Book Plunge: Discerning the Voice of God Chapter 5

Is God a baritone or a tenor? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Shirer begins this section with Scripture. Yay! Let’s see what she says!

Psalm 62:11-12

11 One thing God has spoken,
    two things I have heard:

Wait. That’s only one verse you quoted! Indeed, because that’s all that Shirer quotes. Now why would she do that? Let’s look at the rest of it and see if we can figure it out.

“Power belongs to you, God,
12     and with you, Lord, is unfailing love”;
and, “You reward everyone
    according to what they have done.”

If you look at the passage, this is not about God speaking to an individual person. It’s about the Psalmist trusting in what he has heard about God in his difficulty. This is the way Hebrews talk, but it looks like Shirer doesn’t care about that. Just look for where it says God has spoken and throw a personal idea on to it.

She says Revelation 3:20 can be applied as a call to salvation, but these are people who already trust in Jesus. Fair enough, but at the same time, she misses the point. She says it is about persistence, and it certainly is, but the persistence is apparently that God is trying to speak to you individualistically and you need to hear it.

Which is why this is in a letter read to churches from someone taking the role of a prophet. Got it.

Never think that the circumstances in your life have nothing to do with God’s will. They have everything to do with it! When you’re seeking His guidance, you should always reflect on the events the Lord is allowing to occur in your life. Persistent, internal inklings matched by external confirmation is often the way God directs believers into His will.

Shirer, Priscilla. Discerning the Voice of God: How to Recognize When He Speaks (pp. 81-82). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

This piece of advice is backed by the Scripture of….

Oh wait. There’s nothing here.

Nope. Shirer thinks that every single bit of events in your life is arranged in a specific way because God is trying to give you a specific message. I am not denying that God works everything according to His will, but I am against trying to approach reality with a decoder ring.

Here’s my suggestion. Try to interpret Scripture as what God is telling you instead of your circumstances. For your circumstances, see how according to Romans 8, they can be used for your good if you love the Lord. They’re not about God trying to give you a message.

She then quotes Ecclesiastes 5:1 asking where this verse had been hiding all her life. I dealt with it before, but I will do so again.

Guard your steps when you go to the house of God. Go near to listen rather than to offer the sacrifice of fools, who do not know that they do wrong.

This is about going to a worship service or to offer a sacrifice and to be stingy with your words. Heed what your priest says. Speak too much and you can bring judgment on yourself. If this was about God speaking individually to you, why do you need to go to the House of God? Can’t He do that just as well anywhere else?

Even when you hear incorrectly, God knows your heart well, and He honors the person whose sincere desire is to know and do His will even in their imperfection. “If anyone’s will is to do God’s will, he will know whether the teaching is from God” (John 7:17 ESV).

Shirer, Priscilla. Discerning the Voice of God: How to Recognize When He Speaks (p. 88). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

So if you think you heard from God and you heard wrong, God knows you are trying to do right. Look! There’s a Scripture to back it!

Except this is Jesus talking about Himself and how people can know His teaching is from God and that He is from God.

How reliable can a teaching be if you have to mishandle Scripture so often to get to it?

So in the end, I still see nothing here. Next time, Shirer will tell us how God communicates impersonally. We’ll pick this up next week.

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

Book Plunge: Discerning the Voice of God Chapter 4

How does God speak? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I was pleased to see this short little part toward the start of this chapter from Shirer:

Often the Bible doesn’t tell us exactly how He chose to speak, only that “the Lord spoke,” and those who heard Him weren’t in any doubt about who was talking or what He was saying. Whether He spoke to reveal His character or to give specific direction, His voice was clear. Unmistakable. From the very beginning of time, and no matter what the method He chose, He has spoken in ways that could be plainly understood, revealing His deep desire to make sure that communication between Himself and His children was possible.

