Category: Evil

The Nashville Manifesto

What are my thoughts on the shooter’s manifesto? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

When I found out the manifesto was available for reading, I decided to get it in wanting to be informed on the matter. Personally, I think the whole thing should have come out a lot earlier. Now this isn’t anything that’s formally typed out or anything like that so some parts were hard to read just for that reason.

Going through, I wanted to see what this person said about their mental state and really, that was also hard to read. So much was sad about this. This is a person who needed severe help and wasn’t getting it. Also, while I favor quoting material, due to the sensitive nature and not everyone wanting to see it themselves, I am not going to do that this time.

The first day I got it and started going through it, I remember reading it and seeing something said along the lines of “Love is not real if my Autism is.”

At that point, I had to close it up for a bit and get back to it later.

In some ways, I can understand. I watch society and I don’t know what people think. I don’t know what’s really going on with them. One of my favorite shows is The Big Bang Theory and even if you don’t like it, this is one of the best clips I have seen on that. I have read material behind the show and Sheldon is on the spectrum. They just didn’t want to say that officially. Look at what he says here and I give this to people as an example of what this is like.

For me, I don’t understand social cues. If my boss corrects me, is she mad at me and I am a disappointment? Is that girl flirting with me or just being nice? If I say something to her different, will she want to go out with me or will she think I’m a creeper? Do people really care about how I am doing or are they just saying that to be nice? Why do we greet each other in public but when we go home there’s no interaction?

Feelings are hard to understand, but I do know I do have people who love me and people who care about me. It can be hard to tell who they are sometimes, but it is real. I do know after a failed marriage, I am on guard around people more and just want people to be real. It’s painful when I think someone hasn’t trusted me.

Going through further, the shooter repeatedly said that everything hurts. They wanted to die. They also wanted God to forgive them. This wasn’t an angry atheist from what I see. This was someone very delusional wanting to take it out on the world.

The shooter also said that their father loved the cats more than the shooter was loved. I don’t know about their father, but fathers are extremely important. Kids need father love. I do remember they spoke some about their parents conservative values and that was extremely difficult for them.

Granted, I am only getting one side of the story, but parents need to make sure they love their children even if they think their thinking is delusional, and thinking you are the wrong sex is delusional. At the same time, too many parents panic. It’s understandable, but they do.

Years ago my wife was feeling suicidal and I took her to see a great therapist who taught counseling at the seminary. I was hoping he would see the emergency here, but I was stunned as he talked to her as calmly as if they were talking about the weather as if this was no big deal and added at the end, “I hope you stay.” Turns out, he was right. Not much of a shock. I learned from him that if you act panicked, the people you are trying to help will also panic.

This is also why when your children show up doubting their faith, don’t panic. Josh McDowell and Francis Schaeffer both were calm with their children and encouraged questioning and it worked both times. That being said, I do understand it’s more difficult now as most therapists will automatically affirm the delusional thinking and parents will be reported for not going along with it.

This was an incredibly sick individual. Sometimes, sex was described in ways that seemed tantamount to rape. They had some delusional fantasies, but overall, I think they just wanted to be loved.

Something we all want.

Here is something else sad about this.

The whole thing could have been prevented.

They wrote at one point they were surprised they were not arrested in 2021. None of those deaths had to happen. (FBI must have been too busy arresting grandmothers who went into the Capitol on J6 or going after pro-life protesters.) Friends. New laws won’t change this. Criminals do not care about the law and if you are sick enough to do something like what this person did, you definitely do not care about it.

We need a whole worldview change.

We need the gospel.

I urge you to be prepared if you want to read this manifesto. It is sad. It is difficult. Pray for everyone involved. Pray for the families of the victims. Pray for the family of the shooter. Pray for the survivors.

Pray we can stop the next one because one school shooting is one too many.

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

 

9/11 And Why Evil Fails Practically

Does the atheistic problem of evil really help? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Since today is the anniversary of 9/11, let us consider a thought experiment. Now I think that it is impossible for anything to exist without God existing, but I am going to put that aside for argument’s sake in this post. I also am going to approach this as if we have no strong evidence for or against the existing of God. This is going to be on a practical level only. In essence, I am asking which worldview would be preferable to be true on theism vs. atheism.

We thus have two different scenarios for a 9/11 event. In world A, theism is true. In world B, atheism is true, and I am taking atheism as the definitive statement that there is no God. That is what it means anyway.

