Category: sexual ethics

Abstinence and the Virgin Birth (Which I do affirm)

Is there a problem with holding to abstinence and the virgin birth (Which I do affirm)? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

This one has been going around Facebook a bit and as the main virgin birth guy (Which I do affirm), I figure I should be the one to address it. Looking at this, I do wonder what the main contention is. As is the problem with memes, it’s rarely clear.

So let’s consider if it’s a moral objection. Can you believe in the virgin birth, which I do affirm, and still believe in practicing abstinence? Yes. You recognize that this is a miracle that has taken place and that Mary herself did nothing wrong in this case.

By the way, along those lines, all Christians know that there are other forms of birth control. What we do know also is that when practiced, abstinence is the only one that is 100% effective. For most of the world today, it’s just incredible to think of a person going through life without having sex. The premise of a movie like the 40 Year-Old Virgin is meant to be obvious.

So let’s go the more likely route. It’s meant to poke fun at us for believing in something that is unscientific. After all, this involves a miracle and don’t we know that those never happen.

At this, I think even the most hardened skeptic would not want to try to take on the burden that there has never been a miracle in history and have to demonstrate this. How could you even begin to do that? What is more likely to be argued is that we do not have sufficient evidence to believe that a miracle has taken place in history.

Thus, we get to the first problem. There is really no way to establish that a miracle has never taken place in history so why should it be treated with incredulity that a miracle has taken place. I actually call this the argument from incredulity. The problem is it only works if you accept a worldview at the start that says miracles never happen.

Imagine if I made a similar argument.

Christians: We know Christianity is true.

Atheist: How?

Christian: Because Jesus rose from the dead.

Atheist: And how do we know that?

Christian: Because Christianity is true.

If you take at the start that a naturalistic philosophy is true and a miracle has never taken place, then obviously, a virgin birth, which I do affirm, has never taken place. However, that is the very claim under question. Has a miracle ever taken place?

If you affirm the existing of God and have reasons for believing in such, then you have a basis for believing that a miracle has taken place or at least could take place. If someone wants to mock that because atheism is true or some version of metaphysics that denies miracles, then they need to establish that. Whatever your worldview, it does not work to go to the other side and say “Your position is laughable because it disagrees with my position.”

In the end, I see no reason you cannot both affirm the virgin birth, which I do affirm, and consistently practice abstinence. Issues about birth control can be debated among ourselves. This is just more of the type of argument from incredulity that works on those with the mindset already of materialism, but not much of anyone else. It has strong rhetorical pull, but nothing logical behind it.

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

Remembering the Sacred

Is nothing sacred? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Yesterday, I wrote about recognizing marriage as a sacred calling. As I wrote out those words, I thought about that. What is the sacred in our society? Do we have a place for it anymore?

In his book The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, Trueman writes about first, second, and third world cultures. First-world cultures put the ideas on how we should live on notions of fate or the gods. They’re not built on anything ultimate in a sense, but they are great and outside of us and we ought to follow them. The gods say it so whatever their reasons, you must obey.

Second-world cultures are those that do base the ideas in one transcendent God who can to some extent be known. Christianity presents such a culture. It’s not just “The God says so” which would be sufficient in itself, but also here is why the God says so and here are the reasons and God can enforce His rules.

Third-world cultures are like what America is in now. Everything is rooted in the secular. There is nothing outside of ourselves that morality is grounded in. It is all built on secularism.

What that also means is nothing outside enforces us. We have to enforce it. That also means there is no longer anything transcendent and lasting. Ultimately, it is moral relativism, but there is a who says going on in this culture. Who says? Whoever is in charge says. That’s who.

Consider our recent Supreme Court scenarios. Under this kind of ideology, the voice of the people is in some ways the voice of God. If the Court says abortion is allowable, then that is that. The case has spoken. The court is closed. Likewise if it says it’s going to stay out of it. Whatever side you take, I hope the problem is apparent. It’s the saying that a government that is big enough to give you rights is also big enough to take them away.

That’s why in America, our founding document is a second-world document. It roots our rights in a creator. The government doesn’t give us these rights. It recognizes these rights. It also cannot take away these rights.

