Category: Apologetics

Hook-Up Culture Ending?

Is this really a bad thing? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

With Roe v. Wade possibly being overturned, now women are telling men that they are wanting to end hook-up culture. It’s not worth the risk. Apparently, some guys are fine to sleep with, but they’re not good if they are going to be the father of your children.

Now these people are saying things like going on a sex strike to change people’s minds. Who are the minds they are trying to change? Largely, a lot of us conservative Christians.

You know, the ones who have long been pushing for abstinence until marriage and then sexual faithfulness in marriage?

Real convincing argument.

All we can say is “Your terms are acceptable.”

So what are some takeaways from all of this?

First, many of us were told we need abortion laws for cases of rape and incest. Sorry, but if you’re going out and hooking up with someone and wanting to get an abortion afterwards, you can’t call it rape. Now you could call it incest I suppose if you are going out and sleeping with your brother for a hook-up, but I really hope no one is doing something like that.

So thank you actually then for telling us what we have known all along. Abortion is not about those cases. It is about being used for contraception.

Second, you could very well wind up proving our case. Maybe it could actually mean people take sex seriously. After all, a woman usually has a lesser libido than a man does. I am not denying that there are some higher drive women out there, but statistically, men usually are the most eager to do the deed. A woman could want to have it, but she would be thinking, “But I don’t want to risk getting pregnant.” (Not only that, there are emotional ramifications of sex as well as STDs to consider.) She could be choosy then in who she gives herself to.

Now what does this mean for the men? Believe it or not, men might actually have to work to show themselves capable men to have sex. They might have to show that they can hold down a job and provide for a woman and the offspring. If they cannot do this, they do not get sex. Yes, women. You’ve had this power all along. You have no idea what a man is willing to do to get sex and if that means changing his life around entirely, well a man will go and do that. If you put sex out there as something easy for him to get, then he will stop generally at the level he gets it at and not go further from there. It’s a human thing. We tend to like to give the bare minimum.

Not only all of this, but if you have less sex, then you will have less need to go get an abortion which will mean fewer abortions anyway. Really, everything you’re doing here is a win for the people you want to go after the most, conservative Christians. I do know that there are plenty of secularists and atheists who are pro-life and I am thankful for that, but usually the position is associated with Christianity.

We will all be better off if we do take sex a lot more seriously because sex is a serious thing. The same applies to marriage. Women. In the end, you will have a better pool of people to date because the ones you want to be with will be the ones that work the hardest. Who gets weeded out? The men who are not willing to work to please a woman.

Why lower yourself by sleeping with a guy who’s not willing to give you his all anyway?

Welcome to what you have long been protesting. You could find this is one of the best things that ever happened to you.

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

Ignorance Is A Weak Excuse

Should you know what the other side says? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I have been going through Raymond Bradley’s book God’s Gravediggers and I plan to do a fuller look chapter by chapter, but I saw one quote that I wanted to highlight. It is about Christian philosophers who hold to inerrancy.

“”Are these guys serious? What would be their line when confronted by 2 Chronicles 4:2, which gives a false value for the mathematical constant pi (the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter)? What would they say about countless inconsistencies the Bible contains? For example, between 2 Samuel 24:1, which says the Lord commanded King David to “number the people of Israel”, and 1 Chronicles 21:1, which says it was Satan, not the Lord, who issued the command. What account would they give of scientific absurdities such as that of a six-day creation, the fixity of species, and the world-wide flood, an event that some biblical genealogists calculate as occurring on the 27 February 2267 BCE, an event that, as Australian geologist Ian Plimer points out, was “spitefully” ignored by the Egyptians of the time? I simply don’t know what answers these notable theistic philosophers would give. They proclaim inerrancy as a general doctrine without considering its specific applications. They preach it from their pulpits yet ignore it in their philosophical writings. Yet where inconsistencies abound, so does falsity; for at least one of each inconsistent pair must be false.”
There’s one part in here worth highlighting.
“I simply don’t know what answers these notable theistic philosophers would give.”
Anyone should really know at this point to not take Bradley seriously.
Unfortunately, Bradley is not in the minority. Normally when I speak to atheists, I ask them if they have read such and such that disagrees with them and I am told that they have not. Most usually make some excuse and it really is presuppositional atheism. After all, everyone knows science is the only way to truth and anything that disagrees is automatically stupid. Why bother looking into a case for a miracle if it’s just so obvious they never happen?
Getting back to Bradley, he is talking about Old Testament questions. No one is saying that these questions shouldn’t be asked, but these are not new. The early church often debated passages that seemed to contradict and tried to work out apparent discrepancies.
The problem is that Bradley has no idea what would be said and this is too often something that can happen. A person can come up with what they think is an objection to a position and say to themselves, “I can’t think of any possible counter to this, therefore there isn’t one.” Consider what happens with the problem of evil. “Why would God allow this evil?” If no answer can be found immediately, well then there just obviously isn’t an answer. Right?
By the way, this is not to say that Christians don’t do the same thing. Christians absolutely do and that’s a travesty on our side. The mindset of Bradley is one that no one should really have.
Also, I would encourage Bradley to instead go to some Old Testament scholars instead of philosophers. Go to people like Walton or Longman or Christopher Wright or others. Go to a seminary and ask to see the library and read some commentaries on the passages in question.
When it comes to the age of the Earth, even the rabbis had been debating the interpretation of Genesis 1-2. Rudimentary forms of evolution were even discussed in those times. The information we can have is new, but the debates are really old. While it looks like Bradley grew up with young-Earth creationism, even the most ardent YEC would know other Christians have other interpretations and while they don’t agree, I hope they would say they understand these people are trying to be faithful to Scripture who disagree.
Something I often say about skeptics I encounter is they are not true skeptics. They believe what agrees with them 100%. They only question what disagrees with them. This also applies to politics also where it’s easy to go in with a bias and find something that supports your side and ignore the rejoinders to it.
Bradley is not a skeptic. He honors it with his lips, but his head is far from it. He has simply abandoned one loyalty to a position and replaced it with the same loyalty to another position.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: God’s Gravediggers Part 1

