Category: Apologetics

Book Plunge: The God Virus Part 3

What about guilt? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Ray several times talks about being raised with a fundamentalist background and it shows. Chapter 4 is all about guilt. Right off, Ray is not aware of the fact that Christianity rose in a context where guilt like this would not be understood. Shame was what was understood and not in the psychological sense either. It is doubtful that Ray has any understanding of an honor-shame paradigm.

However, Ray says something that I have warned of for some time. Do not use guilt as a means for evangelism. Consider the danger of telling a young Christian couple “If you have pre-marital sex, you will feel guilty.” Some will. Some won’t. For those that won’t, they could think, “What else is the church lying to me about?

For Ray, it was masturbation. Now let’s put aside the question of if masturbation is a sin or not. I think we should all agree that going to teenagers and telling them that masturbation will send them to hell is overkill. Ray writes of how he felt great guilt over this and especially doing it over the “sexy preacher’s daughter.”

Ray says he later read Master’s and Johnson’s Human Sexaul Response and Alex Comfort’s The Joy of Sex and found out that in his mind, he was wrong about masturbation. No. His religion was wrong. If it was wrong about that, what else could it be wrong about?

And this, friends, is the danger indeed. All that is needed is a tiny bit of distrust and everything can go out the window. If you think masturbation is a sin, instead of just saying it and leaving it there, find a way to talk to the young person about the issue and what they’re struggling with.

So let’s go through a list now of some of the messages he says young people are exposed to. These about God in Christianity (Not Allah or any other religion) are worth quoting in full.

“God loves you, but he will send you to hell if you don’t do exactly as he says.”

“God loves you and gave you an intelligent brain to see and understand his creation, but you will be condemned for asking prohibited questions.”

“God loves you and gave you incredibly pleasurable sex, but you dare not use it except within strict limitations.”

“God loves you and your children. If you do anything to lead them astray, he will punish you. (Mark 9:42)”

“God loves you and wants you to prosper. If you are poor or hungry, you must be doing something wrong in his eyes.”

“God loves you. He causes you pain, grief, disasters, floods, hurricanes, and much more so you will see his will, repent, and do as he commanded.”

“God loves you. He created Satan to tempt and test you.”

“God loves you. That is why he makes it so hard to resist temptation and stay on the straight and narrow.”

“God loves you. He loves all Christians. He hates Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and all those who deny him.”

“God loves you, so you should reject your parents, children, neighbors, relatives, or anyone who is a hopeless non-believer.” (Yes. He actually references Luke 14:26 and is still reading it in a super literalistic fundamentalist mindset)

“God loves you, but if you get divorced you are unclean. (Matt. 5:31-32)”

“God loves you. That is why he sent his son to die. Millions of other people have died in his name and you should be willing to as well.”

“God loves you, but you were born unclean and can never be clean without God.”

Some of these properly understood, most of us who are Christians have no problem with, such as sex being reserved for marriage. A lot of these will just make many of us cringe. It’s as if Ray never bothered to check to see if what he was being taught was what historic Christianity has said for centuries. It is not Christianity that is the problem so much as our rampant individualism where we cut ourselves off from the past.

Some of these are things we need to do better at. Divorce is a tragedy, but it is not the unpardonable sin. We are also way too quick to read God’s will into disasters whenever they take place. This is hardly an effective evangelism strategy.

Ray writes about how guilt is used to draw people to a minister or someone who will point to God to alleviate the guilt. This becomes a cycle. This is a problem I agree with an individualistic centered Christianity. Christianity is determined by your experiences. God’s character is determined by what you feel and what you experience. It is all about you.

Doubtless, some guilt we feel is valid. It should be taken care of. If you really do something wrong, you should feel guilty barring any other condition. Still, not everyone responds to guilt the same way or acts the same way.

And yes, I have a problem with using purely emotional appeals to make a case for Christianity. Doubtless, a good speaker will often speak with emotion, which goes all the way back to Aristotle. However, the case should be based on reason and evidence and not just trying to get people to feel something.

