Category: Apologetics

You Have Not Blasphemed The Holy Spirit

Are you doomed? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

There are some passages of Scripture that scare Christians. One such passage is in Matthew 12. Personally, I think some passages should scare such as passages on judgment that will make us take sin seriously, but sometimes, there is an unnecessary fear. Consider again, Matthew 12.

30 “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters. 31 And so I tell you, every kind of sin and slander can be forgiven, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. 32 Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.”

This is one of the most common questions I get from Christians where they are convinced they have committed this sin. I can speak as one who has been there before as well. If you think you’ve committed this sin, then it’s like a death sentence where you can live your life, but you’re hellbound forever after that.

As I said, I get this question several times and every single time, I am convinced that the person has not done this. The moment they tell me they are sure they have committed this, I am usually sure of the exact opposite. Why would I say that?

Because if you care about a sin you have committed, that is the work of the Holy Spirit in you. It is the people who are doing wrong and thinking that they are fine that concern me. It is the person who is convinced that they do not have a problem that I usually think does really have a problem, especially if so many around them are telling them they are doing something seriously wrong.

So let’s look at some scenarios here.

If someone is in a sin and they are actively resisting the Holy Spirit, does that mean they have committed this? No. If it did, most all of us would be guilty because we have all done actions that we know that we shouldn’t.

So what if you one day say something in anger against the Holy Spirit? No. That wouldn’t do it either. Keep in mind that when the words are said by Jesus, Jesus has the Pharisees telling the people that Jesus who is healing by the Holy Spirit is doing so by the devil.

And yet even then He does not say that they have committed this sin.

So what is going on with this sin? The reason it is unforgivable is that it is not a one-time action. It is a lifetime action. If you are going to be forgiven, you have to believe. You have to be willing to repent to God and confess that He is Lord and you are not.

If you cannot do this, then you cannot be forgiven, because you will not agree that you are doing wrong and you do not turn to the one person who can forgive you. It is something eternal. How else can we be sure of this?

Because otherwise, you are also saying you have a sin that you could confess to God and He says “I would rather punish than forgive you.” That’s not the way God is at all. If you confess, you are forgiven.

Christians should definitely be concerned about sins in their lives, but they shouldn’t be concerned about sins they haven’t been committed. If you contact me about this sin, expect a similar reply. I generally have no reason to think you have done this. It’s those who are sure they are fine despite evidence to the contrary that concern me.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)
Support my Patreon here.

Don’t Stop With A Question

Do some skeptics really want answers? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Have you ever seen a meme like this?

Now I fully agree that reality is interesting and we should not be content with ignorance. Unfortunately, the idea is that religions treat questions as something hideous to encounter and science loves the questions. Also, if you are someone who is scientific, you will want to go and find out the answers.

Now never mind that something like this never defines science or religion, but I can’t expect a meme to do something like that. I do have something to say on the idea I see that leads me to think that many skeptics do not truly have a scientific mindset. Anyone can raise a question, but how many questions are raised that one goes out and seeks the answers?

For instance, let’s consider a question in science. Many readers of my blog know I take no stance on evolution. I do not argue for it and I do not argue against it. My interpretation of Scripture doesn’t change depending on the question or does any doctrine of Christianity I hold to.

Yet if I had one question, it would be this. In reproduction, the whole of the male and female systems are essential and have to work together in order to produce a new life. I really don’t know how it is that these could develop independently. I can understand how some body systems could perhaps be formed by gradual steps. This one I don’t see.

At the same time, I know I am not studied in the sciences and so I don’t use that as a reason to disavow evolution entirely and say it’s nonsense. Some I have interacted with who do hold to evolution have presented real research done on this question which I appreciate. I honestly haven’t had the chance to do any of that yet since not too much hangs on this question to me. Before I said yes or no entirely to evolution, I would need to spend a lot of time in study and really, I have other things I want to study more.

Yet it would be a problem if I raised the question and said, “I see no answer to this question and I am not bothering to do the research and I will decide without doing that.” However, I think too many people do this with religion, and not just Christianity, but any religion. Of course, my main emphasis is on Christianity, but if you are fair to any worldview, the same applies.

Every worldview is complex. You are talking about how all of reality works. There will be hard questions and no, not every answer can fit into the Twitter character limit. Some questions require longer and more in-depth answers.

This is not just the way it is for religious worldviews. Theists have a lot of hard questions for atheists and atheists being honest will admit that these are real questions that need real answers if their worldviews are going to hold. The same applies for Christianity and any theistic worldview.