However, if we remove that, then the only way to enforce the powers of the third-world and whoever is in charge is, well, power. Force will have to be used. The more secular a culture is, the more likely it will use this kind of force to control its citizens.

In looking at marriage also, we have lost the sacred. Marriage used to be a sacred calling where the two made a commitment. Now we have cheapened most everything about marriage. In the past, it would have been that if a man wanted to see a woman in all of her glory, he really needed to work a lot and prove he was a man and show the girl he was worth marrying and he would be treated on their wedding night, and hopefully, she would be as well.

Now? Nope. All you have to do is browse the internet for a few seconds and look at porn. If anything diminishes a human being, it is pornography, both the viewed and the viewer diminish one another in this. Internet pornography is one of the most destructive forces in our world today. It is a cheapening of the good gift of humanity and sexuality and turns women especially into objects to be consumed. If women truly wanted to fight the patriarchy, they would take a stand against internet pornography, abortion, and anything else that makes a man give them anything less than a lifetime commitment.

It’s honestly hard to think of anything our world holds as sacred. In a sense, we treat sexuality like the highest good, making it an aspect of your highest identity and if you haven’t had sex, there’s something wrong with you. How else is just a movie title like The Forty Year-old Virgin possible? At the same time, we treat it as simply a recreational activity and say casual sex is no big deal. It’s hard to think of how you can have it both ways. In a Christian worldview, you understand that sex is an aspect of something much bigger. It is indeed part of your identity, in that you are male or female and nothing can ever change that, and as an activity, it is an intimate one that is reserved for the most intimate of relationships.

One aspect of saving our culture is going to have to be the recovery of the sacred. Right now, we live in a culture of power plays and whoever is in charge has the power to enforce what they want and it will shift back and forth constantly as long as we have nothing outside of ourselves to ground it in. Hear this. You cannot be a true moral reformer if you hold to third-world principles of morality. It takes a second-worlder who says “No. This is something greater than us regardless of what the culture says.” You cannot stand up against slavery, Nazism, or any other evil and be a part of a third-world culture truly for you are just going with what you want for whatever reason and as soon as the other side gets more power, they can change that immediately and what standard can be pointed to beyond men to say “This is wrong.”?

Right now, our culture is on a suicide path. Those of us who are Christians and see the danger should be raising the warning alarms and crying out that something must change. We must be the Ezekiel watchman or else God will hold us accountable for not speaking up. When men forget God, what happens is chaos and some men become god for their culture. Nietzsche recognized this and lamented it knowing it would lead to chaos. He was indeed right. Nietzsche recognized the seriousness of the idea of the death of God and would think most atheists today are gutless embarrassments.

The rest of us. Stand strong. Everyday, build up the sacred in your own life and demonstrate it to the world. Remember Lewis also said that outside of the sacrament (And he said this as a Protestant) the most holy sight you see will be your neighbor. It all starts with how you treat him.

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

 

Marriage and Consumerism

How do we view the other person? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I’m downstairs with the family and I multitask. I usually do that as I can pay attention to two things at once. So we’re watching something and I have my Switch with me and I decide which game I want to play on it. Easy. Which one will bring me the most joy at the moment? If I get frustrated or bored with it, I can just switch to another one.

That’s fine.

Suppose we’re watching a show and just lose interest. What do we do? Easy. We switch over and find another one. Easy. It works fine.

Suppose you’re at a restaurant. What do you get? What you can afford, what you want, and possibly what you think is good for you. Don’t like it when it comes? You can just trash it.

Suppose you get married to someone and you love them at first, but then you just lose that spark. You think there are better waters somewhere else. What do you do? Easy. Just leave them and go out and find love somewhere else so you can have happiness.

Yet somehow, I hope you paused at that last one and considered it differently.

There is no commitment to the game, the TV show, or the food at the restaurant. I didn’t make a marital vow to, say, Pokemon Arceus, and therefore I can’t switch over to TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge. I didn’t vow exclusivity to Smallville, therefore I can’t watch the Flash. I didn’t say I will only order Subway sandwiches, therefore I can’t order french fries at another restaurant. None of those things will care either if I switch.