“Atheism is the position that affirms the non-existence of God. It proposes positive disbelief rather than mere suspension of belief.”

William Rowe The Concise Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy p.62

“Atheism, as presented in this book, is a definite doctrine, and defending it requires one to engage with religious ideas. An atheist is one who denies the existence of a personal, transcendent creator of the universe, rather than one who simply lives life without reference to such a being.”

Robin Le Poidevin Arguing for Atheism: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion p.xvii

I hate that I have to post so much, but I am sure some atheists would come around and say “Atheism is a lack of belief!”

So now having established my case here is what happens. In both worlds, 9/11 happens and thousands die in one horrible attack.

In world A, there is an eternity that people will spend. Some will spend it in Heaven and some will spend it in Hell, at least on Christian theism. There is the possibility that there will be justice for the people who perpetrated the evil. There is the possibility that there will be the chance that people will see their loved ones again. Justice can still prevail in the world. Of course, some other forms of theism might answer matters differently, but I think a large number would say that there is still a God who can give justice and raise the dead.

In B, well, it was certainly a tragedy, but that was it. The attackers? Dead. The victims? Dead. Chances of justice for them? None. Chances of seeing dead loved ones again? None. I do realize there are some atheists who have postulated an after-death, but this is a very very small minority. Note also I am even granting that there are still ideas such as goodness and justice in an atheist universe which I even then still question.

From a practical standpoint, you could say that in the theistic universe, some people could suffer eternally, but also some will rejoice eternally and some will see dead loved ones again and some of those people who will suffer will very likely be the attackers themselves who pulled off the evil.

This is one reason I just do not think the problem of evil works. Remove God and you still have all the problems. Sure. We might not know why God allowed X to happen, but if we are honest with ourselves, we do not know why we do X in our own lives many times. I am fine with an unknown of why if it comes with a known of someone I can trust.

9/11 is a great tragedy in our nation’s history. It was not the first. It will not be the last. As a Christian, I can be thankful there is a God in every tragedy.

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

You Don’t Deserve Good Things

Do you get what you deserve? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Often times, the problem of evil is brought up by atheists and it is hard to not understand the emotional plight being discussed. You see horrible situations going on in the world and the question is “Why does God not intervene?” It is okay to wonder this and to even ask it yourself.

Asking why is understandable, but there is often a hidden assumption that God is obligated to do something about this. Is He not a God of love? How does love sit on the sidelines? Yes, He is love, but He is also a God of justice. My question I often ask is “What does God owe us?” This is especially so when it comes to the case of God taking life. Upon what grounds can it be said that God had no right to take life? Who does He owe life to?

Let us now turn to make this something that hits home to us on a personal level every day. If you read this blog regularly, and I hope you do, then you know if I have a deep desire in my heart, it is to find love again. The truth is there is no amount of good that I can ever do whereby God is obligated to give me a love. He owes me nothing.

Sometimes when people get good things in their life, we often say that they deserve it. On a horizontal level from human to human, this could be so. On the divine level, it is not. This is not bad news, but great news. After all, who wants it to be that we have something because God owed it to us? Paul says this in the start of Romans 4 in saying that the man is blessed whose sins will not be held against him.

What do I deserve from God? Judgment. Every time I sin, I am essentially saying that I wish He was dead. I am saying that I want to be on the divine throne. I am saying my will be done and not His. I refer to sin as divine treason. It’s no light matter. I know too many times in my life I treat it like such a light matter.

It is pure grace that God forgives me. It is even more grace that He allows me to come into His kingdom.

What does that say about the rest of life? It says that if I do get blessed to have the love that I want again someday, it will not because I was just so incredibly good that God decided to give me something. I am not denying that He rewards those who do good, but He does so out of grace even then and not obligation. James tells us that every good and perfect gift comes from the Father above. All is grace.

I pray God will give me that love in my life. If He does, it is His grace. If He does not, He still has given me more than I deserve and in reality, the opposite of what I deserve. I should be thankful for all that I have. Again, this is my own struggle as well.

When good things come in your life, be thankful. When suffering comes, remember the good things and God is still with you. In everything, as Scripture says again, give thanks.

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

On The Assassination Attempt

What does this say about us? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I have an app that gives me points for walking that I can use to get gift cards, so I was walking at the student center yesterday here on campus when I hear my phone. It’s my Mom calling. I answer and she asks if I had heard the news. Well, I had heard that Richard Simmons had died as well as Dr. Ruth.  Which one was it?

