Book Plunge: Irreligion Chapter 5

Was the fool right or was Anselm? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I don’t find the ontological argument convincing.

I know a lot of you will disagree with that one, and that’s okay. Many Thomists don’t. I know there are a few that do, but I am not one of them.

That being said, I still will say something when someone else gets an argument wrong, but that’s the curious thing. While Paulos blew it on the ontological argument, it seems he got the ontological argument correct in its formulation. He even goes into the history of it with Anselm and with the disagreement from Gaunilo.

It left me wondering why it is he got this argument right in its presentation and yet got the cosmological argument so incredibly wrong?

It has been said that most every philosopher in history who studies claims about theism since Anselm has had something to say about the ontological argument. I am not surprised it shows up on something like this. I am also not surprised that Paulos punts to David Hume again.

Anyway, let’s look at one long argument Paulos has.

If one assumes that God is both omnipotent and omniscient, an obvious contradiction arises. Being omniscient, God knows everything that will happen; He can predict the future trajectory of every snowflake, the sprouting of every blade of grass, and the deeds of every human being, as well as all of His own actions. But being omnipotent, He can act in any way and do anything He wants, including behaving in ways different from those He’d predicted, making His expectations uncertain and fallible. He thus can’t be both omnipotent and omniscient.

Paulos, John Allen. Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (p. 41). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

Uhhhh. Why?

You see, if God knows everything, the only reason He would change what He will do in the future (Although I do think there is no past or future with God, I hope you understand what I am saying) is because He gets new information. He can’t because He is omniscient. So why would He change what He is going to do? That makes Him a being in time anyway.

It really amazes me that these new atheist types talk so much about science and reason and asking big questions and finding answers. It sounds so incredible to them. They want to go out there with their curiosity and find the answers to what they ask!

Except for in religion.

Then they just drop a question, don’t bother to see what anyone has said about it for 2,000+ years, and then walk away celebrating like they made a major accomplishment. Then if a Christian comes along and asks what they think is a hard question for something like evolution, the atheist turns and mocks them for not doing their research to find the answer.

My saying about atheists is that too many of them honor reason and evidence with their lips, but their heads are far from them.

Still, we have only scratched the surface with how much worse Paulos will get.

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

Book Plunge: Irreligion Chapter 4

Do improbable events just happen all the time? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

In this chapter, Paulos is taking on the anthropic principle. Now as readers know, I’m not really a science guy so I’m not going to try to approach it from that angle. Seeing as he is a mathematician, I am going to try to give Paulos the benefit of the doubt on the math, despite I think I have great reason to distrust him, which we will get to later.

At the start, Paulos says this:

1. The values of physical constants, the matterantimatter imbalance, and various other physical laws are necessary for human beings to exist.

2. Human beings exist.

3. The physics must have been fine-tuned to the constants’ values to make us possible.

4. Therefore the fine-tuner, God, exists.

Paulos, John Allen. Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (p. 28). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

Little problem at the start. For one, this is quite simplistic. Second, does Paulos interact with any scientists who advocate this? No. There are secular scientists as well as Christian ones who have written on this. Where is their work cited? Not here.

He does at least mention Lee Smolin, who hypothesizes a theory of universes breaking off from other universes, a sort of Darwinian theory of a multiverse. The problem is even if this is true, how does this help? I am trying to explain one universe and you are suddenly going to say there are countless universes. It’s like a police officer trying to explain one dead body only to be told that there are 500 more out there and he thinks, “Oh. Well, I guess we can close up and go home then.”

From here, he goes into something called a Doomsday argument. Honestly, I’m looking at this and wondering what this has to do with the price of tea in China. He says that this kind of thinking makes more sense than various end-times scenarios held by many religious people. Perhaps it does, but Paulos assumes that all Christians hold to those kinds of end-times scenarios.

So let’s review. Has Paulos really interacted with the science behind this argument? Not for a moment. Has he looked at the philosophy used by some philosophers as well to explain why our existing in this time and space is unlikely? Of course, he hasn’t. Instead, Paulos has decided to punt to the subject of math and I suspect hope that in the end, none of us will notice that he has not interacted with any of the relevant material on the anthropic principle, and keep in mind I say this as someone who is not scientifically inclined and thus does not use the argument.

