Category: Love

Your Enemy

How much do you love God? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I want you to picture in your mind your enemy. Okay? This is the person you either hate the most or at the least, love the least. Who is this? Well, it could be someone historical, like Hitler. Based on your politics, it could be Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama or Donald Trump. It could be a former friend or an ex-lover. It could be a family member. It could be someone who hurt your spouse and/or kids.

It could even be yourself.

Now this is a personal theory of mine. I think it’s Scriptural, but like many other theories, I welcome feedback. 1 John tells us that if you do not love your neighbor, who you have seen, you cannot love God, who you have not seen.

My theory is you can only love God as much as you love that person that I told you to think about.

I’m not saying I’m crazy about this theory either. It’s really hard when I think about it. I don’t have a lot of personal enemies I can think of, but when I think of people who have hurt my wife Allie, I do have anger towards them. One of the ways I look at how I see people is I ask how they treat my wife. If they treat her well, all is good. If they don’t, it doesn’t matter what else they do.

Yet even those people that hurt her, I am told to love them.

This doesn’t mean I have warm fuzzies with them or particularly good feelings towards them. It also doesn’t mean that I give up the call for justice. However, I think it is a problem if we want punishment for the sake of punishment itself. For some who have hurt Allie, I pray for their brokenness that they will realize what they’ve done and repent.

If you have delight at the thought of someone going to Hell, you have it wrong. After all, if it were not for the grace of God in your life, you would be going the same way, and that’s a statement that doesn’t care if you’re a Calvinist or an Arminian or anywhere else. All is by grace.

It doesn’t mean also that you have to particularly like that person. It makes perfect sense if you don’t want to be around a past abuser and in many cases, it could even be wise, but it could mean that rather than hate them, you look at them with pity. What are they doing to destroy themselves by their actions? I don’t mean suicidal or self-harm actions, but actions where they are destroying what they are meant to be.

C.S. Lewis once said to not ask if you love your neighbor. Live like you did. We often think love is a feeling. This is particularly true in the area of romance. Many of you see the way I treat my wife on here and some have in person and you would probably think I’m constantly filled with lovely and warm feelings towards my wife.

No. Not really.

But the point is you do loving things anyway and it’s not a feeling of love that grows, but it’s rather a mindset of love. So it can be with your neighbor. If you find yourself genuinely praying for your neighbor, you will come eventually to love your neighbor, provided you come with the heart that God expects you to have.

Again, this is just a theory of mine, but I do think it’s scriptural. I welcome your feedback.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Deeper Waters Podcast 4/25/2020

What’s coming up? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Mawwiage. Mawwiage is what bwings us togethew today. Mawwiage, that bwessed awwangement, that dweam within a dweam. And wove, twue wove, wiww fowwow you fowevah and evah… So tweasuwe youw wove.

So was it said in the Princess Bride, that great classic of all time. That blissful union of man and woman together shapes us all. The couple has their dreams come true of finally being united and is off on their honeymoon. May it last forever! After all, marriage is made in Heaven.

Unfortunately, so is thunder and lightning.

The joke is the couple will stand up and say “I do” and then the next day be saying “What did I do?” Yes. Prince Charming has bad breath, bad gas, burps after he finishes a meal, and leaves his dirty underwear on the floor. That Princess who couldn’t keep her hands off of him when they were dating doesn’t want to have sex now that they can, nags him about doing the dishes, gives him a honey-do list constantly, and insists that he not be snitty with mother.

I guess the honeymoon is over.

How do people make it? How do you not only survive in this institution but really come to enjoy it? For that, I am bringing on a guest I have wanted to have on for some time. She was scheduled to be on in February when we normally talk on marriage, but she had a sickness and couldn’t make it so now she is coming on. She is the blogger at To Love, Honor, and Vacuum and her name is Sheila Wray Gregoire.

So who is she?

According to her bio:

Popular blogger and speaker and award-winning author Sheila Wray Gregoire loves encouraging women to grow in their relationships, both with God and with their husbands, kids, and friends. The author of eight books, including 9 Thoughts That Can Change Your Marriage, Sheila mixes humor and real-life stories to help women deal with the messy problems many of us face. She is the 2012 winner of the top literary prize for Canadian Christian books for The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, and her blog, To Love, Honor and Vacuum, is one of the top 25 Mom blogs on the web.

