Category: Apologetics

Book Plunge For Fun: Mollie McQueen Is Not Getting Divorced

What do I think of Lacey London’s book published by SSO Publishing? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I’m looking through my emails with Kindle books on sale and I see this one with the book Mollie McQueen Is Not Getting Divorced and read the description about a lady who after another sexless night with her husband decides she’s 30 and wants to move on with her life so she’ll get a divorce and about how a journey starts from there. The price is free, so you can’t beat that, but I am a student at a seminary with books to read otherwise, even though I still do get in fun reading. Will I or won’t I?

Eventually, I decide I will and start to read a chapter a day. As I get into the book, I sometimes am tempted to break that rule. I want to go through more to find out what is going to happen in the story. I had bought the book originally to also see what a more secular perspective might have to say. There is nothing explicitly Christian in the book, but at the same time nothing explicitly non-Christian really, and the book is not filled with profanity and incessant dirty talk. Descriptions are rather tame.

Not only that, but I did wonder if there could be some secret Christianity in there due to one of the main good characters in the book who is a voice of wisdom being named Evangelina. That’s certainly not a common name to have. Something that makes me hesitant to say that is that the book is from a British author and I know that Christianity is a minority position there. Still, there are some devout Christians over there. (N.T. Wright anyone?)

Anyway, I don’t want to give spoilers since this is really a great book to read and part of a series. (Yes. I’ve already got the next one in the series.) However, as Mollie goes through her journey, she does start to learn a lot about marriage and much of the marriage advice in the book is incredibly solid.  This is a book that admits that marriage is hard and also that marriage is worth it. It also does what it can to dispel the idea that marriage can be absolutely perfect as all marriages have flaws.

What is most helpful is as Mollie goes through her journey, she had originally started complaining about her husband Max and all the things that he needed to change. As she goes through her life and her path to divorce, she comes to realize that she’s quite the guilty party as well. She starts actually learning to see things from Max’s perspective and how to better communicate with him.

I wound up actually telling my therapist that I’m reading this book and sent a link to him as he is helping me work through and process my own divorce. It’s the kind of book that if I was doing marriage counseling or even pre-marital counseling for a couple, I could have them read this book and see what they think about it. There’s good advice and Mollie is a very engaging character and not only that, it’s just fun.

If you want to get the book, you can do so here. On Kindle, it looks like at this moment, the first one is still free.

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

 

What is a bigot?

What does it mean if someone is called a bigot? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

According to dictionary.com, the following is what is meant by a bigot.

A bigot is “a person who is utterly intolerant of any differing creed, belief, or opinion.”

Nowadays, a bigot is seen more often as anyone who disagrees with a belief or doesn’t accept it. The irony is that so many people who are using this term are the ones who are the bigots themselves. Someone who is a bigot is so utterly intolerant that they are not open to changing their mind.

There are some beliefs in my life I would say I do not think I could possibly be wrong on and this even if I have no easy way of verification. I consider it absolutely certain that my parents are my biological parents. I have never done a test and I have never had to. I have accepted their word and lifestyle and the surrounding testimony of the community I grew up in. It’s possible everyone around me is involved in a massive conspiracy, but this is not likely and not something worth considering.

That being said, if you wanted to offer evidence to the contrary, I would be open to it. I would be skeptical, but I have no reason to not listen at all. Note that that is something important. I would be very unlikely to change my mind, but if the evidence was good enough, I would.

I get concerned when I meet people who say that they are Christian and that they will never change their mind. Now I certainly hope that they don’t, but I don’t want you to be in it in such a way that if there was ever given absolutely evidence to the contrary that you would still say, “Nope. Not changing my mind.” As a devout Christian, I have no real concerns I will ever find such evidence, but I also know that I don’t know everything.

If that seems problematic to you, keep in mind that if you do evangelism, you are asking people to do just that. You are asking them to change their mind and whole worldview entirely based on the evidence that you present to them. Why should they need to be open but you don’t? Because your belief is true?  They think the exact same thing about their belief.