Paulos is unfortunately the kind of atheist who likes to do magic where he thinks he can say a few words and wave away a problem with his position. If these kinds of shallow answers seem convincing to him, that tells me more about his atheism than it does about his arguments. Atheists who want to take their worldview seriously should distance themselves from Paulos and encourage other atheists to do the same.

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

Book Plunge: Irreligion Chapter 3

Can God be funny? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

This is an odd chapter. It’s dealing with the idea of pseudoscience and there was very little relevant to our purposes. As it is, I only highlighted one section in this chapter, and it’s not because I disagree with it, but because it is something worth commenting on.

Although the above isn’t particularly amusing, it isn’t reverential, either, and does suggest a couple of questions about religion and humor. Why is the notion of a fundamentalist comedian funny, or at least quite odd? Why does the idea of God as a comedian seem more appealing (at least to me) than the traditional view of God? Why does solemnity tend to infect almost all discussions of religion? Certainly an inability or reluctance to stand outside one’s preferred framework is part of the answer. So is an intolerance for tentativeness and whimsy. The incongruity necessary for appreciating humor is only recognizable with an open mind and fresh perspective. (A famous “argument” for an abstract proposition symbolized by p comes to mind. It’s ascribed to the philosopher Sidney Morgenbesser and illustrates, or maybe mocks, this fluid capriciousness. “So if not p, what? q maybe?”)

Paulos, John Allen. Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (pp. 25-26). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

Do we ever think about Jesus laughing?

Why do we think of the Puritans as boring and stuck-up people?

Why do we associate negativity with words like “sermon” and “preach.”?

I have noticed that I think comedy is dying in the West, but I honestly think it’s because of leftism gaining a hold politically. If it gets to the point where you are not allowed to make jokes about X because they’re politically incorrect, we are closer to tyranny. My recommendation is to let the jokes be made and let the market decide.

Months ago I said that we shouldn’t protect people from jokes about X and I did have someone say that we should definitely allow comedians to make jokes about kids with cancer. My thought to something like that is, yes. Let them make jokes. Then let us silence them not by violent means, but in the market of public ideas. We don’t buy their books or listen to their shows or watch their videos or anything like that. That is the way freedom works. Freedom of speech is there not to protect speech we like, but speech we don’t like.

Christians need to be funny. We should get the most joy out of life compared to anyone else. Sometimes when we are told we believe some bizarre things, we should accept it. Yes. They are wild. What is even funnier about how wild they are, is that they’re also true.

I agree with Paulos to a point here. I do think we should treat God as holy, but that does not mean as boring. We are meant to enjoy Him and enjoy His creation. He created the world to be enjoyed and we are creatures that have the ability to laugh because we find something funny. We should use it.

We’ll continue next time.

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

Book Plunge: Irreligion Chapter 2

Is there design? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

One of the problems atheists have with design arguments is they think all of them are meant to be scientific arguments. If anything, the classical teleological arguments are more arguments of order. There is science in the sense that if you do A, B will follow, That does not require any of our complex science today.

It could be that Paulos gets closer to the idea when he starts out chapter 2 this way.

The trees swaying in the breeze, the gentle hills and valleys, the lakes teeming with fish, are all beautifully exquisite. How could there not be a God?

Paulos, John Allen. Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (p. 10). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

Actually, this is a good argument I think. Beauty is a powerful pointer to God. These are all material objects but there is something that transcends the matter somehow. It is interesting that normally atheists deny objective beauty.

Unfortunately, Paulos throws out any serious study of the argument by saying its best proponent is probably Paley. The problem is while Paley’s argument has a point to it, it is not at all something someone like Aquinas or Aristotle would have in mind by teleology. For those two, you could just have something like an iceberg floating in water and you could have the argument.

To make matters worse, Paulos then just goes on to argue Richard Dawkins’s Boeing 747 argument about how the creator has to be more complex. Why? Paulos I am sure holds to evolutionary theory which says the complexity we have today arose from simpler lifeforms. Why does he change it when it comes to God?

