Category: Apologetics

Life Is A Game Walkthrough Part 1

Are we playing a game? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Spoiler warning for the old game Final Fantasy Legend ahead. It’s an old Gameboy game, but if you are planning on playing on an emulator or something, skip this part.

Your party in Final Fantasy Legend has climbed a tower twice that is said to lead to paradise, defeating the fiends of Gen-Bu, Sei-Ryu, Byak-Ko, and Su-Zaku, as well as their leader Ashura. (Fans of mythology should recognize those names.) There was a trap the first time going up so the party had to do it again and fight the first four of those fiends again, until they got to the top again.

This time, they seem to enter a peaceful and serene area where there doesn’t seem to be much of anything, except for one man, standing in front of a door.  They talk to him to find out he is the Creator and they were the first to finish the game. It was a game he made because people didn’t know what courage and determination meant so he created Ashura to see what they would do. He wants to reward the party and grant them a wish.

The party is indignant upon hearing this insisting that he used them. Eventually, it’s clear they’re picking a fight with him and so the party fights the creator. In the end, they win, and rather than go through the door, they choose to return to their world. (How much I wish we could get a story that would show what was beyond that door.)

THOSE WANTING TO AVOID SPOILERS CAN RESUME HERE.

What if our world also was a game? Granted, there are differences, as contrary to Isaiah 45:7 as read by fundy atheists, God did not create evil. However, He did allow it. My thoughts on this come from reading Edward Castronova’s book, Life Is A Game, which I heard about on a podcast on God and Gaming with two hosts, one being a Catholic priest, who both love gaming and they have Catholics on there who are in the game industry and Castronova was one of them.

He looks at game design and says “What if God created the universe like we create a game?” It’s an interesting hypothesis and I am going through it and in that spirit, rather than call this a book plunge, I will call it a walkthrough. This is one of those books that I am highlighting every night something I read that I find relevant. I am not just learning a lot about the world around me, but I also think I’m learning about myself and so many times I read something and I think “I can relate to that! I didn’t know there was a name for that!” By the way, I’m not even 20% through the book.

So let’s start with RPGs. These are my favorite genre of games. In these, one assumes the role of a character and makes decisions as him (or her) and really seeing the world through their eyes. Castronova says that these have shown us that people want to be heroes and have their lives matter and go on quests. (Another area that shows this I think is the rise of the superhero genre) It’s common in the world of RPGs for a player to spend 20-40 hours a week on one game. Consider how many people made plans suddenly when The Legend of Zelda: The Breath of the Wild came out. In Japan, there are laws on when a Dragon Quest game can come out because everyone takes off to play it.

Now we can look at this and say “What is wrong with our society in that people are wanting to spend so many hours playing a game?” or we can say “People are spending so many hours playing a game? Why?” Obviously, it is meeting some desire in the lives of those people, but is it just a desire to have fun?

Probably not just that, because while gaming is fun, there is also the reality of what is known as rage quitting. People get super frustrated because they can’t seem to beat that one level. Many times it’s common to throw one’s controller and just march off in a huff, and yet so many times we come back. Why?

What if we saw this not as a problem, but rather as a clue? Could it be possible that game design could tell us about the human condition? What if we did see the world as a game? Could that give us any insights into the nature of reality? Is this also a novel idea to see it this way?

And what is the purpose of play? Something to consider is play is its own end. People do not play so they can work, but we do work so we can play.

And how does this relate to our everyday theology and life? Is this part of the reason sometimes men hate going to church? Could seeing life as a game make us want to go deeper into understanding God?

I plan on exploring these questions as I go through this book. I don’t know how long it will take, and I also do not plan on blogging next week as I have the Defend conference going on. I hope you’ll be there, but if you can’t, I hope you’ll join me as we explore answering if life could be a game.

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

 

Hope For Today

What hope do we have for today? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Not too long ago, I wrote about something Elon Musk tweeted out and stated we don’t need a new philosophy, but we need to return to the old. Of course, I use the term philosophy as I think Musk intended it, a system of living. I am not saying Christianity is a philosophy, but I can say there is a Christian worldview.

Yet it’s easy to think for many that the hope Christianity gives is only for the future of when we die. It is not hope for today. It’s understandable that people think this today since we are so heavily future-oriented in Christianity. Why should you become a Christian? Isn’t it obviously so you can go to Heaven when you die? With this, Christianity becomes all about getting to Heaven and avoiding Hell. I can picture N.T. Wright saying that it is not less than that, but it is more.