Then she told me about the assassination attempt.

That got me opening up YouTube and Facebook and Messenger and many other apps piecing together everything that happened. When I got back, I watched several videos talking about the event. As a gamer, I have an Echo nearby so while I’m doing a game, I’m also learning about everything going on in the world around me.

So let’s get some things clear.

First, this is not a hoax. There are a lot of people on the left that have been saying this kind of thing. The problem with a hoax being a largely public event is that so many people have to be in on a cover-up. This would mean every Secret Service agent there was in on it and that the person who died as a result of being shot by a stray bullet and the others in critical condition had to be in on it.

No. This was the real deal. Also, let’s keep in mind that Alex Jones was sued heavily for saying that Sandy Hook was a hoax.

What happened was awful, but what was even worse in many ways was the responses that were going on. You can say with an assassin that there is one crazy person out there. However, my social media feeds yesterday were full of leftists regretting not that the event happened, but that the attempt failed. Trending on X were “How did you miss?” and “You had one job.”

Some people were saying that if the shot had hit, it would have saved democracy. I’m wondering if these people know how World War I started. Our country right now is a powder keg and many of us fear that a Civil War is going to break out sometime. This could have been the match that sparked it all off.

The Babylon Bee was accurate when it said that a party that for years has claimed Trump was Hitler is shocked when someone tries to assassinate him. This is something many of us on the right have been saying in various other circumstances. All it takes is one person to believe the claims.

A major question is how this has happened and some former Secret Service agents are saying this was a failure on the part of the Service. Yes. They did their part to protect when it was clear what was happening, and that is honorable, but we have at least one witness who was there who saw what was going on and tried in vain to alert the people.

Then you have the way that many on the left were responding which is extremely problematic. Consider what Representative Steven Woodrow said on X shortly after:

He has since deleted his X account, but the internet never forgets. If you want to see more like these, you can go look at DefiantLs who has the best compendium of them on X that I know of. Also while there, you can see what various news outlets said about it:

USA Today:

Trump removed from stage by Secret Service after loud noises startles former president, crowd.

Yeah. Loud noises. That’s what it was.

CNN also had similar with a statement about Trump being led off by Secret Service after falling at rally.

So what happens now?

First, we pray. We pray for the healing of our nation. We pray for President Trump and we pray for the families of those who lost a loved one. We all need to know about Corey Comperatore who died protecting his family. For many of you who complain about men, real men do what Comperatore did.

Second, we also pray for our enemies as well. If it were not for the grace of God, any of us could have been them. Any of us could have been an assassin were it not for God’s grace in our lives. We have seen from history that anyone is capable of great evil if given the chance.

Third, we pray for ourselves that we will not escalate the situation in any way. I know I was angry when I heard the news yesterday, but I also realized that if I let that anger control me, I would be heading down the path that I was condemning. Christ told us to not hate your brother in your heart. Why is that? Because if you do, then if the benefits outweighed the costs, you would kill him. Keep in mind something I tell people. When you think you are incapable of falling into a certain sin, you are taking the first step to falling into that sin.

Political pundits will discuss this back and forth. I was too young to know about it when the attempt was made on Reagan, but I am not too young now to remember this attempt. Let’s hope that it’s another 40 years before another such attempt, but preferably let’s pray one doesn’t happen at all.

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

Suffering Together

What can make suffering easier? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

A few nights ago on Facebook I saw someone share something and I knew immediately what it was about. It was about his divorce as when I announced mine and shared my experience, it was greatly helpful to him. I hate that every day I live with the scarlet D on me, but it is somehow easier when I meet someone who I have got to help who is going through the storm as well.

When my divorce came, I remember that it was helpful having someone around with me who had gone through it before as well. Now don’t get me wrong. I still had to do the work of healing myself. I also made sure to get in touch with DivorceCare, which was actually instrumental in getting me down here to seminary.

The reality is for many of us that when we meet someone who has the same struggle that we do, it can make the burden a little bit easier. We’re no longer alone. One of the worst feelings in suffering is that you are unique in your experience. Even if you know you are not, it can be hard if you think no one around you understands what you’re going through.

When you meet someone who does, it changes. Now you’re not alone. They don’t even have to be able to solve the problem. All they really need to do is to be able to listen.