In debates today, such as issues like homosexuality and abortion, many who are more conservative are often called bigots. The idea implicitly is that this is a done debate and there’s really no need to listen to the other side. If that is what you think, then that is actually being utterly intolerant of a creed different from yours which makes you the bigot in that case.

Yesterday, I wrote about charges like homophobia. What was rightly said in a comment on my Facebook is that this is a way of just shutting down debate. That’s entirely correct. The problem is that means that you really don’t care to know if you’re wrong on an issue if you go that route. Now I have no problem if you think it’s highly unlikely that you are wrong. All that’s recommended is to listen to the other side.

If someone opposes XYZ, it’s good to always ask why they oppose it. It’s easy to say something like “Republicans just want to see poor people die!” or “Democrats just only want to spread sinfulness!” Now both of those could be true, but you don’t know someone’s reason for opposing something until you ask them. I saw someone share something today about Republicans voting against a certain act. I wanted to look and see why they did so and find it in their own words. Too many articles I wrote were on the other side saying “Republicans hate XYZ!” I kept looking and found reasons that on the surface at least left me thinking, “That makes sense.” If I wanted to argue they were right, I would want to look more, but I at least decided I should see what was said first.

Ultimately, if you think it highly unlike you are wrong, that’s one thing, and that’s fine, but still listen to see what your opponent has to say and if it’s something new and you consider it important to your thinking, look into it. If you are convinced that you cannot possibly be wrong, then you are just a dogmatist and essentially you’re holding to a religious creed of sorts. If I meet someone who does not think they can be wrong in anything, I wonder why I should think they are right in anything. Ironically, as was said about, such a person is truly a bigot.

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

On Charges Like Homophobia

Does it really make a difference to say such claims? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Yesterday, I wrote about the failure of the movie Bros. One claim brought up by Billy Eichner who was behind the movie was that it failed because of homophobia. I could talk about just that claim today, but there are plenty of others.

Let’s go back in time and consider Hillary Clinton’s “Basket of Deplorables” quote. She had said that half of Trump supporters could be placed in this basket. How did she describe these people? “They’re racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic.”

The sad thing is sometimes, techniques like this work. People get scared because they don’t want to be labeled this way and seen this way. Nowadays, the same people that used to tell us about how totes awesome tolerance was, are the ones that will go scouring through someone’s Twitter history and seeing if just one time a decade ago they said something mildly offensive to ruin their lives.

For my part, when I hear the claim about racism, sexism, or even a counterpart such as white supremacist, I tend to disregard it immediately. Why? Because I have heard it so many times that I just can’t take it seriously. It has become a story of the boy who cried wolf.

Homophobia is a particularly odd one to me. Consider if I came up to you and said “So have you given any thought lately to having sex with your mother?” Now if you act repulsed at that, could I go and say “Oh! You must be an incestophobe!” (My spell check is saying that word is not real, but give it time.) Are we going to move soon from an age where we talk more about pedophobes than we do about pedophiles? (The former is a word that doesn’t exist yet in spell check, but I suspect it could be there within a decade.)

If anything, consider that you are accusing someone of having a phobia, which is a mental condition, and your reply is to make fun of them for it? Phobias are incredibly serious things when they are real that can severely limit someone’s life. Somehow, many more often on the left have chosen to use this term regularly.

Tolerance is no longer totes awesome.

Disagreement with a position doesn’t mean that you are afraid of it, unless we want to say every non-Christian is a Christophobe. If anything, you could have a positive attitude towards something and still choose to avoid it. Consider someone who is recovering from addiction. You can find plenty of people in an Alcoholics Anonymous group who somewhere would likely still love to have alcohol. They’re not alcoholphobes either. They just know it’s not good for them and they have to avoid it because the effects of it on them are not good.

Right now, looking at racism, I live in a city where it is very much a melting pot of various cultures. At many of the businesses around here, I am a minority. Does this cause me any trouble? Nope. I’m still a Christian and everyone around me is still in the image of God.