For one thing, Christianity gives us hope of forgiveness. This is something that can be difficult to grasp. We are loved as we are and we are cherished as we are and forgiveness is free for the asking. All of us I am sure would like to erase some actions we have done from our past. That will not happen, but we can be forgiven for what we have done wrong.

The amazing truth also is we are loved. As a gamer, I like to watch various gaming channels and I like how one of the hosts at WhatCulture gaming ends each video he does with a positive message encouraging people on mental health. I understand what he means when he says that you deserve love and the best things in life, but to a certain degree, I disagree. What makes God’s love incredible is not that we deserve it. We certainly don’t. We are not owed love. What makes it incredible is we DON’T deserve it.

Christianity also tells us that what we do makes a difference and we have an example. Jesus is the greatest example of love the world has ever seen. His life has inspired morality, art, literature, science, medicine, etc. The world is a better place because of Christianity.

Hope for eternity does matter and the people who have had the effect in this life have had their eyes on eternity. We know no weapon formed against us will prosper. We know evil today does not have the final word. We know that suffering will come to an end. It means every bit of suffering we go through will be redeemed. This is not the end.

We also get to play a part. We can go forward knowing that like most any good story, the good guys win in the end. All will work out somehow and if we are on the side of God, all will also work out in our favor. All things will work together for good. The future does matter because if you know the future is good, you can push through the present today.

For today’s debates also, Christianity gives us a foundation outside of ourselves that we can hook on to. There is a foundation for truth, goodness, and beauty. There are answers to those questions and those three things we all desire are real.

Christianity is hope. Christianity is the only hope we have left for the world. Death does not have the final say. Eternal life begins right now.

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

Speaking At Defend 2023

What’s going on in January? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

For all interested, I will be speaking at Defend 2023 this year. Those interested in signing up for the event can find out how to here. We have a number of well-known speakers coming like Gary Habermas, Tim McGrew, Frank Turek, Paul Copan, Craig Hazen, Sam Allberry, Mike Strauss, and many others. I will be speaking at a breakout session at 2 PM on Thursday.

When Bob Stewart asked me if I spoke what I would speak on, he wanted me to send him a list of three topics I could do. I thought that everyone and their mother already speaks on a lot of the big topics. Honestly, if someone had to choose between hearing me on the resurrection or Gary Habermas, where will they go? I’d probably go hear Habermas instead even.

So what could I speak on that others aren’t speaking on but I think could be relevant to the people there? I had three topics. I had considered speaking on Autism and Christianity. I also was willing to speak on divorce and Christianity. My main interest though had a lot to do with what I had been reading a bit about and that was video games and Christianity.

That’s the topic then that I was asked to speak on. I had recently heard on Audible a book about the history of Nintendo and Super Mario in particular. I also had listened to The Gaming Mind and had read Grand Theft Childhood about how there is no real link between video games and violence. I am also reading Matthew Millsap’s dissertation on video games and theology. I found this kind of reading fascinating. I also noticed that there was a hysteria often whenever a new medium came out. I wanted to know how to better avoid that.

It wasn’t long after I shared the news on Facebook that people were immediately wanting to engage with me and discuss this. I find this exciting not just on an intellectual level, but on a personal level. Why have I gravitated towards games all my life and why is it that that played a role I think in my getting into Christian apologetics? A resonating quote with me after all is Peter Kreeft’s of “Apologetics is the closest you come to saving the world.”

When it came time to move to New Orleans, my DivorceCare leader and his wife came over to talk to my parents about their concerns and my leader said it well. “He has been playing games all his life and now he wants to go out and live those games. He really wants to be out there in the battle.” I have told people that in recovering from divorce, my slogan has been to play to win. I don’t want to spend my one life in defeat and a victim because of how she treated me.

Too often, those of us who are gamers are often dismissed. I did recently skim through the Gaming Alone post on The Gospel Coalition. I did notice the story about a seminary professor who wanted to start a gaming club when told that every domain in the world is meant to belong to God and when the call came out, he saw several students he didn’t know were there and he thought he knew everyone. He wondered if it was because these students tend to isolate themselves with games.

To an extent, we do, but I also wonder if it could be gaming is more friendly to introverts. When I go to a party, I am often miserable. I go to every event I can on campus because a friend told me if I want to meet women and get a wife, that is the thing to do. However, I am often bored intensely at them as it is difficult to talk to people and initiate conversation. Now get me to my D&D group that plays here on the campus and I have no problem with interaction with them. Most of my great friendships I have had in life have started with games.