What do I think of Raymond Bradley’s book published by Ockham Publishers? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I got this book seeing it on sale on Kindle and seeing praise from Graham Oppy for it. I thought this would then be a good and challenging read. Unfortunately, the more I go through this book, the more I see it is not that. Bradley holds to extreme fundamentalist views. Unfortunately, I can easily see why.

Bradley grew up in New Zealand in a situation that was hyper-fundamentalist. He talks about being at Bible camps and all manner of events constantly. At one, he talks about how a leader taught about masturbation and treated it essentially as if it was the unforgivable sin and identified it with blaspheming the Holy Spirit. Whether or not one agrees with masturbation or not, I don’t know anyone who thinks that’s what Jesus was talking about in the Gospels.

There was also the case that his parents when confronted with questions would tell him to have faith. Now I cannot prove any of these stories, but I am going to accept them on face value. I really have no reason to not do so.

So let’s say this at the start. Parents. If you think your faith is extremely important and that your child should believe the things you believe, don’t you think you should study those things and why you should believe them? If you have no reason to believe what you believe, why should your children?

I can think of no other area in your life where people would say have faith? Whether you are a conservative or a liberal, do you tell your child to just have faith your position is true. Do you tell them why you think they should support or oppose gun control instead? Do you tell them why they should or should not support minimum wage laws?

Bradley also early on talks about what could convince him of theism. On page 7, he tells how if the heavens opened tomorrow and God was revealed and kept sharing His desires and ended all injustice and human and animal suffering, he might consider revising his beliefs. When atheists make statements like this, it tells me they are not open to argumentation. They want an experience. (All the while, telling Christians to not go by their experiences.)

He also says that dates are given for people like Caesar in ancient history, but not for the Son of God. It’s hard to believe so many people think this is a serious objection. Now if everyone believed Jesus was the Son of God, of course, they would have written that, but hardly anyone did. Bradley compares the Caesar on the throne to what the rest of the world said was a crucified criminal and asks “Why was one recorded and not the other?”

He also goes on to say the prevailing view among Christians at the start was Docetism. Source for this? Good luck.

When he writes about the existence of Jesus, he says most scholars regard what was said in Josephus as interpolation possibly invented by Eusebius. Source for this? None. He also says Tacitus was at best just hearsay of what Christians were reporting. Source? The same. None. Most scholars think there is some interpolation to Josephus’s first reference to Jesus, but not the whole statement is interpolation. The second one is hard to regard as interpolation.

The reference to Tacitus is not hearsay as Tacitus did not care about hearsay and regularly checked every claim given, including by his best friend Pliny. He was a senator and a priest. If anyone had access to the information, it was Tacitus.

Bradley goes on to decide how his parents reacted to his questioning. This included physical beatings by his father that were so bad a neighbor threatened to call the police. It also involved some books he got being burned. This is actually a great example of how NOT to reach your children. His parents saw this coming for years. They sat him down with two experts, but never seemed to consider learning themselves.

At this, I can have some sympathies for Bradley as such abuse is never justified. However, it looks like Bradley has stayed at this state. He is still the fundamentalist that he was years ago as we will see.

We will continue next time on chapter 2.

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

Book Plunge: Hidden in Plain Sight: Esther and a Marginalized Hermeneutic

What do I think of Robert P. Debelak Jr.’s book published by Wipf and Stock? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Nearly everyone who is a Christian has a favorite Bible book. Many point to John or to Romans. I recently had someone surprise me who told me they really like Leviticus. If you ask me, the book that I seem to get very excited about whenever it comes up in my daily Bible reading is Esther.