Another problem with the approach of crying something like racism or homophobe is that it really doesn’t require you actually listen to the other person. If you did not, for example, want Obama to be president, it is possible it could be because you are a racist, but it could also be because of other reasons, such as you didn’t like his policies and approach.

If someone is called a homophobe, it could be they find homosexuality disgusting, but it could also be that they have a view of the family that doesn’t allow for that. They think, and I agree, that a man-woman monogamous unit is the foundation of a society and raising up the next generation. Now someone like myself could be wrong on that, but just throwing out homophobe doesn’t allow us to even discuss the issue.

Every time something like this is said, what is no longer being discussed is the issue, but rather the person. For someone who receives this charge, defending yourself is not really the way to go, at least primarily. That distracts from the issue. What really needs to be discussed is the belief in question.

So for those of us who have heard this, the ideal goal is really to just not pay attention to this unless there’s serious evidence behind it. For those who do use this kind of claim, really try something better. You might be further convincing the choir, but you really just cause the rest of us to roll our eyes and not take you seriously.

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

The Failure of Bros

Is this due to “homophobia”? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I’ve seen on YouTube today a lot of talk about the failure of a movie called Bros. If you haven’t heard of this movie, it’s supposed to be a romantic comedy, but the lovers in this are a pair of men. This was the first of its kind and its fail was tremendous.

Billy Eichner, who is behind the movie, has sadly taken the lower path in handling this. Instead of looking at himself and looking at his movie and seeing why it is no one went to see it, he is instead blaming the audience. Why did it fail? It is because YOU must be a homophobe.

However, if that is the case, then even assuming everyone who saw the movie in America is gay, a lot of them even didn’t see it, so does that mean someone in the homosexual community is a homophobe? Eichner has also been on Twitter sending out regular tweets about this. Little tip here. If you want your audience to listen to you, it’s probably not a good idea to call them homophobes and anything else at the same time.

Well here are a lot of reasons most people didn’t go see this movie.

First, romcoms are normally meant for women. For the most part, men do not go to see romcoms unless their girlfriends or wives insist on it. Men would rather see an action flick of some kind. They want to see some fights, car chases, shootings, and something getting blown up. If they do go see a romcom, they want to at least see a beautiful woman in that movie.

A gay romcom has neither. No straight guy I know of wants to see two dudes getting it on together. Add in there are supposedly multiple orgies in this and we’re even less interested.

While men will go see action flicks wanting to be the man in the films, women go see romcoms because for the most part, they want to be romanced. They like the love story and it’s their kind of fairy tale. They are not interested in seeing two dudes either.

If you’re wanting men to go see your film, don’t make it a romcom.

Second, people don’t want to see something if they think they’re being preached to. Most people do not go to church for entertainment value and there’s a reason we’ve called a long message we don’t want to hear a sermon. There’s a reason we refer to a negative onslaught of what we ought to do as preaching. When people see a system they don’t want regularly put in their face, they lose interest. It’s the whole “Go woke, go broke.”

Consider how it is in superhero comics. Most people I know wouldn’t really care too much if someone wanted to make a gay superhero. What they don’t want is to take a traditional superhero who has never shown any inkling of being gay and then turning them gay to appeal to diversity. People go to comics for entertainment. They don’t go for politics.

Third, yes, a lot of people don’t agree with homosexuality, including myself, but it doesn’t do anything to call us all homophobes any more than calling non-Christians Christophobes is going to get them to repent or seriously examine Christianity. Instead of having any debate on the topic, instead, it is easier to just shout an insult at someone. It doesn’t help your side any.

That means when we go see a movie, we don’t want to see an orgy with a bunch of guys in it. That might appeal to the homosexual community, but not to heterosexual community. We also don’t care for a movie that tells us that we had a good run. You don’t tell us our time is done and then respond negatively when we choose to not show interest in you.