I might blog more on this topic after Christmas, or I might wait until after the conference. I hope you will come and if you do, even if you don’t come to my session, if we know each other through a medium like Facebook, I would be thrilled to get to meet you. There’s always something exciting with putting a face to the name.

Please come to Defend 2023 this year and let me know if you signed up!

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

Can God Care Without Emotions?

If God doesn’t have emotions, can He care about you and me? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Yesterday, I was browsing Facebook and I saw someone make a post asking how God can care about us if He has no emotions? This idea has been known as impassibility where God has no emotions. It has been the teaching of Christians, Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox, up until around the 1800’s.

If you want to respond and say “But look at this text where it says God was moved with compassion or was angry or XYZ!”, then I will tell you “Look at this text where it talks about the hand of God or the eyes of the Lord or any other number of bodily references? Most of us know that those bodily references are not to a real physical body, but they are describing God in ways we can understand. I do the same with the passages about emotions.

How about Jesus? Jesus had emotions in the text! Surely you’re not suggesting that those are just figures of speech are you?

Not at all! Jesus definitely has emotions and had them in his earthly journey and I contend He still has them today. However, if you want to say that means God has emotions, then you have the same problem again. Jesus still has a body and if you want to go this route, then you need to say that God has a body as well. If you want to say because of Jesus, God has emotions, but not a body, then you’re just picking and choosing.

Yet the question still remains. If we accept this, how can we say God cares about us or God loves us? It sounds like a difficult question until we do consider that we regularly do the same thing without emotions.

If you are married and think that the degree to which you love your spouse is dependent on your emotions, then you are going to be in for a hard time. There could be times you have a great degree of negative emotions towards them, such as in an argument, and when you do, you can still say that you love them. When you make a promise to love until death do you part, you do not make a promise to have an emotion. No one can make themselves have an emotion or else we would all make ourselves happy all the time. We can make ourselves act, even when a part of us doesn’t want to. Many of us do that when we get out of bed in the morning.

Too often, we start this also with ourselves. “When I have love, I can have emotion. Why not God?” It’s a mistake to look at us and say “God is like that.” God is not really like anything at all. As Scripture says “To whom can you compare me?” No one. It is really that we are like God. God is said to be the Father from whom all fatherhood comes. It’s not that a man can say “I am a father and I can see God is like that.” It’s really “God is a Father, and I am somewhat like Him.”

God loves us and God cares for us and that is not because He has an emotion, but because that is who He is. God is not loving, but rather God is love. God does not act and then develop an emotion, as if He was a changeable being in time. God consistently acts out of His nature.

We can say all day long “I don’t understand how that works,” but why should that matter? We can go to our churches and say that we believe in the doctrine of the Trinity. Is anyone going to stand up and say that you understand entirely how that works? If we think we understand God, then we have a really small God, hardly one worthy of worship.

Also, if one wants to question impassibility and simplicity and other doctrines, that is fine, but we have to ask why. If there is a consistent line that goes from the early church to modern times accepted by all three branches, what did we discover that they did not know? Before we take down a fence, we should see why it was put up in the first place.

God can have love towards us and have compassion towards us without emotion. Is that hard for me to understand? Of course, but what of God is easy to understand?

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

Book Plunge For Fun: Mollie McQueen Is Not Getting Botox

What do I think of book three of Lacey London’s series? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

We live in an age where image is everything. As a single man, I am on dating apps and if I told you that how a lady looks to me doesn’t matter, that wouldn’t be accurate. On the other hand, it would be just as wrong to say that that’s all that matters. Also, it is common for people to be ashamed of their age and not want anyone to know how old they are. I have no problem now telling people that I am 42.

This also extends to social media where we often come and put our best side forward and all the pictures of us are the best-looking pictures we have. I don’t remember seeing a lady take a selfie of her having bed hair or thinking she doesn’t have her make-up on properly. Our lives are often portrayed as being the best that they could possibly me and how much that one “like” that we can get means to us.

In this third book in this series, these kinds of questions come to mind as Mollie’s parents and her in-laws are both obsessing about aging and trying to look young. This involves going through some of the most extreme measures like getting medical procedures done. Eventually, this leads to even more bizarre “natural” treatments that I don’t want to go into now in case someone wants to read them themselves.