This is one of the beautiful things at times about suffering. When I get to help someone else out of their suffering by sharing my experience, it is true they get helped, but I am also helped by it. It shows me that already, my experience is not being wasted. If I have someone also who respects me and says “Hey. This guy I respect has gone through this. Maybe I’m not so awful for having this experience.”

For me, it works with situations like divorce, being on the spectrum, dealing with anxiety, and I wouldn’t mind helping out kids in the hospital who are about to undergo surgery for scoliosis to say “I went through it, and I’m fine today.” For you, it could be anything else. It could be having to go through a miscarriage or recovering from cancer or surviving child abuse when you were younger.

As Christians, we should know that none of our suffering is wasted. God will not put any of us through needless suffering. All of our suffering will be redeemed somehow. Somehow, it will work for His glory, yes, but Romans 8 tells us all things work together for good to them that love the Lord.

That means whatever suffering you go through, it will work for your good. In gaming terms, this is the ultimate cheat code. Imagine going through a game and no matter what happened in it, you knew it would work for your good. You would be a quite confident player.

This isn’t a game. This is reality. All things will work for your good. Deal with suffering in a healthy way, but remember in all of it, it will work out for your good.

Then go out and help someone else with their suffering. In turn, they too can be a wounded healer for others.

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

 

Theology And Suffering

Where do we live? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I have said a lot this week about atheology and the idea that we have God in a specific niche for how He is supposed to work in the world. Atheists think that God is not filling this niche and then abandon theism. We need to realize that we can be just as prone to that kind of thinking where we see God on a functional basis. God is not the ground of being, but rather a being who fills in the gaps for us and is supposed to comfort us. This has been known as moral therapeutic deism.

Final Fantasy IX has as its intro a song called “A Place To Call Home.” That’s really what we are to think as theists. This world is supposed to be our home. Yes. I am going to dispute the song that says “This world is not my home. I’m just passing through.” This world was created for God to dwell with man forever in, and if we read the end of Revelation, He has not abandoned that plan.

When we have suffering in our lives, we can dwell on it and get stuck in and let it consume us. Note I am not saying to never be depressed. When something tragic happens, by all means mourn. I am not telling you to be a stoic and to suppress all emotion and never feel sad.

That being said, there comes a time when you have to move on with your life. My divorce hurt immensely when it happened, but I couldn’t stay there. Did I have to spend some time mourning? Yes. Some times will take longer than others and to some extent I still mourn everyday, but when it comes to fighting evil in my own life, I couldn’t stay there.

If we focus on ourselves in the evil, we will likely have an entitlement mindset and think that we are even owed by God the solution that we want to our problem. It’s easy to go from “God didn’t do what He was supposed to” to “God doesn’t care about me” to “God doesn’t exist.”

However, we can also go another route and say that we are aware of the evil and we are going to do something to fight against the evil. I make it a point to try to help men who are going through divorce now whenever I can. I have been pleased to hear that my forthrightness has been a blessing to some men. I don’t want any man to walk this road alone.

That sense of injustice that we can have can drive us to do something about evil. If you think sex trafficking is an evil, you’re more prone to do something about it. The same with abortion or cults or anything else out there. Rather than give up on what you see as a problem, you go out there and do your part to help deal with the problem.

Yet I need to say one more thing about suffering. Some people can get so caught up in themselves and their suffering that they can think that they don’t belong at all in the world. We can claim the internet has led us to have global connections, but we have also missed local connections. How well do you know your next-door neighbors? Do you even know them at all? I notice living in an apartment complex on a seminary that most of us when we go home at the end of the day, we stay there.

It’s easy to feel alone in the world and feeling alone can easily lead to an idea that you don’t belong, especially when suffering hits. This can then lead to suicide. In order to think that is the best response, in some level, you must have built in an idea of God that He is supposed to do XYZ or else He doesn’t love you.

To a degree, it makes sense to us, but it is also very much focused on ourselves. One of the greatest helps we could have to dealing with suffering is to have good doctrine about God and our relationship to Him. That has made a tremendous difference in the suffering that I have experienced. If you are thinking this way, please go somewhere like here. Reach out to someone. You are not an accident and you do belong here.

Please.

Possibly tomorrow we will return to reviewing the atheist book I have been reviewing.

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

Atheology and the Problem of Evil

What kind of God should deal with evil? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

In yesterday’s post, I wrote about a certain idea of God that many evangelistic atheists have. We could describe this as a functional god. This god is meant to explain the universe. This god is meant to be a presence to me in suffering.