Shirer, Priscilla. Discerning the Voice of God: How to Recognize When He Speaks (p. 64). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Yes. In the past, God spoke in these ways. People knew for the most part that it was Him speaking. We don’t know how, but it was clear and it was specific. Now, He has upgraded to…

Speaking through emotions, feelings, and an inner voice that is hard to discern from the voice of the devil or your own voice, but that’s how He’s chosen to speak…

Of course, we all know this is Scriptural. As Hebrews 1 says, in the past, God spoke to our fathers in various ways but in these last days, He has chosen to speak to us by the voice of the Holy Spirit…

Wait a second…

It says He has chosen to speak by His Son.

Maybe Shirer missed that part.

Instead, she says that after the Son departed, the Father has spoken by His Spirit and has attempted to reveal God to every saint who has been willing to listen. We can certainly agree that the Spirit is to be a fixture in our lives. We cannot agree on the idea that He has been trying to speak throughout history.

When the early church held their councils on the doctrine of Christ, we do not see anyone standing up and saying “God has told me that XYZ” and that that settles everything.

We do not see Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas claiming divine revelation for the knowledge they shared with the church.

We do not see Martin Luther standing up and saying “God has told me that the RCC has it wrong!”

If Shirer wants to say this has been going on throughout church history, it would have been nice to, you know, quote church history.

Shirer later says:

But consider this. While we often wish we had what the people of God enjoyed in Old Testament days, I think they probably would have preferred what we have today—the special blessing of the Holy Spirit. They had no choice but to rely on prophets and visible signs since they did not experience the Holy Spirit as fully as we do in this age of the church. We possess a blessing they could only hope for—direct, personal contact with the living God. Even though His voice may sometimes be hard to discern without careful, deliberate discipline and self-denial, it’s a gift that ages past would have envied. That’s why we find the psalmist pleading, “Don’t take your Holy Spirit from me” (Psalm 51:11 NLT).

Shirer, Priscilla. Discerning the Voice of God: How to Recognize When He Speaks (p. 68). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

I do not doubt they would have wanted the Spirit that we have today, but not for the same reason. They would relish knowing that by that, they were part of the covenant people of God. They were certainly not thinking about individualistic questions. For instance, most of their marriages were arranged before they were even born. It’s also so fascinating that Shirer misses that in the past the message was clear, but today, it isn’t.

To top it off, this is not what is being talked about in Psalm 51. In Psalm 51, David has realized his sin with Bathsheba and is in repentance. He is not saying “Please don’t take away my source of guidance.” Nathan was the one who told him what God wanted him to do. He was saying “Do not take salvation from me.” It’s a shame that Shirer takes the giver of salvation and turns Him into personal guidance.

Shirer later tells a story about going to a new Bible study and the leader saying to her that he was just thinking so much about her and that God had given him this message. She told Shirer she believes God wants to do something new in her life. She needs to embrace it and then referenced Isaiah 43 with saying to forget the things of the past. Something new is coming.

Problems. First off, this is so generic it could apply to anyone and how do we know this guy didn’t say this to most every new person who came in? Who wouldn’t want to hear a message like this? The problem with generic messages is like reading your horoscope and taking it seriously. You can interpret anything as a fulfillment.

Second, this isn’t even what Isaiah 43 is about. Isaiah 43 is not about forgetting an individual’s hard past, as wise as that might be at times. (Not only that, but I think when the Bible speaks about forgetting and remembering, I think it is not about mental states but focus. To forget the past is to not dwell on it and to remember is to dwell on something again.) God is saying in Isaiah 43, remember all that stuff I did when I led you out of Egypt? You haven’t seen anything yet! Forget that stuff of the past! Don’t focus on that! I’m about to do something even greater!”

But for Shirer, who cares about context as long as it makes you feel better? The problem with this kind of material is that it really only serves to feed the ego. “Dear reader! Look at this story! God had a personal message for me!” One wonders what happens to all the people who are going through hard times and saying “Wonderful. Where’s my personal message?”

She also quotes Romans 8:14 saying all who are led by the Spirit are the sons of God. Paul is not saying “All who are guided in personal decision making are the sons of God.” The leading by the Spirit is righteous living in contrast to sinful living. Just look at the surrounding context.

12 Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation—but it is not to the flesh, to live according to it. 13 For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.

14 For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. 15 The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” 16 The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. 17 Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.

