Deeper Waters Podcast 12/1/2018: Hugh Ross

What’s coming up? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

A Christian is never off-duty. One never knows what challenges will await throughout the day. This is true of the apologist as well. If you are a Christian, you could go anywhere and see an attack on your faith.

There are plenty of books out there with the information you need. Very few are written about the life that that entails. What’s it like to live a life where you’re always ready? What programs can you get going in your church to help with the task of evangelism?

To discuss this, I brought on someone who has recently written a book with his wife about this very topic. The book is one quite different from his ordinary writings. Very little of this is direct apologetics information. Most of it is about his life and how he does ministry. I honestly thought it would be a boring and basic read. I was quite wrong. He’ll be on my show to talk about it. My guest is Dr. Hugh Ross of Reasons To Believe.

So who is he?

According to his bio:

Astronomer and best-selling author Hugh Ross travels the globe speaking on the compatibility of advancing scientific discoveries with the timeless truths of Christianity. His organization, Reasons to Believe, is dedicated to demonstrating, via a variety of resources and events, that science and biblical faith are allies, not enemies.

We’ll be talking about a lot of those travels but also about how he came to be a Christian. This is the most autobiographical of Dr. Ross’s books which includes his growing up, his coming to Christ, and how he met his wife. Naturally, I also liked that he talked some about what it’s like to be on the autism spectrum.

Dr. Ross also talks about working with his church to do an evangelism program and reaching people out in the neighborhood and about the many bizarre encounters he has had. These are so prevalent that you could expect that someone could make a TV series about the many adventures of Dr. Hugh Ross. He also includes that some people have been skeptical of these kinds of events until they actually travel with him and see them taking place.

If you want to know who Dr. Ross is some more, this will be a good show to listen to. If you check our archives, we have interviewed him on Autism/Aspergers, but we’ve also interviewed his wife on what it’s like having a marriage where one person is on the spectrum and one isn’t. This will be another great show to add to your list if you want to know someone like Hugh Ross even better.

Please be watching your podcast feed for the latest episode. Again, I apologize for all the trouble that we’ve had lately with producing a new episode. I really hope that this Saturday will be different and I am very confident at this point that it will be. As always also, please consider going on iTunes and leaving a positive review for the Deeper Waters Podcast.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

 

What Is Religious Passion?

What does a passionate Christian look like? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Passion is a difficult term to describe. Most of us when we hear of passion think immediately of romantic passion, and yet that is part of the problem of defining it. Watch a TV show or movie and you will think all passion takes place in the bedroom. Well, there’s supposed to be a lot of passion there, but ask most any married couple and there will be other places of passion. A wife can fix a great dinner for her husband with passion. A husband can passionately express his love through gifts or writing or music to his wife.

When it comes to religious passion, we often have some negative ideas about it. We might think of people barking like dogs and calling that the work of the Holy Spirit. Religious passion often seems to be equated with a show. It is a strongly expressed feeling or emotion.

Well, yeah. It can be. Maybe it isn’t just that. Maybe it’s something different and maybe it’s different from person to person.

My wife and I were talking about someone we admire very much who gave an excellent testimony at Celebrate Recovery and during the music in the last service talked about how she was dancing in the center aisle and she used to think there was something wrong with people like that. I asked Allie if she could ever see me doing that yesterday. Nope. Not at all.

Yet she still thinks I’m passionate about Christianity.

I think many of us know several Christians who we would say are passionate about that, but would not express that passion the same way. Get me together with some of my theological friends and there will be passionate discussion about matters of faith and practice. There won’t be dancing going on, but there’s a lot of excitement.

This doesn’t mean that we always have a strong feeling about what we are doing, and this is really a good thing. C.S. Lewis said something once similar about being in love. When you fall in love with someone, it is an emotional explosion at first, but if you stayed that way, you would not be able to function. The explosion dies down, but the will can stay there and that should be the strongest. It would be a mistake to coast from that point on after the explosion.