Not only that, but classically, Christianity has held that God is absolutely simple. (Of course, that would require that Paulos actually studied what he talked about.) I look at the argument and think that Paulos doesn’t know what he’s talking about immediately. Even if he did disagree with that approach, as even some Christians do, he should at least mention some Christians hold to divine simplicity.

But let’s look at how this goes for Paulos.

Suppose he claims complex things need a designer.

If so, then we have to ask how we have anything here since evolution is not a designer. If the reply is that not all complex things need a designer, then one could hypothetically say that God is also one of those things. I find that weak, but if Paulos can beg a question, why not the rest of us?

Paulos also tries to use the free market as an example of something without an intelligent designer, but as my friend David Marshall said in his Amazon review of the book:

Really bizarre is his illustration of how the Free Market accomplishes all kinds of complex planning without a Planner. Paulos goes on and on about this, citing Adam Smith and thinking he has scored a great point by cleverly citing an icon of conservatism. This is a “stunningly obvious” example of evolution working by itself, without need for a designer.

But of course, the free market involves millions of intelligent designers. Maybe that doesn’t matter to Paulos’ illustration, but that, too, ought to be “stunningly obvious,” and again, he ought not to just ignore this stunningly obvious fact.

So far, Paulos’s book is just awful.

But oh dear reader, it’s going to get much worse.

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

 

 

Book Plunge: Irreligion Chapter 1

Does Paulos have the cosmological argument right? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

So I started reading another atheist book. This one is by a mathematician named John Allen Paulos. A mathematician? They’re usually smart guys. Surely this one will be better than a lot of atheist material.

Hope swings eternal.

And then comes crashing right back down again.

Let’s start at the beginning, with the cosmological argument.

As I saw he was starting with the first cause, I was uttering that silent hope of “Please don’t say it. Please don’t say it. Please don’t say it.”

He said it.

1. Everything has a cause, or perhaps many causes.

2. Nothing is its own cause.

3. Causal chains can’t go on forever.

4. So there has to be a first cause.

5. That first cause is God, who therefore exists.

Paulos, John Allen. Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (pp. 3-4). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

At this point, and we’re only on page 4, I know this is someone who I can’t take seriously. It will get even worse in this book, but I will save that for when we get there. When we get there, you will know I have no respect for Paulos whatsoever.

For now, let’s note that no intellectual has ever made the ridiculous argument that Paulos put forward. Plato, Aristotle, Anselm, Plotinus, Augustine, Leibniz, Aquinas, Descartes, Plantinga, Craig, etc. I don’t care who you are talking about. This is not the argument. I don’t care what an ignorant pastor said from the pulpit one time. I care about what the actual argument is.

This is covered in great detail by Edward Feser here.

The figure with the dunce cap in the article is fitting for Paulos. Feser, after pointing out how no one makes this argument and even professional philosophers arguing against the cosmological argument get it wrong says:

And that, I submit, is the reason why the stupid “Everything has a cause” argument – a complete fabrication, an urban legend, something no philosopher has ever defended – perpetually haunts the debate over the cosmological argument.  It gives atheists an easy target, and a way rhetorically to make even their most sophisticated opponents seem silly and not worth bothering with.  It‘s a slimy debating trick, nothing more – a shameless exercise in what I have elsewhere called “meta-sophistry.”  (I make no judgment about whether Le Poidevin’s or Dennett’s sleaziness was deliberate.  But that they should know better is beyond question.)

Getting back to the dunce, I mean Paulos, he says:

A slight variation of this is the so-called cosmological argument, which dates back to Aristotle and depends on the Big Bang theory of the origins of the universe (or some primitive precursor to it). It states that whatever has a beginning must have a cause and since the universe is thought to have a beginning, it must have a cause.