Unfortunately, we treat marriage the same way. Marriage is not about something bigger than ourselves often. It is just about ourselves. It is about what makes us happy and normally, about our feelings at the moment.

The Human League years ago did a song called Fascination where they said to keep feeling fascination, passion burning, love so strong. It’s a nice dream, but any married couple will tell you it’s false. You cannot promise good feelings to each other forever. Feelings come and go for whatever reason.

And too often, our lives are built on trying to get those feelings. Dare I say it, but I suspect our spiritual lives are often the same way. Could we often want joy in the Lord more than the Lord Himself? You could actually be worshiping the Lord properly and not be exuberant with feelings of joy. (How many of our worship songs are really about us and our emotional states instead of about Jesus?)

Marriage has really become a consumer good. Pick someone that makes you happy and brings you joy and when that fades, then go somewhere else. Marriage is about what the other person can do for me.

Now in some sense, you do have to know what the other person can do for you. As one seeking to remarry, I do have to think about what I like in a spouse. What qualities am I looking for? However, I also have to think about who I am good for. This other person could help me greatly, but is it a two-way street? Do I help them as well? If it’s all about what they can do for me, then when it looks like I’m not getting what I want anymore, I can move on after all.

If you are expecting someone to always give you good feelings, they will fail you. If I think I can always give someone good feelings, I will fail them. No one can do that. I cannot possibly go to an altar and promise another woman that I will feel love for her forever.

However, I can promise that I will love and that I will do loving actions. I won’t do them perfectly, but that will be my goal. I have to realize that marriage is bigger than I am. What we are entering into is a microcosm of a demonstration of Christ and the Church.

Suppose you are someone who reads the Song of Songs allegorically. Even if you do that, it has to be accepted that a physical love relationship is the means that the love of God for His people is demonstrated by. I do think the Song can be read as an allegory, but I also stress we should read it first as a love poem celebrating love and marital intimacy. See it as a love song about marriage and then say “And that’s a minor demonstration of how God loves us.”

So what do we do? Get past our consumer good mentality of marriage. We can use consumerism for things of this world often, but people are not just things. We don’t treat people like that. We don’t treat our relationships with them like that. People are greater than that and marriage is greater than that.

If we enter into a marriage expecting it to be all about us, it will end. If we enter a marriage asking what we can do for the greater good, we are far more likely to succeed. Marriage is not our story really. It’s God’s story and He lets us play a part in it.

Let’s play it well.

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

Divorce And Reasons for Marriage

Why should someone get married? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Something I have noticed is a lot of you seem to like it when I write something on divorce. I don’t want to talk about it every day, because frankly it’s still painful for me to talk about, but give the people what they want. If all of this can help prevent someone from going down this path or help to revitalize a struggling marriage, then that will be enough for me.

A major problem is that we don’t take commitment seriously enough and marriage is not just a commitment, but it’s a covenant. Our culture already doesn’t place much on it. Want to have sex? That used to be a big incentive to get a man to be married and to invest in the relationship. No more. Men can easily get sex outside of making an actual commitment to a woman.

Does a woman want to be provided for? Again, not a big issue since the feminist movement. Women nowadays can often work hard and care for themselves financially and usually only need a man around when it’s time to make a baby. Oh wait. Thanks to artificial insemination, now they don’t even need that. Add in also that the government is more than willing to do what they can to provide for mothers who are single and not in a marital relationship and they have even more incentive.

When this happens, the question then becomes why should anyone get married? If we consider the first option with men, women who give in to men before marriage are not really giving any incentive for a man to get married. If he can get it and he doesn’t have to risk any kind of commitment, well why not? He can literally have his cake and eat it too. It happens so much that no one really even bats an eye anymore.

Yet something is wrong with it. The breakdown of the family has led to a lot of social unrest in our society. Gangs are often formed when men have no real male figure around that they can call Dad. There are many single women who for whatever reason, even one like being widowed tragically, are raising single sons alone and doing admirable jobs, but the sons are best raised if they have at least some figure in their lives they can consider a father figure, such as an uncle, a teacher, or a coach.