All the while, she is interacting with her neighbor, a lady who is a senior citizen, and the other elderly man next door watching them go at one another in what seems to be a contest to irritate one another constantly. Something that is pleasant to see is that the elderly as treated as people who do have a lot of wisdom. Mollie goes to see her neighbor just to hang out, but also to seek some sage advice.

Also, she’s involved with a presentation at her firm where she works to put together a campaign idea for a social media company. She is someone who hates social media thinking it has done a lot of harm to us all. However, with the benefits that could come from this position, what will she do?

As I was going through the book, at the start, i was thinking I couldn’t relate much and that wasn’t such a draw, but then it came to seeing discussions of questions of image and where beauty comes from, which is something I am definitely interested in. We got to questions of social media and I was curious to see what would happen, seeing as I see it as a mixed bag. I do realize a lot of the problems, but I am incredibly thankful for the people and relationships that I have formed through social media that I never would have otherwise.

In the end, I thought the story had an excellent ending and a note on how the next one would go. Right now there are five books in this series and I do plan on going straight through them. The aspect I like is that the characters become relatable to the reader and after awhile, you come to know them personally and are invested in them. I still hope there will be a sequel to Odd Billy Todd for the same reason.

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

We Don’t Need No Stinking New Philosophy

Do we need something new? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Over the weekend, I saw somewhere on Twitter that Elon Musk had said that people are losing hope in the future and we need a new philosophy. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find that tweet again. I agree with Musk on the first part, that people are losing hope. I disagree with the second part that we need a new philosophy.

By philosophy, I suspect Musk means a new way of living and a new way of seeing the world. It’s understandable, but it’s unlikely we’re going to uncover a grand new truth of reason that hasn’t been discovered already. The main foundations have already been laid and we are simply building on them.

I do question that we need something new based on the maxim of C.S. Lewis. If you find yourself traveling the wrong direction, the way of progress is to turn around. If we look at where our “progress” is taking us, it really doesn’t look good. The humanist dream has always said that Utopia is just around the corner, when Utopia usually turns out to be a nightmare.

What we need is not a new philosophy but a new embrace of the old philosophy and that is to return to Christianity. It is in Christianity that we have an embrace of the family, the essential building block of our society. It is in this system that we have an emphasis on morality and the good and love of your fellow man.

As for hope, Christianity gives us hope, and this is hope not just in the future, but hope for the present. We have a real message of forgiveness and that justice will be done for all. That can be both good and frightening as well. Justice sounds good when we think about evil people and we think about people who have wronged us. It doesn’t sound as good when we realize we have to sit at the same seat.

Christianity does give us hope that death has been defeated. It means that no weapon formed against us will prosper. It tells us that we should do our best, but that everything doesn’t depend on us. This is our Father’s world and He is watching over it. This message gives us something to live for. It’s not just about collecting the most stuff or having the most pleasure. It’s about seeking a greater kingdom and the best way to bring it about.

Christianity is a message of hope to people. It was something that changed the world of its time and whenever it is preached and lived, that same change begins again. Christianity tells us that everyone is worthwhile and everyone is in the image of God. Christianity tells us that God cares enough about us that He Himself lived among us and He is a security that we can put our hope in.

The way to change society around us today is not by anything new. It is to undo the damage that has been done, I contend principally by the sexual revolution, and return to the truth of Christianity, an ethic not dependent on circumstances or feelings, but on eternal truth. Some could think that hope is just for the future, but I will contend another time, perhaps tomorrow, that this hope is for the present life as well.

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

Celebrating The Season of War

Is everything just merry and bright? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

This Christmas for most of us here in the West, Christmas is indeed merry and bright. It will have us coming together with friends and family to celebrate the coming of Jesus. We will exchange gifts, have meals, sing carols, and any number of other traditions.

It’s a time of war.

That description doesn’t sound like war….

Yet it really is a time of war and we don’t realize it because we have it so good in the West. Imagine if you were celebrating this holiday in a Muslim nation where you are proclaiming God incarnate coming. Imagine celebrating it in a country like China. In a number of countries, being a Christian is a death sentence.

It was like that in the Roman Empire as well. A number of Christians faced the death penalty because of the charge of atheism. It was not safe to be a Christian.

This shouldn’t surprise us because in the Bible, Christmas is presented as a time of war.