So in closing, let’s watch the messages we are giving, especially to young people. A lot of these are indeed messages about sex. That is the emphasis of Ray’s next chapter and we will discuss those then.

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

Book Plunge: The God Virus Part 2

What does Ray think about religion in America? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

This chapter spends a lot of time talking about American Civil Religion. The problem is, Ray never defines it. Now it could be that I am supposed to know what that is, but I honestly don’t. If anyone else doesn’t know, they will be at a loss to wonder what Ray is talking about and it is his job to define it.

He starts off talking some about the history of religions and mentions how Judaism was affected by Zoroastrianism. Unfortunately, we don’t have any writings from Zoroastrianism at the time. Also, even a skeptical scholar like Bart Ehrman is skeptical of this.

More recently scholars have questioned a Persian derivation for the Jewish doctrine because of certain problems of dating.1 Some experts have undercut the entire thesis by pointing out that we actually do not have any Zoroastrian texts that support the idea of resurrection prior to its appearance in early Jewish writings. It is not clear who influenced whom. Even more significant, the timing does not make sense: Judah emerged from Persian rule in the fourth century BCE, when Alexander the Great (356–323 BCE) swept through the eastern Mediterranean and defeated the Persian Empire. But the idea of bodily resurrection does not appear in Jewish texts for well over a century after that. (Heaven and Hell. P. 104-105.

In talking about America next, Ray goes on to quote John Adams. “The government of the United States is in no sense founded on the Christian religion.” Well, I guess that settles it. Adams was the second president so surely he would know. Wait. What’s that? There’s no source for the quote. Hmmm. I wonder what would happen if we looked it up….

Well, good luck to Ray if he can find it. The closest is in the Treaty of Tripoli. Even skeptical atheists recommend that this not be used as an argument. See more information on that here.

Thomas Essel says you could take one quote from Adams and ignore all the others and easily make a doctrine. Let’s suppose I made one from another Adams quote.

“[T]he safety and prosperity of nations ultimately and essentially depend on the protection and the blessing of Almighty God, and the national acknowledgment of this truth is not only an indispensable duty which the people owe to Him, but a duty whose natural influence is favorable to the promotion of that morality and piety without which social happiness can not [sic] exist nor the blessings of a free government be enjoyed.”

Also, little difference with me and Ray. I can tell you where that quote is from.

Okay, well what about James Madison?

“What have been Christianity’s fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution.”

Again, this sounds really impressive, until you ask this person who goes on and on about evidence what his source is. It’s a good question, and sadly, Ray doesn’t give it. Some of us who actually do care about evidence looked it up.

As you can see here, Madison isn’t talking about Christianity. He’s talking about the marrying of Christianity to the state. He doesn’t want to see it, and rightly so. Both get damaged by that because both institutions use human beings who have a tendency to use both wrongly. Madison is not making an anti-Christian statement.

One has to ask how Ray got these quotes. Apparently, he got them and never bothered to look them up to make sure he was using them rightly or else they wouldn’t be in the book. I want to give him the benefit of the doubt that he did this without knowing the context. If he did it knowing the context doesn’t show it, then that is just plain immoral on his part.

Now for something incredible here. I’m actually doing to defend Mormonism from a misrepresentation. You all should know by now I care enough about truth that I don’t even want my opponents misrepresented. I am no fan of Mormonism. It is a false religion, though it is one that is fun to study. Ray though is shocked that Mormons and evangelicals can work closely together on social issues. He says even a cursory reading of the Book of Mormon will show you beliefs such as sacred underwear to people becoming gods of their own planets to Native Americans being from the diaspora to Joseph Smith as the last prophet.

Well, not exactly. The doctrine of eternal progression with people becoming gods wasn’t revealed until the 1844 King Follett Discourse of Joseph Smith. You’ll find beliefs like that more in the Doctrines and Covenants. The Book of Mormon is actually quite monotheistic. I also don’t think there’s any mention of sacred underwear in there. Mormons would also not say Joseph Smith is the last prophet since every Mormon president is said to be a prophet.