Women themselves? Many women still do want to get married and have a firm commitment they can count on. Too often they are giving sex thinking it will help them get that commitment, but it isn’t working. Men much more easily bounce from relationship to relationship because it’s easy for them to escape the consequences, which is one reason abortion is seen as so essential for so many people. It’s a way to get to enjoy a sexual relationship without consequences.

So with all of this, some could be asking why someone like me would still want to get married again?

It’s because I consider myself a Christian realist.

I think reality is that sex is meant for a covenant relationship in marriage. I actually think it’s a great evidence of Christianity when I consider its sexual ethic when it’s so counter-cultural in every way, even from Roman times, and yet it’s consistent too. I think a man and a woman go together physiologically and in every other way.

I also think every person is worth a lifetime commitment and to get sex from a woman without making that covenant before God and man with her is to demean her and lower her. She is worth nothing less than that lifetime commitment upfront and then she is the exclusive person to be with. The same applies to men in reverse.

I do think a man should want to provide for a woman, no matter how much the woman can provide for herself. A man will still on some level want to provide and care for someone. A woman meanwhile will often still want to be a mother and still give a good home and raise her children well and bring joy to her husband.

Ultimately, I look at the fruit of the sexual revolution and see that it doesn’t work. Right now, I have high hopes that with abortion being removed, we will hopefully get to a place where we will actually start taking sex seriously and thinking about what it means and what role marriage has in our society. Our culture is not in trouble because we have a high view of sex, but it is because we have a low view of it. We have taken one facet of it, the pleasure of the act, and made that everything.

For the church, if we are to change, it starts with us. Christian marriages have to be stronger than ever. I say this as one who has been badly burned in a marriage, but I still uphold marriage 100% as a good gift from God and to be celebrated.

Those of you who are married right now are the ones who can best demonstrate that this is true. Those of us who are looking for marriage again can meanwhile honor it by how we live. For me, it is still abstinence until I remarry, no matter how painful that is. I trust that assuming I remarry again, God will honor what I have done and make it worthwhile.

If we want to change the culture, it begins with us.

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

 

Preaching on Divorce

How should pastors handle divorce from the pulpit? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Yesterday, my pastor did a sermon on divorce and it got me thinking that I have not written on this facet. If you’re a pastor, how should you preach such a sermon? Our text was mainly Deuteronomy 24 with some of Matthew 19. I want to state also that my pastor did a very good sermon, but since you all likely didn’t hear it for the most part, I have to repeat the things that were right and then offer other aspects I recommend.

First, marriage must absolutely be upheld as a good. This is non-negotiable. Marriage must be seen as a gift from God. That does not mean everyone has to use it, but it does mean all are to respect it. Hebrews says marriage must be honored by all. The author doesn’t limit it to those who are married.

Second, divorce is an evil. This needs some clarification. It doesn’t mean that everyone who divorces or was the recipient of divorce is guilty of an evil in this area. It means that in a non-fallen world, there will be relationships that are meant to last a lifetime that will not last that long. People will betray their vows in a number of ways.

This means that every time a divorce occurs, that means someone has along the way broken their vows. How would this apply to a woman who divorces her husband because he is absuive? Sometime along the way, he also broke a vow to love and to cherish. I can agree that a woman does the right thing in leaving an abusive husband, but it still is a tragedy that someone committed such a great evil that the union has to be dissolved.

Third, if you are the one who initiated a divorce and did so wrongfully, we must always emphasize that there is forgiveness. Divorce is not the unforgivable sin. As one who attends a Southern Baptist Church, sadly, the SBC is usually among the worst in dealing with this. It is easier to let a murderer up in the pulpit than it is to let a divorced person in it, even someone who was wrongfully divorced.

This applies to any sin really. If you preach on the evil of abortion, you must always stress that God loves people who have abortions and is ready to forgive them. If you preach on gluttony or pride or homosexuality or anything else, the same applies. Grace must always be shown from our pulpits.

Fourth, if someone wants to remarry after a divorce, I think it is good to encourage them. It is true that you don’t need marriage to be complete and happy, but there are many things you don’t need that you can want and there is no wrong in wanting them. A couple could pray to God earnestly for a child wanting one. They don’t need one to be happy, but Scripture emphasizes that children are a gift from the Lord.