Ultimately, if people don’t like your work, no matter how passionate you are about it, you need to look to yourself. You will never have something that pleases everyone, but I have to do the same thing here. If people aren’t interacting with my content or taking it seriously, I have to look at myself mostly. Now there’s no harm in looking at my audience and asking what they want. I wrote about divorce for quite awhile, for instance, because I saw views were up on my blog when I did that. Give the people what they want.

If someone isn’t interested in my content, I can ask what I can do to make it interesting to them. I could look at my writing style or website presentation or anything else. The first place to start if someone doesn’t like my work is always with me. It is not with the audience.

So Billy, take a look at yourself. How passionate you are about the work doesn’t matter a bit. I can be super-passionate about selling overcoats, but it won’t work if I’m talking to people in the Middle East most likely. I can be super passionate about pork products, but it won’t work with Muslims or Orthodox Jews. Passion doesn’t equal success. Having a good product or service and then knowing your audience well and what they want does.

We just don’t want Bros. Time to accept that and move on.

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

Game Violence And Porn

Is there a difference? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I was watching a political commentator talk about the topic of pornography and faithfulness in marriage. Does watching pornography count as adultery and having an affair? It could be said you’re not having sex yourself, but you are watching simulated sex to some extent. Does this count as unfaithfulness to your marriage?

If you are married, I say 100% yes that it does. Some might say, “But we’re doing it together willingly.” Even so, then you are both breaking your vows together by inviting someone else into your bedroom. It’s a private place meant to be for the two of you.

When I was married, we lived this out. There was a time we had someone staying with us who was fleeing a hurricane in Florida. When it came night time and we went to sleep, I told him if you need anything, you can call us and let us know, but don’t come in there. That’s our private place. That rule was always upheld.

However, this is about a different issue. The commentator asked a different question briefly and I wanted to address it since it’s a real question and I believe asked in all sincerity and I have asked it myself. What about video games that involve killing? Is that engaging in actual killing?

At the start, I suspect war games have always been with us to some extent. Little boys grow up playing with toy weapons and I really have no reason to think it was different in ages past. I’m sure little boys back thousands of years ago dreamed of being fighters and soldiers and would play with one another. Boys do tend to be aggressive and we can roughhouse regularly.

Of course, girls do this also some as nowadays, a girl can grow up pretending she is Wonder Woman, for example. There are plenty of other female superheroes that girls can be like. When young children play pretend, they are assuming an interface of interaction where what they imagine is for the time being true. A little boy pretends he’s Superman and a little girl pretends she’s Wonder Woman and for the time being, they live out as if that is reality, knowing that it is not, but it is called pretend for a reason.

Now video games have provided that interface for us where when we play a game, we accept the reality of the game and to follow by the rules that the game has set for us. If you play a game as simple as Pong, you accept that you can only move your blocker in a certain direction and you have to score X number of points before your opponent does. If you play Mario Kart, you accept that you have to drive such and such a way on the track and that you can use power-ups on the field, but alas for you, so can your opponents.

So what about violence in games? Like the children playing pretend, people know it isn’t real. So when kids play a game in pure imagination and one of them “kills” the other, in the end they all get up and go about their own lives or play another game. They know it isn’t real.

However, I think what is really important to ask is why are you doing what you are doing? For most of us who play games, we don’t kill the enemy for the sake of killing itself. Now there is something good about the feeling of taking down a powerful boss in a game, but there’s also the sense of good vs evil and stopping an evil force from hurting others who are innocent.

That means it is not violence for the sake of violence, but violence to protect someone or something else. It is a battle for justice, much like going to war is supposed to be or self-defense. If there is anything tapped into inside of us, it is the idea that we want justice.

Now some have suggested that playing video games leads to violence. Unfortunately for those wanting to argue that, there is no hard correlation that has ever been found, but yet this has been assumed so long most people take it for granted. For those wanting a stronger case on this, I recommend reading Moral Combat: Why The War on Violent Video Games is Wrong.

Let’s also remember that this is not new. It just has a new target. When films started coming into their own, the exact same thing was said about them. Back in the 60’s, there was a war on comic books. I find it amazing that so many of my fellow political conservatives jump on these bandwagons.