Finally, let’s look at verses which Ray says shows Christians shouldn’t be interested in ecomonic progress.

Luke 12:33 is about selling all that you have and giving to the poor for the Kingdom of Heaven. Ray still in his fundamentalist mindset reads this as if the apostles were to get naked and sell their clothes right there. (And then when the poor got everything, were they to do likewise?) Jewish teachers often spoke in hyperbole to make a point, this one about generosity.

In Mark 10:25, Jesus says it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God. This is because many rich people at the time were tied to their money and didn’t want to part from it. Their wealth came first. The problem isn’t the wealth, but the person.

Finally, 1 Tim. 6:10 is the well-known verse about the love of money being the root of all evil, except it doesn’t say that. The verse really says the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. Many great crimes are done even today and money is not a motive.

This chapter was thoroughly disappointing due to Ray’s lack of citing sources and doing fact-checking. It doesn’t help your case to say you’re evidence based and then don’t bother to do a basic search like that. Too many of Ray’s readers who think they are people of evidence will believe him as blindly as Christians often believe their pastors, and actually Ray blindly believed some source on this too. Let’s be better than that.

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

Book Plunge: The God Virus Part 1

What do I think of Darrel Ray’s book published by IPC Press? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Oh my! There are atheist books out there that actually try to make a convincing argument, but this is not one of them. At least, that’s not the way I see it. It’s as if today atheists want to compete to see who can write the worst one out there.

This one is an older one published in 2009, but while age might improve wine and friendships, it doesn’t always improve books. I was asked to read this by someone and thinking them someone I want to take seriously if I remember rightly who it was, I ordered it. Going through this one has been funny at times, but a labor at others.

Ray writes the whole time as if religion is a virus and he uses metaphors for viruses throughout. It really doesn’t work well. The work comes across as very depersonalizing and instead of really treating religion seriously, it looks like Ray, who apparently has a Master’s in religion, doesn’t really know much about it.

For one thing, he never even defines the term. He just comes out of the gate talking about religion and I’m sitting here wondering “What do you mean by the term?” This is especially problematic when later on he gets to movements like Marxism and the rise of Lenin and those get treated like religions too. Those are atheistic movements and yet somehow an atheistic movement is a religion.

Ray also says he starts with an experiment. You talk with a deeply Christian friend (Assuming you’re not a theist) about Muhammad. You agree he was delusional thinking he was talking to God and the Koran is definitely his work and he didn’t fly to Heaven on a horse, etc. Then he says imagine you wrote a transcript of the conversation and gave it to them.

“During the conversation you bother agree that Jesus was probably delusional to think he could talk to Jehovah. The Bible was clearly written by men and not by Jehovah. You both agree that it is ludicrous to claim that he is the last prophet and that all later ones are false. Neither of you can believe that he rose from the dead nor flew to heaven. It all sounds too crazy, and it is difficult to see how someone could believe such a religion. At the end of the conversation, you both agree that Christians did not choose their religion; they were born into it. Anyone who was exposed to both Christianity and Islam would see that Islam is the true religion.”

And thus is the experiment. Present this to your Christian friend and they will turn defensive (Imagine that. When you question what someone believes, they might actually defend what they believe! Gasp!) Will they make elaborate arguments that have no factual basis? Will they cut you off and terminate your friendship?

Some of us will give arguments and if Ray wants to say they have no factual basis, it will be up to him to demonstrate that. Good luck. Without that, he’s just engaging in presuppositional atheism.

However, on this very page after talking about a friendship enduring, he goes on to talk about an associate of his who lost a father to cancer. After that, he became a Christian and any time they talked religion crept in and before too long, Ray stopped seeing him altogether. This on the very same page as the above questions.

So if you challenge a Christian, your friendship might not endure. However, when Ray hears someone talking about Jesus so much, their friendship can’t endure. How is this not seen?

In just three paragraphs, Ray deals with near-death experiences. Does he look at any with evidential claims in them? Not a one. Does he mention any researchers in the field that endorse such arguments? No. He points to one doctor who says it’s the brain trying to make sense of an experience. He also tells us that we can bring about the emotion of NDEs by stimulating certain parts of the brain. This is likely true, but irrelevant. We can stimulate many things, but that doesn’t mean that we aren’t stimulating real things.