I still remember sitting at a personal table I had in the living room as a young child going through my Bible and going straight through and coming to this book. Naturally, I had no idea what this ten chapter book was about, but I decided to go through it. That’s exactly what I did. I read all of the book in one sitting because I couldn’t put it down.

The book read like a modern adventure novel and has comedy in the irony that takes place in it. Something I found fascinating that I read about in the intro to the book the first time I read it was that God was not mentioned. In an odd way, this adds to the appeal of the book because you know God is present in the narrative, but here He is behind the scenes. (The king just happens to have insomnia and just happens to read about Mordecai saving him and then Haman just happens to be in the king’s court at the time wanting to ask about hanging Mordecai?) I could go on and on like that, but you get the idea.

In this book, Debelak takes us through and just encourages us to read it through the lens of margnizalization. What is especially noteworthy is the contrast of the women to him in the book and to those deemed less otherwise. Vashti is mentioned briefly in the first chapter and yet disappears as Esther takes her place and Esther has even more control over the narrative. At the start, Vashti is deposed for not following the orders of the king and in the end, it is Esther that is giving out the orders. Vashti is called to come into the king’s presence and refuses. Esther is not asked to come and risks her life and is accepted.

Mordecai is also such a figure. We know nothing of him other than he is Esther’s uncle of the tribe of Benjamin. He is seen as a loner figure who just sits outside the king’s gate and checks on Esther, but he is the one who has the gall to stand up to Haman (In every way as he refuses to bow down to Haman and give him honor) which brings about the events of the book. If Mordecai had just been like everyone else, nothing would have happened and Esther would just have enjoyed a nice royal life and Haman would not have had a plot to kill all the Jews.

Also, Debelak does not make any references such as “And here is how we see Jesus in this passage” or at least none that I remember. This is important because we too often do jump to that instead of just seeing what the passage means. Questions of historicity do matter, but Debelak doesn’t focus on those either but rather just looks at what the text means in the setting that it claims to take place in.

I found this an interesting perspective on Esther and I am interested in reading anything I can on the book. It is one I wish we talked about more in the church as I cannot recall one time I have ever heard a sermon on it. Sadly, most people don’t know about this book in the Old Testament. If you don’t, maybe you should dust off that Bible and go through it and see if you read it as I did as a youth back in the day.

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

In Happiness and in Health

Should this guy marry or not? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I saw a couple of days or so ago a post on Facebook about a bride who wanted to change her wedding vows. She wanted to take out the “In sickness and in health” part and replace it with “In happiness and in health.” Why? She didn’t want to be stuck with a husband with a long-term illness. She went to Reddit to express this and thankfully, got slammed repeatedly. The story can be found here.

Let it be known also that through my entire marriage of ten years, I had to care for my ex-wife in many ways due to her mental illnesses. If someone wants to come to me and ask if I would be willing to care for someone with long-term illness, I can say I already have. This is not to complain about her either. Had she wanted to stay and work on our marriage, I would have kept caring for her.

We’re going to be looking at key parts of this article.

“Claiming that she hates “taking care of sick people”, the bride said she wanted to “live my life to the fullest” without being burdened with an ill husband.”

Okay. This is mainly being written for this husband. Dude. Take a look at this. She has come out and stated that if you get stuck with a major illness, that you will become a burden. She wants to live her life to the fullest. What is that all about? Her. For me, it was a privilege to get to care for my ex when she was sick. So possible future husband, she only wants you if you are in good health. If you come down with some long-term cancer or something like that, well she will be gone. She is not willing to be 100% faithful.

“While she said she has “no problem” with caring for him if he was sick with a cold or flu, she wasn’t prepared to look after him if he had a “chronic” or “severe” illness such as cancer.

She also outrageously said that she would put any of their future children up for adoption if they had a disability, saying “taking care of a disabled child for more than 18 years is too much”.

The post sparked an angry response on Reddit, with thousands criticising the bride for being “selfish”.”

And look at this. This woman has also said she will do the same with children. Those aren’t going to be just her children. They will be yours as well. Do you want to have to say bye to your children because your wife sees them as a burden? Do you want to have to explain to them years later that you gave in to that kind of treatment?

Reddit users are calling her selfish? Rightly so. This lady is entirely selfish and marriage will not change that. Your marriage will be all about her.

“However, the bride justified her stance, explaining that she’d spent a long time looking after her sick parents and wanted a break.

“This is harsh, but I hate taking care of sick people,” she wrote.”

Traditionally, the parents of the bride pay for the wedding. I can imagine if this happened that her parents are so happy to provide for their daughter who says she hated taking care of them. She is right on one thing. It is harsh.