Anyone can raise a question, but if someone raises a question and says that question is keeping them from that position and is not seeking an answer to that question, I have to wonder if it is really an honest question. One such example against Christianity is the problem of evil. I really consider this a more simplistic way to try to eliminate Christianity. However, it does appeal to emotions which can easily override reason.

For one thing, everyone has to answer this question. This is our world together and we all have to deal with it. A skeptic could say that’s just the byproduct of a world of chaos, but at that point, someone like G.K. Chesterton would ask how the problem of pleasure is dealt with. Why is there so much that is good in this world? For some reason, this is not usually considered a problem, but it is.

Not only do we have to deal with evil, somehow we have to ask if there is any hope. Now a skeptic could freely agree and say “I agree that Christianity can provide hope for those suffering in an afterdeath, but there’s no way to prove that.” Sure. There isn’t, but this is about consistency. Is the Christian answer coherent and can it provide hope? Yes. That doesn’t mean it’s true, but it does mean it is consistent. (And no, just because an answer involves God does not mean that it is incoherent)

Anyone can raise the objection, but go and read the best defenses of the problem of evil, people like Alvin Plantinga and Clay Jones. See what they have to say. Maybe you won’t be convinced, but you can at least know what they think.

In the same way, whatever your question is, try to read the best that you can of what you’re questioning. Contrary to what you may think, Christians at least have been asking questions of themselves. If you go and read some of the early church fathers or later thinkers like Aquinas and Augustine, you would be tempted to think they were answering questions we are asking today. You could even say we were sometimes answering questions that weren’t even being asked. I seriously doubt in Aquinas’s day some people were questioning if God even existed, but lo and behold, his five ways are still used today.

Again, anyone can ask a question. Going and getting an answer is something different. It may require work and time, but if you care about a truth like that enough to a central question, it should be worth it.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)
Support my Patreon here.

Book Plunge: The Politics of Envy

What do I think of Anne Hendershott’s book published by Crisis Publications?

Envy is said to be the one sin that we don’t enjoy while we’re doing it. A guy can enjoy lust while he’s sitting at his computer watching pornography. We can rejoice in the adulation we get when undergoing pride. Having a lot of wealth and greed can be a good feeling and many a glutton still loves the taste of food.

Envy doesn’t do any of that. Unless acted on also, it will not hurt the one we are envious of a bit. They get along with their lives just fine. However, despite all of that, we still struggle with envy. It does us no good and it leads to great damage.

It’s almost as if man is fallen.

This book is written from a perspective that is religious and I think likely Catholic, but being religious does not mean that the secularist has nothing to get out of the book. Religion is presented in a gentle way. This isn’t in your face Christianity and the skeptic of Christianity could still easily agree with the damage that envy does.

One of the places the book starts off with is sex and marriage. Here, we encounter a confusion between jealousy and envy. If a husband has a wife who is being adulterous, he will have jealousy, and that is in this case something noble to have. The husband expects an inclusive intimate relationship with his wife and that is not being given.

Most all societies view marriage this way. Really? What about the Inuit people who are supposed to have free love going on? Not so fast.

The reality is , as David Buss writes from an evolutionary perspective : “ Contrary to popular myth , male sexual jealousy is the leading cause of spousal homicide among the Inuit , and these homicides occur at an alarmingly high rate . Inuit men share their wives only under highly circumscribed conditions , such as when there is a reciprocal expectation that the favor will be returned in kind . . . . All of these findings demonstrate that there is no paradise populated with sexually liberated people who share mates freely and do not get jealous . ”

Many of those who claim to be open in this way do normally have some breaking point. If they don’t, it’s easy to wonder if they really care about the relationship at all. However, that is jealousy. There is real envy going on.

This happens with a group called the InCels, which stands for involuntary celibates. These are guys who would love to have sexual relationships with women, but they don’t think they are desirable in the eyes of women. Sadly, this has arrested in a lot of violence taking place. Killing sprees were done by Alec Minassian and Elliot Rodger.

All of this happens because of the envy that these guys have. It is the kind that says they want to take their rejection by women out on the world around them. There are other places of envy to consider as well.

Do we not hear today often about taxing the rich? This will pay for all of our nice social programs from the government. Right? How much of this is envy? Historically, this tactic failed in the past, but today is different. In the past….