Paulos, John Allen. Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (p. 4). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

Except Aristotle doesn’t think this. Aristotle thought the universe was eternal. Even the Christian Aquinas said that reason alone cannot establish that the universe had a beginning. He believed it did, but that was because he saw that in Scripture. Consider Aristotle first in book 8 of his Physics:

(Further, how can there be any ‘before’ and ‘after’ without the existence of time? Or how can there be any time without the existence of motion? If, then, time is the number of motion or itself a kind of motion, it follows that, if there is always time, motion must also be eternal. But so far as time is concerned we see that all with one exception are in agreement in saying that it is uncreated: in fact, it is just this that enables Democritus to show that all things cannot have had a becoming: for time, he says, is uncreated. Plato alone asserts the creation of time, saying that it had a becoming together with the universe, the universe according to him having had a becoming. Now since time cannot exist and is unthinkable apart from the moment, and the moment a kind of middle-point, uniting as it does in itself both a beginning and an end, a beginning of future time and an end of past time, it follows that there must always be time: for the extremity of the last period of time that we take must be found in some moment, since time contains no point of contact for us except the moment. Therefore, since the moment is both a beginning and an end, there must always be time on both sides of it. But if this is true of time, it is evident that it must also be true of motion, time being a kind of affection of motion.)

While he did hold to an unmoved mover, he did believe that there was something that was always in motion. That would be the universe. There’s a reason Paulos never quotes anyone who makes the ridiculous argument he claims is the first cause argument.

As for Aquinas:

n the contrary, The articles of faith cannot be proved demonstratively, because faith is of things “that appear not” (Hebrews 11:1). But that God is the Creator of the world: hence that the world began, is an article of faith; for we say, “I believe in one God,” etc. And again, Gregory says (Hom. i in Ezech.), that Moses prophesied of the past, saying, “In the beginning God created heaven and earth”: in which words the newness of the world is stated. Therefore the newness of the world is known only by revelation; and therefore it cannot be proved demonstratively.

That the world had a beginning cannot be proved demonstratively.

Hint Paulos. If you want to argue against a position, it helps to learn what that position is.

Of course, Paulos says “Why can’t the universe be the first cause?” ignoring that Aristotle and Aquinas would both reply because it is in motion and its motion needs to be dependent on something outside of itself that is not in motion. Asking “What caused God?” is the usual question which of course, Paulos never consulted these philosophers on to see what they said. It’s more like “Gotcha! Bet you never thought of that one, huh?!”

No. They did. I have something on this here.

He also goes on to go after Augustine for his answer to this question was “He was creating Hell for people who ask questions like that.” Never mind that that was Carthaginian humor Augustine engaged in. Never mind also that Augustine was the one who said it was a nonsense question because God created time. Also, never mind that Paulos gives no sources. Paulos also says that placing God outside of space and time would preclude divine intervention in worldly affairs. Why? Because I suppose. Paulos doesn’t tell us.

He also quotes Hume saying that A causes B means that whenever we have seen A, we have seen it followed by the effect of B. It seems odd Paulos would say this. If this is the case, we have no basis to trust science. Today, water boils at 212 degrees Fahrenheit. Maybe tomorrow it will be 130 degrees. Maybe tomorrow at that temperature it will turn into pink lemonade. Who knows?

As for natural laws, Paulos says either we need to know why God chose the laws the way that He did or if He did choose them, then God Himself is subject to those laws. Why? Again, we don’t know. Paulos sits on his atheist throne and speaks ex cathedra and hopes all his little atheist minions will bow down and say “Brilliant insight!” Those of us who enjoy thinking ask “Why?”

He then quotes Leibniz as saying:

The sufficient reason for the universe, he stated, “is a necessary Being bearing the reason for its existence within itself.” The necessary being is God, the first cause, who caused or brought about not only the physical world but also somehow Himself.

Paulos, John Allen. Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (p. 8). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

No. Leibniz does not believe God brought about Himself.

But whatever helps you sleep at night.

Based on this, it’s pretty clear why Paulos is an atheist. He does not understand the arguments and he does not read books that disagree with him. Sad, really.

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

The Story Is Just Beginning

What can we learn the day after Christmas? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Those who know my PhD study area is on video games and Christianity might be shocked to learn that in many ways, video games are secondary to the study. What is primary is studying stories. Not stories as in particular stories, but in general. What makes a story a story and why are we drawn to them?