““My siblings and I were always taking care of our parents whenever they get sick and I just hate it, I’m sick of it and I hate feeling bound or obligated to take care of somebody.

“My life is full of moments and events like this and I just finally want to live my life to the fullest.

“I’m going to be married soon to my lovely partner and the best guy in the world. I’m so lucky and happy to have him by my side.” “

Once again, it’s all about her. Surprisingly at least, she didn’t end this by talking about how she’s the best woman in the world in her mind and her husband will be lucky to have her by his side. She’s lucky and happy to have him, until he gets cancer. Then it’s off to find someone else as he’s keeping her from living her life to the fullest. He’s only the best guy in the world if he’s healthy after all.

“In her post, the bride said her fiancé was unhappy with her request to change her vows.

“We have been thinking a little about our marriage vows,” she said.

“My fiancé is going to have a traditional Christian one: ‘I, _____, take thee, _____, to be my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part, according to God’s holy ordinance; and thereto I pledge thee my faith.’

“I’m going to have an identical one but without the ‘in sickness’ part, I’m going to replace it with ‘in happiness’.”

I read “We have been thinking” as, “I have been trying to get my fiance to accept my new idea and he wants to go with this dumb traditional thing.” She is right that this is apparently a great guy. This guy is being clear in his vows. She’s wanting to change them meaning she’s not wiling to make the same commitment.

So to the guy again, here’s who is the one who’s least committed to the relationship. It’s the one who cares the least. You can give 110%, but it can still fall apart because of her actions. Do you want to risk that? Do you want to have a future divorce and be paying alimony and only get to see your kids when a judge says you can?

““My fiancé says that he will not accept this and he is very mad at me, he is even rethinking the whole thing.”

Good for him. He should. I encourage him to run for the hills and find someone more worthy.

““I just don’t want to feel obligated to take care of anybody sick for years of my own and only life.

“It’s so stressful and I think he is being very unreasonable right now, it’s just a marriage vow and I have the choice to change it.”

Look at that sentence. “It’s just a marriage vow.” For her, this is no big deal. Just a vow? This is her one and only life and you, hopefully no longer future husband, would ruin things for her if you got sick, which could well be beyond your control.” Note that you are being unreasonable in her eyes because you’re not willing to concede this whole thing to her.

“In response the extreme backlash, the woman said she was happy to care for her husband if he was suffering from a minor ailment.

“It depends on the disease, obviously – I’m going to have no problems taking care of somebody with a cold or some flu or some broken bones,” she said.

“However, if it’s chronic or severe and requires so much time and playing around (diets, restrictions, surgery risk, special conditions, frequent problems…etc) like Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, disabilities, cancer… etc then no.

“I had enough of those in my life.””

Again, how much warning do you need? This woman is not marriage material. She is only so much committed. Now let’s look at children again.

“When asked whether she would care for their future children if they had a disability, she responded: “If they are abnormal and the tests detected that, then I honestly would abort them.

“I made this clear to my fiancé before, even though we are both Christians),” she said.”

If this lady wants to claim she is a Christian, she really needs to rethink what a Christian is. Christians do not abort children because they have inconvenient sicknesses. To the man here, she is willing to kill children that are also yours. Get out now, set up blocks on email and phone and Facebook, and never look back.

“Otherwise, I would give them up for adoption. Taking care of a disabled child for more than 18 years is too much, almost like the past repeating itself but somehow reversed roles and worse and I just … I just can’t do that.

“Obviously it’s not for all cases. Like, if they got it when they are [age] seven or eight then I’m definitely going to keep taking care of them.

“It will be very unfortunate but as a mother, I would do my best to make their life better.

“However, if they had a disability at [age] two or three then I’m sorry but I just can’t do that. It will not be fair for them and it will not be fair for me and it will not be fair for my husband.

“At least I would give them the chance for a loving family that is capable of caring for them before getting too attached to me.”

Since the husband is a Christian, husband, consider this. What did Jesus say about the least of these? How you treat them is a picture of how you treat Jesus? This is how she would see her own children!

I will say I am thankful Reddit has been hard on this woman. At least there are still people in this world who see marriage as a serious vow. I don’t know their worldview, but they are treating this seriously. Kudos to them.

To the man, again, get out now. If you marry and things go wrong, you can’t say you weren’t warned. The bride is right about this being a one and only life to an extent. You don’t get to replay this. You deserve better. If you are willing to be 100% committed, find someone else who is. Physical beauty that drives us men so much will fade, but unfortunately, her attitude will stay forever and as appealing as she might be physically, her attitude is just ugly.

Get out now.