In Federalist No . 10 , James Madison dismissed the idea of taxing what he called the “ various descriptions of property ” because he knew it would begin to destroy the rules of justice . The Fourteenth Amendment promised equal protection of the law to all citizens , and early attempts to “ tax the rich ” met with legislative failure . In 1894 , when Congress passed an income tax that was levied on only the top 2 percent of wealth holders , the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional because it targeted only one group . Writing for the majority , Supreme Court Justice Stephen Field repudiated the congressional action and predicted that if such a tax were allowed , it would be the “ stepping stone to others , larger and more sweeping , until our political contests become a war of the poor against the rich . ”

And as Hayek warned:

According to economist Friedrich Hayek ( 1899 – 1992 ) , “ social justice rests on the hate towards those that enjoy a comfortable position , namely , upon envy . ” In The Mirage of Social Justice , Hayek suggests that social justice is a notion that lacks a rigorous meaning since no one has been able to determine , except in the marketplace , what would be the absolutely just distribution of the patrimony and income in a mass society . Suggesting that the phrase social justice had become a source of “ sloppy thinking and intellectual dishonesty , ” Hayek believed that using the phrase was “ the mark of demagogy and cheap journalism which responsible thinkers ought to be ashamed to use because , once its vacuity is recognized , its use is dishonest . ” Describing social justice as “ that incubus which today makes fine sentiments the instruments for the destruction of all values of a free civilization , ” Hayek warned that the continued unexamined pursuit of “ social justice ” will contribute to the erosion of personal liberties and encourage the advent of totalitarianism .

It should not be a shock that we have envy going on. Whenever I hear people talk about social justice, I notice it is never really defined. The reality is economics won’t change that. Some people will always have something that someone else won’t and despite what we think, the self-esteem movement has not helped a bit with this. We really need to consider if envy is driving much of what we do today and if it is, it won’t end well.

And as for why we make such a big deal about politics….

In some important ways , this has contributed to the current culture of envy because once the realm of the metaphysical is rejected , individuals become creatures not of God but of society and politics . This is why everything is now political . It is also why people become anxious and consumed with political campaigns and the outcomes of elections . Those who continue to try to depend on their traditional religious institutions have found that , in many cases , religion itself has become corrupted by politics — losing its transcendental reference points while it undermines balanced political judgment .

After all, if our hope is not to be found in God, it must be found in man, and thus if an election goes wrong, then there goes everything. This does not mean that a Christian or any religious person shouldn’t care about politics. It means politics should not be seen as everything.

No look at this would be complete without social media being discussed. In the past, those who lived glamorous lives didn’t have everything they did accessible to the public. Now, they do. Facebook and Instagram and other sites have us putting forward our best selves normally and we are competing with the best selves of others.

Sometimes, we can go to talk about problems on these sites, but it really isn’t the best place to go. This is not to say we don’t form true friendships on these sites, as I have, but that does mean that most people won’t invest in you like real friends will offline. Social media has actually led to us being depressed and being dependent on what others think of us going for that coveted “like.”

The hope for this is the recovery of the sacred. We need to know what is truly good and worth pursuing for all of us and that is available for all of us. That will also help us to look less at others and then pursue that which is worthwhile.

Again, even if you are a skeptic of religion, you will likely get something good out of this book. Envy is a topic we need to discuss more often. If we miss that so much of what we do is a result of envy, we will only keep doing the damage that envy causes without any real long-term solutions.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)
Support my Patreon here.

Book Plunge: The First Conspiracy

What do I think of Brad Meltzer and John Mensch’s book published by Flatiron Books? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I saw this book a few times at a grocery store. It sounded interesting, but I didn’t want to spend that much money. Then I saw that it was on sale on Kindle and figured “Why not?” I picked it up then. The account is about a secret plot to either assassinate or kidnap George Washington.

It’s always hard to find out something about such a conspiracy since people who are really doing conspiracies want to keep them secret. It’s not likely someone from that time period will write out in their journal, “Plan to assassinate the lead general in the American army is going well. I am actively recruiting XYZ to join us in the plot.”

There are clues there though. This isn’t something like trying to find the illuminati in hidden messages. This is something that actually happened and it makes sense that it happened. It’s not as if the British would not have any plans in mind to take care of Washington. Also, this was a politically divisive topic here as some people did think that they should remain loyal to England.

You also find out how important not only espionage was, but also counter-espionage. Washington was in a precarious situation also where he wanted to be able to trust someone, but he didn’t always know who he could trust. Not only that, but many of the American soldiers didn’t exactly have the kind of training in military tactics that the British did.

