Category: Love

Sacrificing Children

Do we sacrifice our children to Molek? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

When we get to this verse in Leviticus, many in our society would think that this is not applicable to us. After all, we no longer sacrifice our children to pagan gods, and I’d say for the most part, this is true, but do we sacrifice them to secular gods? I contend we obviously do.

These are gods such as convenience, autonomy, sexual freedom, etc.

For us, we call it abortion today. It is one of the sacraments of our culture. It is one of the rare places where the science is ignored entirely and everyone becomes philosophical all of a sudden.

So what science is ignored exactly?

“Although life is a continuous process, fertilization (which, incidentally, is not a ‘moment’) is a critical landmark because, under ordinary circumstances, a new genetically distinct human organism is formed when the chromosomes of the male and female pronuclei blend in the oocyte.” — Ronan O’Rahilly and Fabiola Müller, Human Embryology and Teratology, 3rd edition. New York: Wiley-Liss, 2001. p. 8

“Human development begins at fertilization, the process during which a male gamete or sperm unites with a female gamete or oocyte (ovum) to form a single cell called a zygote. This highly specialized, totipotent cell marked the beginning of each of us as a unique individual.” –Keith L. Moore and T.V.N. Persaud, The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology, 7th edition, Philadelphia, PA: Saunders, 2003. p. 16.

“Human embryos begin development following the fusion of definitive male and female gametes during fertilization… This moment of zygote formation may be taken as the beginning or zero time point of embryonic development.” –William J. Larsen, Essentials of Human Embryology, New York: Churchill Livingstone, 1998. pp. 1, 14.

“Every time a sperm cell and ovum unite, a new being is created which is alive and will continue to live unless its death is brought about by some specific condition.” — E.L. Potter, M.D., and J.M. Craig, M.D. Pathology of the Fetus and the Infant (3rd Edition). Chicago: Year Book Medical Publishers, 1975, page vii.

“It is the penetration of the ovum by a spermatozoan and the resultant mingling of the nuclear material each brings to the union that constitutes the culmination of the process of fertilization and marks the initiation of life of a new individual.” –Bradley M. Patton, Human Embryology, 3rd Ed., (New York: McGraw Hill, 1968), p. 43.

“It is possible to give ‘human being’ a precise meaning. We can use it as equivalent to ‘member of the species Homo sapiens’. Whether a being is a member of a given species is something that can be determined scientifically, by an examination of the nature of the chromosomes in the cells of living organisms. In this sense there is no doubt that from the first moments of its existence an embryo conceived from human sperm and eggs is a human being.” –Peter Singer, Practical Ethics, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 85-86.

“Perhaps the most straightforward relation between you and me on the one hand and every human fetus on the other is this: All are living members of the same species, homo sapiens. A human fetus after all is simply a human being at a very early stage in his or her development.” –David Boonin, A Defense of Abortion. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2003) 20.

“A human fetus is not a nonhuman animal; it is a stage of a human being.” –Wayne L. Sumner, Abortion and Moral Theory, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), p. 10.

Actually, our age is worse than the pagan ages. They did a great evil in sacrificing their children, but they often did it for the good of the community thinking they would have a great harvest and saw it as a real sacrifice. When our children are sacrificed today, they are sacrificed more for individual goods than anything else.

Sometimes, I wonder if a future culture will look back on us and wonder what we were thinking by allowing abortion. How many lives have been lost due to this great evil? We have a modern-day holocaust going on and I look forward to when we realize that is happening.

So yes, we do sacrifice our children today, except we don’t consider it a sacrifice and it is not to a pagan deity, but secular ones.

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

Get Your Own Girl

How should you treat your neighbor? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

So far in this list, we have seen a load of people mentioned who are somehow related to you. Now God goes even further and says to avoid your neighbor’s wife. This is something that is extremely relevant today as we normally do agree that you shouldn’t sleep with relatives, but somehow, we do have many people today who sleep with their neighbor’s spouse or at least pursue that.

This is especially the case in the age of social media. A friend told me sometime within the past year about going through divorce records in a court, though I don’t remember what for, and being surprised how many times the word “Facebook” showed up. The problem with this is that you can get easily attached to someone you haven’t met and since they’re a fantasy, they can be whatever you want them to be.