Christmas is a story, but it is also a true story. While we celebrate the day, let’s remember that on that day, a war started. The forces of evil decided to do whatever they could to prevent the mission of the Son of God in the world. Jesus is the greatest protagonist of all time, but at the start of the story, He was dependent on His parents.

Sure. An angel could have whisked him and them somewhere safe to escape Herod, but that didn’t happen. An angel instead just told Joseph to run to Egypt. The responsibility was on Joseph to lead his family. Like it or not, Joseph was caught up in a cosmic battle at that point. He was a player in a far greater story than we can imagine.

Not only that, but the story is going on today. Remember how the book of Acts starts? It starts after the resurrection of Jesus and right before the ascension. What does it cover? Everything Jesus BEGAN to do and teach. In other words, the story is still the story of Jesus ongoing and we are playing a part in it.

As long as the return of Christ hasn’t happened, we are still in that story. The story continues past Easter up into the present. You and I are caught up in that battle still between good and evil and we have to choose with every action that we do which side we will serve.

Many of us might think we don’t play a significant role in the story, but actually, we do to some extent. Every one of us is shaping everyone around us and preparing the next generation. What can be a small move can actually have grand repercussions down the line that we cannot even fathom.

Yet we are told to play our part in this. Even in the coming of Jesus, ordinary human beings were counted on to make sure that Jesus’s mission went according to plan. Jesus also picked ordinary humans. He has to. There aren’t any others available.

I wrote an article when Final Fantasy XV came out and I started playing it. In this one, I noted that you go through a city, and people are going about their daily lives. You can hear the background chatter when you walk through places with a lot of people. Leave the city and soldiers from the empire randomly airdrop on you and your party in an attempt to eliminate you and you have to fight for your lives.

I think that’s where we are. Most of the world is engaged in day-to-day matters and are not aware that there is a war going on. They are then taken unaware by the enemy. We do know that there is a war going on. We also are told that we are to fight in this war.

Christmas is one of the major turning points in the story. The book of Acts is still going on. The book ends saying the gospel reached across the world unhindered. It is still reaching today. That’s not up to angels still. It’s up to you and I.

Let’s do it.

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

 

Are You Memucan?

Who? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

You might be surprised to learn Esther is my favorite book in the Bible. As a young man going through the text (I am unsure if I had hit my teenage years yet), I got to this book and knew nothing about it. As I started reading it, I could not put it down. It was like reading a modern adventure novel. I read through the whole thing in one sitting.

Something else fascinating about the book is that it never mentions God one time. That’s actually an added appeal to me. It’s not because I am opposed to God obviously, but because by this, you get to truly see how God is working behind the scenes. You know that some of the events that just seem to happen, are really the work of a divine hand.

I also wrote yesterday on your part in the story of God. At night, I go through a book of the Bible and read just one verse. This allows me to think on the text slowly. Right now, it is Esther.

If you had come to me knowing that I love the book of Esther and asked me who Memucan was, I would not have known. Who? Is that a video game boss or something like that?

No. He actually is a character in the book of Esther. At the start of the book, Queen Vashti refuses to do what King Xerxes bids so he has her banished from his presence. Then the question is asked what is to be done. Memucan comes up with the idea for this.

He gives a case why this is so and the king likes the idea and has Vashti banished. Thus, the king has no queen and it is because of the idea of Memucan. After all of this, what happens to him?

Nothing. His name never shows up in the rest of the book or anywhere else in Scripture. He is one of those bit characters that unless you were looking for him, you would not know he was there. He leaves the story just as quickly as he enters.

But it is a good thing that he entered it.

You see, if Memucan had never entered the story, then we would never have had the search for someone else to be the bride of Xerxes. We would have never had Esther be chosen then and she would never be queen. When Haman decides to go after all the Jewish people, that has nothing to do with what happened with Vashti earlier. Had Esther not been the queen, there is nothing that she could have done to stop it. It could be that help would come from another place, but we don’t know what would have happened. All we know is what did happen.

It depended in part on Memucan.