This is not about decision-making aside from the decision of living holy lives or not. This is about being children of God. This is about putting to death wicked desires. You don’t need a personal message from the Holy Spirit to know about that.

Next time, Shirer will start looking at how to recognize the voice of God. We’ll see if she has anything concrete.

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

Book Plunge: Discerning the Voice of God Chapter 3

What role do desires play to Shirer? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

When students come to the seminary post office and don’t know what they plan to do with their lives entirely, I start with a simple question. “What do you want to do?” Most people start off with “What do you feel like God is leading you to do?” Since I reject that premise, I instead go with what their desires are. What really drives them? What makes them want to get out of bed everyday?

People like Shirer instead think you have to get into some blueprint written before time for you that is known as “God’s will for your life” and you must find out what this will is. I use a simple illustration to show how this is problematic. If God has a will for your life, and that includes marriage, don’t you think that that would include the person you marry?

So you marry someone and lo and behold, you have not married the one person that was right for you.

Well, now the person you married hasn’t either, and then the two people that you married can’t marry the person that was right for them. Now you have four people married to the wrong person. Now, those four people can’t marry the right people and so it goes on and on and on.

By someone making the wrong decision, the plan is screwed up forever.

No. Here’s the deal. Scripture gives you criteria. Must be a Christian. Must be the opposite sex. (Although that is included in the definition of marriage.) Can’t be a close family member. Then it can give you criteria you should consider like being able to care for one’s self, handling money well, good moral character, etc.

Then, here’s the hard part, the question is “What kind of spouse will you be?” That’s where the walk gets hardest.

When the Bible talks about knowing God’s will, it is more often than not talking about knowing God’s moral will in the kind of life you are to live. It is not talking about knowing a blueprint plan.

Shirer goes to Philippians 2:12-13:

Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, 13 for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.

For her, this is saying that God has a will for you to find. You will be transformed in your emotions, mind, and will, to fulfill it. The problem is that first off, the letter is written to a community and not individuals. I contend that this passage is saying that the community will come together to follow the will of God. Note: I also think it’s wrong for Christians to use Philippians 1:6 individualistically also. Second, the will is as I said earlier, the moral will. These people are to know how to live holy lives.

Immersing ourselves in the Word, actively listening for the Spirit’s voice within, watching for His activity around us, and living in obedience to His directives—these are the ways we participate with the Lord’s work in us.

Shirer, Priscilla. Discerning the Voice of God: How to Recognize When He Speaks (p. 54). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Now silly me, I would just say to read and study Scripture and know it better and heed what it says. Shirer goes to the idea of looking within, which I still contend is a dangerous idea. I am also cautious about watching for His activity around us. There are some things that are certainly often the work of God, such as miracles done specifically in response to Christian prayer. For many other day-to-day activities, I recommend not trying to divine the voice of God.

My ex-wife would wonder about her dreams. She wanted to know what God was trying to tell her at times. I told her it would be far better for her if she studied Scripture, which she knew came from God, and less time studying dreams, which could be just from eating too much pizza the night before.

She also turns to Psalm 46:10, the “Be still and know that I am God” passage and realized she needed to stop her personal strivings. She got a personal feeling of peace and knew the Lord was working to remove her burden. The problem is this verse is not about personal feeling. It’s about the city being at war and trying to hold on and God telling them to stop what they’re doing. Watch. He’s going to win the battle for them. Trust in Him instead.

She talks about wondering if a man she had considered a friend should be someone she should marry. Then as she prayed about this, she started developing feelings for him. That must be the sign that she was to marry this person!

Look. I don’t want anything bad to happen to Shirer’s marriage. I think many marriages today start off this way, but it is not because it was a divine appointment. It’s because the couples work at it. Many marriages start out with strong feelings and end in divorce. You do not want to base a lifelong covenant on feelings alone.

She also says Paul struggled in Romans 7. I have written about this prior. This is more of Shirer reading her individualism into the text.

The next chapter asks what’s better than a burning bush. We’ll see how badly Shirer treats this topic next time.