Most of us know nothing about the conspiracy. I sure didn’t. The thought experiment now is if we live in America, how different would our history be if this had actually worked. Of course, that will always be speculation, but it would be something drastic most likely.

We can also be thankful for the moral character of Washington. Washington made honor extremely important in his army and had to fight to keep soldiers from drinking, gambling, and houses of ill repute. He wanted nothing but the best from his troops.

Those who are interested in American history should read this book. You will find out about something little spoken of in our history and most of us know nothing about, but something that impacts us to this day. The story is also written in a form that it reads like a novel instead of just dry history. Give it a try.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)
Support my Patreon here.

Pastor. Your Eyes And Heart Need Work.

What are wives required to do for husbands? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I heard yesterday about a video going viral. In it, a pastor was giving a sermon and sometime in the middle, he went on a tirade that is extremely derogatory towards women. If you want the highlights, here’s what someone posted about it.

As a husband to my wife and father to my daughter the things he brought out such as:

“Don’t give him a reason to look elsewhere”

“men are going to look so be sure to keep your self attractive enough he only wants to look at you”

“My friend set a divorce weight for his wife”

“It’s really important for a man to have a beautiful woman on his arm”

“Women stink”

“Weight control”

“Food never taste as good as skinny feels”

“Dress appropriately, dress your age, dress your body type…just look good”.

Now someone could look at this and say, “Well isn’t it true that a wife should care about her appearance?” Yes. It is. Unfortunately, the way this guy spoke will not encourage any wife and places the blame on her and some statements are just hideous.

Let’s start with don’t give him a reason to look elsewhere. If this was a playful challenge given as an encouragement, that could have been one thing. “Women! You’re already beautiful! Your husband is tempted to look at other women because he is a man, but be a feast for his eyes and he will always return to you.”

Instead, what the preacher said was, “If you lower your beauty, your husband will look elsewhere.” When you’re a Christian man and dating, you already know that a woman is beautiful. When you marry, you learn that she really is much more beautiful than you realize.

If you are a man and you look at a woman and don’t see something beautiful, it is not the woman that needs to change but you. This is especially so for your wife. Every woman is beautiful in some way. If you are not seeing beauty, then work on changing yourself.

I honestly cannot easily picture Christ referring to any woman physically as ugly. He might think that their behavior is awful, but He never rejected a woman who came to Him for help. Jesus was incredibly kind towards women.

That being said, it is true men are going to look. I remember a young Catholic priest telling me about how he can look too and he always says, “She is a beautiful gift, but she is not for you.” A man might notice a woman and have a momentary thought, but a good man just moves on then.

I don’t think a man is responsible for his momentary temptation that flies through his mind. Now if he stares or leers or something else, that is different, but it is a struggle for the majority of men out there. A wife should not take it personally. At the end of the day, he chose her.

The comment about a man setting a divorce weight for his wife is one of the worst. I don’t know of anything in Scripture that says, “If you start thinking your wife is putting on too much weight, you may leave her and trade her in for a less heavy model.” This pastor doesn’t need to be condemning the women. He needs to be condemning his friend instead.

Now it is true that a man likes to have a beautiful woman on his arm and whenever I have had to take Allie somewhere, I have been delighted to show her off to everyone. If anything, I always delighted in telling everyone the story about her winning a beauty pageant. When I went to my 20th year high school reunion, I remember being eager to show her off to everyone I went to school with. Yes. I did get married and I married a beautiful woman.

Women stink? I have no doubt that a woman could have a problem if she has just worked out or anything like that, but so do men. That’s part of the human condition. It doesn’t matter either. A woman is still beautiful.

The statement about nothing tastes as good as being thin feels is one often used in diet motivation. If a woman wants to lose weight for proper health reasons (Not Anorexia or Bulimia) and is motivated by this, good for her. By the way, that should be the best motivation for weight control and that is health.

Now there is certainly truth in the last part about dress appropriately, but many Christian wives don’t have this problem. They’re not going to show up to church in a bikini or something like that. This could be something said more for the teenage girls in the audience who are still wanting to get a man in their lives.

But in the end, the big problem is that there’s nothing wrong with a woman wanting to make herself beautiful for the man in her life. When Ruth approached Boaz to see if he would marry her, she was told to bathe and put on her best clothes. Yes. Men do respond to physical appearance.

