came to did not receive Him and instead crucified Him. If that is the case, then the crucifixion was the most wicked act of all that put to death the most righteous man who ever lived.

Of course, Christians hold to the latter. Why do we call this Good Friday then? Because we know this is when Christ began dealing the death blow to the powers that be. Paul says this in Colossians 2. The powers did not shame Jesus on the cross and make a spectacle of Him. Instead, He shamed them on the cross and made a spectacle of them.

This good Friday period ends with the resurrection, but right now, we are at the turning point in the story that has been being built for us from the Old Testament. History is going somewhere and right now, it is going upwards because Christ has risen and He is taking creation with Him to reach that fullness. Good Friday is the start and throughout this weekend, we will see how it ends.

Deeper Waters: Where We’ve Been. Where We’re Going.

Where have you been? Where are you going? Today we will discuss this on Deeper Waters.

Some of you might have been worried seeing as this blog hasn’t been updated in awhile. Did something happen to me? Well in a sense, yes. There is obviously a reason why I haven’t been posting. Today, I want to discuss where we’ve been, what changes have happened recently, and what this means for the future.

This blog was started a few years ago after reading Hugh Hewitt’s book “Blog.” It was never my intention to have this be just a blog. I hope to sometime soon have a full web site up and be active in other areas of ministry. For now, writing is a passion and something I plan to do regularly.

When I started, I lived in Knoxville, but I soon moved to Charlotte in order to pursue a degree at Southern Evangelical Seminary. After the controversy over Geisler’s actions towards Mike Licona last year, I decided that it was also time for me to move on and I’m now looking at the University of Pretoria to attain my Master’s.

While in Charlotte, I did through Gary Habermas meet Licona’s daughter and our relationship very quickly blossomed into a romantic one with my roommate at the time knowing that before too long, they’d have to book a wedding chapel, and indeed they did. We were married within a year’s time.

Before the wedding, I had also been talking with J.P. Holding of Tektonics. J.P. and I have had a long friendship over the years, even with my staying at his home when a friend of mine who lived near his area was getting married. J.P. and I had worked together often on TheologyWeb.com where we still do debates together and where I’m a department head. As it stands, when we had the new update to the site, shortly after my wedding, there was a section called “Deeper Waters” alongside Tektonics.

Now, I am J.P.’s ministry partner. Our work together continues but there are still other areas of work. Notably also, I am with Ratio Christi now as their social media and communications expert. I am in charge of the Issues and Answers chapter, which is a purely internet ministry, although I do hope to have speaking engagements from time to time.

While I was in Charlotte, we were planning to move back to Knoxville. My grandmother had passed away in November of 2010 and we found out in Christmas of 2011 that her old house was willed to among other people, myself. My wife wanted a good country environment where she could have a garden and be close to my family for whenever the time comes that we decide to expand the family. (A decision that I can think of several who would say “Please have mercy on us and don’t bring someone else like yourself into the world.”)

Unfortunately, I happened to lose my job in February and we would have no way to pay the rent. We decided then that it was time to just pack up and head back here. All of my ministry positions are still secure seeing as they’re online ones. I’m also working with Ratio Christi at UT of Knoxville. Furthermore, I plan on going to a Reasonable Faith meeting tonight so we’ll see where that goes from here.

In addition, I hope to be working on some books. I don’t want to say too much about what they’re about however, but the ones in closest confidence to me know. Rest assured that our ministry is still going strong. Of course, we could still use your support in donations and those made through Ratio Christi are tax-deductible.

Also, several of you comment on the date of the blogs and such. That is for my Mrs. to deal with as I know nothing about this kind of thing. I would also like to put up a button sometime on the side that links to my Amazon wish lists. (Yes. There are two. The first one had too many books in it and I had to make a new one)

If anyone else has any ideas on what they’d like to see, feel free to let me know. I am open to many suggestions. I cannot do everything, but I can at least listen. Hopefully tomorrow, we’ll return to our regular schedule.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Information on donating through Ratio Christi can be found here

Reason Rally: Westboro Baptist

Wait. I thought they didn’t want Christians. Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Remember how our good friend P.Z. was complaining about Christians showing up at the Reason Rally. Apparently, he wasn’t specific enough. The invitation was sent by Jim Klawon who is the Deputy Vice-President of Administration of the National Atheist Party.