For many people, if they read the book of Esther today, they would say “I’m Esther!” or “I’m Mordecai!” No. More likely than not, if you’re anyone, you’ll be Memucan. It will not be a part that has a lot of glory here to it, but it is an essential part anyway. It is in part because of Memucan that the Jewish people were saved.

But really, shouldn’t any part you play in God’s story be a part that you are honored to play?

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

Christmas Can Be Hard

The joyful time of year is not always joyful for everyone. Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and talk about it.

Holidays can be hard times. It’s my understanding that the idea that suicide increases during the holidays is a myth, but that does not mean that it is not difficult for some. For some people, it is really the absence that is most experienced.

For me, at least for my first Christmas after my divorce, I was with my family. I can’t imagine how hard it would be for those who weren’t with anyone. That being said, while I was thankful to not be alone, it was different. I used to share Christmas with my wife. Now I didn’t. That was a specter that was haunting me.

Recently driving here in New Orleans, there was bumper-to-bumper traffic on the interstate and when I got to the point of slow down, I saw that there was a horrible car accident involving multiple cars. I couldn’t help but wonder what Christmas would be like that year for them. Our pastor spoke of someone who went overseas in missionary work and his wife contracted a disease and died recently. What will the holidays be like?

We would like to think the internet has made us more connected, and in some ways, it can be so, but in others, it isn’t. I know many people online better than I do those in real life. I notice in my apartment complex on campus that many times, we all come home and then just stay to ourselves.

My encouragement to you is that if you have space for someone, reach out to someone else who you think could be lonely this Christmas. Give them a gift, but the best gift you can give them is presence. Let them enjoy getting to spend Christmas with another person.

Also, try to understand what they would like before having someone come over to see you. For instance, if you invited me over and you wanted it to be a big Christmas feast, I would likely sit there wondering when the whole thing was going to end. If I was invited over for a family game night where we just played games together, it would be incredibly memorable.

Christmas should be a time to share with the least of these. That includes those who are divorced and widowed. These are people who used to have someone they shared their lives with and now there is no one that they share with, at least to that level. Speaking as a divorced person, I can easily say that loneliness is a struggle that I experience every day.

Today, after all the fun is done, try to find someone you can reach out to and share the love of Christmas with them. If they would like a feast, bring them over a nice meal. If they would prefer a game night instead, invite them to join in with you and play some games together. You might even form a lasting relationship with them and start a tradition that your children can learn from.

Merry Christmas.

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

 

Was The World Waiting?

Was the world expecting the Messiah? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Sometimes we hear people say, and I might have said it in the past, that when Jesus came to Earth, the world was waiting for Him. There was a universal language, a universal travel system, and people were searching for hope. It sounds good to say, but as I pondered it, I wondered if that was true.

Even if we look at the Jewish people at the time, we don’t see them saying “Look! The 70 weeks of Daniel are almost over! The Messiah is coming!” Of course, they were expecting a Messiah, but there wasn’t an effort done to pin down when the date would be. When the wise men come to Herod, there is no urgency on the part of the Jewish people to go and see Jesus. There is no cause of celebration among them. If anything, we read the opposite, that they were troubled.

Jesus came into a world He wanted to save, but that doesn’t mean He came into a world that wanted Him.

Jesus came into a world where He experienced more rejection and suffering than any of us have. Even as an infant, He could not escape it as His family had to flee to keep Him from being killed. At this point, the only “crime” He was guilty of was being born.

Not only that, but for any of us, when we experience suffering, it is not as if we are perfectly innocent people. Jesus is the only one who there was no justice in what was done to Him by the people. He is the one who should have been received with the most love, but instead, He was condemned with the most hate.

Not much has changed in 2,000 years.

Of course, Christians can be jerks just as much as anyone else can, but also we live in a world where we are hated for the positions that we hold today. If you defend marriage as a man and a woman exclusively, then you are a bigot. If you hold that human life is sacred from the moment of conception and should not be killed in the womb, then you hate women. Since we hold to the biblical miracles, we are also obviously anti-science as well.

We, like our Lord before us, are not welcome in the world.