If someone on the other hand does not want to seek a new marriage, then we should celebrate with them in that decision. We should not treat a single person as an incomplete person nor should we celebrate when a single person gets married if we are saying “Now you are a complete person.” We should celebrate marriage itself, but we should also celebrate singleness for those who don’t desire marriage.

So if you want to remarry, you are not doing anything wrong. Marriage is a good to be celebrated. If you don’t want to, the same applies. You can still serve God as a single person. Some could perhaps serve better. It depends on the person.

Fifth, we always need some teaching on worldviews and that includes a worldview on sex and marriage. If someone wants to not get married, for example, they have to be willing to accept that they will be living a celibate lifestyle. While sex is not the only reason for marriage, it is still a reason for marriage. This is something that separates marriage from other relationships.

For our young people especially, and this I have talked about in many other posts, we need more regular talks about why sex outside of a marital covenant is not only wrong, but will cause more harm. The sexual revolution has not been a friend to society. Honestly pastors, you need to preach on the issues of sex and marriage I would say at least monthly.

Finally, we need to stress how to treat people who are divorced. There can easily be a tendency to look down on people who are divorced. I am thankful that when I went public, people knew me enough that for the most part, they knew that I was someone who always showed great love to my ex-wfe. Even today, when people tell me I loved her dearly, I always make sure they know it’s not past tense. I still want the best for her and pray for her well-being and holiness every night.

That doesn’t mean that there aren’t still struggles. I can be tempted to think ill of her, but I need to remember to think ill of her actions more than of her and see her as a fallen human being who God loves just as much as He loves me. If anything, this has been a great lesson to me about the grace and forgiveness of God.

In the church, this needs to be the case. A divorced person needs to be able to go to church and find love without people looking down on them or treating them as second-class Christians. Those who have not been divorced do not know how painful this is, and it definitely is. Every day, in some way, I suffer because of the fact that I am divorced.

Just yesterday, when I was working, I had a customer say to me “These ones” about something. It always bothered me when my ex said that because it struck me as a redundancy. Now when I heard it, it was just painful to hear. That’s a tiny example, but a tiny example could best illustrate the point. If a little thing can bring back a painful memory, how much more can bigger things?

Whenever we preach about any sin, we must always assume, and we could be right or wrong, that someone in the audience is struggling with that sin. You could preach on homosexuality, but you must always remember there could be someone in the audience who is struggling with same-sex attraction and doesn’t know what to do. Preach sin as sin, but always preach grace as greater than sin.

And along those lines, don’t make promises that aren’t promised. I saw last night getting set for bed a tract I picked up somewhere asking if you want peace. Now if someone wants peace with God in the sense that God doesn’t hold their sins against them and they are forgiven, that is promised. If someone wants peace in the psychological sense, that is NOT promised. If someone struggles with sin, there is no promise that God will take away that struggle in this lifetime. He might, but He might not. We cannot promise to remove the pain of divorce, but we can promise to be there in it. We should make that promise and keep it.

Divorce is hard. It is hard to teach on. It is hard to preach on. It is hard to go through. I hope these words of wisdom will help those who struggle with this. My pastor did a really good job yesterday with it. If you’re a pastor, I hope you will take this to heart from a divorced person.

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

Crisis at Peor

What happened at Peor? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

For now, let’s get back to marriage in the Bible with intermittent posting when I get something new on how Jesus handled the crowds in His day. In this chapter, Balaam had failed to curse Israel, but that didn’t stop other methods being used. If the direct approach won’t work, get them to abandon their covenant indirectly and well, what better way to lead men astray than the temptation of women.

So some women show up and the men give in to the temptation of the flesh. Something to note here as an aside. Usually if you want a family to go to the church, you go for the father and if he goes, most likely, the rest of his family will come along. We could say if you want the family to fail, you do the same thing. You strike the father.

The operation is successful. In Numbers 25, the men are led astray. It’s worth noting also that Israel was more than willing to leave Moab alone. They only wanted to get to the Promised Land. Moab went out of their way to go after Israel. The goal was to get them to abandon their covenant with YHWH and lose His favor.