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

Book Plunge: Discerning the Voice of God Chapter 2

How do you allegedly listen to God? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Oh boy. Here we go again. One valuable part of all this is the ways that Shirer is upfront. She says that if you want to hear the voice of God, you have to listen within.

I know Shirer is not part of the New Age movement, but when I see something like that, that’s what I start thinking immediately. It is saying that God speaks to us somehow internally. Where do you see this in Scripture? Nowhere. It is an idea that we read into the text.

She then points to conscience. The problem is she has an understanding of conscience foreign to the Scripture. For them, the conscience wasn’t in the individual, but in the group. You acted in a way to make sure you did not violate the standards of the group. Ancient Pinnochio would not have understood “Let your conscience be your guide.” He would have understood “Let their conscience be your guide.”

Shirer goes further and says the conscience becomes the mechanism God uses to guide you in the direction He wants you to go. The problem is that our “internal voices” can be highly fallible, and yet Shirer wants us to think that something in them is infallible. This can only set us up for neuroses. Instead, we have guides in Scripture telling us how to live and how to make wise decisions. That is the infallible guide that exists.

Not too far after this, Shirer will talk about how you feel inside when God is speaking. Again, making decisions like this based on how you feel is highly dangerous. There is no Scripture that says how you feel is an indication that God is trying to tell you something. Your feelings can come from any number of places.

One indication she says is a green light of peace and permission. Unfortunately, there are many times you can make a decision you should make and you won’t feel peace. Many people are awfully scared on their wedding days. I sure was. I also am right now preparing for PhD work and I have been told that everyone who walks into their first class in this area struggles with impostor syndrome.

Feeling peace about a decision is not a sign that God has approved that decision. This is taught nowhere in Scripture. You can feel great making the wrong decision and you can feel terrible making the right decision.

As we get closer to the end of this chapter, Shirer tells us to turn our thoughts inwardly as we seek God and about the inner leading of the Holy Spirit. This is a disaster area. If you want to know the mind of God, go to Scripture. If you are a Christian and you think Scripture is insufficient, that tells more about you than it does about the Scripture.

She ends telling us that the next time we’re shopping and we hear a voice say “No”, it’s probably God. The next time we want to eat something more and we hear a voice say “No”, it’s probably God. This is a mindset that will keep Christians infantile. God is not meant to be your babysitter or nanny. He’s not supposed to tell you to keep under budget or to watch your waistline. If you say you are an adult, but you need God to tell you to do basic things, I have to wonder if you’re really an adult.

Next time, we’ll look at desire.

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

Book Plunge: Discerning The Voice of God Chapter 1

Should we expect to hear the voice of God? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

My boss at the Post Office was surprised when I told her that hearing the voice of God is not a part of normative Christian living. It hasn’t been for centuries. It’s only been in more recent times that Christians have been convinced they are hearing the voice of God and that this is what everyone is supposed to do.

Someday, I would like to know where it started.

So when I’m browsing Kindle books and I see one about hearing the voice of God, I figure for the sake of argument, I’ll get it. It’s by Priscilla Shirer and it’s called Discerning The Voice of God. Who knows? Maybe it will give me something substantial on this.

Instead, I saw more and more how dangerous this idea is.

One of the big problems you find is that when you go through this book, you’ll find you learn a lot about the author. You won’t really learn a lot about God. She regularly says God was telling her XYZ and yet, we just have to take her word for it. But hey, having someone say they heard from God has never led to any problems before has it?

Did I mention I’m reading a book on Islam now and I’m reading something on Mormonism?

Now to be fair, Shirer would say that they disagree with Scripture, so they’re false, and I agree, but the point is they do claim to hear from God.

Early on, we are told by Shirer that God wants to tell her things, but she’s too busy talking to listen.

Remember all those times in the Bible when the people are speaking so much that they can’t hear the voice of God?

Neither do I.

At this point, she has a sidebar referencing Ezekiel 3:10. (At least it looks like a sidebar on Kindle.)

And he said to me, “Son of man, listen carefully and take to heart all the words I speak to you.

Let me just state something obvious.

You are not Ezekiel.