Growing up the only child of a single mother, she learned two things quickly: God is close to those who are lonely, and marriage is a sacred thing. The void that she felt in her early life has been transformed into a passion to help women find their worth first in Christ, and then to make their relationships mirror His. With her trademark humour and light touch, Sheila is able to drive home scriptural truths in a challenging yet inviting way.

Shortly after moving to Belleville, Ontario, when her girls were young, Sheila began writing for magazines. In 2003, her first book, To Love, Honor and Vacuum was published, followed rapidly by several more. She began to speak all over North America, keynoting at national denominational events, such as the Coffee Break conference and the Baptist Women’s convention, and leading workshops at large conferences like the MOPS convention and at BreakForth. She also speaks at women’s outreaches and retreats, sharing her story of finding God even in the darkest times. These don’t just include rejection as a child, but also walking through the horrible valley of losing her son Christopher. Through it all, Sheila learned that God is enough, a message she desperately wants other women to cling to and understand.

Sheila’s background includes two Master’s degrees from Queen’s University, with one in Sociology and the other in Public Administration. Her real education, though, has come as she has learned to be a wife to Keith, a busy pediatrician, and mother to Rebecca and Katie. Sheila and Keith homeschooled their two daughters, who are now university students in Ottawa. And Sheila is getting used to being a mother-in-law to her new “son”. Sheila is one of the few people in her immediate family who is not actually a physician, so she spends her life in doctor circles, on medical missions trips, and medical conferences. But she still faints at the sight of blood.

And she knits. Even in line at the grocery store.

I hope you’ll be looking forward to this. I think this will likely be a very entertaining episode and hopefully informative. Hopefully, we’ll walk away with better marriages or be better prepared for our future marriages.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Not Liking Scripture

Should you always enjoy Scripture? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Sometimes I meet people who tell me they just look forward to getting up and reading the Bible every day. They just find such great delight and get a new insight every time they read it. Personally, I don’t really believe such people. The more prone someone is to tell me how spiritual they are, the less I am likely to believe them. The more someone tells me what a struggle their Christian walk is, the more I believe them.

Last night, I talked to someone who told me they recently read the Bible for the first time and as a Christian, there was a lot of stuff they didn’t like. I think this is something very real. If anything, I admire it. I don’t think highly of people who read through the text and never have any questions about it or get troubled by it whatsoever.

This person was wondering why Abraham would decide to sleep with his concubine or why Moses wasn’t allowed to enter the promised land. I really think these are good questions. I don’t want to go into them here, but I think they are good questions.

The point I wish to establish with this is someone who is wrestling with these questions is someone who is taking the text more seriously. Sadly, by those standards, some atheists online take the text more seriously than some Christians. The problem is most of those atheists never bother looking for answers to the questions. It just becomes, “I don’t like this, therefore the Bible is wrong and Christianity is false.”

When we read the Bible, we see the blemishes and faults of the characters. It’s not a pretty picture. David, the man after God’s own heart, is a murderer who can’t keep it in his pants. Moses is a murderer with a temper. Solomon, well, we all know how much he loved the ladies. In the New Testament, the apostles many times seem to be bumbling idiots that even Jesus Himself is exasperated with.

But there are also other parts of the Bible I don’t like. I don’t like being told I need to love my enemies. I’d like to do many things to my enemies, but love isn’t one of them. I don’t like being told I have to put others before myself. Personally, I’d love to be at the center of my own universe. I don’t like being told I have to forgive those who wrong me. I think it would often be more fun to sit back and plan a nasty revenge.

These are all things I am told to do though, and when I do them, I find I grow to be a better person regardless. Are they easy? Of course not. If they were, everyone would do them.

And honestly, I think this is the real problem many skeptics have with the Bible, especially in the area of sex. So many times when questions begin to arise, it can be because a member of the opposite sex is involved. If Christianity did not have high standards such as sex only within marriage and marriage is to be for life, then I think it would be more popular to people, but God’s ways are indeed not our ways.