Moses tells them to deal with the problem by hanging the chiefs of the people who were responsible. While some of the leaders are weeping in repentance, an Israelite man comes with a Midianite woman and enters into the chambers right in front of everyone. Phineas the priest will not put up with this. He grabs a spear and goes in and interrupts their intimate time together by running through both of them with one spear. Phineas was praised for this action and was often held as an example of zeal for the Lord.

What’s fascinating about this is that this man did this in open defiance. Everyone knew what was going on in that tent. Consider today in movies and TV shows, when it comes to a sex scene, practically everything has to be shown. Older people will tell you in the past, a man and a woman went into a room and you saw the door closed and perhaps heard a click of a lock and you knew what was going on. No one had to be shown.

While everyone is in repentance, this man doesn’t care and will do what he wants. He will not only do it, but he will flaunt it. This is a man who cares nothing about the standards that YHWH has set up. Had he really wanted to go this route, he could have just left Israel and traveled to Moab and had a relationship with a Moabite woman.

Nope. He wanted to flaunt.

One of the ways to be faithful to YHWH is to be faithful in your marriage covenant and that means treating sex as something sacred. Don’t have it before or outside of marriage and when you are in marriage, honor the one you are with with the gift of sex. Our culture is caught up in a confusion about sex. We treat it like a recreational activity and then say that we have an identity built around this recreational activity.

I am not at all saying divorce is always wrong. I have cases where I would even encourage a couple to sadly get a divorce, but even when I think it is the best option, it is still a tragedy. It means along the lines, someone was that unfaithful to the covenant. However, if that has not happened to a party, then it is not just unfaithfulness to the person they promised faithfulness to, but unfaithfulness to God, and in a marriage, they did promise God they would be faithful to Him in being faithful to their spouse.

Phineas was more faithful to YHWH than he was to public opinion. He didn’t care what the people would think of him. He didn’t wait for Moses to take the lead. He knew what needed to be done in faithfulness to YHWH and he did it.

Marriage is also a call of faithfulness to YHWH if you enter it. It doesn’t matter what the public opinion is. You also don’t wait on the other person. You do what you can to build up your marriage and it is done in faithfulness to YHWH. That’s hard many times, but if we want to rebuild our nation, we have to rebuild marriage. We can blame the left for attempts to redefine marriage and matters like that, but we have to ask ourselves if we were treating marriage seriously ourselves.

Keep in mind, this is also so serious that this is what leads to Numbers 31 where Israel battles Midian, a favorite passage of skeptics. Abandoning of YHWH’s covenant by abandoning marriage led to a full-on war where several people died. It’s serious business.

Marriage always is.

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

Book Plunge: Eve In Exile

What do I think of Rebekah Merkle’s book published by Canon Press? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I saw a quote from this book, and I do not recall which one it was, and I immediately went to Amazon to see if I could order it. Turns out, I had already ordered it. So off I went to find it in my Kindle library and enjoy it.

The main point of this book is how feminism has destroyed femininity. The #1 area that this is talked about in is in the area of being a wife and how being a mother is seen as a sort of letdown in life. Yeah. You could go off and have a career and make a lot of money and build up a name and do something good for the world, or you could become a mother. It’s as if being a mother is a lesser position. After all, all you’re doing is bringing a new human being into the world that could spend eternity in the presence of God.

The sad part is some people will then think that Merkle is automatically against women working at all and wants all women to be in the kitchen making their husbands sandwiches while pregnant. Not at all. Merkle never forbids a woman getting a job or an education or anything like that, but she does say to make sure your family comes first.

She also gives a history of feminism and who the major players have been in it. They weren’t Christians for sure. At the start, there were a lot of noble intentions, but it has gone more and more downhill so much so that feminism is often anti-feminine. However, there is a mistake conservatives can make.

Our mistake is we can look back on the past and think the 50’s were a paradise and have an Ozzie and Harriet type of family. Part of the problem was women were too complacent as technology was more and more doing everything for us and there was that desire to go out into the world and do more. We could say women wanted to be a lot more like men.