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

Book Plunge: Hate Crime Hoax

What do I think of Wilfred Reilly’s book published by Blackstone Publishing? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I read a number of political books and normally, I don’t review them, but this one is an exception. I listened to it on Audible and decided the material was too important to not share. The author, Reilly, is himself a person of color, as he says, and yet wants to share this to show how in his mind the left is selling a fake race war based on hate crime hoaxes.

Now if you consider yourself someone on the left, please don’t shut down at this point or just close this blog page. Hear me out. If anything, the information in the book should strike you as good news.

By the way, before going further, I also want to say that there hate crime hoaxes done by conservatives and done by white conservatives especially that Reilly talks about. While a majority are on the other side, my own conservative party is not without its hoaxers.

Many of us know about such hoaxes when we think about the Jussie Smollett case, which happened just a month before the book was published so you won’t see it in here. We saw the outrage when Jussie said he was attacked and then before too long, everything changed. It became clear pretty quickly that no such attack had ever happened.

Unfortunately, too many hoaxes do not have the same response. The usual pattern is some “hate crime hoax” happens and then there is outrage and everyone gets up and does some virtue signaling and then, something happens and it’s found to be a hoax and people say “Well there’s still an issue here that needs to be dealt with” and any retraction is put offhandedly in a tiny paragraph on page 26 of the New York Times.

However, the good news is that so many of these crimes are hoaxes. Sadly, many times, anti-black crimes are committed by someone who is black and anti-gay crimes committed by someone who is gay and on and on. Some sad cases even end in real deaths and real injuries. The burning down of a gay club was actually done by the owner. A black church has been burnt down by a black member who made it look like a hate crime. One black minister even staged a hate crime at his home where he was going to go to bed and die in a blaze he had started. If his oldest son hadn’t been woken up by the sound and reacted, everyone would have died.

The story is told of two black children who encountered white men with shoe polish who told them “You’ll be white today” putting it on them. Fortunately, this never happened. Unfortunately, there was at least one white man who was beat up by three black men in response to this crime.

While these may be done to draw attention supposedly to racism, if anything, they make racism more and more of a problem. Each of these hoaxes gets people to take sides more and more. This is one reason I do not take accusations of racism very seriously anymore. I need to see highly convincing evidence.

I also don’t think it helps to take people who disagree and tell them that they are phobic of whatever it is that they disagree with. Throwing out terms like sexist and racist and bigot do not help understand a position and if you assume the motive at the start is something like racism in your opponent, then you won’t listen a bit. This is not to say that there are no racists out there among us, but we need to be very careful with the term.

One story I remember hearing about when it first happened was the pastor of a gay church who asked to get a Love Wins cake from the Whole Foods store. He claimed that there was an anti-homosexual slur that was written on the cake. Whole Foods faced a backlash and the baker of the cake got fired. I do not know if they got their job back or not, but I do know that it was found to be a hoax thanks to security footage.

One step that needs to be done to stop these is to have much harsher penalties for hoaxers. If someone commits a hate crime hoax on a campus, don’t celebrate it by having an event to raise awareness or building a building. Instead, expel the offender immediately and cancel any events or plans that were going to be set in motion by the hoax. Giving attention and fame to one hoaxer just empowers the next one.

Why should this be good news if you are on the left? If most of these hate crimes are hoaxes, then that means society is not as bad in this area as you think it is. In an economic way of putting it, the supply does not match the demand. Any time we deal with fake racism, we are kept from dealing with real racism. It should be kept in mind that crimes the police and FBI investigate that are hoaxes are also drainers of time they could be spending on real crimes.

I urge everyone out there to go and read this. Really consider what is being said and be careful the next time you hear of a hate crime. Don’t go and get your pitchforks ready to deal with the other side and don’t immediately start concluding that society is completely hopeless on this issue. Wait and see. Odds are, it will likely be a hoax.

Not the best news of all if it is, but still far better than the alternative.

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

On Tracts And Evangelism

What do I think when I see tracts? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

On my Facebook over the weekend, i shared about what it’s like when I see tracts that people leave behind or I am given. I do appreciate that people want to do evangelism, but honestly, when I get one I keep thinking “I would have preferred you just talk to me.” I also go through and look and see just how bad some of them are with their presentation.

One big problem I have with tracts is “It’s all about me.” The goal of Christianity in so many tracts is “Here’s how you can go to Heaven.” When our predecessors in the first century were doing evangelism, they weren’t talking about how you can go to Heaven. Go through the epistles of Paul and you will rarely find mention of Heaven and Hell. Paul is doing evangelism, but his focus is also on how we are living right now and the Kingdom right now.  When he looks to the future, he talks instead about resurrection.

That’s interesting considering I found a tract yesterday that said Jesus rose from the dead proving that there is life after death. Unfortunately, while it was emphasized Jesus was raised, there was nothing about our resurrection. The point of Christianity is not that there is life after death as even some pagans could accept that. The point is resurrection in that death itself will be undone and God will be King over all the Earth.