Go to Revelation 12. It’s really my favorite rendition of the Christmas story. In this account, you see the birth of Jesus and when the devil can’t kill Him, he goes out to seek war on all of the saints. By the way, this is a problem for a totally futurist view of the book of Revelation. It’s really difficult to see this as anything other than the birth of Christ.

As a result of God coming into the world, war was declared. If we were really being accurate going to church, we should wear military gear. We often think we will go to get a feel-good message and encouragement, and there’s nothing wrong with such encouragement, but we should also consider that we are going to get our marching orders as we are soldiers for the Kingdom of God seeking its spread.

The world has never reconciled to the coming of God. There is still a desire to shut down Christianity. In the West, we are starting to see this more and more as the sexual revolution’s fruit is still going strong and more and more, movements are being made against Christianity. We could fear what happens, but it could be one of our greatest gifts. Christianity taken for granted tends to grow weak, much like anything that is taken for granted.

We are right now living in contested territory. We are living in a world where the forces of good and evil are constantly facing off against one another. As someone who studies video games and Christianity, this is something I find easy to understand as a game often throws us into a world where it is good vs. evil fighting constantly.

Go and enjoy Christmas by all means. There is something to celebrate. Jesus did come in the flesh and did start the battle. We are to go and announce the good news that not only the king came, but that the king is still reigning right now. None of this is the case if it hadn’t been that that original birth took place. (And I do affirm the virgin birth.)

Merry Christmas.

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

Christmas on Sunday

Should we go to church on Christmas? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

So there’s been a lot of talk I’ve seen on Facebook about Christmas being on a Sunday this year. I do know a lot of churches are having Christmas Eve services, which is fairly common. I don’t remember going to them growing up since my parents were the ones in charge and we always went to two different houses on Christmas Eve. I know my ex-wife and I didn’t on our first Christmas Eve together, but we were also going on a deep drive through snow.

Now this year, I do plan on going to my church for Christmas. I understand we’re going to not have the regular Sunday School aspect, which is fine with me, but I plan on attending the service. There are some people who are thinking we shouldn’t have church this year on Christmas because people will want to be with their families.

Churches normally are open on Christmas day for a service and also people usually do want to spend Christmas with their families. Both of those make sense. Somehow, when Christmas falls on Sunday, it seems strange to some people to think you’d go to church.

Which is kind of odd. We’re only celebrating the birth of the Son of God into the world. It’s strange to go to the very place where that is celebrated?

However, we could also consider this a Romans 14 matter. Perhaps someone’s family has non-Christians that will absolutely refuse to go to church at all and maybe one doesn’t want to avoid any sort of drama. That would be up to each person to decide based on the kind of skeptic in their family they are dealing with. It could also be a great time to get someone to church so they can hopefully learn something more about the message of salvation.

For me, I am going to church and my family is going to be celebrating on Eastern time. They will have to wait another hour likely for me then, but I don’t think there will be much problem with that. I am staying in New Orleans for Christmas and we have said we are going to use our Echo devices so we can see each other and open gifts that way.

If we treat this as a Romans 14 matter, then we should also say that each person should be fully convinced in his own mind. For me, the idea of missing church doesn’t really make sense, but at the same time, I don’t want to look down my nose at someone who is missing. It would be horrible to be celebrating the birth of Christ while practicing the sin of satan after all.

People will be discussing their reasons back and forth for what they do and there are many factors to consider. Again, let each be fully convinced in his own mind. For me, I am going to be going to my service that day and the gifts, God willing, will still be waiting for me when I get home and the family will still be there. They’ll do just fine.

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

Book Plunge For Fun: Trueman Bradley: Aspie Detective

What do I think of this book? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I am a great fan of detective fiction and so I got this one looking to see if there were any stories of detectives on the spectrum. I happen to enjoy the series Monk with the detective who has extreme OCD which helps him greatly with his sleuthing, but creates numerous hindrances not just for him, but for everyone around him. Of course, the great challenge in a mystery show or novel is the goal to try and find out if you can solve the case before the detective can.

So I got this book to see what the aspie detective is like. The only other well-known one I can think of is L from the series Death Note. Thus, I wanted to see if this is someone who would remind me of L or be quite different.

In the series, Bradley lives on Baker Street in England and has made it his goal to be the next Sherlock Holmes. He has an assistant who he regularly calls Watson to match with what he calls resonance, where he gets into the mindset of thinking that he is Sherlock Holmes. He has also taken it a point to memorize a number of smells and locations in London as well as the history and train schedules.