Why is that? One of the ideas of conservatism is personal responsibility. We all accept that some people get dealt a hard hand in life, but like playing a card game, if you get a bad hand, well those are the cards you play with. You make the most of them and many people have and played very good games doing such and come out to be successful.

We say that if a man rapes a woman, he can’t blame the action on how the woman was dressed. If a couple gets pregnant, personal responsibility should be accepted and the baby brought to term. If you are able and capable, you need to be part of the working field and providing for yourself and your family.

Yet when it comes to people being violent, we try to blame anything else that is responsible for the violence, except, well, the person themselves. If anything, we should consider looking to what is often most immediate as influences first off before anything else, the family, realizing that this is not also hard-wired. What values and beliefs was a child raised with and how does that influence them?

I will present my own self as an example. I grew up in a Christian home and I was in church every Sunday and when I left home, that didn’t change. I have also played video games all my life and many of them involve combat and battle, yet I am the driver also who if it is safe, will hit the brakes before I hit a squirrel even and don’t relish the taking of life like that.

That doesn’t mean I’m opposed to combat. There is a time and place for it and if someone threatens me or someone I care about, I hope I will rise up to the challenge and take them on if need be. Had I grown up in a different environment and been raised a different way, I could have turned out very differently.

Now having said that, if you do have a problem with any sort of game and think it is wrong to play that game, then don’t do it. I have played Mortal Kombat with some friends before, but I could never do a fatality move. I don’t really like games that show a lot of blood in them. Gore is not appealing to me.

So how about pornography by contrast? When one watches porn, they watch because they want to see sex and sex they don’t really have a right to see. They want to take what is meant for the private sphere and put it in the public sphere. Sexuality is a means in itself and the person or persons being viewed are simply being viewed for their own pleasure and usage, which can affect easily how they see other people.

Not only that, but there is also reason to believe that many boys who grow up watching pornography can struggle with ED. Yes, I know porn is becoming a problem for girls watching it, but ED is not their struggle. It’s harder and harder to find men who are not affected as most of them have watched porn. I am thankful that by the grace of God I have avoided this temptation. It is a real one at times still, but it is overcomable.

But what about you? I have presented my thoughts on the matter of games and violence in them and about pornography. I am always interested in hearing what others have to say, especially my fellow gamers. Feel free to leave a comment.

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

 

The Work of a Roofer

Do you have to be in ministry to serve Jesus? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I work at the campus post office here at the seminary and today, we had someone come in wanting to mail some packages who was the roofer for the seminary. He came in, a happy guy, and said he was going to first go to the cafe in the seminary and asked if we wanted anything. I told him I don’t drink coffee, so he offered a tea, to which i definitely said yes. I don’t turn down a free hot herbal tea. When he returned, he had it with him and I have it right here next to me.

The guy was extremely generous to all three of us working there and it left me thinking as I wrote it about how a few weeks ago I posted asking if you have to be in ministry to serve Jesus. Actually, C.S. Lewis said all of us somehow or other, even non-Christians, serve Jesus. Judas and John both served Jesus. One did so freely and with a good reward. One did so in opposition and with not so great a reward.

If this guy wasn’t doing the work he was doing and others like him, could we have a seminary, especially in an area prone to hurricanes? Could I have an apartment to live in here? Could we have classrooms? Not at all. His work is a service to God and it is a “secular” job.

Not only that, but the visit was a blessing to me today. It means a lot to me when people out of the blue come out and get me gifts. While it’s great to get gifts like a new Patreon subscriber or a game or a book, a simple gift like a tea from the cafe means a lot as well. I have posted how on my birthday here, I got a gift from some fellow seminarians that live in my building.

Ultimately, if you want to serve God, you just have to go from where you are and give it fully to God. We can go to Europe today and look at the cathedrals and we can think about the great Christian saints that worked in them. We can see magnificent churhes here in America and think about all the great sermons that were preached in them. Do we ever stop to think about all the architects and builders that worked on these buildings? Of course we do sometimes, but generally, that’s not what comes to mind.