Ladies. Prince Charming will likely snore when you go to bed at night.

And guys, her hair will not stay beautiful and pristine when she wakes up in the morning.

Very few people will wake up one day and say “I think I’ll have an affair today.” It generally starts with something innocent. This is one reason why when I normally message a woman and I think it could be a long conversation, I will include her husband in it as well. I also have some rules set up for whenever I go on dates again.

The action of an affair with someone else’s spouse damages relationships across the board. In my DivorceCare group, we watch a video every week from DivorceCare and one lady does describe how her ex-husband was sleeping with her ex-best friend. I’m pretty sure this other lady was her best friend before this happened.

Even if someone is a skeptic of Christianity, I am sure they will agree with the passage in Proverbs that says that jealousy arouses a husband’s fury and he will not be bought off. He will not be pacified when he seeks revenge. He will refuse a bribe however great it is. There’s something about this activity that gets spouses engaged on a whole new level.

This should also tell us that sexual activity is not like anything else that we have. A husband might be upset if his wife plays tennis with another man or something of that sort, but once he finds out she has slept with someone else, at that point normally all bets are off. Who knows where this could go from here?

So what’s a simple solution? Easy. If you want to sleep with someone, make a lifelong commitment to them first and go through with it. Don’t hedge your bets and say that we’ll be together for now, but there’s no need to make a commitment. You or they can just run out at any time then actually. This is something especially women need to realize who really control the market. Have a guy give a lifetime commitment upfront.

For both sexes, once you are married, build up yourself and your own relationship. If the grass looks greener on the other side, water your own side and care for it more. Be very careful on social media as well. Marriage is a terrible thing to destroy even if it is necessary sometimes such as in abuse and adultery.

The alternative of destroying relationships is far worse.

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

Sex Rules

Why this long list? Lets plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Leviticus 18 seems really repetitive. The writer, speaking for God, goes through and lists a number of people one-by-one for the most part, tells who they are, and then says to not try to have sex with them. Many a reader could get confused by all of this. Wouldn’t it just make sense to say “Only have sex with your spouse.”?

One of the reasons I think this is done this way is because to say sex is the great obsession of our society is an understatement. However, our society is not the exception in this. I remember hearing before that we have even found cave drawings of women with exaggerated proportions. An early form of pornography perhaps?

There’s no reason to think Hebrew society was any different and especially if you have 70 people go to Egypt and then a few hundred years later even with high child mortality rates there’s a great number of them, we can easily guess how they spent their free time. Not only that, but after the wilderness wanderings and when they get settled in the land, promiscuous behavior is a problem. Heck. While they’re in the wilderness, promiscuous behavior is a problem.

This is a problem of human nature.

As a divorced man now, I realize that for the time being for me, sexual activity is off the table. Is that hard? Yep. Do I like it? Not a bit. Is it a temptation for me to want to break the rules? Yes. That can include anything with a woman in person or just watching pornography at home. I still abstain from all of those and sometimes, there can be strong temptations. I have already set up hard rules when I start dating again for how I will behave in certain scenarios.

This is a hard path to follow. I have no doubt that some people are non-Christians today because they do not want to follow Christianity’s sexual ethic. I am not saying at all that’s right. I will say it makes sense. We all to some extent love sin. That’s why we do it so often.

Notice something. It’s easy to look at this list and see all the negatives. No list is needed for the positives. God nowhere has to tell the listener “Go and have sex with the wife of your youth.” That doesn’t need to be said at all. There are no restrictions put on the married couple together.

He’s not opposed to that. He created the system. He designed all the parts. He made all of it to work together. Christians have a status of being seen as anti-sex when we should be seen as the most pro-sex people of all. Unfortunately, we have developed a reputation of being seen as prudes.

Sex is not evil. The body is not evil. Both of these are good things and God designed them to work the way they do and in a marital unit, to be able to enjoy the gift of sexual intimacy. We should mind the negative rules, but let’s not forget the positives that don’t have to be said here.