When it looks like the universe works scientifically on its own and that there is no emotional presence, then atheism seems rational to these people. Let’s consider another aspect of this. What about evil?

Too often, we theists have been on the defensive end in this area. It is up to us to explain why a good God allows evil. What never seems to go answered is “Why should God be obligated to deal with evil at all, let alone in XYZ manner?” To say that God has to deal with evil is to assume that God has an obligation to us.

Note I am not saying that God will not deal with evil. I am questioning the why He will and the how and when of His doing so. If an atheist says that God needs to deal with evil, they have in mind a certain theology of the God that they think should defeat it, but what is this God like? We need to know.

For instance, why should God have to deal with what we deem to be a problem on our terms? Why should He have to deal with it as a being with unlimited resources in a way that we think is amenable to our limited resources? You need more of an answer than “I want Him to” or “If He really loved us, He would do it this way.” Why?

Could it be that evil really became a problem when we thought the universe was meant to be a place that was just to make us happy and that it was all about us? I get that people have talked about suffering and wondered about it for awhile, but at the same time, they didn’t jump to atheism. Job and his friends never doubted the reality of the deity, but just debated what He was like.

The problem of evil is in many ways asking a question about justice. Will there be any justice in the universe? We often have the saying of justice delayed is not justice denied, and it is true. Just because justice isn’t happening immediately doesn’t mean it’s not happening at all.

A Christian specifically views this world as intentional and while this world is not all about our happiness, it is meant for us to live in. We were made for this place. In a sense, this is our home. Someone else like Richard Dawkins will instead look at the world and say in River Out of Eden.

“In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.”

Yet if this is the way the universe is, then why do we have this longing for justice? Why do we cling to ideas of good and evil? Does Dawkins? Not at all. Look at any moral crusade Dawkins goes on, whether he’s right or wrong in it, he certainly thinks he’s going out for something good. He certainly thinks science is a good worth pursuing. He certainly thinks Christianity is damaging to young people.

And this is what we really need to be asking atheists. What is this idea of good that you hold to? What is this idea of evil? We use these terms and speak about them as if we all know what they mean when they really don’t. I, as a classical theist, ask atheists to tell me what they mean by good. If good boils down to what you want and evil to what you don’t want, then you are saying that the universe should bow to your desires and that if God were real, He would do the same. Not much of a god then.

Then, we need to go beyond that and ask what their idea of God is like. Yes. Atheists have an idea of what God would be like if He existed. One such seems to be He would deal with evil in such and such a way in such and such a time. They also think that this is an obligation on His part.

There is another point I would like to make on this and this is in the question of suffering, but that is for another day.

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

Hard But Worth It

Is life easy? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Yesterday, I wrote about the Dutch woman wanting to have herself euthanized next month. The story can present a variety of responses. There is sadness in thinking this woman wants to throw away her life like this. There is anger at the people wanting to do this. There could be anger towards her even thinking that she does not appreciate what she has.

Since she is on the spectrum, I figure I can share my own thoughts on the matter as to what life is like on the spectrum. Is it hard? Yep. Sure is. Yet as a lifelong gamer, something I notice is that most things that bring the most joy are the hardest. There is a great satisfaction in trying to defeat an enemy over and over again and failing and then one time completing the task. The challenge makes the overcoming all the sweeter.

Also, April is Autism Awareness Month so why not give some insight?

So let’s start with the negatives. There are people all around me and many times, it can seem like people are speaking in a language I don’t understand. It’s the language of tone and body. I am someone who can speak sarcasm fluently, but I can’t understand it well in others. I relate greatly to Sheldon Cooper.

Wanting to express myself can be difficult. Usually, if someone comes to the post office I work at and want to put some letters in the slip to mail out, I find it hard to say if I’m sitting there “I’ll take those.” Instead, I usually just hold my hands out. If I can speak without having to use words, all the better. Unfortunately, that’s a struggle when people don’t notice.

For an example where it’s harder, imagine going to the grocery store. You’re in the checkout line and behind someone and there’s a barrier there to separate your orders. You can’t reach it and so you want to tell the person in front of you to hand it to you.

I instead wind up gesturing wildly hoping they will notice me and hand it to me. The words are there, but I can’t seem to verbalize them. Sadly, this method has never worked.

I also tend to live a life in quite regimented order. On days that I work as an example, I go and get a hot tea from the cafe at 3:30 and I don’t start drinking it until 4. I was watching the time on my phone one day and my boss said “You could just go and get it early.”