That passion can still show up momentarily. The great feeling shows up when you actually do the loving things you’re supposed to. So it is with religion. When my friends and I get together, I may not be feeling it at the moment, but get some discussion going and before too long, there is passion and excitement once more.

There is a mistake along those lines that we often make that we often think all genuine action must be backed by genuine feeling. Not at all. What virtue is it to you to act the way you feel? Anyone can do that. We could make a parallel to the words of Christ. You love those who love you? Wow! Aren’t you just awesome? If you love those who hate you, that is real love. You love when you feel like loving? Impressive! Your parents must be so proud! When you love when the feeling isn’t there and maybe even the opposite one is, that is real love.

As I told my wife yesterday about this, there have been mornings I have got up and thought the heavens seemed silent and I am angry with my God. What do I do? I go and serve Him anyway. Why? Because it’s just the right thing to do and nothing in Christianity says “Do the right thing provided you feel like it.”

“But I feel so fake doing that?” So what. That’s again putting the cart before the horse. Is it better to say, “I feel fake doing this so I won’t do what is the right thing to do.”? If your intention is you want to serve or you want to have a certain mindset, God knows and I believe honors your intention. Do you not feel like reading your Bible or praying but want it to be a priority? Then do it. Many times our feelings don’t change until we act. As long as we act the same way, our feelings will continue.

“But it’s just duty then!” And sometimes duty is where you have to begin. For one thing, duty does not mean that you don’t like it. For example, a husband in Scripture is required to give his wife her conjugal rights. I am sure so many husbands were saying “Well geez. If I gotta do it, I gotta do it.” That’s a duty, but it’s a wonderful duty to so many of us men.

We also have to be on guard that passion itself is not a goal. If we are coming to God because we want to feel really good, then we are just using God. Holiness is our real goal. If passion comes with that, great. If not, oh well. We have done the right thing.

But if you do want some excitement, I do have some recommendations. First, I think you really need to make sure you have some apologetic grounding. Not every Christian is meant to specialize in theology and/or apologetics, but all Christians are called to do those things. You have to do them. You might as well do them well.

At the same time, those of us more intellectually inclined need to remember that while Scripture says that there is zeal not according to knowledge which is dangerous, there is the reality that knowledge puffs up. We need to study. I think Lewis once spoke of seeing a lady in church and thinking she probably doesn’t have a clue about the Nicene Creed, but then realizing that when it comes to holy and devout prayer and living, she has him beat by spades.

Then just go and do what you are supposed to do. It doesn’t matter if you feel like it or not. Do it anyway. Let the actions and will lead the feelings instead of the other way around. Nothing says “Love your neighbor as yourself, provided you feel like it.” When our neighbor is being an agreeable person, we are to love them. When they are being a total jerk, we are also called to love them. Don’t like that? Keep in mind God’s love for you doesn’t change when you are a complete jerk, including to him.

To come back to Lewis again, when you start loving your jerk neighbor, you will notice a strange thing. You start to love him. If you wait until you feel like loving him, you will never do it. If you just do it because it is the right thing, you will eventually have the love for him.

Passion is good, but it is not to be our foundation. Enjoy emotions when they come, but do not make a steady diet out of them. Instead, shape your will to serve God more and do the right thing regardless of the feeling.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

 

Book Plunge: Behind The Scenes of the Old Testament

What do I think of Jonathan S. Greer’s, John Hilber, and John Walton’s book published by Baker Academic? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

It’d be tempting to think that this book is purely nerdy academic stuff and material that no one can understand. Topping in at 514 pages of content, it would make sense. Such a thought would be wrong. While this book is scholarly, it is also very layman-friendly. It is a read that if you want to pick it up and read a chapter, you can walk away informed.

Granted most people will probably not do what I do as a reviewer and that’s read it straight through. If you do, you will be blessed. If you don’t, but you just read the chapters relevant to what you’re studying, you will still be blessed. These chapters are collected from a wide array of scholars.

Something else interesting is very little Biblical interpretation goes on. You won’t find a chapter on what this prophecy means or on the age of the Earth or the scope of the flood. The material is to help you be able to interpret the text better, but the book does not do the job of interpreting the text for you.