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

 

Discharges in Leviticus 15

Why are discharges treated so seriously? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

It might seem odd in looking at marriage to go to Leviticus 15, but these are issues with regard to sexuality. Normally, the Bible is not that explicit concerning sexual terminology, though Song of Songs is exceptional in some ways. Many times, it uses euphemisms to speak of sexual activity or of sexual body parts.

Obviously, a discharge refers to something other than just going to the bathroom or else every man who is unclean after an emission would be pretty much constantly unclean, including the high priest. It more refers to emissions of a sexual nature that are likely outside of regular sexual activity. Sex isn’t dirty, but there are times to abstain to focus on holy aspects, as Paul advised temporarily for married couples in 1 Cor. 7 and sometimes would happen in the Old Testament in the wilderness wanderings when God was about to do something grand.

The same applied to a woman during the time of her period. For her, this is especially evident since she has a flow of blood and the loss of blood in this way was considered unclean. It’s worth noting this does not mean evil. It was no sin to have a period.

So now we have to ask a question that might seem obvious, but it is one worth thinking about. Why does God have all these regulations concerning the human body? Many of them also concern matters that were not sinful but would just happen over the course of time.

For one thing, the body matters. Many of us can treat the body as a negative. We refer to it as a prison. The body is something good and it is something that God will raise us up in again. Too many of us sing songs that are practically Gnostic where we compare the body to a prison. That doesn’t come from Jesus, but it comes from Plato instead.

Second, sex is something sacred as it is the connecting of two sacred bodies in the most intimate way possible. As a divorced man now, I am having to make the pledge that until I remarry again, I will be abstaining from sex. It is not because I delight in abstaining. It is not because I can celebrate and say “Whew! At least I don’t have to do that anymore!” It’s quite the opposite for me and for many other men who are divorced if not all of us.

So why do it? It’s the right thing to do. It honors God, our future spouses, and ourselves. Granted I have a future spouse, she will know that I was faithfully pure both inside of marriage and outside of it. Today, we often treat sex as a casual activity that you just do for recreation.

Christians are to hold to something different, but we are not to give the view that we are anti-sex. We should be the most pro-sex people out there. After all, God created this whole system and meant for us to enjoy it as well. He just wants to enjoy it in the way it was meant to be enjoyed and ultimately, the way that will provide us with the best joy.

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

To The Broken Up Girl

What do I have to say? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Hello.

You might remember me. I was working behind the counter and you came in for your return. I had to ask you why you were returning the items per our requirements and you told me they were for your boyfriend and after three years he had broken up with you and you didn’t want them.

Then you mentioned about going home and crying. The lady next to you, we’ll call her L so there’s no confusion between you and her, told you he’s not worth it. It’s his loss. Now L could be entirely right in that. However, I told L you have still experienced a loss and you need to cry. Then i said to cry, but if you have thoughts about self-harm or worse that are lingering, get help.

From there, I told you about my own divorce. I lost someone special after ten years with them and they had made a promise. I assured you a divorce is worse than a break-up. I didn’t get to tell you that break-ups hurt, but divorce is worse. Divorce is when someone has made a promise before God and man and has broken that promise.

You told me about how your boyfriend went to a strip club for a bachelor party of one of his friends and shortly after told you he wanted to move on. That must have hurt. I am sure you felt like you were being compared to some girl dancing on a stage that he didn’t even know.

Can I say this? I really hate to say it, but a lot of my gender consists of jerks sadly. Most of them are just looking to women to see what they can get out of them. This is why I was sure you were living together and wanted to encourage you to not do that. I told you to not give a man what he wants until he fulfills his covenant promise to you.

You see, in essence, what you are saying with the living together is “I might want to get married, but I want to keep my options open in case someone better or comes along or unless I just want out.” The other person says the same thing. In marriage, you say “There are no better options and I don’t want out.”

At least you’re supposed to.

Remember also the urge I told you that if you think about hurting yourself seriously, do something about it. That can happen. My DivorceCare leader once said in a meeting unprompted by anything I had said that everyone who goes through this, normally on the side of being divorced, thinks about suicide at least some. I know I did. Sometimes I saw some benadryl or something I could take for allergies and to help me sleep and thought, “You know you could and no one would notice until morning.” Never did, of course, but I understand the thinking.