I looked at her like she practically had two heads.

I have two pairs of shoes that I wear and I follow the same order with them. On the days I wear my white shoes, well those are days that when I take a shower in the evening, I will be washing my hair. I will also be having something besides a pizza for dinner that evening. The system works well in that regard.

Speaking of food situations, those I don’t care for. If I’m at an event with a lot of people and I don’t know them well and I think the food looks messy to me, I get extremely nervous. I can’t explain why, but I know when Crawfest comes along, most students here love it. I’m probably the only student who wants to run screaming.

When I joined my church, I did it with three other single men and I tell my pastor that to this day, I remember how he said what these men would appreciate most is to have someone invite them over to their house for a nice meal.

I was standing there thinking, “Darn. I was hoping you would say introduce us to some nice single ladies. Please don’t have me over to your house for a meal.”

Speaking of single women, that’s also a struggle. I get it. Most men are oblivious to when a woman is flirting to them and we can’t read signals all that well. I suspect I’m worse. It’s also a struggle to express myself to a woman and let her know I am interested in her. It’s one reason I’m in therapy here.

That is also because I am working through the divorce which is still painful. It really stings when you put your trust in someone and give them all of you in every way and they reject you in the end. That gets to what is probably the biggest struggle I have.

I fear that in the day and age of the internet, we’re more globally connected, but we’re less locally connected, and thus it’s loneliness. I come home and it’s just me and Shiro at the end of the day. This is not to say I don’t have friends around here. I remember when my first birthday came around, I wondered if anyone would know on campus. I opened my apartment door and there were gold streamers outside with a gift card, some cookies, and other decorations. I don’t remember everything that was there, but my RA and her husband had decided to do something. That was a huge blessing to me. The gifts were nice, but nicer still were people showing they took an interest in me.

Loneliness is the real struggle though. I notice that it seems like when we all get done at the end of the day, everyone goes out to their own place and that’s it. I have some friends I meet for tabletop gaming and that’s every couple of weeks. I go out with some of the professors at the end of many months for a trivia night. I also see students at the Post Office and I think they know me as a cut-up and someone who tries to make everyone laugh.

It would be a mistake to say people on the spectrum don’t have emotions. We do. We don’t always express them well or have them the same way. Church services that seem to be geared towards getting people towards an emotional high don’t work on me. I have to be doing something else while I’m in a service or else I will zone out. Something interesting for me at least on the spectrum is that this can often help me focus.

It also means we can hurt just like anyone else. I take rejection since my divorce extremely seriously. My apartment is a mess, but in my own way, I need order in my life and I think things should be a certain way and it’s hard to focus when they are not.

That all sounds hard.

It is.

But I’ve only told you the hard side.

I like though that I have a very strong memory that can pull up random bits of information when needed. I can remember facts I know of for trivia night. I can play games and know where I need to go much easier. I can tell you what’s going on in many passages of the Bible. I rarely have to study for a class.

I have a Greek tutor who says that I can sight=read Greek which he says is quite rare. In my symbolic logic class which is a rare class I am having to work at, my professor says I seem to be going through the fog area quickly and I’m even asking questions about the material that shows I’m really thinking about it. It’s great to be in an apologetics debate and have the knowledge mentally that I need to have.

I enjoy making people laugh. I figure if being on the spectrum, I take things literalistically for the most part, why not have some fun with that? I have a professor who came to me in the Post Office once and said “Can you check my mailbox?”

“Yep.”

I just sit there for awhile doing what I was doing and he notices what happened and then says “Will you check it?” That’s when I get up. Even then, I can still have some fun going and coming back and saying “It’s still there.”

“Is there any mail in it?’

“Yes.”

“Will you get it?”

Usually, I already have it with me, but it is a game that I play.

Sometimes students see me on campus and ask “What’s up?”

“The sky. Birds in flight. The opposite of down. A two-letter word that starts with a U and ends with a P. A preposition. Elevators rising. A quark. A Pixar movie.”

Naturally also, students and professors regularly assure me that they affirm the virgin birth, which I do affirm, and I likewise assure them that I affirm the virgin birth, which I do affirm. If I start a joke with you, you’d better get used to it. It’s not dying. If I stop joking with you, that’s the time to be concerned. That means something has shifted in our relationship.