There are also over sixty chapters here and all of them touch on different aspects. One I found particularly interesting was on slavery in the Old Testament world. This is a frequent favorite of critics of the Christian faith and if anyone is struggling with this, reading this chapter will be a benefit to them.

Really that is the kind of work this book is. It looks at what was going on in the world of the Old Testament. What was daily life like? What were simple things we take for granted like food production and music like? How are we to understand the role the Law played? What about marriage and family?

The book is also not preachy. You’re not going to get an essayist who is going to go and try to squeeze Jesus into the text. Even with a chapter on God, the book is surprisingly not very theological, and that could be a good thing. The book is not meant to give you the nature of God, but rather to introduce you to how the gods were seen in the world of the Old Testament and then apply that to Israel in its own proper way.

Also, the book points to several other resources which is always a plus. If you want more information on any one topic, you know where to go. You can either see what else the writer of that essay had to say elsewhere or look at the material that he or she cites.

I would have liked to have seen a little bit more on the world of honor and shame in the Old Testament. This would also include the client/patron system. Such a system I think is also behind the suzerainty treaty that I see Deuteronomy as. This way of thinking is common in much of the world, but completely foreign to modern Americans.

This is the kind of book Christians who want to understand the Old Testament need to read. It’s also the kind of book that most critics of Christianity who use the Old Testament will not dare read. In conclusion, it ultimately is the kind of book anyone serious about the Old Testament, and thus the rest of Scripture, needs to read.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

The Importance of Giving Thanks

Why does it matter that we give thanks? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I just don’t care for Thanksgiving Day.

I find it odd that when I say that, that means I have to say I don’t care for giving thanks. I don’t really. It’s just the day itself has never been appealing to me. Being on the autism spectrum, I have a strange relationship with food. It’s nothing I am really comfortable around in many cases.

If you ask me what my best Thanksgiving were, I will point to two. The first one was in 2009. A girl I was dating invited me to spend Thanksgiving with her family. That girl, as I’m sure you know, is now my wife. I, in turn, invited her to spend Christmas with my family and the day before I proposed to her.

The second was in 1996. This one ranked as awesome to me because The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time had just come out. I also had the flu so I couldn’t be around anyone. I spent that evening not being around food I didn’t care for, but trying to make it through the Forest Temple. Good times. Good times.

Today, I’m still not a food person, and that’s something that often troubles me about Thanksgiving. Hear advertising about Thanksgiving or a remark on the radio about it and all people talk about is the food involved. There’s actually little mention of the idea of, you know, giving thanks.

Giving thanks is extremely important. Just because I don’t care for the rituals around the event doesn’t mean the event itself doesn’t matter. In Romans 1, one of the reasons the wrath of God comes upon humanity is that we didn’t give thanks to God.

When we don’t give thanks for a thing in our lives, we begin to take it for granted. We act like it’s just a sure thing and it will always be there. We have no such promise. None of us is promised another minute. I have no promise today that I will go to sleep tonight. Neither do you.

As I sit here in my office, there are many realities around here. Periodically, my cat will come in here. Sometimes, my wife will come in and if I don’t see her, I see pictures of her all around. I have gifts from friends and several books and pictures on the wall and on the bookshelves. I have gifts from Allie all throughout here too.

None of these have to be.

Now when it comes to taking for granted, some might say that for a Christian, marriage is to be a sure thing. Divorce is not to be an open option for Christians. Yes. I do realize that there are issues of abuse and infidelity, but generally, most of us think we should avoid divorce.

That is true, but that does not mean we take the other for granted. Some of you see that on Facebook I post love messages to my wife six days a week. Why do that? I do it not only to express love to her, but for a reason that could be considered selfish. I do it to hold myself accountable before people. See how I treat Allie and make sure what happens in private matches what’s in the public social media.

Doing this also builds up the love that I have for her. If I give thanks for her every day, I do not take her for granted then as much. I have friends who are single and want to marry. I pray that they will, but I am thankful I am not in that position anymore. That is a gift.