None of this is also to discourage people going into the ministry, but this is mainly for people who want to serve God and think they’re not doing it in a non-ministry setting. You definitely can serve God no matter where you are at. Paul tells us in 1 Cor. 10:31 to do whatever it is that we do, and he related it to eating and drinking, to the glory of God. That means whatever line of work you’re in, do it to the glory of God.

You will get your reward, and you will likely be a reward to others.

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

The Influence of Christian Parents

How important is a Christian education to a child? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I recently read J. Gresham Machen’s Christianity in Conflict. This is being read for school and if I read something for school, I don’t really want to do a book plunge on it for the most part. Machen in his day was one of the most influential New Testament scholars and was revolutionary here in America.

Machen wrote about the virgin birth, which I do affirm, especially and so much that even a 100 years later, we’re still talking about what he wrote. He was a man of great learning and one of the great Princeton Theologians. He also went and studied abroad in Germany.

The book is largely an autobiography of his and he does touch lightly on the education he got in the secular schools growing up, but if there’s one aspect of his life that was influential on him remaining a strong Christian, it was his parents. His parents were devout Christians and also very learned Christians. His father was a lawyer who in his 80’s started learning Italian and reading Italian authors just for the fun of it. I don’t think as much was said about his mother, but her character shone through and through.

Both of them encouraged Machen to read and learn and both of them encouraged him to ask questions. They were not people who shied away from doubts and Machen did often times have doubts. However, as time goes by, he gets more and more help in getting a higher education, but one can see throughout his life, the great influence his parents had.

When he studied abroad in Germany, he was not in a conservative environment at all. He was in one where he was challenged every day and yet, he held on and argued his case well and read all he could of his opponents. What really helped him so much? The preparation he had at the feet of his parents.

Christian parents. This is for you. Please never lose sight of the influence that you can have on your children. For all you know, you could have another Machen growing up in your household.

That means that you do take them to church regularly, but don’t just do that. Educate them in your home. Make Christianity something you live seven days a week and not just on church days. Do not be afraid of your kids having questions and if you don’t know the answer, go and find it.

I am sure some atheist readers could say something about indoctrination, but the reality is I expect most parents will somehow raise their children up with their values. I suspect Muslim parents, Mormon parents, Jewish parents, and atheist parents all do this. You don’t really want to force your kids, but if what you believe about ultimate reality really matters to you, you will pass that on to your children.

If you’re wondering some on how to do that, I have a resource for you. I recommend you check my friend Elizabeth Urbanowics’s program Foundation Worldview. Her work is aimed to help extremely young children start to learn about the Bible and how to think and about what it means to be a Christian.

Raise your children well. Welcome their doubts and questions. Be there to support them. Our world is not a safe place and you will have more influence than anyone else.

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

Can God Be A Moral Monster

Is it possible for God to be morally wrong? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

He told me that it the flood was wrong. I wanted to know why. The reply was that it brought about a lot of agony. I’m sure it did, but on what grounds does that mean it was wrong? There are plenty of events that bring about agony. Sometimes, it’s needed. I had a lot of agony after my back surgery. Still glad I went through it.

One of the big problems with this kind of objection is that it carries in it a built-in idea about God that many Christians hold to as well. The book Is God A Moral Monster? is a great book and I’m not saying Copan holds the view I am critiquing, but it could be asked if the claim is even possible. Can God be a moral monster?

When objections are raised about what God does, the claim often comes up that it is wrong for God to do X. Why? On what grounds? I am not going the presuppositionalist route here. This is not asking by what authority one can condemn God. It’s asking if questions of morality can even apply to God.

Consider how this works. If God is capable of being moral or immoral, then that means there is a moral law that is objective. Christians agree at this point, but does this mean that it applies to God? God is under the law and is to be held accountable to it? Who could hold God to account for it?