I love being able to do math in my head. I do a birthday game as well where I tell someone what day of the week they were born on by knowing their birthday. Numbers are just fun things to play with.

I have a group I get together with every Thursday night via Zoom that I enjoy. It’s a Thomas Aquinas group and I’m one of the token Protestants. They know they can turn to me for Bible questions and I joke I’m here to make sure they understand Aquinas right.

Right now, I’m hoping to either find someone who can show me how to make YouTube videos or just make them for me if I can supply the ideas and my speaking that I want to have done. It is for my Gaming Theologian channel. I am also trying to raise money to help me with my ongoing expenses as I work on my Master’s and then PhD. You can help out with that here.

Naturally, I’m trying to find a good Christian girl. I have said before that in many ways, I am like Monk and I am looking for my Trudy. I would love to have someone I could just cherish and adore.

Is life hard sometimes still? Absolutely. There can still be times of great sadness. I am on medication for anxiety and depression still. However, at the end of the day, it’s worth it. I love going out and walking on campus and seeing people I know. I enjoy going through my books and then having a relaxing evening playing games and watching YouTube videos and whatever TV show I am going through. (Currently, Young Sheldon.) I have friends and I have family. Tomorrow, I plan on writing about the battle to get here.

If I struggle, which I still do, well that just makes the quest all the more exciting in the end, even if it doesn’t seem like it at the time. It’s another step I am taking on the path to making a difference in the world. I also pray it’s a testimony to other people on the spectrum to not give up, like this poor girl.

I pray every night she will find Jesus. I hope you will too. It is ultimately my trust in Christ that keeps me going. It tells me there is a cause greater than myself not just worth dying for, but worth living for.

It’s hard.

Hard, but worth it.

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

The Culture Of Death

Is hope found in death? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Her name is Zoraya Ter Beek. She’s a beautiful woman at a young age of 28. She has a boyfriend who is forty years old. She has a pair of cats.

She’s also due to die in May of this year.

She has Autism, Borderline Personality Disorder, and depression. Her psychiatrist has told her that it will never get better. She doesn’t want to bear with it anymore, so she’s going to be “Euthanized” in May.

I am on the spectrum as readers know. Since my divorce, I also take medication for anxiety and depression. So how do I approach this story?

First off, let’s say that I and many others understand being in a place where you are under the impression you’d be better off dead. I don’t care if you think it or feel it or both. I’ve been there, There were times of temptation after my divorce. It’s a pain that still hurts to this day, but I have also known if I did that, it would hurt everyone around me, and she would win.

I have been there because life is hard. We have never been promised a rose garden. There are times of suffering that we must all go through. Some times are worse than others. Some people have lives that are overall harder than others do. At least, that’s how it can look to us.

That being said, we live in a culture now that devalues life thinking that death is the answer. Rather than do the hard work of treating and/or curing a patient, it can be easier to just send them to their demise.

Easier does not mean right.

Suicide is automatically a way of saying that absolutely nothing in this world is worth it. Not her boyfriend. Not her family. Not her cats. Not beautiful sunsets or cool breezes in the afternoon or a favorite food. Nothing. It is an insult to all creation.

Also, I would love to know how this psychiatrist knows the future since I know several people who have thought their lives would never get better and lo and behold, they did. I also wonder about a boyfriend who is just fine apparently with letting a girlfriend kill herself. Warning women. Don’t date a guy who can tell you he let his last girlfriend kill herself knowingly.

Everyone involved in this story is guilty of a form of murder to some extent. You can say it is legal so it’s okay, but legal doesn’t mean right. This girl’s life is worth it. I’m not saying it’s easy. I’m just saying it is worth it. It is worth it because she is in the image of God and Jesus loves her and died for her.

Can someone introduce this girl to Jesus before it’s too late?

We live in a culture that seems to worship death and if a life becomes inconvenient to us, we snuff it out and call it compassion. “That child will grow up with a disability! That child will grow up in poverty! Better to have an abortion!” “That person is going through such sorrow! They’re better off dead!” Is it really thought that the person who is being murdered is helped or is it more that we are trying to lighten our burden by removing those that remind us of suffering and having to fight and struggle to succeed in life?

It doesn’t help that we have a one-size-fits-all approach to eschatology. Either everyone just becomes worm food, or everyone goes to Heaven because a God of grace would never do otherwise! Unfortunately, what if He does? What if the moment this girl dies, she dies without Jesus and is in a position where she would give anything to not have made this decision?