I get that some people do come to salvation through this method, and that’s wonderful. I wonder how many though are turned off of salvation? There are two that I think are quite good at this. The first is chick tracts, which I always remove as soon as I can. The second is those tracts that look like a $20 bill. I’m sure nothing will get people excited about Jesus more than thinking they had money to finding out they got tricked.

I also shared about one tract that had a list of problems like anxiety and depression and Bible verses to read if you felt this. I’m not saying the Bible is not helpful for these problems, but at the same time, it is treating the Bible like a medicine cabinet. When I was anxious and depressed in the worst part of my divorce, I would have been insulted if I had been told “Just read this Bible verse.” There are some times that just reading a verse will not deal with a deep issue, but a good Christian therapist can help immensely.

Not only that, but often it’s not just reading, but really understanding. That can require serious meditation and study of a verse or passage. Go with a superficial reading and you will get a superficial result.

Besides that, there are many people who are not primarily emotionally wired. For many of us, the goal of getting us to feel something just will not do it and too often, it can be damaging to say that this is what you should feel in response to something.

I also remember ringing up two separate customers who stayed together and one guy was doing evangelism and spent more time defending his church than talking about Jesus. Meanwhile, I was standing there and wondering “Either of you two want to say something to me?” Naturally, no one did.

So what can you do? Learn something about your faith and really talk to people. Instead of just a tract, go out and invest and get a good book. I know many people who have been helped by a copy of The Case for Christ being given to them or left behind by someone.

Also, everyone should be doing evangelism. There are many different forms of it. I am one who is not going to go up to someone who is a total stranger and evangelize them, but I can excel greatly doing something behind a keyboard, which is okay. After all, if we want to know what Paul thought, what do we do most but go to his letters? We have some statements in Acts, but the bulk is in the epistles. It would be fascinating to see how many videos, blogs, and podcasts Paul would do if he was here today.

Doing evangelism more personally today might require we, brace yourself, actually equip our churches to have people understand their faith. I’m not saying everyone should be a skilled apologist, but everyone should have a basic apologetic at least beyond just their testimony. Everyone should have some basic understanding to some basic questions. Everyone is an apologist for their worldview whether they like it or not. It’s just a question of if you will be a good one or a bad one.

That also means discipleship has to be a priority. I personally wince every time I hear it treated as if the goal of Christianity is to get people to go to Heaven. This is not because of opposition to Heaven, but because the focus is really on Jesus and resurrection and the kingdom of God.

I have said that this depends on the church, but not just our leaders. There are many people out there that are studying beyond what their churches are teaching them because it matters to them. Many people complain about the weather but never do anything about it, and many people talk about evangelism and never do it.

Do it and do it well.

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

The Strange Test In Numbers 5

Is this a misogynistic test? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

In Numbers 5, we have a test that seems to us to be very strange. This is a test for faithfulness in marriage. If a man suspects that his wife is being unfaithful to him. In our continuing look at marriage and divorce, we are going to look at this.

In this test, a woman was required to drink a substance and if her abdomen swells and her thigh rots, then she has been unfaithful. There is no doubt, some euphemistic language here, but there’s nothing to suggest that an abortion or miscarriage is taking place. It could be rendering the woman infertile, however, which would indeed be a mark of shame in that culture.

Why would such a test be found in Scripture? Does God hate women that he puts them through this and the man doesn’t have to do anything similar? This test is not actually put in to demean the woman, but quite the opposite. It is there in order to protect her.

For the most part, a man is not usually in danger from the women in his life. Today, with something like a gun that is an equalizer, that can be different, but in the time of Scripture, when it came to physical power, men held that. It is certainly wrong for a man to be unfaithful, but generally, he would not have to fear that if he wound up being caught, his wife would beat him. (And even in unfaithfulness, wife-beating is never okay.)

A woman doesn’t have that benefit in the culture. Generally, women are physically weaker than men are and don’t have the upper body strength that men do. In many cultures, if a man got jealous, he could easily kill his wife if he so wanted to. If not kill, he could at least seriously injure her.

In this culture, God steps in and has a solution. Undergo a ceremony that can have real physical effects on a woman. The result would be undeniable in that culture and would settle the manner once and for all. At least one person would leave that meeting very shamed. A husband could leave if he has falsely accused his wife and she passes the test with flying colors. If she doesn’t pass, she will leave shamed with physical conditions that she will likely be stuck with because of her unfaithfulness. He could leave shamed as well knowing that his wife has been unfaithful to him.

This also illustrates that in Scripture, faithfulness in marriage is highly valued. Every time a man in Scripture was unfaithful in any way to his marriage covenant, it did not end well. The same happens with women who are unfaithful to their spouses. When we get to the New Testament, we will find that when it comes to the question of remarriage, there is differentiation between a spouse who has been faithful to a prior marriage and the spouse who has been unfaithful to the marriage covenant, but that’s for in the future.