As you read your Bible, realize it’s okay if it’s difficult or boring sometimes or you find things you don’t like. Still, I encourage you to keep wrestling with the text and asking the hard questions. They have been asked for years. However, it is foolish to ask a question and not seek an answer. That’s where too many atheists stop. Go find the answers. You might find that in the end, though you still don’t like everything in there, you respect the text a lot more.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Are Romance Novels Female Porn?

Do women receive unrealistic expectations? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Last night I was talking to someone and the topic of pornography came up. We were talking about how men have a hard time with relationships with women because pornography gives unrealistic expectations. However, as a contrast, we discussed women can have unrealistic expectations for men and this could be in the form of romance novels.

Of course, I cannot say if this is the case since no one can read all romance novels, but women can often have expectations of all the men that they want to marry. We are often told men are shallow going solely by looks. This can be true, but women can also go by looks entirely. I remember when I was single not being as attractive to women as the really athletic guys are, which I definitely am not.

Yet it goes beyond that. When I talk to guys about to get married about the wedding night, I tell them to think about what they have seen in movies and on television. I then tell them forget it all. After all, in popular culture, nothing goes wrong. No one puts down a towel. No one makes any inappropriate bodily noises. No one does anything that is displeasing. Everything flows naturally and perfectly.

Real life isn’t like that. Real sex takes work. It takes practice. For most people, their first time will be incredibly awkward. They’re just getting started. Why expect to be a professional?

Real romance also takes work.

Women have been raised with stories of Prince Charming coming for them. He looks perfect so much and he’s a great kisser and he knows how to do everything to sweep a woman off of her feet. What’s absent is the time that Prince Charming wakes up in the morning to kiss her and he has really bad morning breath.

Prince Charming will leave his underwear on the floor sometimes. He will leave a dirty dish out wanting you to clean it. He will ask you to bring him dinner while he watches his football game. He will get snippy with your mother sometime. He will be playing on his iPhone sometimes while he’s on a date with you. He will get gray hair or go bald and he will lose his perfect physique.

In other words, Prince Charming will be like every other man out there. To expect a man like to be like that is as unrealistic as expecting a woman to be like a porn star. (And I suspect a porn star isn’t even really like a porn star in reality.) It will set you up for failure.

Men tend to connect with sight. That’s why there’s such a joke out there about anime girls who seem to have totally unrealistic proportions. Women tend to connect with stories. If the sight of a woman who is unrealistic in porn can damage men, an unrealistic story could do the same for women.

Also, notice how each of these can set us up with a false idea about marriage. We need to find a spouse who is good for us. Now you should hope your spouse is good for you, but the best question to be asking is “Are you being good for your spouse?” For most of us in marriage sadly, we are asking if our spouse is making us happy and if we are not happy, well just get divorced. The real question to ask is more “What can I do to bring happiness to my spouse?” (Or even better, holiness.)

This is not to say you can’t think of what makes you happy. You should because if your spouse wants to make you happy, they need to know from you what does that. The real goal though should be seeking to show love to others in season and out of season and that starts in your own home.

So if you’re reading a romance novel, maybe it doesn’t have anything in it like an explicit sex scene, but that doesn’t mean you’re not having your ideas altered by it. You can marry Prince Charming and wake up one morning to find his dirty socks on the floor. In reality though, he probably had expectations of you that you fell short of, and that’s okay, because we all come with unrealistic expectations.

This then is the time for grace. Accept people where they are, including your spouse. At the same time, motivate them to be better than they are, not just because of what you want for them, but because of what is good for them themselves.

Guys. Women will not be like porn stars and pornography is wrong anyway so please don’t bother with it. Women. Please be careful about your ideas of romance. Prince Charming will have morning breath sometimes.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: In Pursuit of Love

What do I think of Rebecca Bender’s book published by Zondervan? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Years ago a group called AM Radio had a song called “I Just Wanna Be Loved.” The only reason I know this is because it was on the Talon Mix, the first CD put out from the series Smallville. AM Radio definitely hit on something. Everyone has a longing in their life to be loved.