Sometimes people might look down on you if you seek therapy. They shouldn’t. We all have problems. We all have issues that we need to work on. Asking for help when you need it is not shameful. It’s not asking for help that’s shameful.

You have been rejected and that sucks. You have been rejected as a person. Break-ups are understandable at times. Sometimes some people don’t work well together. However, when you invest years in someone and if you are married or live together, you have done more than that. I don’t approve of living together before marriage, but I do understand it is a step women take when they are hoping to marry often.

I also wanted to make sure you knew something and you shook my hand as you left I think largely because of this. I doubt you will ever read this, but if you do, maybe you’ll remember this. I hope you do.

I told you most importantly, I made it through. What I went through is worse, and I lived through it. There were times I was doubtful, but I made it. I tried to make a vow that I would not be a victim. I only have one chance to play this game and I want to win. I determined that if I wanted to get a revenge, the best revenge is a life well-lived.

You see, I don’t live in a place of hatred for my ex. It doesn’t consume me. I think what she did was awful to me and it is the worst pain I have ever experienced, but I still pray for her well-being and holiness. I pray for mercy on her. I pray for justice and mercy for everyone involved, and that’s a scary prayer since it includes me.

Right now, I am making plans to attend a seminary in Louisiana on-campus. I want to succeed in my life. I want to get a Master’s and then get a PhD. I would love to remarry. I would think it wonderful if there was a woman in New Orleans waiting for me. Of course, she probably doesn’t know she’s waiting for me, but I would love to find a woman who would want someone who wants to bring joy to someone. My own therapist and I talk about this. He does think this is a step I need to take.

But for you for now, I want to tell you what a divorced friend also told me. Today will suck, but tomorrow will suck a little bit less. Another friend added what would suck today is if nothing sucked today. You’re allowed to hurt. It’s okay.

A little over 25 years ago I had back surgery. I had a steel rod placed on my spine. You think that hurts? It definitely does. I took a year to recover. Now, I can go all day without even realizing I have a steel rod back there. I learned how to deal with the pain. Emotional scars are harder, but they do heal.

I urge you to get a woman who has gone through this pain before and meet with her also. One of the greatest blessings I had was men who had been divorced who came alongside of me. My non-divorced friends were helpful, but they cannot help me in the way my divorced friends can. That includes my own therapist and when I told him, he agreed. They mean well, but there are aspects they do not understand, and that’s fine.

I hope no other guy has to go through this, but that’s a pipe dream, but when they do, I want to be there for them as others were for me. Right now, it seems like your world has ended, and in some ways, you’re right. You had plans of the future and hopes and dreams and all of those have been destroyed by that one action. My ex used to talk about how much it hurts to be rejected and told you weren’t good enough. I know how much it hurts, because that’s what I have been told by the action.

But she doesn’t define me. God doesn’t love me either because I’m good enough, whatever that means. He loves me because of who He is. That’s enough for me to rejoice in. Of course, there’s no wrong in seeking other loves, like family, friendship, and yes, remarriage, but if it weren’t for my foundation in God, I don’t think I would have made it.

I don’t think from our interaction that you’re a Christian. If I’m right, I hope you will find Jesus Christ. He’s the ultimate help for you in your suffering. My trust in God sustained me through it all. I had to realize God had some way to still use me for the Kingdom and ultimately, I think if He takes away something, it will often be to eventually give us something better.

For now though, go home and cry. Talk to a friend. Do something that can be just for you. Have some fun. Read a book. Watch a TV show. Go to the movies. Do something to keep you moving. You don’t have to be a victim. That’s ultimately a choice. I am not saying you chose to have someone reject you, but you are responsible for the choice of if their actions define you. A woman is not responsible if her husband beats her, but she is responsible for what she tells herself about the beatings. It can be hard to tell yourself the truth, but it is doable.

Remember you are not alone. Other people have gone through this and they can help you. I am thankful when I went to theological conventions like ETS and DTF, no one looked down on me. I got no indication that I was a pariah because I wear the “Divorced” label. Some even prayed with me there over the situation.

Too many people do look at divorced as a bad label. I had someone share how even decades after when applying for a ministry position they had to explain their divorce and does that stigma ever go away? In many churches, it’s like the unforgivable sin and it’s usually thought you must really be a problematic person if you got divorced.