It’s a scary thought.

We can try to be nice with it and call it “Euthanasia” meaning a good death, but this is not a good death. This is murder. It is the wrongful taking of life when we have no business taking it. We are telling this woman she is a hopeless case and society will be better off. She has nothing to contribute then.

How much do you have to hate someone to tell them that?

It’s also strange that conservatives like myself are told we are responsible for the deaths of so many people who kill themselves, but when someone else like this kills themselves, well that’s met by cheers and shouts of bravery. It’s been said that people become what they worship. What happens if we treat death as the greatest good that there is? What will we become?

We will become a culture of death.

Or maybe we already have.

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

 

Book Plunge: Improbable Issues With The God Hypothesis Conclusion

Any final comments? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

It is always something good to finish off another poorly argued book. So how does this chapter end?

As I embarked on this endeavor, I aimed to prove to myself that such unbelief was warranted; that such doctrine held so dear by many was nothing more than wishful thinking. I once wanted to believe in a higher power and that an unseen force perhaps carried my being along as I moved along this life that I am currently living – that the pain that I’ve experienced as a child wasn’t all in vain. I was ignorant of the beauty and mystery that existed, without the need to believe that God was the one responsible. I found that I had the ability to learn and see for myself that such a view was obtainable, and that a belief system built on nothing but fanciful tales offered nothing that could answer the questions I had. I know such a way of thinking is possible, and as such I know this is possible for anyone. We are all humans, and with that, we all have the chance to look at the evidence, admit when we have been wrong and work towards a better understanding of this world. My final realization was a simple one.

Brucker, J. D.. Improbable: Issues with the God Hypothesis (p. 136). Kindle Edition.

It’s always amazing how these people still cling to a personal testimony years later. Amazing. As for answering the questions Brucker had, I found it to be pretty simple for the most part. The ones I can say I don’t know to, such as the scientific ones, don’t matter to the ultimate claims of theism and Christianity anyway.

One obvious problem is that Brucker was answering questions, which is fine, but his questions were being ignored. He recounts some stories of this happening in Sunday School and other such events. Pastors and youth leaders. Hear this. If you have a student who is asking questions, never silence or ignore them. If that means you have to do extra work to answer their questions, then do it. Avoid it and you are on the fast track to creating an atheist.

What got my curiosity going was perhaps spurred by my grandfather – an avid fan of Real Time with Bill Maher. While watching the HBO program with my grandfather one night, Maher advertised his then-upcoming documentary Religulous. It sounded like an interesting piece at that time, so once it was released, I purchased a copy and watched it with grandfather. We had a few laughs, but most of all it sparked something inside of me, constructing a question that I still struggle to answer today – Is this popular belief as warranted as was once portrayed to me?

Brucker, J. D.. Improbable: Issues with the God Hypothesis (pp. 137-138). Kindle Edition.

I went to see Religulous shortly after it came out. It sparked a lot of questions in me. Namely, how ignorant does someone have to be to think that this is a powerful critique of religion? You can find my review here.

Brucker goes on to describe struggling in AA because people would attribute so much of their success to God. I find it more concerning that Brucker sees people succeeding all around him and is complaining because of God. Perhaps he could have said “Maybe there is something to this if it leads to so many people leading better lives?” That doesn’t make it true, but it is still evidence to consider.

From my memory, I recall a particular quote which effectively ended the notion that God – as he’s been described – may exist; and if he does in fact exist, almost every monotheist religion that’s supported him has failed remarkably. The particular quote was one of Epicurus – a Greek philosopher – and as do most atheists, I regard this as one of my most favorite. It goes as such: “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”

Brucker, J. D.. Improbable: Issues with the God Hypothesis (pp. 139-140). Kindle Edition.

The problem is this kind of statement is not even really used by atheistic philosophers anymore. It’s the logical problem of evil and it doesn’t work. That’s not to say all forms of the argument from evil fail, but this one does, and had Brucker just done basic reading on the topic, he would have known that.

Religious faith requires its adherents to relinquish their ability to freely question – perhaps the most beautiful aspect of who we are as human beings.

Brucker, J. D.. Improbable: Issues with the God Hypothesis (p. 140). Kindle Edition.

No. That’s fundamentalism. I freely question and I celebrate anyone who asks questions. Questions are incredible and wonderful and worth exploring.

At any rate, this book is not worth your time and money. I read this stuff so you don’t have to.

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