Merkle regularly makes it clear in the book that she is writing to Christian women and assumes her audience is female, which is fine, but men should read this too to understand feminism better. As she says in the end, most all of our negative major events have been led by women. Abortion? Women. Redefining marriage? Women. Transgenderism? Women. Now guess who’s being replaced in sports? Yep. Women.

If there is one more thing I would like to see in this book, it would have been more on how if women are to be wives and mothers and display the beauty of God in their lives, how should they relate to their husbands? Perhaps Merkle will write another book someday focusing on this on how the feminist movement has damaged marriage as well and how women are the worse off for it.

Either way, this book is a good book every woman should read and it couldn’t hurt the man to read it. Want to have a good book for a women’s Bible study at your church? Go with this one.

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

Book Plunge: Strange New World

What do I think of Carl Trueman’s book published by Crossway publishing? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

This is one of those books that I was recommending practically immediately as I got into it. Carl Trueman has written a look at how the self has come to be in our times and the implications it has for our society. Now some of you might be curious about that. “Haven’t there always been selves? Why is this so strange to talk about the coming of the self?”

Yes, there have always been selves, but the self has not always been understood the same way. In the past, self was often connected with religion, family, and nation. Now, self has been disjointed. Self comes through who you are within. While we have always had feelings, those feelings have never defined us. Now, they normally do.

In the past, it was thought that culture civilized a man, but centuries ago, Jean-Jacques Rousseau argued the opposite. Man was pure in his natural state. It is culture that makes him what he is often not. This would include the effect of technology and the sciences.

From here, we continue down a path of more and more looking inward to find who you are. Marx had his impact with putting man against society. Nietzsche announced the death of God and said the Earth had been untethered from its sun. Unlike today’s modern atheists, Nietzsche knew the serious ramifications of the death of God. Freud started us down the path of making our main identity be the sexual identity.

Today then, we live in a culture where we don’t know who we are and our identities are psychological. The problem is that psychology is often flexible and fluid so we have no stable basis for identity. At the same time also, how can you argue against what someone else is feeling? We live in a world where the feelings are true and when someone gets in touch with their feelings, they are experiencing their true selves.

Along the way here, we talk about being authentic. How can you deny your true self? Now in a sense, there is some good in authenticity. Jesus had a lot to say about hypocrisy, However, the problem comes with when we think that every feeling is something that must be lived out. It starts with assuming that man is innately good, per Rousseau, and we still have the effects.

Today, the biggest way we are seeing this is the LGBTQ movement. This is one of the biggest results of feelings being given the ultimate authority. Tolerance would never have worked for the LGBTQ movement because that would be seen as putting someone in a lesser state and denying their personhood. After all, if your identity is based on your sexual desires and behavior, then to question those is to question your humanity. If people have this mindset, love the sinner and hate the sin does not work.

The self has been redefined, but now we are going further. The family is being redefined. All of this is done as we keep looking inside ourselves to find out who we are. Emotions and feelings become the main moving forces in our lives and they are to be obeyed and treated as the main authority. Our courts are moving more and more this way and the path won’t stop.

We are becoming a society where the goal is to always feel good and be happy. This has even happened in the churches. Don’t like your church? Go to another one. Now some Catholics and Orthodox readers might say “We don’t have that problem” but they do as well. Church is a choice and the Catholic and the Orthodox have to be given a reason to keep coming to church. They can just as easily stay home.

As our culture becomes more and more of a self-focused culture, the church is going to be on the hard end of matters as we return more and more to Roman Empire times and the state assumes control. For all of us, the challenge will likely come sometime. Will we risk getting fired because we won’t use a certain person’s pronouns of choice? Will we have our businesses be destroyed because we refuse to bake a cake for a “gay wedding” ceremony?

This is definitely a book where I say to get it and read it and learn it. The one who told me about this book said they read it once every year. I could very well start that myself as well.

This book is also a smaller version of a bigger book of his on this topic, so it is also accessible for everyone. It would be one of the best books for a church book study to do. Bottom line: Get this book and learn it.