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

The World Of Divorce

What’s it like going through it? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

This season of DivorceCare just ended. I suspect it will be my last time here. I am in the process of applying to be a student at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and I will then be moving to New Orleans when accepted. Even if I don’t start a semester immediately, I want to be able to get situated, get good employment, and start meeting people.

It really left me tonight thinking about the world of divorce. It’s still a struggle for all of us. I am helping someone out now who is on the journey just as I was helped, but all of us on the path are still hurting.

Other couples can be difficult to see. I am reading through an apocalyptic novel, a chapter a night right now, involving a simple country guy who somehow survives a plague that outright kills most of humanity and recently, he has come across a girl he went to school with who also survived. Tuesday night, they professed their love for each other and well, we know what comes next. No. The book didn’t describe the scene at all, but you did know what was happening. (Do you need to seek a minister to marry you if the world has come to an end like that? Questions theologians ask.)

Did I go to bed depressed some? Yep. I thought about this tonight as we described seeing other couples sometimes. When I was married, it was we were getting together with friends. Now, I am getting together with a friend. When you’re married, your friends seem to be other couples. When you’re single, not as much.

I really do miss that interaction. I wonder if I will ever experience the love of a woman again and getting to give her my love as well. Add in that I’m on the spectrum and that makes it even harder. I understand many guys have a hard time knowing if a woman is flirting with them. For me, it’s far harder.

Not only that, but how do you properly express yourself? How do I know I’m not being a stalker type? How do I show someone how much I adore them without appearing too obsessed over a person?

How do you even make the first move? I remember reading a book on flirting and it told to go through a week at a time. The first week was learning to make eye contact. Hard, but doable. I start looking everyone in the eye as I am told to not just look the opposite sex but the same sex so you can just get better used to eye contact. Okay. Good.

Then the next week was when wisdom shows it’s a good idea, give a gentle smile to someone you deem attractive. I started doing that and I was really surprised how many smiles I got back. I don’t know what that means exactly. I couldn’t help but wonder if they thought I was cute possibly.

So far so good. Let’s go to step three!

Small talk.

I don’t think I came back for months and still I struggle with this one as I despise small talk.

It’s a hope of mine to get to seminary and find guys who will be my wingmen and give me tips on if a girl is interested in me or not. I would totally miss it if they were. I do love the academic life and the intellectual arena, but I am not the best when it comes to the social arena.

Some people might think I focus on that too much. First off, as a guy, I think about physical interaction a lot and miss it everyday so yeah, this is something I focus on. Second, it’s easy for people who are still married to talk about learning to focus on God. Divorce really rips out something from you and it’s as if you’ve lost a limb or even a few of them.

Add in also now that when I am at work, I am essentially bored silly. My work doesn’t challenge me and I realize I did not go to college for this. When I am spoken to by my managers, it is essentially to tell me about things I have done wrong or they think are wrong. I see other people interacting fine and wonder what I’m missing. Really, one of the times I feel the loneliest of all in my life is when I’m at work. I am truly an outsider.

I look at the world around me and see so much chaos going on and I want to be out there doing something and making a difference, but here I am doing what any high schooler could do. I spend 40 hours a week doing it. At least on the way to and fro I can listen to an audible book and while I’m at work I can on breaks read my other books. I won’t deny that work at least pays the bills, but I want meaning in what I do.

When I fill out a survey online and I get asked my marital status, it is still always painful to select divorced. It was a word I never wanted to use to describe myself. I really think I tried to do most everything I could do to be a good and loving husband. In the end, it was rejection.

Rejection is painful. It’s one reason I hate going to work as I feel like an outsider there. I have been there for about ten months and thus far no one has even asked for my Facebook information or anything like that. The only exception is one person who got fired and came through my line and wanted my number and I gave it to him.

I am thankful my parents have provided me a place to live. I am also thankful that I get to spend my time with my cat here. I don’t want to say life is completely terrible. It’s not. I still enjoy my reading and doing my apologetics and I love my gaming time with my friends. I have more money for that now and I also am now playing Final Fantasy XIV online with friends of mine. (If you play, let me know. I am Phoenix Skywing.)

I also try to live by the maxim that the best revenge is a life well lived. I have no wish to harm my ex-wife. I don’t even know where she is right now or what she’s doing. I have a general idea, but I don’t look her up or anything like that. She’s made her decision. I still pray for her every night, but I don’t watch her or keep tabs or anything like that.

For going to New Orleans, I am looking for a church now that is autism friendly. I am also going to talk about getting a job with the New Orleans Baptist Association if I don’t get one at a local church. I have also given some thought to doing Christian comedy from an autistic Christian perspective. One benefit of my work now is I have so many interactions that really show the way people think that I can make plenty of jokes about how people act in a retail environment.