Christianity is something we take for granted. Here we have things like worship wars going on over what style of music should be played, arguments about the color of the carpet, and any number of doctrinal disputes. On the last one, of course, doctrine does matter, but sometimes we think the purpose of Christianity is those disputes. While these are going on, Christians in Iran and China and other places are risking their lives by going to church. Just a suspicion. They’re not leaving a church because the children’s nursery is less than perfect.

We have become so familiar with the Gospel, that we even take God’s love for granted. We take forgiveness for granted. We have heard the message so often we don’t pause to realize what we have been given. If we take those for granted, we will also not take sin seriously. You don’t take Christianity seriously if it’s just a given to you.

That ingratitude towards God will lead to a bitter root in our lives. It will make us more self-centered and less other-centered. That keeps us from fulfilling the two greatest commandments of Jesus. We don’t need to treat God as a given in our lives. His being in our lives came at the price of Christ.

So today, do I still care for the food and festivities? No. Does that mean I don’t care for giving thanks? Not at all. I think financially, our family is poor, but spiritually, we have blessings beyond compare. I am thankful for them.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Contextualizing Inerrancy

What’s the new resource at Deeper Waters? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

What is inerrancy? It’s a question that normally if you ask ten evangelicals you’ll get eleven opinions. An even more controversial question would be what counts as going against inerrancy? There’s also the problem that today, the inerrancy of Scripture is often equated with the inerrancy of interpretation.

In a new resource available just recently, my ministry partner, J.P. Holding of Tektonics.org, and I look at the question of inerrancy. The book is called Contextualizing Inerrancy and you can find it here. The goal of the book is to go further than our Defining Inerrancy and include some real scholarly interaction.

What we do in this work is not just look at the topic of inerrancy, but see what some scholars say by reviewing their work on the topic. There are many people that don’t just disagree with someone’s interpretation on a particular text, but contend that by taking on that interpretation, that person has denied inerrancy. Most notably is the case of Norman Geisler going after Mike Licona. (And for those who don’t know, possible bias on my part is that Mike is my father-in-law.)

Those of us who are contextualizers do not believe that the text can be fully divorced from the context. This includes not just the Biblical context, but the social context. There are a number of remarks I could say to my wife that would grant her and me instant laughter. Most everyone else would not understand them. Why? Because there is a background knowledge known between the two of us that explains the context.

We hold that the Biblical writers also lived in a culture where they did not have to explain the culture. We do not live in that culture and we have to do the work to find out about it. While this includes studying the original languages, it goes beyond that. It looks at archaeology and other writings of the time to find out what life was like. We use all of this to inform our interpretation. How can study of the Biblical text be damaged by studying the world of the Bible?

With this, we look at evangelical scholars today and the work that they’re doing to see how that helps with the question. Our goal is to help Christians have a more refined look at Scripture and in the end, we hope you’ll walk away with a greater appreciation for the Bible. After all, anyone can pick up a book and find something about it to criticize, and many people are doing just that, but few will sadly bother to take the time to actually really study and see if their criticisms are accurate.

I really hope you’ll go and partake of this resource and share it with a friend as well. Christmas is here and this could be a great gift for someone as well. We appreciate every copy that you buy and we also hope that you’ll leave a positive review.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

 

 

Shiro and Suffering

What can life with pets teach us about suffering? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

If you come to our apartment, you will quickly find out who really rules the roost. No. It’s not me. Well, obviously, it must be the wife. No. It’s not Allie. The undisputed ruler of our house is this guy.

This is Shiro. We got him when we had been married for about a year. We were searching for a new apartment to live and someone had abandoned him. They were going to take him to the pound if we didn’t do anything. Now we are different from most couples in that I have always been a fan of cats and Allie has preferred dogs, but this cat is different. She bonded with this cat immediately. We wound up adopting him.

No regrets.

Oh sure. Sometimes he gets on our nerves. Sometimes it’s really annoying to be wanting to sleep in the morning and hear that little kitty whining relentlessly because he wants to be fed. Such is life. We get a cat and we get the responsibilities. It’s worth it. Allie gets a great sense of joy when she’s sitting or lying on the couch and he jumps up right next to her.