The man also needs to work on being the best that he can. It’s meant to be a mutual self-giving. Also, normally if a woman wants to do this, her husband will likely have no problem with it. I remember when Allie got a new dress at Wal-Mart one time and when she came out, my jaw just dropped. I was stunned by how beautiful she looks. I even told her that for my birthday I could ask my parents and in-laws to give her dresses as well. That would be just as much a gift to me.

As far as I know, this pastor’s wife didn’t poison him in his sleep or anything like that during the night. Either way, this is a man who definitely needs to get into marriage counseling and get his attitude towards women taken care of. Also, until that changes, please don’t be in the pulpit. We don’t need this kind of attitude there.

And women, you’re already beautiful. If a man doesn’t find you beautiful just the way you are, then he’s not going to find you beautiful anyway. His idea of your beauty is conditional. Move on.

However, while you should want to take care of yourself, if you have a good man, he will find you beautiful no matter what changes you go through. It is because while he sees your body, he doesn’t see just your body. He sees you and when he sees you he sees beauty. It’s not conditional.

If you’re a man who makes your commitment to your wife conditional on what is fleeting and passing anyway, then you don’t really have a commitment to your wife. You have a commitment to a female body. Work on your eyes, and your heart.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)
Support my Patreon here.

Lack of Education

Are we on the path to elimination? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

My last blog post was about the culture wars. Someone in the comments on my Facebook pointed out that we should be concerned also about statistics about people not believing Christian doctrine even in the church. If anything, we should be more concerned. I heartily agree. If all we keep doing is responding to the world, then we are always going to be on the defensive.

It should be the opposite. Jesus said the gates of hell wouldn’t stand up against the church. Gates are defensive measures. If we were going to church accurately, we wouldn’t wear our Sunday best. We would wear battle gear and realize we are undergoing training for the mission of the Kingdom.

Many of us have seen the statistics such as people in the church who believe there are more ways to God than Jesus Christ, who question the deity of Christ, who believe in reincarnation, have no problem with sex outside of marriage, accept homosexual behavior, etc.

Is it any wonder that if this is what people within the church believe that we are losing the culture war? How can soldiers who don’t know basic training manage to handle conflict on the outside? How is it that we are losing this battle?

Part of it is that we unfortunately, took a stance of retreat. In the 19th century, you had higher criticism, the teaching of evolution, and situations like this that led to questioning of Scripture. Instead of engaging the culture, the church went into retreat. Soon, the church became a private sphere. The church dealt with the internal and the personal and the outside world, namely science, dealt with the external and the factual. Is it any wonder so many people, even Christians, believe there is a war between science and religion?

The church is always better off when it engages with the culture and faces challenges head on, but when the church withdraws from the academy, expect the academy to fall. Keep in mind, the Ivy League schools had been established for the good of Christianity. Now they are for the good of the hook-up culture. How far we have fallen!

Today, normally strong believers that we have in the church are not strong believers because of a deep study of theology or apologetics. It is because of a deep emotional commitment. How many of our churches are full of preachers who don’t have any higher education whatsoever?

Now some will counter and say “Well, the disciples of Jesus didn’t go to seminary did they?” Consider what the person is asking. The disciples of Jesus. What did that mean? They were His students. The apostles were constant students of Jesus Himself and I think all of us would happily change our seminary education to sit at the feet of the greatest rabbi ever like they did. Jesus personally taught and invested in these men.

As for Paul, who didn’t have that experience, who would question that he was greatly educated? He got invited to speak on Mars Hill, which is not a place where idiots went to. His epistles show someone who is extremely educated.

Also, ask many of the people in the church to explain the Trinity and likely, they will become Arians or Modalists. I have heard evangelists say the Trinity is like a man who is a husband, a father, and a son. Such a person should not be doing evangelism if they cannot give a proper illustration of the Trinity without falling into heresy.

We wonder with all of this why our young people are struggling in the area of sexuality. More of us get our sexual ethics from pop culture than we do from Scripture. As has been said before, if a young man and woman are on a couch together, it will take more than a few verses from Paul to stop them. They need a whole worldview of sex to know how it fits in. (Something most secular people don’t have either.)

Our people need to know not just what they believe, but why they should believe it. They should be having discussions of great books and know what the people around them believe. If you’re going to become a Christian in the Middle East, you need to know not only why you believe in Jesus, but why you don’t believe in Islam.

The problem with the culture starts with us. We watch the news and ask what has happened to the world. It is better to ask what has not happened to it. We have not happened to it. We have not been salt and light to the world.