First off, we’re all problematic people. Second, the church does need to handle this better as we need to have more sympathy for those divorced, especially the wrongfully divorced ones, and I contend I’m one of them. I think many churches would have a murderer take the pulpit before a divorced person. That’s a shame.

Grace covers all sins, including marital and sexual ones.

Young lady. You are precious in the eyes of God, but if you become a Christian, assuming you are not, your ex is also precious too. Pray for his redemption. That can help stop the seed of hate growing in your heart that will do you no good. If my ex has any hatred of me, it doesn’t hurt me a bit. It only hurts her. If I have it, it doesn’t hurt her. It only hurts me. You be the better person. Show love even to those who hurt you as I strive to do.

I have spoken a long time. I doubt you will ever read this, but even if you don’t, someone will who needs to hear this I am sure. I hope they hear it too. Already, your suffering is being used for redemption. If anything, it has helped me to focus again on what I need to focus on.

You will get through this.

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

Are Sex Rules Pro-Women?

Do all the stipulations in the Bible on sex benefit women? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

On yesterday’s blog, some commenters on Facebook thought that I had given the impression that in this society, women were only valued for sex. They were pretty much objects. One did rightly see I was trying to point out the sacredness of sex, but that didn’t come across that way.

So today, I want to clear things up as to why the Bible has these rules and if they are good for women or not.

Let’s start with something. I do think our society is led by men. That’s not necessarily a bad thing for women. When men are being men, they will look out for the women around them. I suspect there weren’t many feminists on the Titanic who were objecting when it was said “Women and children first!”

A man who abuses and/or uses a woman is not being a man really. He’s being less of a man. If you view yourself as a leader in society, your goal is to build up those around you and not to tear them down. Any man if he wants to can take a woman’s body. Not any man can take her heart. That requires that he be a real man and one she is willing to entrust her heart to.

So let’s look at some other realities. Are some men more tempted to just look at women as sex objects? Yes. Pornography is a great example of this. If anything has taught men to treat women as objects, it’s pornography.

In the ancient world, this would also be the natural temptation of men. After all, men by nature of the chemicals and hormones in their bodies tend to have very high sex drives. Not all do and in some marriages, the woman actually has the higher drive. We’re speaking of averages here.

A man and a woman would often get together immediately in an arranged marriage and then you could be introducing yourselves to one another and then sleeping together immediately as husband and wife. Why this way? Because sex is meant to be a bonding act. It releases scores of hormones and chemicals that bind the two people to one another.

This is one reason Christians safeguard this so much. Not because sex is anything dirty. After all, the joke is that many Christians are taught two things about sex growing up. #1. It’s dirty. #2. I should save it for someone I love.

Sex is in a sense like nuclear energy. If you use it the way it was meant to be used, wonderful things can happen. If you use it in a way it’s not meant to be used, Chernobyl can happen. Do we see this? Yes. Look at most any talk show on where they talk about who is the father of who and see it. Look at single mothers who have been kicked to the curb by a guy because he thought someone hotter came along or he didn’t want to get married. Sadly, look at our divorce culture where too many people don’t take their vows seriously and many times, one person is rejected and abandoned over it.

In sharing my own story of divorce, I have had men share stories with me that leave me thankful I didn’t go through that and I have heard stories in DivorceCare that are indeed horrendous. Even harder is the fact that so many men and women jump into relationships immediately before they are ready because of the intense loneliness. Some have said that being divorced is worse than the other person dying and I am inclined to agree. Death is normally not intentional. Divorce is.

The rules of the Old Testament also started with people where they were. Let’s face it again. Guys are very much driven by sex and our natural tendency will be the path of least resistance to get what we want. We were originally designed to use our drive for the good of the other. Now we often place the good of ourselves first and foremost. Women become just means to us. Even outside of sex, this is naturally how we tend to view other people. What can they do for me?

Women meanwhile live in a world where half of the people around them could overpower them if they wanted to for the most part. Yes. I realize that there are men who are not physically intimidating, including myself, and there are women who know how to fight well, but I am again speaking of averages. I will not claim to know what it’s like to walk as a woman in a parking lot at night, though I do walk out women who work at night where I work so they don’t have to go alone.