But again, without dealing with real evidential cases, Ray is not doing his proper work. Throughout the book Ray will talk about theists shutting off logic and critical thinking. Physician! Heal thyself!

On p. 30 in a footnote he says that during witch trials in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries, historians estimate that 200,000 people died. Inquiring minds want to know who these historians are. Ray never tells us. Too many atheist readers will lap this up and believe it instantly. Those of us who actually care about evidence want to know more.

In a footnote on p. 32 he mentions Bruno as one who questioned the suppositions of religion and paid a price for it. Another such example he mentions is Galileo. People who make this claim have likely never read anything by Bruno. As for Galileo, he questioned Catholic interpretations, but he never once questioned the truth of Christianity.

On p. 39, he speaks about fundamentalism where people are immune to influence and ignore any evidence that contradicts their beliefs. Note, this is from a man who at least halfway through the book has not interacted with one opposing scholar so far. Ray also regularly writes about his fundamentalist upbringing. I do not question he had one. I also do not question that he has not escaped it. His thinking is still very much the same way.

On p. 42, he says Christians early on were instructed on how to take over political institutions. I would love to know where he sees this, but he does not say. Maybe all those things about honoring the emperor and praying for him and things like that. That’s how you take over government after all.

When we get to p. 48, he describes Marxism as a god virus. How this is a god virus when it is inherently atheistic is not explained. It’s a convenient way though to avoid having to question your own movement. Any movement that has mass death behind it must be a religious movement. It can’t possibly be atheistic!

Naturally, on p. 51, he says science education is the answer to religion. There is never a connection made here. There are plenty of fine scientists who have no trouble with being theists at all. Ray gives no arguments here.

When we return next time, we’ll start with the chapter on American Civil Religion, which is definitely a hideous chapter as far as evidential claims are concerned.

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

Book Plunge: Retrieving Augustine’s Doctrine of Creation

What do I think of Gavin Ortlund’s book published by IVP? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Gavin Ortlund is a pastor and a scholar.

Yeah. I know. I didn’t realize that was legal either. Pastors can actually be well-educated and write scholarly books?

Thank God they can and we need more like that. This book is on Augustine and his doctrine of creation. What can we learn from him on this? After all, he did not know about Darwin and the theory of evolution. He did not know about what modern science says about the age of the Earth. He did not know about Einstein and cosmology. We also have about 1,400 years of biblical exegesis on him now.

If we think we cannot, we miss out. As Ortlund tells us, Augustine’s time was a different time and they had different issues and debates going on which can cause them to see our issues and debates in a new light. Imagine a table where you have Francis Collins from BioLogos, Hugh Ross from Reasons to Believe, and Ken Ham from Answers in Genesis all sitting together debating creation. Augustine comes and joins them. What will he add to the conversation? What will he take away from it?

Let’s start with one of the first lessons he can teach everyone at the table. Humility. Augustine did hold strongly to his positions, but when he wrote, he also said “This position that I disagree with now could be right.” He is not dogmatic in his stances and does not hold only one position on the matter of creation as the Christian position. While we debate how long it took, many might be surprised to hear what Augustine would say. Young-earthers sometimes ask old-earthers about God taking so long to create. Augustine would say the same to young-earthers since he held that creation was instantaneous and Anselm even said that was the most common view in his time years later.

The first lesson that Augustine would want to teach us I think is that we need humility to be able to listen instead of just try to respond. What are the concerns of the intellectual opponents. Why do they hold their position? Should we really be calling their faith into question over this topic? You cannot tell someone’s commitment to Christ solely based on how they answer questions on evolution or the age of the Earth.