Rebecca Bender is included in that. She was a successful student in school and everything seemed to be going well, until she got pregnant by her boyfriend and for some reason he wound up in jail so she’s a single mother looking to find a means to provide for herself. As it turns out, she meets a guy she thinks is awesome and they start living together and then he talks about getting a job in Vegas. She has to come along and turns out, he gets her to sign up for an escort service. Gotta pay the bills somehow. Right?

And thus begins her life as a prostitute.

I really don’t want to go much beyond that in terms of story, but it is a story of redemption. Bender describes the role Christianity played in all of this because there’s never any moment in the book where she comes to Jesus. It’s as if she’s someone who already came to Jesus and knows she’s being a prodigal, but she has no idea how to escape.

Reading books like this are always gripping. You really do see the mind control that goes on in this situation. The pimps these women get caught up with control them with abuse and then promises of love and marriage and children. Aside from the abuse, it’s fake and self-serving. These pimps also abuse over the tiniest things. If there’s a little dust on a windowsill, then it’s time for abuse.

And no one deserves that.

You wonder why they stay? Often, they don’t have any idea where to go. Their lives are that controlled and all of their hope comes from the pimp that they are with. They all want desperately to earn his approval, and yet the pimp looks at them and just sees money and victims.

Bender also describes the outright dangers that exist in the profession, such as meeting a dentist in a room once who turned incredibly violent on her. One story is amazingly touching. She was called to the room of an old man once who was holding his wedding ring and saying how his wife of fifty years passed away and it was their anniversary and he just wanted to dance with a girl. Not a striptease or anything. It was just a dance. One can question that the old man handled the situation the right way, but it was hard to read that and not feel grief for the man who lost the love of his life.

In the end through it all, Bender does escape and she winds up marrying a man who really does treat her right, having a family, and speaking out against sex trafficking. The thing is that this happens right here in America. I live in the Atlanta area and I have no doubt that sex trafficking is going on right here. Some girls at your local high school could be involved in sex trafficking.

If you watch porn also, you could be supporting sex trafficking unknowingly. You can claim all you want that these girls do this willingly and would even defend it, but for all you know, they’re thoroughly brainwashed, a term I don’t use lightly, by a pimp.

Here’s a good way to avoid contributing. Never watch porn. Try treating a woman right and winning her heart instead.

This is the kind of book that we need to be made more aware of. Our loose sexual morality in our society has led to the enabling of something like this. Sex trafficking is a great evil that has to be stopped now and I am thankful that Rebecca Bender found hope in Christ and are now out there raising awareness for others who are caught in the trap.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Why Not Use Porn?

Does porn disgrace a human being? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Recently, I was on a Facebook thread where someone had been talking about changing their VPN to show being in Italy where apparently, PornHub is giving a free gift to people under quarantine. I jumped in some and was dialoguing and all was going well and seemed to quite down. Later, I saw the thread again and realized Facebook hadn’t notified me that people had replied to me, a problem I seem to be having with Facebook lately. I didn’t want to jump into what looked like a dumpster fire then, so I figured I would now.

I write this from the perspective of a man. I realize that women can struggle with pornography as well. My wife has overcome that addiction so I defer women to talk to her who want some help.

For one thing, porn requires nothing of you. Nothing. In the past, you would have to at least brave up to go to the magazine rack or ask about that one room at the video store. Not so anymore. Hypothetically, if I wanted to, I could access porn from anywhere in the world. I could watch it in the check-out line at the grocery store. No more do little boys have to hide under bedsheets at night with a flashlight. Now they can hide with their iPhones.

Traditionally, if a man wanted a woman, he would have to risk himself and ask her out and be prepared for rejection. Then he would have to go to the time and effort of wooing her and loving her. The hope in all of this is that physical attraction would become long and lasting love.

In the past, most marriages were arranged. You would literally go to bed with a total stranger on the wedding night. My thinking is that sexual behavior was meant to build the bonds of love and make the man realize that if he wanted the woman, he needed to treat her well. Repeated behavior leads to real love in that case. Sadly, too many men decided to shortcut the process and not stay faithful to their wives just to get what they wanted.