Yet like our Lord before us, we are called to love this world and give ourselves for the cause of its salvation if need be. We are also called to love those who persecute us. We should consider that if Jesus was willing to go to the cross for those He loved, surely we are willing to be called a name for those same people.

Christmas should be a time to stop and remember not just that Jesus came, but why He came. By all means, have fun and celebrate with family and friends, but also remember Jesus came into a warzone. We still live in one.

The world didn’t want Him. It doesn’t want us.

Yet Jesus gave Himself for the world. We have the same responsibility to save the world He loves.

Let’s do it.

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

A Woman’s Worth

How should a woman view herself? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

“I don’t understand why she’s living the way she is. She seems to just get all of her joy from being with different men. What could I say to her?”

So someone asked me about someone they knew. It’s easy to say speak of such a person in negative terms, but I don’t want to go that route. The condemnation route from Christians is already known.

I thought back in reflecting on this question to a time I went to visit some friends from church when I lived in Georgia and their daughter came down to talk to me in the midst of a group conversation. She told me about a guy she was with and I asked if they were going to get married. She said not yet because he said he wanted to travel first.

Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!

If a guy is really interested in a girl, you have to wonder why he would put off wanting to be with her until after he “travels.” Besides, wouldn’t it be better to have a wife and go on those travels with someone? Wouldn’t the relationship come before one’s fun?

The parents were thrilled this was happening. I made it clear to this young lady that the guy was not really committed to her. She was good for some entertainment, but if he was committed to her, she would come first.

So we come now to the case of a young woman who is sleeping with men thinking that that is where her joy comes from. Is she seeking value? Is she seeking love? Does she think this is her purpose?

Now none of this is to say women shouldn’t enjoy sex. They absolutely should. However, like any good thing that can be enjoyed, it should be enjoyed in the proper place and context. It’s fine to enjoy a sweet every now and then, but if you make sweets your whole diet, you will suffer for it.

So what I would say to this woman is what is she worth?

If a woman wants to know if a man she is dating is really interested in her, there’s a simple way. Don’t have sex. Yes. I know that sounds revolutionary, but hear me out on this.

Men tend to be very self-sufficient. If it wasn’t for sex and also children, we would not really bother pursuing a romantic relationship. It’s not that we don’t care, but you can marry a girl and then she can divorce you and the state will back her and you could lose half of what you have and wind up paying alimony and child support for life.

What would be ideal for a man? A sexual relationship with a woman where he doesn’t have to risk everything. In other words, one where he doesn’t have to make a commitment. He can leave any time he wants and there’s nothing the woman can do about it. If he doesn’t want her to have children and protection fails, just get an abortion.

It’s a shame the way the feminist model has played right into the hands of the men they have such a problem with.

Suppose though a woman wants to be more than just a toy to him. Suppose she does want a commitment. Suppose she does want someone she can count on? Suppose she wants someone she can grow old with.

Then don’t have sex.

And yes, women are in charge of that one.

The question of when a woman has sex shows how much a man has to do to get her. A simple date? Three dates? Dinner and a movie? A month? Three months? A year? Engagement?

What if you say you have to make a lifelong commitment and it can only be me until death do us part?

If the man says “No,” then he’s not really interested in you. That’s good. You’ve eliminated a poser. However, if he says “Deal,” and then he works and works to get to that point for you, you know how much worth you have in his eyes. He is willing to go the extra mile and if a man really loves a woman, he wants to pursue her. He will climb mountains for the chance to demonstrate his commitment to her.

Not only that, but the man wins in the end to. A man gets a relationship that he has fought for. He gets to know that he has proven himself worthy of the girl he is with, although ask him later and he still will say he married a girl out of his league. The woman gets the lifelong relationship. She also in the end gets the sex too, just like the man does. In the end, both parties win. Both parties put the relationship first and then both parties get all of the benefits.

As it is, in the end, women are the big losers in the dating game today. Men don’t have to commit to them. They don’t have to step up and be actual men. They can come to the woman when they want to have some fun and then it’s off to do whatever they want to do.

Women deserve better. They deserve the best. They deserve a man, not a boy.

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