What’s the solution? We have to learn what we believe and why we believe it and know how to interact with the world. That also means knowing more than just the Bible. We need the best education we can get in history, the sciences, economics, psychology, etc. Christians should be the most educated people of all, but in reality, we are usually the dumbest.

Many experts on marriage will tell you you change your marriage best by changing yourself first. If we want to change the world, we change ourselves first. If the culture is going insane, and it is, the best we can do is work on our own sanity.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)
Support my Patreon here.

Why Christians Lose Culture Wars

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

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

Eventually, the cable company and Cracker Barrel both relented.

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

Way to go, team!

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

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

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

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

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

Well, sometimes Christians post something on Facebook about it.

Congratulations.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is He worth living for?

Is He worth anything at all?

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

We could learn something from that.

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

Will we do the work for Him?

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)
Support my Patreon here.

Should God Reveal Himself To You?

Should you have to seek? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Suppose you met a young man who said he really wanted to get married. However, he also said he refused to go out and search for a wife. He refused to talk to any women he met. He even refused to go on any online dating sites. After all, if he is to be married, surely the right woman will just come along and choose him.

Or, suppose someone says they want to get a job. However, they refuse to go online to search for any jobs. They refuse to work on a resume. They refuse to go to any places of business and apply for a job. Do you really think they want a job?

Of course not. We would all question these claims. If you really want something, you are to go out and get it. Even in dating, while girls typically are the ones who are asked out, they at least do things to indicate that they are available and interested. (Granted though, many of us men are horrible at reading these signals.)

Yet so many internet skeptics approach this this same way. They ask if God has revealed Himself to them. I have encountered some like that this week, but it hasn’t been anything new. How many people have you heard say “God knows what it would take to convince me that He exists and He hasn’t done it. I guess He doesn’t exist.”

Some of you might think that sounds ridiculous. Some of you might even be skeptics of Christianity who agree that that’s ridiculous, which is commendable. However, some might be wondering “Why doesn’t God do that?”

I have written before that God is not a trivia question. The point assumes God just wants people to know that He exists. Why should anyone think that?

The analogy I often give is suppose you meet a husband who says he wants more sex. (Yeah. I know you all are really having to stretch your imagination.) His wife says, “Okay.” In the bedroom though, she shows no excitement or passion, doesn’t respond or get physically involved at all other than letting him do what he wants and then when he releases she says, “Okay. We’re done. I’m going to go watch TV now.”

Did the guy get what he wants? If you just go in a fully technical sense, yes, but no man would be satisfied. What he is really saying is he also wants his wife to want him. He doesn’t want to be a duty. He wants to be desired.

What a person who raises this claim about God is saying implicitly is “God is not worth seeking out. However, if He wants me, He needs to show me that He exists.” Such a person is automatically putting themselves above God as greater in importance. Why should God appear to such a person and enable them further in this way?”

The person who seeks though is the person who says, “This question is worth an answer.” They are saying “If God exists, He is worth knowing and I want to know that He is real.” I am convinced that if that person does seek, they will find. It’s a biblical promise. It is not a guarantee, but those who are diligent in their search will find.

Those who expect God to come to them can expect nothing and are really making a theological claim with no backing. God does not have any reason to show Himself to the proud. It’s the humble who receive grace, including Himself.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)
Support my Patreon here.

Book Plunge: Sex Matters

What do I think of Mona Charen’s book published by The Crown Forum? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Feminism has failed women.

This is not to say that everything it has done has been a catastrophe. What it means is that the movement has done more harm than good. While it hailed itself as pro-woman, it has actually been anti-woman. The damage has been because it had an idea of what they would like women to be, but ignored what women really are, and the same for men as well.

The movement assumed that for many women, the dream is to be a career woman. It assumed that women should experience sex the same way that men do. It assumed that women must be able to have abortions in order to be on equal footing with men.

Unfortunately, this is not the case for the majority of women. Women tend to really want to feel security. Marriage is one of the great ways that women can have that security. Not only that, that also has a positive effect on the man as the marriage covenant usually domesticates a man.

It started with some good goals for women, but then it went on to other ones. Many of the earliest feminists would be appalled at what feminism is today. The first one to really change the way the movement was seen was Betty Friedan with the Feminine Mystique. Much of what she said was rooted in Communism as well.

From there, more and more feminists wanted to push the envelope further. Marriage was seen as a bondage for women. Women should pursue sex outside of marriage. Motherhood should not be a major goal for women. Abortion should be a right for women.