So it’s okay for Christians to attend, provided it’s the Christians that the Reason Rally wants to attend. This is certainly news. Now the next question to ask is why would the Reason Rally want to have a group like Westboro Baptist attend the Reason Rally?

Do you know about Westboro Baptist? That’s the group that shows up at funerals of dead soldiers from wars here in America and pickets them. They’re the ones that march around with the signs that say “God hates fags.” They’re a group led by Fred Phelps and his family.

This is quite an odd happening, but sadly understandable. One would think that those who are presenting themselves as champions of reason would in fact want to celebrate the Christians advocating reason coming to the Reason Rally. They would want to proudly announce to the world “Yes. Ratio Christi is trying to send some evangelicals here to dialogue with us since they’re so sure we’re wrong. Well we’re certainly going to be able to deal with them. We want them to send as many as they can because we want to demonstrate to everyone that we are indeed the champions of reason.”

It’s hard to see this and not think about how Dawkins was invited by a number of groups, Christian and non-Christian, to have a debate with William Lane Craig and refused. It is amazing that while he is too busy to do that, he certainly does have time to debate with O’Reilly.

The most ironic thing about this is that I believe that these two groups have much more in common than they realize. They are just opposite sides of the same coin. Both of them are fully fundamentalist in their approach and both of them are looking to be as outspoken as possible and get noticed by the media for what they do.

The reason I believe that the Westboro group has been invited is to set up a contrast, but that contrast does not work. The Rally might want to paint Westboro as representative of all Christians, but upon what basis? Is it because they call themselves Christians? Would it work if I said Stalin was an atheist and wanted to say then that all atheists were just like Stalin and his atheist followers?

The Rally will already be a major PR disaster and in fact, this is only going to make it worse. Once again, it is my hope that more and more atheists will attend the Rally. I also hope that more Christians will be there to demonstrate what true reason is all about. If atheists want to demonstrate that their side is reasonable, invite the strongest opponents and let that be publicly shown.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Reason Rally: True Reason

Is there a response to be brought to the Reason Rally? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Lately, I’ve been presenting my own defenses against the unreason that will take place at the rally. Today, I do not have to do that. Instead, I am going to be writing about a small ebook that has been put together for the purposes of giving a response to those at the Reason Rally.

To be fair, I was not able to do an exhaustive reading of the work. As it stands, my family is in the process of preparing to move and as I’m busy packing boxes and running out and getting supplies to do that and making arrangements and still trying to make time for my wife and my own personal reading, it can be difficult to do this. I did briefly examine the document to see where it was going overall and what I thought.

I was pleased to see first off that a response has been put out and it is a response emphasizing reason. I do agree that the new atheists give the implication that if one is a disbeliever in God, then one is ipso facto automatically reasonable. The reality is I’ve met far too many who are atheists who are in fact quite unreasonable.

I was also pleased to see that several issues were addressed in the work. There were sections that could be found on faith and science as well as sections on the problem of evil, the question of slavery, and the conquest of the Canaanites. Many will be pleased to see that someone of the caliber of Craig in fact has added his work to this volume.

For that, I do commend the authors. I believe this is a fine step forward in the dialogue unlike what we usually see from the new atheist side. The writers have actually taken what the new atheists have said and they have been in dialogue with it, which is different from the way new atheists handle evangelical works.

I would have however liked to have seen more arguments that I think get to the heart of the issue. I do not think it’s always best to argue against the conclusions of the new atheists but rather their methodology. What is their approach to study and research?

Here at Deeper Waters, for instance, I have already received questions about the Bible implying that I interpret it arbitrarily or depend on the Holy Spirit. The Bible is treated like an all-or-nothing game. Either it’s all literal and absurd, or it’s all metaphorical and thus irrelevant.

What would help is to have a section on how to read not just the Bible, but any piece of literature. Why? The way one reads the Bible is really the exact same way. It can only be different by degree due to difference in time, place, culture, and language. This would be akin to learning how to read Plutarch, Aristotle, or Sophocles.

If we could get past the hermeneutical question, I believe that would also deal with many other objections. The first question to ask is if the text really has any meaning. If it does, then what does it take to get to that meaning? Is it hard some times? Yep. That’s why there’s differences of opinion. If one wants truth, one will work at it.