The Old Testament doesn’t expect perfection right away. Consider many of the rules as baby steps towards a better ideal. We have slavery at the start in the wilderness, but as time moves along and people become more and more capable economically, that starts to dissipate. Jesus Himself implies this when He says that Moses granted divorce because of hardness of heart, but this is not the way it was meant to be.

So God looks at sinful men and says that if they follow their natural instincts, they will pay a price. They will either have to be with the woman for life or at the least, pay a hefty fine. That’s to curtail the man’s strong desire. So if he wants to be with the woman then, what does he have to do? He has to work up and be a man and really impress the father enough that he says “Okay. I can trust you with her.” Many of us know that if we start acting a certain way towards someone, our feelings towards that someone can change. Lewis once said to not ask if you love your neighbor. Live like you do, and loving feelings will follow. Even if they don’t, you are still doing the right thing.

Within the past few years, I was at Celebrate Recovery and for the group sharing after, it was just me and one other man. He told me about how he doesn’t feel respected by his wife and XYZ and all this other stuff. I listened and then said, “You know, I’m hearing all of this stuff and I’m going to say something and it’s going to sound insensitive, but I think I need to say it.”

“Who cares?”

BAM! The guy said even the next week it was the slap in the face he needed.

After all, as I explained. You have a duty. You have a responsibility. You made a promise as a husband. You are to do that regardless of how you feel. Do your duty and let her work out her own issues.

The Christian call to a man is not to deny his sex drive. God made it for us and He made the woman’s body desirable to us for a reason. He built the engine. It’s instead to channel that into greater love for the woman. Saving sex for marriage is meant to say that you only get to love the woman this way after you make a lifetime commitment. There is no try before you buy.

This is also to make the woman feel safe. She can freely give herself to the man because she knows he has her best interests at heart. He has made the promise and he will keep it. Ideally, a woman will meet the needs of her husband sexually, and he will meet her needs as well, not just emotional, but every other need. Also ladies, if you have a good man, he delights in meeting your needs and wants to meet your needs.

I can safely tell you that when I was married, I loved doing things that I thought put a smile on her face. When our anniversary came, I tried to go all out every single year. I wanted to go above and beyond to please her. Some I remember well, such as taking her to the hotel we stayed in our first night for our first anniversary to recreate things. For the fifth, I took her to an Equestrian theater. For the seventh, a friend had given me $200 and told me to spend it on something fun explicitly. I spent all of it and even more on our anniversary which included eating out for every meal, getting her a PSP, and a singing telegram singing songs from our wedding and other songs.

For me, I just wanted to make her happy and have her feel loved.

Ladies. Please remember you are worth a lifetime commitment. Don’t give yourself to a man for anything less than that. Let him demonstrate his commitment by making the promise first.

God realizes our natural tendencies in Scripture and puts these stipulations in because He wants us to get the most out of what He has made. It is wrong to say God only cares about our happiness, but it is just as wrong to say our happiness matters nothing to Him. God created love and sex and marriage for us to enjoy it as well and we should. Marriage done right will have us living more holy lives and in those lives finding more joy in one another and in God.

As we go through Scripture looking at marriage and divorce, keep this in mind. We are talking about the sacred. Marriage and sex are sacred because they come from a God who is sacred and they involve two people who are meant to be sacred together and bring up holiness in the next generation.

I hope this clears up matters for readers and my apologies for any bad phrasing on my part yesterday.

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

Can You Try Before You Buy?

Could you take her for a test run? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

We live in a world that tends to worship at the altar of sexuality. We often think we know so much in this area, when really we know so little. It’s one reason there’s so much confusion such that people are having perfectly fine body parts removed from them because they feel like they’re the opposite gender. (As if to say there’s any set way a man or a woman is meant to feel.)

Sex is certainly not sacred to most people anymore and is pretty much a recreational activity. You are attracted to someone, you date, you sleep together, you move in, you could get married. Normally, it’s the woman who wants to get married to have that security, but the man isn’t as motivated. Why would he be? He’s getting what he wants already.