Augustine could also tell us a lot about the literal interpretation of Genesis. He wrote a book called that and yet we today would not think his interpretations are very literal. He’s got figurative and allegorical meanings in his understanding of creation. Yet despite this, he also does pay attention to the historical matters in the book. He does tend to want to take it to be historical, but his main concern is how we see the Scriptures. Augustine would have more understanding to someone who takes the passages in a figurative or allegorical sense and yet holds to inerrancy than one who rejects them because he thinks they don’t cohere with modern science and that the Bible just got it wrong thinking the Bible requires one interpretation.

What about animal death? This is a big one and we can be tempted to think that modern science again has caused many people to think animal death was going on before the Fall and Augustine would be unfamiliar with that debate. We would be inaccurate. Augustine spoke about animal predation. He would tell us it’s unwise for us to critique the design of the universe in this area like it would be unwise for a layman to go into an engineer’s office and see many of the tools and be critical not knowing what the tools represent.

For Augustine, creation is a key doctrine and the one that gets him the most enthralled quite likely. He has endless praise for even the simple worm. He does see something beautiful in even predation. The way the system works together is amazing as he says old life needs to pass away to make room for new life. Augustine also lived in a time before the world was touched by Disney. We can automatically think hunting is evil after hearing the story of Bambi after all.

The chapter on evolution is wonderfully named. Can we evolve on evolution without falling on the fall? This chapter deals with how we should see evolution. Ortlund doesn’t take any side in this actually, but he says many of the debates aren’t new. For this one, it usually comes down to the historical Adam and there are evolutionary creationists who think Adam is historical.

Yet even before the coming of Darwin, many interpreters of Genesis were suggesting that Adam was not the only human being on Earth. When the story of Adam and Eve took place, there were other humans there. This explains where Cain got his wife, Cain building a city for inhabitants, and the avoidance of inbreeding to bring about new people.

I am not saying this is what Ortlund says happened as he admits he doesn’t know enough of the science to comment, but I think he just wants us to be more open. Even if we can’t agree in dialogue, is there a way we can have better dialogues? If all three organizations could meet at the table, have a heated debate, and in the end shake hands and leave as fellow Christians and friends though still disagreeing, I think Ortlund would be pleased and even more, I think Augustine would as well.

Those interested in the debate about creation and evolution and Genesis should read this book. Again, I think the main lesson to learn is humility. Reading Augustine could cause us to look with new eyes at creation.

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

Is the Antichrist the Beast, The Man of Sin, etc.?

Does the antichrist fit the profile of all these people? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Sometimes when I argue with dispensationalists, I notice a theme of the antichrist and his identity. It is said that the antichrist is the beast and he’s the man of lawlessness or sin in 2 Thess. and he’s the prince who will come in Daniel 9 and most any other figure you can think of that seems to have an evil description in the text. Every single time, I ask them to demonstrate this claim.

Usually, it’s demonstrated just by listing the Scriptures about each of these people, but it’s important to note that nowhere does the book of Revelation say the Beast is the antichrist. Nowhere does Paul say the man of sin is the antichrist. These are assumptions that are brought to the text.

Now does the Bible talk about the antichrist? Yes it does, and it’s interesting that this only shows up in the epistles of John. This is in 1 John and 2 John only. You can easily look up the references on a site like Bible Gateway. They’re very short. Let’s look now.

1 John 2:18 Children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. Therefore we know that it is the last hour.

1 John 2:22 Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son.

1 John 4:3 and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already.

2 John 7
For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist.

This really isn’t a lot to go on to make a whole doctrine of the antichrist, but yet dispensationalists keep asserting that this figure is the same as all these other figures. Now I am not saying that that absolutely isn’t the case, but I am saying that that case hasn’t been made.

If you are a dispensationalist and you are making this case, then it is up to you to demonstrate it. It is not enough to assert it. It is not enough to assume that there is one great evil figure coming in the future. That would be just begging the question on your end. You need to demonstrate it.

So for dispensationalist friends and readers, that ball is in your court. Can you demonstrate your case? If not, then keep in mind your case could still be right, but it could also be wrong and what that could mean for your system.

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

Accusations of Lying

What does it mean to lie? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

This political season, as we watch debates, one term I want people to watch for is the term “lie.” We use this term regularly and it can be a powerful ad hominem, especially when we refer to someone as a liar. At that point, if that idea gets cemented, nothing they say can be used in their defense.