The biggest concern about this is sadly, the church can treat divorce like it’s the unpardonable sin. This is one area we definitely need to improve on. I am thankful I have a good church family. I can’t imagine going through this and having a church family that would kick me while I’m down as if I was an awful sinner because of what happened. Sadly, there are too many people who cannot say the same thing about having a good church.

Until then, I will be sharing my Patreon also so that if I do lose my job, which wouldn’t surprise me frankly, I can at least have some more income coming in in the meanwhile and hopefully, I can get to a point of working entirely from home doing apologetics. I also ask people who want to encourage to mainly listen if you have not gone through divorce. Help from people who have not been there is often remembered as being more painful than it is helpful.

If you have been through it, I welcome you walking beside me, especially if you’re a guy and can share in the struggles that guys have. I remember as an example talking to a guy friend here who has gone through it about the struggle I had at the start of it when I felt guilty finding myself attracted to other women. I remember also thinking about going through a store and saying to myself, “She would like this. Oh yeah. Right. She did that.” I was so used to buying her gifts and now so much I have to unthink. Having a guy who has walked the walk has been essential to me.

Divorce is painful. Even writing this blog has been painful. There are times I can be minding my own business and just get hit with sudden sorrow for a moment or so. One reason I think I game a lot now is so that I can have my mind off of the matter for a short time. I have a goal I can accomplish and I work on doing that.

Many of you have been there and I appreciate that. Also, not all of you are Christians even, but I appreciate your help as well. I am thankful that as much as I love debate, posts like this don’t become debate posts. I am also thankful some people I know have been inspired to speak out and share their stories on divorce. I would love to see the stigma against it broken. This is also why I have a Facebook group for Christian men and divorce. Feel free to find it and join in, but you have to answer all the questions to get in.

And if you have read this long, I appreciate your reading. I do really look forward to what’s coming up in my life, though I won’t deny it is somewhat frightening too. I have never lived as far away as in Louisiana, but I want to do something to make a difference down there as well.

Please be praying for me and consider becoming a contributor to my Patreon as well. All the support I can get will be great and I am a spender who tries to be conscientious with money. I am always looking for a bargain.

Again, thank you for reading.

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

Ancient Scripture, Ancient Views

How should we interpret an ancient document? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

A friend of Deeper Waters and a personal friend as well sent me this video. I was surprised when I got to the end because I thought it had a lot of good stuff to see that it was also Mormon apologetics. Does that mean everything said is wrong? No. If a Mormon says 2 + 2 = 4, I’m going to agree with them. I just do want that disclaimer up there. Just because a group overall has wrong beliefs, it doesn’t mean that everything they say is wrong. (Thank you, Weird Al.)

What do we do when the Bible speaks about ancient science but says ideas that disagree with modern science. We realize that the Bible is not trying to teach us that science at that point. It is using language acceptable by people at the time. Some we still use today. A weatherman talks about sunrise and sunset even though we know that’s not what literally happens. Many a love song today can talk about loving someone with all their heart, even though we know the heart doesn’t do that.

Keep in mind I am not at all saying that the Bible has limited inerrancy where it errors in science but everything else is okay. What has to be asked is what is the Bible trying to each? When the Bible says to love the Lord your God with all your heart, God is not trying to give instructions of where love comes from, but to instead love the Lord with all you have.

The speaker in this video uses this I think accurately to critique the Flat Earth view. Fortunately for me, I haven’t really encountered people arguing this view yet. I know they’re out there, but I guess I have just been fortunate to not bother dealing with them.

Let’s make a brief statement about the whole statement about Latter-Day prophets that are cited in the end. Is everything the prophet of the Mormon Church says wrong? No, but we need to look at what they say in their own context as well and even then, there are still problems.

My biggest problem with the LDS movement is really the material they have that goes against the Bible and is also a problem with just good philosophy. Eternal progression, the idea that God was a man who eventually became God and good Mormons are to have the same experience is extremely problematic. There are a lot of problems in the Book of Mormon, but if you really want to see the esoteric doctrines, it’s in places like the Doctrines and Covenants.

Mormonism falls on other grounds. Many people have used the Book of Abraham as the ultimate Achilles’ Heel of Mormonism. However, I do think we also need to treat it the same way in that we look at the culture of the time and also with the Book of Mormon, we need to consider it in light of the claim that it is supposed to be an ancient document. Does it match ancient documents of the time and does it have claims that match them? (Materials used, for example.)

So in the end, I do ultimately agree with what was said. However, I do think this provides more problems for Mormonism as it doesn’t really mirror the ancient world that well. Mormonism falls on other grounds, but that’s for other blogs.

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