Unfortunately, all of this denies what women are. Women have a natural longing for the most part to be mothers. Many women would be willing to sacrifice a career to raise their children directly. Sex outside of marriage does not do women good but rather allows them to be used.

This is built on the idea that femininity is something artificial that can be bent to be whatever we want, but if women have a nature and we are fighting against that, then we are doing harm to women. The same is also done to men. We live in an age where we hear about toxic masculinity and complaining about the patriarchy, automatically assuming that masculinity is a bad thing and a man is a villain if he leads.

This has also led to women severing their bonds. In abortion, a woman severs the natural bond she has to be a mother to her children. Abortion is actually the most anti-feminine behavior I can think of. First off, many of the babies aborted are themselves women. Second, a woman is doing the exact opposite of the motherly instinct and learning to kill her own children for the sake of something else. It could be money or career or just wanting to have free sex. Either way, a woman does herself great harm as she has to find a way to justify abortion.

A woman also has to shut herself down during sex which can lead to the hook-up culture. Women are too easily used and many women have taught themselves to not feel anything during sex lest they form a connection that get severed. Many women will also say yes to sex when they don’t really want to because of fear of losing the guy or of being seen as a prude by society.

We’re also told men need to stop pressuring women to have sex. This is true, but at the same time, in reality, men also have far more testosterone in their bodies and think about sex a whole lot more than women. We are also far more aggressive. Andrew Sullivan is even cited with an example of how he was getting testosterone for something and at the start, he almost got into a fight with his neighbor because of it.

Do men need to control their strong desire for sex? Yes. Will you change male nature though? No. The more you do that, you will find yourself fighting against reality.

Let’s consider some ways we are doing that. Charen cites someone who complains about a tool that is used by women to help them see if a date rape drug has been put in a drink. A woman complains saying she doesn’t want to live in a world where she has to fear that her date has done something like that.

That’s a fine goal, but the reality is we do live in that world. We do live in a world where some men are scum and you might not know if that guy you just met in a bar is one of them or not. I remember hearing actress Bates say about the Weinstein situation that in her day, when a man invited you up to his hotel room, you knew what it was about.

Men, however, also can be natural protectors. If a man has a wife, for the most part, he will want to protect her and provide for her. I remember even when I worked at a movie theater as a young adult. We worked at a mall and often got out of work after midnight. I would always walk my female co-workers to their cars and told them the same thing. “If someone comes after us, you run. Don’t look back. Don’t worry about me. Just run.” After all, I’m a Christian. I knew where I was going. My goal was to keep the women safe.

This has also changed college culture. Date rape is on the rise and more and more control is being exerted. Many a woman can seduce a man or at least have sex where the man thinks it’s consensual and then months later he’s slapped with rape and abuse charges. The problem is usually when a couple is having sex there aren’t a lot of witnesses around.

And what about after that? The family is in crisis. It was long beforehand, but it has only gotten worse because of feminism and “sexual liberation.” We have let government take the role of parents and it just doesn’t work. The main loss is the loss of fathers. Children are best raised by their biological mothers and fathers in a committed relationship.

The breakdown of the family is a disaster for men and women both, but especially for the children afterward. We are fighting against reality by doing this. We need to go back and examine feminism and see what is really good for women, and not for men, and not just what we would like to see.

This is an excellent book that we definitely need to read and the data is far more than I can show in just a blog review. I would that more people would read a book like this. Our society is on a downhill track and we really need to change it.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)
Support my Patreon here.

Book Plunge: Woke

What do I think of Titania McGrath’s book published by Constable? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Truly, we have a budding genius in our times whose writing will bring about a new Copernican Revolution. Then again, she would prefer we call this a McGrathian since Copernicus was obviously a racist and sexist cis white male. Everyone of us should be blessed by reading McGrath’s work.

Obviously, everything is tongue in cheek here. Titania McGrath doesn’t really exist. She is the creation of Andrew Doyle. Her satirical work is meant to make fun of woke culture and does a superb job. I found something that made me laugh on most every page.

Consider some examples:

The conservative broadcaster Ben Shapiro ( whose opinions are always wrong ) bases much of what he believes on facts, which just goes to show how useless they are. ‘ Facts don’t care about your feelings, ’ he is known to say. The opposite is true. Feelings don’t care about your facts. This is how social justice works. If you feel something to be true, then it is true.