We often say a lie is to tell someone something that isn’t true. That can often be a part of it, but that is not sufficient to tell a lie. It’s telling a falsehood, but is that the same thing as lying? I’m not convinced it is.

A child is in school and fills out a test. He puts down an answer for a question. He is convinced that answer is correct. The teacher gets that one and marks it wrong and properly so. It is a wrong answer. The child told something that turned out to be false. Did he lie?

No. It would have been a lie if he had known that it was a wrong answer and had presented it was true or it would be a lie if he told something that was true and presented it as if it were false. By this standard, someone could actually tell a truth and be lying. I remain open to that. The lie is not only in the truth-content of the account. It lies mainly in the intention of the person.

Let’s use an example in the political discourse. In the interest of being impartial, I will present something the other side said opposite me that is often said to be a lie. This is in the VP debate when Kamala Harris told the story about honest Abe and how he wouldn’t appoint a Supreme Court justice in an election year.

There have been several historical sources that have pointed out that this account is false. That is good, but not necessary for our point. We can say the story then is a falsehood. Does that indicate that Kamala lied when she told it? Maybe, but we don’t know. We don’t know because we don’t know if she really believed it or not.

Now some have said she probably had an intern do some research and try to find a story she could use because even a lot of politicians who study history might not know the facts about Abraham Lincoln right off like that and can respond. It might be different if you were a specialist in something like Abraham Lincoln or the Civil War, but most won’t know that.

What is necessary for it to be a lie is if the story is false and Kamala Harris knows that it’s false and yet she presents it as true. If that is so, then she has lied to the American people. The problem is we don’t know that. If she honestly believes the story is true, then she did tell a falsehood and she can be called out for that, but she did not tell a lie. She just didn’t do enough research. You can fault her for that as a VP candidate also, but it’s not the same as lying.

Be on guard against this term this political season. When you see a claim being made, you can ask some simple questions. “What is the claim being made exactly?” “What is the evidence for it?” “What arguments are against it?” “How powerful are those arguments?” “Is there any counter-reply and how powerful are those?” Etc.

Liar when someone tells a falsehood is too easy to throw out. Now if a politician answers the same question two different ways, it does make it more likely that a lie is going on, but even then someone can always change their mind. Still, be careful with giving someone a reputation like that. None of us would like that every time we told something false after all.

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

Evil is Temporary

Will this truly pass? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Yesterday, in preparation for a possible upcoming operation, I had to go and get a COVID test. It involves a swab being put in each nostril while a nurse counts to ten. I was sure that wasn’t a whole ten seconds, but I wasn’t going to complain.

I had seen Allie get this done before and so I wasn’t looking forward to it for myself. Still, there was the desire to be the tough guy and take it. It reminds me of a time Allie and I went to the Titanic museum and you can stick your arm in water that was the temperature of the water the night the Titanic sank. I thought I would be the tough guy there and show Allie how I could handle it.

I couldn’t last two minutes.

So while the swabs were in, it was horrible, but as soon as they were gone, there was some mild irritation, but then not too long later, I was just fine. I thought about that later that day. That’s the way most suffering is. Something that we can consider so awful and extreme can just a year later be forgotten about.

“Just forgotten about? I lost my child in a car accident years ago. You don’t just forget about that!”

True, which is why I said it can be. Not all evils are like this. What happens to a parent in this situation is awful, but the thing is the suffering while still ongoing doesn’t remain at the same level. You manage to learn to live somehow even if it is difficult and even if there always is that hole in your heart.

Sometimes you will get reminders that will still hit hard. To this day, whenever I visit the gravesides of my grandmother and aunt, I am tempted to cry about my loss still. On the anniversary of the death of a loved one or at holidays like Christmas and Thanksgiving, an empty chair is a painful reminder.

But you learn to manage.

It’s the same with feelings of happiness and joy. They do diminish over time. Now if you pause to think about something really good in your life, you can at times start to experience the joy again, but it doesn’t last. There is a law of diminishing returns in place.