Knowing this, picture our concern when we hear him making a noise that sounds like he’s throwing up on Wednesday morning. This has happened. He gets hairballs. Not this time. There’s blood there. We make an appointment for the vet.

So enter step one of the suffering for Shiro. We have to get him and put him in his kitty carrier. He’s not happy about that. One can picture him if he could thinking, “If these people love me, why are they locking me in this tiny confined area?” Sometimes on the road, he would get quiet. I told Allie that I suspected he had just resigned himself to his fate and knew he wasn’t escaping.

Step two of suffering is the vet itself. If any serious work is done on our cat, he has to be sedated because he turns fierce on those he doesn’t trust. We saw him in a vet office running around on the counter and hissing. He had apparently peed on himself in the carrier probably out of fear. When it came time to get him back in, it took two technicians working with gloves and a blanket to get him back in.

Allie was surprised by this, but not I. I was kind of expecting it. Shiro’s a lovable little guy to us, but he just doesn’t trust strangers and hey, which of us would really mark going down to the doctor as a favorite hobby of ours? Even more so when it’s at the hands of people you have given trust to.

Now step three. Three times a day we have to give him medicine. What does that involve? We can’t put it on his food or in his water. Nope. In case of a stomach ulcer, we have to take these pill halves, crush them, and then use a syringe and squirt the water from it in his mouth. First, we have to catch him. Then we have to hold him securely in a towel like a kitty burrito, and finally, we have to somehow get him to open his mouth without biting at us.

Not easy.

How many times we wish we could get him to see. If he would just work with us and not resist, it would all be done quickly and easily. Instead, he sees our hands and that syringe as threats to him instead of tools to help him in his health. I can’t blame him. He’s a cat. He wouldn’t understand if I tried to explain.

And every time I think about the problem of evil. (Yep. I’m a theology nerd.)

The difference between us and a cat is vast. The difference between us and the infinite God is even better. Am I much better? Do I not resist the hands of the potter? Do I think that the event in my life that is meant to chisel me into the likeness of Christ is really something for my harm? Do I really think God allows something into my life because He just wants to see me suffer or delights in my pain or something like that? Do I really think God is a great cosmic sadist?

Maybe if I just went along and submitted and allowed God to use the pain in my life somehow, things would work better. Of course, there are some distinctions. I think we should be hesitant to say God is directly doing something in our lives without strong evidence, but we can be sure that all that happens in our lives happens because God allowed it.

Yet if we believe Scripture, Romans 8 tells us that all things work for good to them that love the Lord. Are all things good? No. The text doesn’t say that. It says that everything will be used for good. That means no matter what happens in our lives, ultimately, we win.

Does that mean we don’t complain about suffering? No. The Psalmist does it. Does that mean we don’t cry in it or feel the pain? No. Again, the Psalmist does the same. Does it mean we don’t question? No. Same answer. It does mean that we do also what the Psalmist still does. We trust God anyway.

What does that look like? It means we keep going and we do the right thing even in the face of suffering. Suffering is never a justification for doing what is wrong. Do the right thing and give honor to God still. It could be God doesn’t explain it to us because He can’t. It’s not because of some limitation on His part, but because of one on ours. For all we know, it could involve events hundreds or thousands of years in the future.

And really, you’re not owed an explanation. It’s quite arrogant to think God should tell us XYZ. If He doesn’t tell us, it’s for our good. Perhaps if we knew we couldn’t be shaped the way we need to be.

And meanwhile, pray for our little Shiro. Things have been going well for him. We think it was most likely a new food we tried to give him. There has been no blood vomited at all, but he’s our little joy here and we are happy to have him around.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

 

Deeper Waters Podcast Update

When’s the next episode coming? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Some of you might be watching your podcast feed and wondering when the next episode is coming. I wanted to make a post today since I normally do on Thursday to give an update. I hope it will clear up any concerns you have and that you will be patient with me and know I still really want to bring you the best information that I can.