So if God takes a life, for example, on what grounds has He done something wrong? He is the Lord and source of all life. If He wants to take a life, He can. Is there anyone that He owes a life to? Is there anyone that God is in debt to?

Now one objection I can think of to this is that God has made promises. Doesn’t God keep His promises? Doesn’t He have an obligation to do that?

God does keep His promises, but it’s not because He’s moral, doing what He ought to do as there is no ought above Him. It is because He is good. All moral acts are good, but not all good acts are moral. Sometimes, we go above and beyond what we ought to do and that is a good act that is not required upon us.  I may have a moral requirement to help my neighbor in need. It’s going above and beyond if I can somehow pay all of his bills for a year.

If you ask me then if God is moral, I will say no. The question doesn’t apply. If you ask me if God is good, I will say absolutely. The question does apply. This is not because goodness is something outside of God He submits to. It is because goodness is His very nature. He is good because He cannot deny Himself or be untrue to Himself.

Thus, in a debate, I make it a point that my opponent has to demonstrate why God is supposedly in the wrong for anything. It’s not mine to assume God’s actions have to be defended. My opponent needs to show me why they need any defense at all.

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

On Coffee and Slavery

What does one of the latest statements on slavery have to tell us about our knowledge of history? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Those who know me know I can’t stand coffee. I am a tea guy. I remain loyal to my beverage of choice. However, that doesn’t mean that anything said against coffee is right automatically. Consider this, one example of how ridiculous our culture is getting thinking they are making a powerful point by resisting something.

So let’s consider a few points here.

First off, let’s be clear that slavery is wrong. I can’t believe I have to say this, but unfortunately, I do. If I don’t say it, someone is going to think that I am defending slavery. They’re going to think that anyway, but I fully agree with the wrongness of slavery.

However, that being said, it’s time to list other facts.

For one, if we were to eliminate anything that has anything to do with slavery at any point in time, we will have to likely eliminate nearly everything that there is. (Which could include those tennis shoes you’re wearing.) Pyramids of Egypt? Gone. Great Wall of China? Gone. How many other great monuments from history would vanish?

Second, slavery has happened with every race out there practically and every race has enslaved every race and every race has even enslaved their own race. The word slave itself comes from the Slavs. Who were they? White Europeans. Who were white Europeans and others buying slaves from in Africa? Other Africans.

Third, the only slavery most people know of today is the slavery in antebellum America. Outside of that, no clue. It’s ignored that it was the West that ultimately did so much to end slavery.

Fourth, many people today who are against slavery, and rightly so, could likely not give a good defense of why they are. If you went back to the Roman Empire and asked anyone if slavery was wrong, even the slaves themselves, they would likely look at you stunned as if society could be any other way. Today, it’s the exact opposite.

Fifth, no matter what we do today, we can never erase history. Not buying coffee today will not change that slavery took place. There is no need to punish the industry today for something that happened before anyone in the industry today was even born. We are living with a fool’s errand if we think we can redeem ourselves this way.

Sixth, we can be redeemed, but only by Jesus. Our nation can make things right best by turning to the God who bought all of humanity for a price in the person of His Son. We will not do it by any other action.

Finally, today, we need to learn history again. So many people think they’re being activists by not buying coffee or something like this. Want to do something about slavery? It still exists in some parts of the world. Go there and do something about slavery in those parts of the world. Our ignorance of history leads to repeating it. Learn instead from slavery that we do have scars in our past, but the good news is we have changed the way we used to do things and become a beacon of freedom for the world.

Real change will take more than this. Avoiding anything that has anything to do with slavery, even antebellum slavery in America, will not do anything. It will only hurt people today who had nothing to do with what happened and are just trying to provide for themselves and their families.

As a tea lover, there are plenty of good reasons for not buying coffee. This is not one of them.

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

Can Jesus Be Non-Miraculous?

Is it really possible to remove the miraculous element from Jesus? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Jesus is the figure that stands out in all of history. It’s really hard at times to find someone who has a bad word to say about Jesus, even from a non-Christian persepctive. Such does exist, but even a negative word is still there in an abundance of praises for his teachings and character.