In the ancient world, a woman was to be protected while she was in the house of her parents, and that included her sexuality. In this case, if a man seduces her, assuming she is not pledged to someone else, then he doesn’t get to try before he buys. He has to marry her at that point.

Suppose the father absolutely refuses? The man is still in the loser’s position. He has to pay the bride-price for her. He has damaged the family. In the world of ancient Israel, men wanted to marry women who were virgins. This woman would be less likely to marry as a result of what this man had done.

Now we can be sure if a woman seduced a man, which could happen as we saw earlier with the wife of Potiphar who attempted this, that the law would be understood to apply in an opposite sense, though a man certainly doesn’t have a bride-price. However, most of us realize it makes sense to address the man because usually, the men are the pursuers in sexual relationships.

Overall, this was to be a deterrent to the man. Do you want to sleep with this woman? Really consider how much it’s going to cost you. Can you afford a bride-price? Later on in the Torah, we will get to the case of a man who seduces a woman who is pledged to be married and the stakes are different.

This is one reason also in our society, abortion is not an ally to women, but it is much more an ally to the man. After all, most men don’t really like the thought of paying child support, but if he can get a woman pregnant and she can make the problem go away, then the man gets off free and can do what he wants at that point. Abortion has really been helping women to be used by men as long as it has been around.

Perhaps our society should also learn to not take sex so casually. Maybe we’re really missing out on the joy that we’re meant to have in this area of life. While Christians are not under the Law, we are foolish if we don’t think we can learn something from it.

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

What Can You Get For Your Daughter?

Why would anyone sell their daughter? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

It sounds bizarre to us really. Why on Earth would someone sell their daughter? Do they want money more than they want a daughter? That does seem to be what is going on in Exodus 21.

7 “If a man sells his daughter as a servant, she is not to go free as male servants do. 8 If she does not please the master who has selected her for himself, he must let her be redeemed. He has no right to sell her to foreigners, because he has broken faith with her. 9 If he selects her for his son, he must grant her the rights of a daughter. 10 If he marries another woman, he must not deprive the first one of her food, clothing and marital rights. 11 If he does not provide her with these three things, she is to go free, without any payment of money.

The problem here is too many of us are reading this from our cultural perspective. We might think of something like sex trafficking going on or people turning their children into prostitutes at their home. This sounds like a family that really doesn’t care for their daughter.

However, when we look at the ancient world, by and large, marriage was about survival and continuing in the family name. This would be more like indentured servitude. serving someone for an amount of time in order to get something out of the deal. This was done by many people at first to get to America.

Okay. So how does that tie into survival? A poor family would have to work extra hard to provide for every family member. For us, we don’t understand this in a world where if we want bread, we can just drive down to the supermarket. For them, just getting a meal was long and laborious and it took time and energy to make bread.

By selling their daughter, they were selling her into a family that could afford her and could provide for her and make a better laugh for her. She would be moved into a new family unit. This doesn’t mean the old family could no longer have any contact with her, but essentially today when a family gives their daughter to a man who wants to marry her, they do the same. When my former in-laws gave my ex-wife to me, they realized that I was going to be the new primary family unit and my parents realized she would be my new primary family unit. I was the one meant to provide for her.

And notice, the new family is meant to do that, especially the husband. He has to provide food, shelter, and yes, marital rights. The man is to consistently love his wife. A man cannot sell her because that would be breaking the covenant promise to her. If the man’s son marries her, the master must treat the new girl like a daughter. If the son marries another woman, this one is not to be deprived and if she is, she can go her own way. In other words, for a book supposedly sexist, the woman has all the freedoms here and the man has all the responsibilities.

Again, we are not really at marriage for love yet, but we will be getting to that kind of attitude. Even still, that needs some temperance as love is badly misunderstood. Keep waiting as that is a way’s away.

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

The Servant’s Wife

What happens when a servant comes to a master? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Yesterday, I wrote about how marriage was treated differently in the Old Testament. In this instance, we’re going to be discussing it with slavery in the Old Testament. It needs to be said that in this society, slavery was largely a willing institution where people gave of themselves to provide for them and their families. It was also not based on race.