First on the list is my look at Tim Perry’s book Mary For Evangelicals. Tim Perry has been gracious and agreed to come on, but first, his Dad died and then we had to cancel. Understandable. We had a rescheduling done but he’s in charge of a church and one of the other members died and that had to be attended to. Right now, we’re looking at a Christmas date for a kind of theme show so sometime in December I anticipate that interview coming.

Next was our Protestant/Catholic dialogue. We had a three-way email going and unfortunately on the recording date it was found there was confusion about the time. This led to us having to do things differently. As it stands, I have done an hour-long interview with my Protestant guest. Before too long, I plan on doing one with my Catholic guest. I hope to remove bias and grill both of them with the same intensity. I am a Protestant, but I always strive to be fair.

Third is Kyle Greenwood’s interview. Some of you may know there was a personal crisis going on in our household for a while. That same thing happened Saturday and I honestly had to cancel the show at practically the last minute because that situation needed my care. We are going to be working on rescheduling that one.

Still, be assured friends I am trying to do the reading for the show to keep you informed and getting the best books that I can from publishers. I do have someone who helps me with audio formatting and such. Other than that, I am the one who does all the reading and all the interviewing and everything else. It is something that does keep me busy. I often tell my guests before an interview that they have the easy part. They get to just answer questions about what they have already written about. For me, I have to keep coming up with those questions.

I do really apologize if some of you have been getting concerned about the next episode coming up. There is nothing wrong with your podcast feed and if you ever think there is, feel free to contact me and let me know and I will tell you there is nothing wrong or look into why there apparently is something wrong. If you also have a recommendation for the show or if you have a reason why you should think you should be a guest yourself, please let me also know about that.

Finally, please go on iTunes and leave a positive review of the show. Every time I check and see a new one, it’s really a great sensation. It’s excellent to know how much you guys value the show and why.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Why I Don’t Take Internet Bible Critics Seriously

Should you really pay attention to that critic? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Let’s be fair. There are some skeptics out there that do their homework. They do try to really find out what scholars in the world of the Bible are saying and make reasonable cases. I disagree, but at least they are doing their due diligence.

The majority are not.

For the past couple of weeks or so, I’ve been going through a big book. It’s Behind The Scenes of the Old Testament and it’s about 512 pages and most of these pages have plenty of lines on them. It’s the kind of book that these same skeptics will not even read. It would be practically a miracle if they even skimmed it and looked at the pictures.

And yet, these same people will think they can speak with authority on the events in the Bible. They will speak on slavery in the Old Testament and all they have is their knowledge of the Civil War in America and the fact that they are offended and think that is sufficient. Never will they dare ask questions like, “What is slavery in the ancient world? What was the purpose of it? What other alternatives did they have?”

Let alone do these people really have an understanding of the Law for Christians. Many think that the Law was meant to lead us to some kind of Utopia and everything in it is a moral principle for all time. It’d be kind of hard for a Christian to say this since Jesus in the New Testament said that Moses permitted divorce to the people because their hearts were hard. This is not to say there are no moral truths in the Law, but the purpose of the Law is not to produce perfect people.

Too many critics of the Bible read the Bible from a modern Western perspective and then look back on the dumb and unenlightened culture they see in the Bible thinking they’ve made a powerful critique. Argument from outrage is a favorite. God did XYZ! What kind of God would do this? The conquest narratives are a favorite. Lately, I’ve seen David’s baby dying as a result of David’s sin as an example of this. (Strangely enough, these same people will also defend abortion. Go figure.)

My advice to Christians on this is to first off not take such critics seriously. If someone is not willing to read and study life in the Ancient Near East, they shouldn’t comment on it. If they do, we shouldn’t take their comments seriously. I say the same thing about Christians who want to go and critique evolution, but will never ever pick up a book on science in their lifetime. Reading your favorite Christian who argues against evolution without studying science yourself and just repeating what they say is just as bad as reading a new atheist on the Bible and repeating what they say without studying it yourself.