Moving on, I find it interesting that those of us with a more conservative position are actually the ones that seem to treat sex more seriously. Someone can sleep around with several people and say “It’s just sex.” I find it difficult to picture someone who believes in covenant monogamy really saying something like that. “Oh yeah. Doing that sex thing together. No big deal.”

Sexual activity is something different. If I were regularly playing something like Mario Kart with a female other than family, my wife could get concerned, but that would not constitute cheating. If that became a heavily emotional relationship and then a physical one, we would be cheating, but the activity itself does not necessitate that. Somehow, when sex enters the picture, a boundary has been crossed.

A more polyamorous lifestyle might try to say that it is just sex, but what if it isn’t? What if we are bumping against reality? What if it could be that sexual behavior actually means something? What if sex really is reserved for a covenant relationship? Could we be desensitizing ourselves to that?

This is also because what you do with your body means something. I am normally a non-social person so I don’t talk much if I don’t have to. Suppose you see me out across the street somewhere and say hi and I wave back. Okay. All is well. Now suppose in a different universe I just scowl at you or I even give you the finger. You go home that night wondering if you offended me some time or if I’m just having a bad day. You don’t treat those actions as if they’re identical.

Sometimes, non-Christians get amazed that it looks like God cares so much what we do with our genitals. Of course, He does. God cares what we do with our whole body. Much of society cares as well. After all, rape is something illegal and that is very much involving one’s genitals.

If our bodily actions mean something, then what we are telling people sexually is how much honor we give them. Give that honor to just anyone and it doesn’t really become an honor. A woman taking off her clothes for a man is telling him what position he holds in her life. Also ladies, if you are married to a good man, he will never tire of your body and he will love it no matter what happens to it.

One analogy has been made has been to picture dating as a marketplace. Each woman tells what she is worth by how long she withholds sexual intimacy. Is she worth dinner and a movie? A week? A month? A year? Engagement? Or is she worth a lifelong commitment?

We’re not even talking about some other moral implications yet, but they’re worth getting into, such as PornHub’s recent trouble in being connected with sex trafficking. Watch porn and you could be enabling that. You are taking someone’s daughter there and treating her as just an object of your own enjoyment instead of a person in her own right.

Furthermore, I think guys who watch porn are just making it harder for them to get real women. After all, you can tell yourself you will never get a real one, so you might as well watch porn. That’s the only way you’ll see a naked female body in your life. Right?

If you do get married, you want things to be special anyway. When a man takes off his wife’s lingerie for the first time, he shouldn’t be immediately comparing her to countless other women he has seen in pornography. He should be able to enjoy her for her alone. I suspect this is also why so many commercials I hear are about ED and problems like that. Men have been being aroused by fake women and needing more and more for so long that fake women can’t do it anymore.

Pornography is addictive behavior. It will do you no favors and this implies even if married couples think it will spice things up for them to watch together. There might be short-term benefits perhaps, but in the long run, the costs will be greater. It’s just not worth it.

Not only that, but once you as a man have a woman to complete the unit, why would you need more? It’s basically saying your wife is inadequate to meet your needs. Sexual rejection is always painful and one of the worst ways of it is saying either implicitly or explicitly, you don’t meet my needs.

If you are struggling with porn, get some help. Go to a group like Celebrate Recovery. Get a filter on your computer and devices from programs like XXXChurch. You can beat this and it will be worth it.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: Who God Is

What do I think of Ben Witherington III’s book published by Lexham Press? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

When I received this book from Lexham, I was a bit skeptical. After all, Ben Witherington is an excellent New Testament scholar, but I have not heard of him being a theologian. Still. I knew that since he wrote it, it would likely be brilliant. The book looked small as well so I thought it would be a quick read and so I decided to dive in.

First off, I was right on one point. This is a quick read. I started it in the late afternoon and I finished it before I went to bed that evening. If you want a quick read on the nature of God, a primer as you will, this is the one to go to. It’s a short read, but let’s get to the other parts.

Second, my skepticism proved to be wrong. This is really a great book. It’s not a dry read from a New Testament scholar. It’s really a passionate act of worship, something I don’t think I’ve seen like that from Witherington before, but it was an excellent work. It focuses on a select few attributes of God, and not always the ones we normally go to.