Despite all he does in the area of deduction, he has a great weakness from his being an Aspie in that he cannot read emotions. He has a solution for that in that he has glasses that were designed for him that connect to the internet and can tell him the mood of the person he is talking with based on their facial expression. This is a weakness I can resonate with as it can be hard to read people and also with his weakness of knowing if someone is being sarcastic or not.

He has technology in other areas as he has drones that follow him overhead constantly that send him feedback of the area around him including items like footprints and can warn him of any intruders. When he is emotional, he can get extremely expressive of that as well. He also carries a walking stick not because he is disabled in that area, but because it is designed in such a way to be a weapon if need be.

Despite that, while the story was alright, the mystery function just wasn’t as much there as I would like. It was hard to picture the environment and it did depend on several aspects that the reader could not see and know about. As a result, I wasn’t going to bed at night thinking about what I had read and trying to find out who the culprit was, which as I said is always the joy of detective novels.

To be fair, this was the one that was setting up the series. I am not adverse to reading another one and I probably will do so if it comes out, but if so, i hope this one is someone that involves the reader in using their logical skills to reach a conclusion. That can be done while still showing the aspie nature of the detective.

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

Why Doesn’t God Just Forgive?

Couldn’t He just say it’s all good? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

One objection that seems to be pretty common is asking why can’t God just forgive? It seems to work in Judaism and Islam. Right? Islam actually has never had to have a system of sacrifices in place. Jews today without a temple have other means of forgiveness open to them they say.

Christians have never needed animal sacrifices, but it seems we have gone a step further. Apparently, we need the Son of God to come and offer Himself as a sacrifice for us. Doesn’t that seem bloody and grotesque? Why would God have to have something like that?

Something to point out is that there are plenty of atonement theories. Sometimes when people ask me how it works, I try to focus also on the more important issues. Let’s say Jesus really did die on the cross and that He did rise from the dead and thus demonstrate His claims about who He was were true. We have that, but we’re not sure just how we are forgiven based on that.

Would that lead anyone to believe Christianity was false?

However, this is a question I have thought about and yes, I do have a response to it. To start off, everything is going to be going on the assumption that the basic Christian account is true. If you do not believe that, then accept it for the time being because this is a hypothetical scenario. It’s testing to see if Christianity is internally coherent and not if it lines up to the external world. If Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, this is just trivia. If He did, then this definitely matters.

If Christianity is true, then God is the greatest good in the universe. Nothing can top Him. Nothing can go beyond Him. God will also be consistent and treat Himself as the greatest good. If He does not, then He is denying His own nature.

So now we have people who sin. One problem could be we treat sin as such a nonchalant word. Imagine a doctor coming to you and telling you you’re sick. That’s not good, but you’re not going to be panicking. Now imagine the same doctor telling you you have cancer. Are you sick if you have cancer? Yes. The two are quite different. A fender bender is a car accident, but so is a total collision. The two are quite different.

So what is sin? It’s not a slip-up or an accident or a mistake. Locking yourself out of your house is a mistake. Breaking into your neighbor’s house is an evil. Sin is really an act of divine treason. It is an implicit statement that you oppose God and all He is and stands for and desire to sit on His throne. It is the same even for those of us who are forgiven Christians. Somewhere, we all still doubt God and think we can do better.

So if God just forgives us, then what does that say? It says that He values our good above His own good, which is also goodness itself. There is something greater than the good. The creation is more important than the creator. In a sense, God becomes an idolator.

Now can He just let us go and not provide any means of forgiveness to us? He can, and He would be just in doing so. God owes us all nothing. Whatever you think of Hell, be it real or be it annihilation, God does not have to save any of us from it. He is under no obligation to free anyone from sin and under no obligation to forgive.

But suppose He wants to anyway. God is just. Sin must be punished, but there is no way that we can pay that price, that price of death. After all, money and good works could never overcome what has been done and if they could, it would require an infinite amount, which we can never pay.

Who can pay an infinite amount? An infinite being could. That would mean Jesus. His sacrifice pays the need for justice and for mercy and still shows the love God has in being willing to go through this for our sakes. God is still the greatest good out there and humanity is shown goodness and love.

That’s my understanding of it at least. Hypothetically, even if this cannot be proven, I at least see it as coherent and thus the question is answered. Even if it wasn’t, that doesn’t show Christianity is false. It just shows we lacked understanding in something, which should shock no one.

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