This also comes with the study of historiography. I was pleased to see a chapter on the reliability of the NT, but i do not recall seeing in there a central question. Many new atheists deny even the existence of a historical Jesus. Forget denying the miracles and the resurrection, which while false is more understandable. These believe that the whole story is a myth from start to finish.

Unfortunately, people who study historiography don’t take this seriously. Even Bart Ehrman is coming out with a book this month to argue that Jesus existed, probably because too many atheists have been asking him this question and some have even listed him as a source.

What needs to be done then is to show how history is to be properly done and this not in a way going all for or all against the events known as miracles. An atheist can still be an atheist while being open to miracles. He doesn’t have to have a dogmatic stance against them. Besides, we all know atheists don’t like dogma. Right?

As for the parts on evolution, I more and more think that the argument should not go on whether evolution is true or false, but rather evolution truly does make God superfluous. I was pleased to see that Tom Gilson in the work realizes that evolution and theism could both be true. Indeed, that is the glaring problem of Dawkins’s “The Blind Watchmaker.” I could grant all the evidence for evolution and that would still be a problem.

Thus, we do need to indeed go after the physics in studying what comes next, metaphysics. We need to establish our arguments on metaphysical reasoning. This is actually the version of the Kalam that I do consider the strongest. Many atheists think when I present Kalam that I’m presenting Craig’s formulation of it. Not at all. No offense to Craig. Craig I find to be a great mind and I’m glad he’s on our side, but I do not agree with all of his stances. I think the way it is for him is that you have to depend on the science largely to demonstrate that Kalam. Since I think science is inductive at best, I prefer to rely on the metaphysical which I consider to be deductive.

It is my concern that when we keep it where it is, we are letting the other side set the rules and then they will ask for scientific evidence. One cannot really do that. God is not in the subject matter of science since God by definition is not material. We need to start with the question of if science is the final arbiter of truth. To be fair, this is done in the book. While many atheists deny scientism with their hearts, with their lips they give full credit to it. It is hard to take their denial seriously when they keep asking for scientific evidence for everything.

These concerns do not go against the overall goodness. I also show these concerns to let atheists know something else. We have this great freedom in Christianity. We can think freely and disagree with one another. I can mention what is positive and what is negative without marrying my view to someone else. I don’t even agree with my own ministry partner on everything.

For those who are interested in the book, feel free to go to TrueReason.org and ask about it. A link is included at the bottom.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

http://truereason.org/

Reason Rally: Outrage!

Why is it that Unreasonables are so often emotional? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Lately I’ve been dialoguing on several fronts with atheists concerning the Reason Rally and one method of argumentation is to speak of something that angers the atheist in the Bible and then the argument is formed.

Premise: X occurs in the Bible.
Premise: I don’t like X.
Conclusion: God does not exist.

Some might think this is simplistic, but it seems that for many, if you just mention the incident of Elisha and the two bears, well that’s enough. The whole thing can be thrown out the window because of that and we can rest assured that Christianity is not true because the holy book contains something distasteful to us in it.

This gets us into what I wrote about last time. Most atheists do not bother to understand the Bible but only come with a superficial reading and act like that destroys all of it. Note I said most. There are some exceptions that are actually capable of dialoguing on the subject. For most, the story ends with something that is not liked and that is the end of it.

If you agree with them that it is distasteful, well you need to come out of your God belief because you would not condone it at all unless God did it. If you seek to explain the passage in question, well it’s obvious that you really believe that the whole thing is horrid and you’re just trying to justify that tension that you feel in your own mind.

Darned if you do. Darned if you don’t.

There is no concept that this book was written in a different time, place, and culture. There is no idea that if God exists, then we should not really expect Him to be just like us and if He is the Lord of all the universe, He does have that authority to take lives as He is the giver and sustainer of all life and He does not owe anyone their life, or anything else for that matter.

Now I am not going to write out a defense of every single event in the Bible. I have written about many elsewhere and will be glad to pull up anything I have written if need be. I mainly want to counter the basic thrust that I see throughout the whole argument. It is the idea that because something is distasteful or seen as morally evil, then obviously the Bible is not the Word of God.