Normally, if you pick up something like the Summa Theologica for example, you will get the far more metaphysical concepts of God. I was just looking it up. Aquinas wrote a lot, but in the Prima Pars I don’t see love mentioned. What Witherington covers is five concepts. Love, light, life, spirit, and unique.

This isn’t an apologetics book per se. You won’t find arguments for the existence of God or the reliability of Scripture. All of this stuff is just assumed, and that’s fine. This book is more of a devotional book for those who believe.

At times, Witherington does touch on some secondary issues. Towards the end, some issues I didn’t care for being discussed, but if that distracts you from the overall point of the book, you have greatly missed out. Witherington’s book is a refreshing step out of the ivory tower as it were to a place where theology is meant to meet real life.

Far too long, I have said that a disconnect is there. Too many apologists I think have been doing what Lewis said, been so intent on proving God exists that you would think He has nothing to do but to exist. Witherington’s work reminds us that theology is meant to touch your life. It should change how you live.

Are you worried you won’t understand it because it’s deep talk about God? Don’t be. Witherington’s book is very readable. Like I said, it’s short enough that you can read it in a day, but it will be a day well spent. You will find at least one gem in here that will get you closer to worship of our great God.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Deeper Waters Podcast 2/29/2020

What’s coming up? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Around the time a young man enters middle school, he starts to go through a physiological change where all of a sudden, those girls who had cooties before immediately become super appealing to him. While he looked at them with disdain before, now he looks at them wanting to know them better. Not only that, their bodies are changing at the same time and a man wants to know what exactly lies underneath all those clothes.

Now there are a few ways that a man can find this out, other than checking out a book on anatomy. He can either date the girl and seek to marry her and on the wedding night see what that girl looks like underneath, or he can try to seduce her before marriage, or if he doesn’t care about that girl in particular and any girl will do, he can look at porn.

In the past, porn used to be something hard to look at. You had to sneak down to the magazine rack at the store or else go to that hidden room at the video store. A lot of planning would be required in order to get your fix. Well, that was then and this is now.

The age of the internet has brought about pornography so much so that now we have rule 34. If it exists, there is porn of the internet on it somewhere. Pornography is a click away. You can access a woman’s body from any computer in your home.

Or heck, who needs your home? Just take your tablet or phone and you can do the same thing. Teenagers especially now have an easier time getting porn than they ever did before.

It’s had an effect sadly. It’s hard to find a man whose life has not been damaged by porn use. Women have to suffer it too as they are increasingly pressured to match what the young men see in their pornography videos. Not only that, I suspect the reasons I hear so many commercials for ED and see so many products for it is because men have trained themselves to get aroused at pornography videos.

Some men want to help out and in my travels on the internet, I found some of those men. Keep in mind that in saying all of this, I know porn is becoming an increasing problem for women who watch it as well today. I hope many skills can be transferable, but today, it’s looking at men. One such man who wants to help will be my guest this Saturday. His name is Shane O’Neill

So who is he?

According to his bio:

Shane O’Neill has a graduate degree in apologetics from Liberty University’s Rawling School of Divinity and He is the Editorial Director for Proven Ministries. Proven Ministries works with organizations, churches, families, and individuals to see a revival of sexual dignity throughout the entire Bride of Christ. 

We are also working on getting the webcam working so hopefully we can go to YouTube live and Facebook live to do these shows. If you struggle with porn or know someone who does, which is incredibly likely, please be listening to this show. Hope to see you then.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: Primal Loss

What do I think about Leila Miller’s book published by LCB Publishing? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

The kids will be alright if the parents split. Right? I mean, the experts all told us it was for the best for the children. If the parents are happy, the children will be happy. Right?

Those children are now speaking and they are not happy. They are speaking about the damage that the divorce caused them. These are people who even if they have gone on to have functional lives, still carry the scars of divorce with them even into their own marriages and other relationships.