Let me make a caveat here. If you are a Christian and you do read the science and you do want to argue against evolution, have at it. It’s not the route I take as evolution is a non-issue to me. I just don’t repeat the arguments. Someone could be making powerful arguments against evolution or talking nonsense. I don’t know.

Also Christians, if I go after the atheists for doing this, I want to be fair and go after us. Too many of us who are Christians don’t bother to study the context either. We take one little section out of a prophecy and either make it about the end times in a dispensational paradigm (As if the prophets never ever said anything about their own culture) or they make it about themselves.

Let’s go with an example. In Jeremiah 29:11, God tells the people that He knows the plans He has for them, plans to prosper and not harm and to give them a hope and a future. Great passage. It’s used so many times in cards for college graduates and such. Horrible interpretation right there.

Jeremiah is making this point to Israel as they are going to Babylon. If you are sending a card to a college graduate who’s part of a covenant people and is being shipped off to Babylon, then that’s okay. If not, you might want to rethink it.

“Great. So are you saying this verse is useless aside from historical information?”

Not at all. We could apply this to us today. Picture a pastor saying this.

“The children of Israel had received a promise from God. They were about to face suffering and that suffering would make them wonder about the promise. They would doubt it and think God had failed them to let this happen. God assures them that is not so. In the same way, we today are recipients of the promises given to Israel and in Christ. We can often go through hardship and suffering still where we wonder if God has abandoned us. Hebrews tells us that God will never leave us or forsake us. As there was a purpose for the children of Israel going into Babylon, so there is a purpose for our suffering and Romans 8 tells us that God will work all things for good to those that love the Lord. Whatever you are going through in your life, realize that God is in control. As He did for the children of Israel in being with them in their suffering, so will He be with you.”

There. If anything, this is a richer understanding I think because it is connected to the New Testament. In the passage in Jeremiah, we can know that some of the people who went to Babylon never came back. After all, the return was about 70 years later. In the New Testament, some promises are individualized, such as Romans 8. We will all in Christ be resurrected in new and glorified bodies and each of us will give an account of what we have done and each of us will be treated accordingly. At the same time, we are a community in Christ and should live that way.

Studying the context of the passage goes a long way and will help us. Critics of the Bible need to really work to study the text instead of thinking that outrage is an argument. Christians need to study it because we think it comes from God and we need to treat it seriously and not misapply it. Will we always interpret it properly? Of course not, but we should always seek to bring the best information to the table that we can.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

 

The Agenda Project’s Ad

What does a baby deserve? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

So Agenda Project has an ad that has been making rounds lately. It has a cute little baby smiling and giggling as babies do. All along words regularly pop up on the screen. I could tell you more, but hey, why not take less than a minute and watch the ad yourself?

At the start when watching, I was wondering what the point of this ad was. We are told the baby deserves to be wanted. The baby deserves to be loved. Yes. Who would dispute that? Then the third one, at least for me, gives a chill. She deserves to be a choice.

To deserve according to the dictionary means to be worthy of. With that, then we can say with the meme on the internet at the three things this baby deserves, one of them is not like the other. Something in the list just really doesn’t belong.

Is the ad saying that if the baby is not loved and not wanted supposedly, she should be a choice? But then that doesn’t fit. If she is not loved and not wanted, why change the last one then to “She is a choice.”? If she is loved and she is wanted, why should she be a choice?

Let’s also acknowledge something. Abortion activists have been telling us that this is not a baby for so long. What is in the womb is a fetus. This ad dispels the myth. Now some abortion advocates are, at last, acknowledging that these are babies. Good on them at least for that! It’s still wicked and evil, but hopefully, confession is the path to recovery.

Sadly, I’m skeptical of that. I think groups like Planned Parenthood know very well that these are babies. They just don’t care. The problem with these babies is that they may deserve to be loved and wanted, and they are, but they also get in the way of our sex lives and our careers and well, we can’t have that now can we?

This ad is also unclear. This is a baby that is not in the womb. Does this mean that infanticide is now okay? Is the baby always a choice? Can she be a choice when she is outside of the womb?