So in Exodus 21, the question comes of a man who sells himself to his neighbor in order to provide for himself. Now if a man comes and he has a wife with him, then when his term is done with his master, then he is to go free and his wife is to come with him. However, what if he comes and he does not have a wife?

His master could provide one for him. This means that the master is giving of himself what he has and letting his servant partake of that gift. After all, a wife isn’t necessary to someone doing their job for the most part. How many of us when we go to work for an employer today discuss with the employer if they will provide a spouse for us or not?

In this scenario, when the man leaves then, his wife and children are not to go with him. The master will provide for all of them. However, there is an exemption to this. The servant can say that he loves his wife and his children and doesn’t want to lose them so he can become a servant for his master for life, which, if the wife was the master’s daughter, would essentially make him a son-in-law entirely and part of the family.

Note also that this indicates love was not really the norm in the time. Marriage was not done so much for love as it was done for survival. However, it would certainly be hoped that a marriage would make someone into a more loving person. In this case, it did.

The servant has no right to claim on his own what is his and what isn’t. He has been working for the master for years, likely had room and board provided, and the master doesn’t owe the servant anything else, including a spouse. If a master gives, that is a gift and the servant can choose how he wants to respond.

For those concerned about the idea of slavery in these passages, there are plenty of resources to go to on this one. I recommend this excellent article from the Christian-thinktank. I also recommend this video series on Scripture and Slavery. For now, I am looking at marriage and I don’t want to get diverted into a whole other series.

This time, we looked at the case of a man going into slavery. Next we’ll be looking at what happens when a man sells his daughter into slavery. That will hopefully be on Monday barring anything else that needs to be said. See you then.

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

Marriage in the Bible Intro

How do we see marriage explicitly? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

We’re in the book of Exodus in our look through the Bible at marriage and as we get into this, we will see a lot of customs that don’t match up with a modern Western approach to marriage. This isn’t a culture that practices dating or marriage for love. You do not normally choose your spouse. Marriage seems to be a different kind of relationship.

At this point, skeptics of the Bible who tend to be left politically shout with glee about how much marriage has changed. Thus, we live in a time also where marriage is changing and it is changing so much that it is no longer supposedly a union of a man and a woman. We have already changed marriage since then, so why not?

So for this, I want to give a brief overview. Some matters will be acknowledged. Why people enter into marriage has changed. Why people got married has changed. How people got married has changed. There is something that hasn’t changed.

Marriage hasn’t.

But what about polygamy?

This was a borderline practice that was allowed in the Old Testament. Still, if anything, this could count as one man having multiple marriages. When Joash was the last surviving member of the line of David that was able to rule, he was granted to have two wives. After all, they needed to produce more children again.

So in the Old Testament, most marriages were arranged. This is still common in much of the world today. A person doesn’t know their spouse sometimes until the day that they marry them and then they are to give to the relationship and make it work. In many cases, it really does work.

Marriage was mainly about the uniting of the families together and the survival of the family. This was to pass on the heritage of the family and ensure that they would not be forgotten in Israel. Producing children was a must as that was the way to make sure this would take place and you needed a lot. Today, we take it for granted that our children will live and start saving for college while they’re in the womb. Not so in those days. Child mortality was very common.

While love was not the basis, there was no doubt that it was hoped for. If you read Proverbs, a man is told to delight in his wife. Song of Songs is a very passionate poem about love and especially sexual love in a marriage relationship.

Divorce did happen, but it was not a practice that God celebrated in Scripture, even when He did it Himself to Israel. The breaking of a covenant is always a tragedy. Now I realize some people are saying, “But my spouse abused me. Are you saying that the divorce was a tragedy?” Yes, and hear me out on this please. It is a tragedy that one person broke a promise to love and cherish the other and treat them like a partner in life and wound up abusing and/or betraying them. While the divorce was sadly a necessity in this case, the first tragedy is that the betrayal had already taken place. It is sad the situation was so bad that one person had to remove themselves from it to protect themselves when marriage was meant to be a relationship for the growing of love between the two.

So as we go into this, I’m not going to say every time about how different the union was entered into and the different purposes it served. I figure it’s easier to do this upfront than to do that. Still, we will see differences between our day and theirs. The past is a strange place. They do things differently there.

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