One might be tempted to think that it’s obvious that feelings don’t determine reality, but then look at our culture. Is that not what is too often happening? When it comes to transgenderism, what data is pointed to but feelings? Now working on changing the feelings isn’t acceptable. One must change the body instead. Speaking of transgender:

“Anybody who has ever taken even a rudimentary course in Gender Studies will know that there are literally no biological differences between men and women. Except in the case of trans people, who are born in the wrong body.”

“I mention all of this because enlightened society now realizes that gender is fluid, the outdated categories of ‘male’ and ‘female’ being dictatorial taxonomies assigned randomly at birth. Some ‘ experts ’ still maintain that there are only two sexes. The idea that knowledge is more important than feelings is everything that is wrong with the field of modern science.”

We should all know that so much of this is nonsense. However, when it is put in a satirical form, it becomes that much more enjoyable. That is the way satire is supposed to work.

There’s much more than just transgenderism. McGrath speaks about Islam as well.

In order to achieve wokeness, one must treat Muslims with special sensitivity. This is essential given the increasingly vehement forms of prejudice they face due to damaging stereotypes in the media and popular culture, as well as legitimate grievances in Islamic communities, which have arisen as a direct corollary of Western depredations in international conflicts. Also, some of them have bombs.

What makes this so funny is the last part. Bart Ehrman was once asked why he doesn’t do what he does with the New Testament to the Qur’an. His answer was quite revealing.

And what happens when there is an attack by a Muslim? You go after the logical target, the Christians. We’ve seen it happen before.

Every time I hear about another act of jihadist terrorism my heart sinks because I know there’ll be a horrible Islamophobic backlash. Whatever their crimes, nothing that ISIS have ever done comes close to the acts perpetrated by the European nations during the Crusades. Surely in the face of modern-day jihadism, we need to be focusing on the misdeeds of medieval Christians. Anything else would be sheer hypocrisy.

And going on those standards,

Westerners have to understand that there is a civil war raging within Islam, and moderates are trying to reform the more problematic beliefs. We could see evidence of this when Islam was rebranded as The Religion Of Peace ™, which I think we can all agree is much catchier. This also helps to remind everyone that when somebody drives a truck into a group of pedestrians, shouting ‘ Allahu Akbar ’, it has absolutely nothing to do with Islam.

You can try to deny it, but remember the Fort Hood shooting? It was marked as workplace violence. I still remember all the memes going around about the Crusades being workplace violence.

Feminism is also a target.

If women choose to sacrifice the prospect of a career in order to breed, that is of course up to them. By doing so, however, they are embodying all that is rotten in patriarchal society. They have internalized their misogyny to such a degree that they genuinely believe that raising a child is more important and rewarding than earning money.

Most of us would laugh at this, except we see it happening. Many of us do place money over what matters most like children. How many of us neglect our families at times for lesser goods?

How many times also have we said something about safe spaces at universities and conservative speakers being chased off of campus?

Student unions at universities are currently spearheading the battle against free speech through the creation of ‘ safe spaces ’ where debate is outlawed if the topics are potentially triggering. At Oxford, a debate on abortion was canceled because a man with incorrect views was scheduled to appear. Debates are all very well in principle, but there’s no need to represent all sides of an argument. One protestor, Niamh McIntyre, said, ‘ The idea that in a free society absolutely everything should be open to debate has a detrimental effect on marginalized groups. ’ A university is hardly the appropriate place for exploring alternative ideas.

Something like this is so incredible since a university is exactly where you should be exploring alternative ideas. We should all welcome debate on controversial topics. As I write this post even, I am dealing with atheists on a JW page who are doing everything they can to avoid reading a book that disagrees with them.

And as for pop culture:

Hip hop music is sublime, with the exception of white rap artists such as Eminem, Vanilla Ice, and Pam Ayres. But while enjoying rap, one must guard against cultural appropriation. When Kendrick Lamar invited a white fan onto the stage to sing along to his song ‘ M.A. A.D City ’ at a concert in Alabama, he was forced to interrupt when she repeatedly used the n-word. Nobody can fathom why the girl indulged in this racist outburst. Some have surmised that it might have something to do with the word being a continual feature in the song’s lyrics.

This is something I have often thought about and yes, I think much of this music does much damage to the culture by instilling ideas that do promote the usage of women especially.

Woke is a hilarious read and one that is not too long. Christian readers need to know the book does contain language that would not be appropriate for your children. The point is that this is satire done extremely well and those who enjoy political humor should read it.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)
Support my Patreon here.