I have no intention of holding back. Abortion is just an evil practice. When we read our Old Testaments and read about the Canaanites that Israel drove out, we need to realize we are worse than they were. They sacrificed their children to be sure, but usually, they did it for something like the good of the harvest for the community. When we do it, we do it at the altar of convenience.

Years ago I was at an apologetics conference where Chuck Colson was speaking and he said that if you are a Christian who supports abortion, you really need to check on the status of your faith. He got a standing ovation and sadly that surprised him because usually, that statement was quite controversial. Perhaps it is, but I agree with it.

Perhaps in the future, more abortions activists might be even more straightforward. We can hope. My fear is that if they are, our society would have reached such a place of immorality that they still won’t care.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

What Does It Mean To Love?

When we say we love something or someone, what do we mean? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Like God, love is one of the most meaningless words in the universe.

Wait. Does that sound problematic to some of you? Do I sound like a nihilist? Well, on both counts, I believe both of them.

Is it because neither are real? Absolutely not. Love is real and God is real. The problem with these words is usually they’re said devoid of content. Ask someone if they believe in God. Whatever the answer, you always have to ask what they mean by that. Someone in a pantheistic religion means something far different by that than a devout Christian in the West does.

And what about love? I can tell you numerous things and people that I love. God. My wife. My family. Friends. Gaming. My cat. Reading. Good debate. All of these are things or persons that I love. The problem is I can’t give love the same meaning across the board entirely.

I love my God, but that has to be a far greater love than anything else on the list. I also love my wife, but when I say I love the rest of my family, there are certainly ways that I love my wife that I will never love my family. This is so strong that if anyone in my family or even extended family with marriage tried to love my wife the same way, we would be moving away from them entirely and possibly having a lot of counseling.

Generally, when it comes to persons, I think the idea of love also means that we seek what is genuinely good for the other for the sake of the other. We won’t do that perfectly in the sense that we can have a false idea of what is good for the other, though to be fair, our intentions are good.

But what role do our feelings play in this? Some people have this idea that if you love someone, you should always feel a certain way towards them. You won’t. Sometimes, you might feel the opposite. There are mornings I have got up and I have been upset about how my life is going and I have not felt love for God in me. What of it? That means that day I have no responsibility to walk a Christian life? Not at all. God is my king, and when you have a king, it doesn’t matter if you feel like serving Him or not.

I have a wife also, and there are many times that I can be upset with her about something. In every marriage, there is some conflict. I do not believe Jesus was married, but if He was, He would not have had a perfect marriage because He would have been married to an imperfect woman. If He could not have had a perfect marriage, I don’t expect I will.

So what happens if I get up in the morning and Allie and I are fighting and I don’t really feel a lot of love in me? I love anyway. We have this strange view in our culture that if you love someone when you don’t feel like it, it’s not genuine. On the contrary, I think that’s when love is the most genuine. It’s when one rises above their moods and does the right thing regardless.

Lindsay Harold on her blog wrote a piece arguing that wives as an example should have sex with their husbands even when they don’t feel like it. It’s another example. What virtue is it to do what you feel like doing? Wow. You did good because you felt like doing it. You obviously deserve a reward!

Can love produce feelings? It sure can. Does that mean it is a feeling? Of course not. We have turned the idea of falling into love as something sacred and there can be no wrong. It’s why we have this idea that our hearts are so infallible and that we just need to follow our heart constantly. We all know from Scripture that that is not really the case.

How did we get to this point in our culture? It’s because like many other things, we stopped thinking about it. We don’t think about God. We don’t think about love. We don’t think about sex. We don’t really think much about anything. We spend a lot of time doing things. We don’t spend time thinking about what we’re doing. We do what we feel like and that’s that.

None of this is to say feelings and emotions are evil. They are not. God gave them to us for a reason. It is to say that they are not to control us. When we know the right thing to do, we are to do it anyway. If you feel like it, fine. If not, it doesn’t matter. Do it anyway.

In Christ,
Nick Peters