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

On The Military on Pride Month

What is the purpose of a military? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

“And when the SJW mob passes through your area, when they see the rainbow flag on your house or business, they will pass over, but if they do not see the rainbow flag on your house and business, they will unleash their fury to get you cancelled and they will show no mercy.”

Such is what I have on my wall for what a friend of mine calls “Liberal Passover.” I get up and pretty much everywhere I go I see Pride flags. I didn’t even see this much for Black History Month or for Women’s History or Asian History or even for my own Autism Awareness Month. Mine is the one I least expect to see it for. After all, we don’t go and form mobs and shut down people that refuse to endorse us.

However, this is the first year I have seen the U.S. Military take this route and put up a statement for Pride Month on the first of the month.

So I did a search. Maybe I just missed something. I looked for Autism Awareness Month and the U.S. military. Nothing was coming up showing they celebrated it. I then replaced Autism Awareness with Pride Month and boom, it was right there immediately. Well, maybe people on the spectrum can’t serve. That was false also. There have been and are people on the spectrum in the military.

Now in a sense, I don’t really want the military to get involved. The military is not about raising awareness for causes necessarily. The military just needs to purely be America first. That is no longer happening.

My great concern with this? If the military can’t stand up to the SJW front, how on Earth can I expect them to stand up to our enemies? I can definitely assure you that the Russian and Chinese militaries are not spending their time making sure they’re supporting Pride Month or using proper pronouns or anything like that.

It’s also disappointing to see that if this is the case with Pride, then apparently the military is saying that the cause of Pride matters more than all those other causes, and this is part of the danger when it becomes political. Many of us on the right are very concerned that our military is becoming weaker because SJW causes are more important than the real point of the military, that of winning wars.

Do I still support the military? At the time, yes, but I am concerned about our future with this. I am more and more concerned that we are becoming a nation that is focusing on feelings instead of focusing on reality. I’m especially thinking about this after a great recommendation from someone that I read the book Strange New World. I have just recently started it and I am reading it on Audible and I definitely plan to review it as I am concerned about the Strange New World we find ourselves in.

I really hope the military returns to winning wars instead of political acceptance.

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

Selling Yourself Short

How much is a girl worth? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Yesterday, I watched a YouTube video talking about the problems girls are having on OnlyFans where no one is subscribing to them. There was a girl in England who was complaining that she couldn’t get someone to subscribe to her page for just two pounds. The girl was saying she was actually worth a million.

Yes. Yes, she is.

The medieval philosophers would have said she is worth more than the universe. Every human being is. Unfortunately, many of us today don’t see it and since OnlyFans is about women selling themselves, I will be addressing them. In relationships, women are usually the ones who control the market. Men for the most part do the chasing and the women decide if they are interested or not.

Unfortunately, when women decide that they have to go out all there to get male attention, they are really selling themselves short and if it doesn’t work out that way, then it is extremely dehumanizing. After all, if a guy doesn’t want to pay just a small amount to see you, what are you to think about yourself? However, while that is sad, isn’t it sad that a woman places herself that low to begin with?

We live in a day and age where if a man wants to see a nude woman, he doesn’t really have to pay for that. Any man right now could easily access such things on his computer. You could turn on streaming services that you have and probably find that soon as well.

When you treat beauty that is personal and intimate as if it is common, it only lowers it. This girl is selling herself for two pounds. She could consider saying she is worth a lifetime commitment from a good man who makes the deal and follows through upfront. This will also show the man who is truly interested in a relationship with her.

Ladies. Just because a man will pay to see nudes of you, it doesn’t mean that he’s interested in you. It means that he is a man with normal male urges. Some men will just constantly give in to those urges and just see every relationship as another fix. Some men will believe those urges need to be saved and controlled and will give them to someone in a committed marriage. Of course, there are various areas all in between, but to the woman, it’s up to you to decide how valuable you see yourself.

Many women will also give in to the advances of a man thinking that that will keep the relationship. I’m not saying it always happens, but too many times, the guy decides to leave shortly after that. It’s one more great reason to save yourself for making that full commitment upfront.

Ladies. Please do not sell yourself short to anyone whatsoever. Don’t put a price tag on a website for your beauty. You are worth so much more. Treat yourself like it.

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