The Christian answer to this is that all evil will be overshadowed by God in the end and knowing Him for the Christian. There is no law of diminishing returns with knowing Him in eternity because there will always be more to experience. God being infinite cannot be exhausted at all by us. We will spend all of eternity going deeper and deeper.

Our problem often today is we treat things that are temporary, like the evil we suffer, as if they were eternal. We then treat the eternal things, like our after-death, as if they were temporal. There are temporal things here for us to enjoy, but they are all meant to point us to the eternal to enjoy.

Whatever evil you are suffering now, even if it is a permanent evil, the level you are experiencing it at will pass. It will not last forever. There will be a new day eventually and you will find yourself not being hurt as much. Of course, you should still seek to take the steps to recover as much as possible and if it was a victimization you had, the best thing to do is to wake up and say “I am not going to be a victim anymore” and then follow through.

Evil is temporary for the Christian. Whatever you fear will pass before too long. It could be that something you are dreading now you won’t even think about a year from now.

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

You’re Being Checked

Should you share that story from the pulpit? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Yesterday sitting in church, I heard my pastor tell the story of Patrick Greene. Greene was an atheist activist wanting to remove a nativity scene from the area where he lived when he came down with a condition that needed surgery. The church in the area raised up the money to help him get his surgery. Shortly after that, he actually converted to Christianity.

I found the story interesting and decided to look it up to see if it’s true. Turns out not only is it true, but Greene is now looking to become a Baptist minister. This was a relief because too many times when I have heard other pastors share stories from the pulpit like this, they have turned out to not be true.

Go back a few decades and this might not be the big deal it is now. Today though, it is a major deal. Your church has especially young people (Let’s hope it does!) who are technologically savvy. They know how to get up on their phones immediately and look up what you said.

If they find out in a search that what you have said is false, they are less inclined to take you seriously. If they cannot take you seriously on a minor point they can look up on their phones, why should they take you seriously on the resurrection? That’s a very valid question. Why should they?

Seriously. Why should they? If you can’t bother to fact-check a story you are going to share that will take only a couple of minutes, why should they trust you on what would take much more time to test?

Now suppose you’re not a pastor. Are you safe? No. If you don’t fact check what you are sharing on the internet, which never forgets, then you are doing the exact same thing as a Christian.

Recently, I shared a Babylon Bee story on a friend’s page who had shared a Babylon Bee story of her own. Both of them were about the VP debate. Someone commented and asked if I know the Bee is satire and that Trump supporters will seem to believe anything.

I replied saying I knew it was satire of course. My friend had shared one and I shared one I thought was even funnier. I also shared that as a political conservative, I have had to take to task many of my fellow conservatives often and I hate it. Of course, that could be because many of my company is also conservative and so that’s what I see the most.

I have taken down false information from liberals before, but I really hate having to do it with my own side. Why do it though? Because if you only care about taking down falsehood on the other side, you don’t really care about truth. You just care about ideology.

Pastor. Today, it’s more essential than ever that you do your best to fact-check your account. If you’re not sure, you could possibly share the story and say “There are differing opinions on the story so I’m not saying it’s absolutely true, but I want you to draw a lesson from it.”

This is especially true if we want to reach youth for Jesus. If our churches do not do this, they are more likely to die when the older generation dies off. If my wife and I go into a church and we’re the youngest people we see there, I start predicting a soon coming death for the church. Older people die of and you need others to replace them and if you aren’t drawing in people, you’re not really winning anyone ever. You’re more of a social club.

I’m thankful my pastor’s story was true. I have heard too many that are not. I know enough about Christianity to know it’s true despite messengers that don’t do their homework. What about that newcomer though? What about that skeptic?

Are they worth a brief fact-check?

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

Why Are They Not Fasting?

Should the disciples stay in joy? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

After the events described in Matthew 9 concerning the calling of Matthew, Jesus is asked why He and His disciples don’t fast. This is not really a hostile question seeing as it comes from the disciples of John the Baptist. It’s a valid question to ask. Shouldn’t good Jewish boys be observing the fast?