However, is there any reason these should stand out? Jesus was a great moral teacher. As Lewis said, we have had enough of those. We didn’t listen to them. Why listen to Jesus? Our world right now shows us that we are not.

New Testament scholars often seek to go through the New Testament and separate the fact from the fiction. What is true about Jesus in this? Can we move past all this miraculous stuff such as the miracles that He did and the idea that He was God or some divine being of some kind? Surely that stuff got added on later.

The moment you say this, you have to ask why it was added on. First off, why was He crucified? I find many a New Testament scholar who presents a case for how Jesus lived gives me no reason to think He would ever be crucified. Their Jesus is more akin to a Mr. Rogers figure. Adolf Harnack used to say Jesus was teaching about ideas like the brotherhood of all men. Okay. Why would this Jesus be a threat to anyone? Not only is He not a threat, He’s not someone you would give the worst death sentence of all to.

The disciples were convinced He rose from the dead? Why? Even assuming He had risen from the dead, is there any reason for them to say “Jesus rose from the dead! He is the Son of God, Messiah, and God Himself!?” No one ever thought that before in Judaism about anyone they thought came back from the dead. Even if the Jews were convinced Moses came back from the dead, would they say such a thing about him?

There is a simple explanation for why they believed such things. Jesus said and indicated such about Himself. Of course, this is the claim the liberal New Testament scholar does not want to admit at all. It wouldn’t be rational to think something like that after all!

So the attempt is made to remove those miraculous elements again and yet even still, Jesus is hard to escape. Jesus makes grandiose claims about Himself. In the Q document, which has never been found and is purely hypothetical, you can still see Jesus speaking about the house built on the rock. Where does this put His view of Himself? “If you hear my words and obey them, you are a wise man.” Nothing about God in there. The very Sermon on the Mount is filled with this high view. Jesus speaks of what we call the Old Testament quoting it and then saying “But I say to you.” These are the Ten Commandments sometimes, the ones written by the finger of God, and Jesus is attempting by His own authority to speak even stronger than they are? Who does He think He is?

Despite this, we look at these claims that Jesus makes about Himself and say “Isn’t He the picture of humility?” If what He says about Himself is true, then He can be, but if it isn’t, Jesus is certainly suffering from delusions of grandeur. Jesus is the greatest narcissist who ever lived in that case. There is a real condition known as Jerusalem Syndrome where someone goes to Israel and becomes convinced they’re the Messiah. We know immediately such people are insane to that extent at least. Do we think that about Jesus? There are many ideas of who the historical Jesus was. I have not seen a New Testament scholar arguing for “Insane lunatic.”

Not only this, but we have the ethical teachings of Jesus and these are not the teachings of someone who is insane. Most everything about Jesus shows a well-balanced individual. At the same time, this individual never asks for help, never apologizes, never admits a wrong, etc. Some of you may recognize shades of Tom Gilson’s Too Good To Be False in here, which is influential, but I’m also talking about the miracle aspect as well. I definitely urge you to read that book on the character of Jesus.

Assuming this figure is somehow made up as the mythicists would like us to think, who did this making up? This puts us in an even more difficult position in many ways. People who foisted a lie on the world also gave an immensely brilliant ethical system if not the greatest one of all?

Some could say it’s not that hard to create a Jesus, such as Lewis’s Aslan as an example, but the difference is Lewis had a model to work with. That is the Jesus who is already in the New Testament. Anyone who did this originally did not have such a model. Whoever could create this figure would be someone practically worthy of worship himself or themselves.

Notice in all of this, I have not once argued that the text we have is perfectly reliable or accurate. I have no need to. I am asking even to go with the data that will be granted by skeptical scholars. If we take all of this still, can we present a coherent picture of Jesus? Can we explain His teaching, His crucifixion, what claims did He make about Himself, and why the belief He rose again?

I seriously urge skeptics of Christianity to try to do so.

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