Now let’s be clear on something. This does not mean that divorce is never a sad necessity sometimes or the unforgivable sin. I believe that if there is a marriage where both people want to work for the good of the marriage, then they can work for it and reach it. This can include even in the case of an actual affair. There could still be times of separation that are needed, however, such as in the case of physical or sexual abuse.

Leila has seventy correspondents she has talked to about this matter. Each of them are asked about eight specific topics. They are left anonymous although details about each can be found in the back. No names are given.

The following are the eight topics.

1. Effects of the divorce.
2. Feelings as child vs adult.
3. View of marriage.
4. Are children resilient?
5. Speak to your parents then and now.
6. What society should know.
7. The role of faith in healing.
8. To those facing divorce.

After this, she has stories of hope of people who overcame divorce in their own marriages and are now happily married. Then, she has a section on what the Catholic Church teaches on divorce. The former section contains several short stories and the latter section is just a few pages.

The stories in the book of what the children went through are gripping and painful to read. They need to be read though. They need to be heard. These are people being raw and candid and not writing to impress. They’re not normally going on and on about themselves or being overdramatic. They are expressing the pain they have as a result of the divorce. They are urging people to work on their own marriages.

There are some further steps I would like to see from a book like this.

First off, I understand this is by a Catholic writer reaching Catholics, but I would like to see this work broadened beyond that. I would like to see Protestants and Orthodox included as well as other religions and even secularists. Is the role of divorce in the lives of these other people the same? Will an atheist be hurt by the divorce of their parents?

I also think this will be good for people outside of the Catholic tradition who read the book. Divorce hits all people groups and all people groups need some help with it. I would like to know what people in my Protestant tradition would say to these questions as well as what other people would say in other faiths or no faiths?

Sometimes, I also thought the large number was good, but it could also be good to have a book that would have fewer correspondents, but those would be far more extensive. Perhaps a sit-down style of interview such as could be found in a Lee Strobel book on the topic.

I would also like to know what encouragement would be given to couples who don’t have children and are considering divorce. If the reason given is the kids will be damaged, what happens if kids aren’t involved? What reason is given then?

Still, this is a book that needs to be read. We need to hear about the effects divorce has on a culture. No. The kids are not alright.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Why is such a day important? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Some of you hate this day, and I get it. I used to as well. Then in 2009, Allie came into my life. We spent our first Valentine’s Day together with some snow on the ground and having her Dad take pictures of us outside of her house. I got her a Kingdom Hearts necklace and we went to see Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief.

It always reminds me that love is a gift. Some of you who aren’t married might have various thoughts about it. Many guys will think to the idea that it’s okay to have sex now. That’s an awesome gift, no doubt, but there is more to it than that.

I also enjoy many simple things with Allie. Sitting down and watching YouTube or Hulu together. Going on a Pokemon raid with her or playing some other game. A drive together where we just talk about meaningless matters sometimes. It can be enjoyable sometimes when she gets into a Facebook debate and I jump in and we do it together. Just run of the mill teasing every day is a delight. As I said, while sex is great, just getting to sleep together in the same bed and wake up together is a gift.

Scripture says we become one, and it’s absolutely right. Many of you know a few years ago we had a car crash where it was sadly my fault and someone ran into the car on Allie’s side. We went to separate rooms at the same hospital and when she came to me the first time there, I was in tears I think and kept saying “I could have lost you.” Sometimes after that, she would hear me crying some and ask what was wrong and I would tell her I was thinking about that and how I could have lost her. It really opens your eyes to what someone means to you.

Allie has also become my standard of female beauty. She is the woman who truly takes my breath away. I look over at her sometimes and just think “How on Earth did I get such a beautiful woman?” Amusingly, I’m not the only one who thinks that. I have been told that when my sister was with my mother before my mother ever met Allie, my sister showed her some of Allie’s pictures on Facebook and my Mom said, “Good grief. How did he get a girl like her?”

I take it as a compliment. I still don’t know.

Today, it is a great gift to have love, but as Christ says, it is even better to give than to receive. I love that I have someone I can share all the love I have with. Allie has done so much to teach me what it means to really love someone and made me a better Christian and a better man in the process.

Happy Valentine’s Day to the love of my life. May we have many more together.

In Christ,
Nick Peters