It’s not really that obvious. It could be many times we do not understand something properly and when that happens, we need to improve our understanding. If we are right, further research will help to elucidate that. If we are wrong, further study will do the same.

Also, it could be for the sake of argument that the Bible is not the Word of God and there is no justification for some of these things. This is not my stance, but it’s a possible stance. So what? There are Christians who do have this view and do believe that there is still enough evidence that Jesus rose from the dead. The idea that the Bible must be Inerrant in all that it teaches in order to be true in anything is a fundamentalist idea. It is that for both fundy atheists and fundy Christians. Keep in mind I do hold to Inerrancy, but if Inerrancy is wrong, I’m not throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

Outrage is just outrage. Being angered about something does not make it wrong. Not liking something does not make it wrong. For that, you actually need to dialogue and seek to understand the situation. Christians in dialogue should realize that if an atheist just wants to rant about something and not dialogue, well that’s how it’s going to be, and while that aspect can’t be changed about them unless they want to, one can usually sit back and explain everything and trust the audience watching sees which side is presenting the more rational presentation.

Yet doesn’t it seem odd that those who claim to rely so much on reason consistently have an appeal to emotion with a conclusion that does not follow?

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Reason Rally: Do You Know The Bible?

Does having read the Bible mean you know the Bible? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

One step I’ve taken for dialogue with people of other faiths like Muslims or Mormons is to have read their religious works. Thus, I have read the Koran and I have read the BOM, the Doctrine and Covenants, the Pearl of Great Price, and the Book of Abraham. However, that does not mean that I will claim to know these books well, certainly not as well as the adherents of those who treat those books as divine revelation.

In other areas, one can read the plays of Shakespeare, such as Romeo and Juliet, and have a basic understanding of what is going on, but to get a substantial understanding, one really needs to study the culture of Shakespeare and the style of writing he used and the meaning of the words back then.

Richard Dawkins recently made a big deal about how many Christians don’t know their Bibles because they did not know the name of the first gospel in the NT. I agree that that is problematic, but let us suppose someone does know the name of the first gospel in the NT? So what? That does not prove that they know the gospel. That proves they can memorize.

N.T. Wright has issued a challenge in a lecture to encourage people to memorize the book of Ephesians verse by verse. Let us suppose that someone did do that. It does not matter if they are an atheist or a Christian. At the end of the process, even if they can quote the whole book verbatim, does that mean that they know the book?

Again, not really. They can know the words of the book, but that is not the same as knowing the content and what those words all mean. Scholars can spend their lives studying just one book of the Bible and still have much about that book that they do not know.

This, of course, does not mean that a simple message cannot be grasped by reading the book. One can read the book and understand that there is no longer a divide between Jew and Gentile and that our lives ought to be lived knowing that Christ has torn apart this wall of division.

To grasp the simple message is not the same as to grasp the deep message. I could tell you about the Brothers Karamazov since I have read the book, but that does not mean that I could tell you as much as a professor of Russian Literature could tell you about the book.

What many atheists have done is what I’ve done with the BOM and other works. They have read the works and assumed that because they’ve read them, that they thus have an understanding of them. In a sense, you do have an understanding of them, but it is not really a substantial understanding of them. Indeed, many Christians, far too many, lack a substantial understanding of their Bibles.

To really understand the Bible, one needs to study many areas. Just what are these and why do they matter?

First, studying the languages would be very helpful. We do have numerous references on Greek and Hebrew that can help the layman who has not learned them yet (And I freely confess I need to still find a good teacher of these languages for myself), but the most helpful way is to be able to read them yourself.

With knowing the languages, you have to know not only the word, but what the word meant to the author. For instance, we are often told that for the NT, faith meant to believe in something without evidence. The Greek word for faith is “pistis.” Is that what it means? What someone can do, and many have done this for us as well, is to do a word study of the word not just in the New Testament, but in other works. Did Aristotle use it? Did Seneca? Did Plato? Did the Jews at Qumran? Did the Septuagint? How else can we find this word being used?

If we come with our own definitions of what the word means, we are not only misrepresenting the author and making them say what they never meant to say, but we are in fact missing the true message that the author of the work in question wishes to convey.

Second, you need a study of history. In reading the gospels, we read about Pharisees and Sadducees. They do not show up anywhere in the Old Testament. Who were these groups? Did they just come out of nowhere? What was going on in Israel at the time? What was the relation to Rome? Did the Jews coming out of exile have anything to say about what was going on?