Jesus’s answer is highly eschatological. How is it that His disciples can enter a time of fasting normally attributed to mourning and sorrow when the bridegroom is there with them? Wedding language is normally used in the Old Testament to describe the relationship of God and His people and the same happens in the New to describe Jesus and the church.

When the wedding is going on, there is to be joy and celebration. You don’t fast, but instead you feast. Jesus is saying that with His coming, the time of the marriage is at hand. The people are all there to celebrate.

This was typical for weddings in the time of Jesus. They would normally last a long time in the sense of the celebrations. The people gathered would celebrate the marrying of the couple and then the consummation of their marriage. To get an idea of that, just imagine spending your honeymoon with all your family right there and knowing what happened on the wedding night and celebrating that openly.

But Jesus does say there will be a time of mourning later. Here, He hints that His visit is just that, a visit, and He will not be there forever. We have no indication in the text that His disciples asked Him about this. We know a number of times they wondered about what He said without asking Him.

For now though, the celebration was on. Jesus was with His people, and not just His disciples but Israel. What is the good news about Jesus’s coming? That will be discussed more in the life of Christ as we continue later on.

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

A Big Problem With Presidential Debates

What needs to be done to change the debates? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I’ve done debate before. Last year I debated Dan Barker on the existence of God. In many ways, I consider that debate more substantial than any presidential debate I have ever seen. I would say that about most debates I have seen on the topic of religion. Why is that?

I say this also as someone who enjoyed last night’s vice-presidential debate. I came in supporting Pence and on substance definitely, I think he won, but I also think he won on presentation and style. So this isn’t the case of someone saying “Last night’s debate was awful. Here’s what needs to be different” and having the reason because I don’t think my side did good. Now you can think Pence did terrible, and that’s fine, but let it be accepted that my thinking is not based on a disappointment and thus wanting to change the rules.

When Barker and I debated, we had a lengthy time to debate one question. Does God exist? After that, we then took live questions from the audience. If you have just one question and each of you has fifteen minutes at the start to make a case, you can make a substantive case.

So you sit down for last night’s debate and the first thing you hear is about 9 segments of ten minutes each. Sorry, but economic plans and matters related to climate change and abortion are not able to really be covered that substantially in just 10 minutes apiece.

Part of that is our culture has become a soundbite culture. We want an answer and we want it quick. If you want to give an economic plan, you need to be able to have time to explain why you think raising or cutting taxes will help and most people don’t read anything on economics to consider such a question.

What about health-care? Nope. You can’t really lay out a whole plan in that short amount of time. Not only that, we have to remember the other side has to have time to respond to that within a few minutes and then the original presenter needs to respond and wait, both of them are supposed to make a case in that time.

At the same time, I understand that especially in any case, the current president and vice-president are busy and won’t always be able to do a debate. What would I recommend? More debates from people that each party will say represents their side versus one on the other. Want to debate health care? Have a whole debate on that topic. Climate change? Racism? Yes. A whole debate.

Unfortunately, I doubt this will happen simply because most people don’t really have that kind of attention span anymore. We want quick and soundbite answers to questions and think everything should be able to be given in bite-size portions. It can’t be. That’s the nature of the beast. I don’t care who is giving the case. If this is a substantive issue, it requires work.

And dare I say it, maybe if you want to understand these issues, you will need to do that on your own some time. Watch on Facebook and when anything major happens, everyone becomes an expert on everything. We live in an age where we think we are worth listening to because we have an opinion. No. Your opinion might be right and valid, but you need to read up on it and give an informed reason for your case.

Ultimately, it all comes down to a public willing to better educate themselves. Unfortunately, I have no pipe dreams of this happening anytime soon. I also see no way to bring it about instantly. The best I would say is start with the churches being willing to educate themselves and hire preachers who know what they’re talking about and have educational credentials. If we want change to start with the world, it needs to start with us.

We could all bear to be more informed anyway.

Also, let questions come from the audience more often that’s there live. Let them tell us what is most important to us. Don’t let a moderator decide that.

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