Jesus claimed to be the Messiah. What did this mean? Were there other Messianic claimants? How did the idea of the Messiah fit into the history of the Jews? When Jesus made the claim to them, what would they think about him in relation to the presence of Rome at the time?

When Paul is writing his epistles, what is going on? When he says “Jesus is Lord” is he just having an old-fashioned revival service where we just shout “Praise the Lord!” or is he in fact making a direct challenge where he is saying “Jesus is Lord and Caesar is not!”?

Third, you need to know about the landscape at the time. Paul wrote to Philippi, a Roman colony at the time. Does it make a difference when he writes and tells them that their citizenship is in Heaven, especially in light of the fact that all of them would have been citizens of Rome?

Fourth, you need to know about the surrounding culture? What was the big deal about honor in the world of Jesus and the New Testament? When the Old Testament talks about slavery, how did that work in the culture back then? Does it matter that there was not a grocery store just down the street for every one?

What about the Old Testament Law with this? Why would God give a darn about tattoos? Are we supposed to put up railings around our roof? If we say we believe in “Do not murder” but do not believe in “Do not wear mixed fabrics” are we just being arbitrary?

Fifth, you need to study hermeneutics. What is the way the text is to be interpreted? When Jesus tells us that we are to hate our father and mother, is this to be taken literally or not? When the proverbs are read, are these ironclad or just generalities? When Jesus tells about the calamities of Matthew 24, are these to be read literally or not? How are we to understand what the text means?

Sixth, with that text, you need to understand textual criticism. How did we get the Bible that we have today? What role did oral tradition play in it? How was the Old Testament passed down to us? How is it that the New Testament has been passed down to us? Can we really trust that the text was copied accurately?

Seventh, you need to understand post-NT history. What was going on at Nicea? Who were the Early Church Fathers? Has the Reformation shaped our understanding of the culture? Are we reading the Trinity into the Bible or out of the Bible? (For the record, we read it out)

Eighth, you need to study theology. What is the doctrine of God in Christian thinking? Does the Trinity really teach that God is one person and three persons, or is it something really quite different? What does it mean when we say God is omnipotent? If we say God is impassible, what does it mean and does it really make a difference?

Ninth, you must be well-read in what real scholars are saying. Of course, Christians can feel free to read devotional literature. We should be discerning in what we read. There is no doubt good application to much of what the Bible says, but we want to make sure that application is faithful to the text. Devotional material needs to be rooted in scholarly understanding.

When we read a text that is puzzling, we not only wrestle with it ourselves, but we also see what other great minds said about it. Perhaps a Calvinist could be helped by reading what an Arminian like Wesley said about a text. Perhaps a Preterist could be helped by reading what a Dispensationalist like Darby said about the text. We need to be open to reading other thinkers who came before us and interacted with the text. We Christians should not be so arrogant, as I believe Spurgeon said, to believe that we are the only ones the Holy Spirit has ever shared truth with.

The man of the book will be a man of many books. The Bible has a message that is simple in some ways. However, it is also a complex book and one does not fully understand it just by reading on one’s own or getting even a basic understanding in the text through Sunday School or other such means.

Please note also that at this point, I am not even telling anyone to agree with the Bible. You can understand the Bible and still think it is wrong. I would disagree, but it can improve our discussion if we find out that those we dialogue with have really understood the text.

With the Reason Rally coming up, what I expect is simply argument from outrage with new atheists taking passages they do not understand and arguing about them. As it stands, I already in a place I dialogue at have seen arguments concerning Elisha and the two bears, a woefully misunderstood story. Note that saying there is something in the Bible you do not like is not the same as saying it is false. I do not like being told I am a sinner and that my way is not always the best way, but it is there in the Bible and I learn to accept it.

Hopefully, a number of atheists will be willing to do their homework and go get some books by evangelical scholars on studying the text. Atheists have long wanted Christians to study evolution before criticizing it. I agree. I would not be qualified to criticize evolution even if I had read the entirety of the Origin of Species. That would be just a start. I’d need to hunker down and really study the subject matter in much the same way.

Will atheists do the same? I’m skeptical, but we can hope.

In Christ,
Nick Peters