This is one of the problems with this kind of thinking. People who hold this always look and say “Look at Abraham or Moses or Habakkuk.” Yes. Those people heard from God. You’re not them. We always look and say “If I’m anyone in Scripture, I’m one of the great people.” No. You and I are far more likely to not be Moses but to be Joe Israelite wandering around the wilderness just trying to survive.

She says Isaiah 55:3 tells us to incline our ears to Him. Indeed, it does, but notice that of those ears, only one set of ears was hearing directly from God. Those were Isaiah’s.

She says to go to the house of God to listen is found in Ecclesiastes 5:1. Indeed, it is, but these were not individualists. These were people going to hear the word of God being given out by the priest. They were essentially going to church to hear a sermon. If God was always speaking anyway like Shirer thinks, why do you need to go to the house of God? If it’s a sermon, then it’s clear why you go to the house of God.

She says that it shows up fifteen times that if anyone has ears to hear the message, they must listen. Indeed! But that’s also given in Revelation and the message they are hearing is a letter that was written. It is not a personal message to them.

Seriously, with this bad of interpretation, I wouldn’t blame a reader if they stopped the book there. I would hope most would. I’m not such. I keep going to make sure and because I read bad books so you won’t have to.

The next reference is James 1:25:

But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.

Forgetting what they heard refers to the Law. It does not refer to a private revelation. Most people could not read so how will they know what the Scriptures say? Through hearing.

Later in the chapter, Shirer says she often feels led to get down and prostrate before God. Look. If you want to worship God that way, go ahead. I have no problem, but where on Earth does Scripture tell us that God leads us by our feelings? So many churches treat it like a staple and an obvious given. If we are people who claim to be Sola Scriptura, we’d better back what we say with Scripture.

Next she talks about how prayer used to be one way and she felt no closer to God at the end.

Let me stress this so much because so many people struggle with this.

Your relationship with God is not dependent on your feelings.

You can feel God is mad at you or feel He is pleased with you and all that means is that that is what you think at the time. There have been plenty of people who have had joy in doing what is wrong because of their feelings. There have been plenty of people who have suffered for doing something that is not wrong but they were convinced it was. All of it was based on feelings.

You can be feeling miserable and still be alright with God. Being a Christian does mean living on cloud nine all the time. Every single one of us will be sad at times. If the very Son of God could not avoid sadness on this Earth, I would be extremely arrogant to think I can.

Then she says Paul wrote about praying with his mind as well as with his spirit in 1 Cor. 14:15.

And?

That means that Paul was telling you to stop and listen to see what God says back?

Notice no one does that in Scripture. When Jesus gives us the Lord’s prayer, nowhere does He say “Now stop and hear what God says to you.” Paul wrote plenty on prayer. He never told us to listen to hear a voice from God in prayer.

She talks about Bible study and how perhaps God brings a Scripture to mind and is leading me there. It’s like God is a gamemaster dropping hints for you or something. Could it just be that you thought of that passage yourself because you know Scripture well? The danger with saying God led you to a passage is that you are starting to treat yourself as infallible. After all, if God did it, who are we as mere mortals to question that?

But it comes down to, did God do that, and if all you have is a strong feeling, that’s not enough.

She then quotes 1 Cor. 2:11 with saying the thoughts of God no one knows but the Spirit of God.

Again, I wonder “Why are you quoting this? How does this make your case?”

This quote shows up later:

First, it is “me and Him.” I come to prayer conscious of myself, my need, my desires. I pour these out to God. Second, prayer becomes “Him and me.” Gradually I become more conscious of the presence of God than of myself. Then it is only “Him.” God’s presence arrests me, captivates me, warms me, works on me. —Stephen Verney

Shirer, Priscilla. Discerning the Voice of God: How to Recognize When He Speaks (p. 33). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.

I did some looking and I don’t know much about it, but he did write a book called Into the New Age. It will take some further looking to see if that is just a bad title or if he was in that movement to some extent. It wouldn’t surprise me because the above statement is honestly pantheism. I could be misunderstanding it to be fair, but I find it a highly concerning quote.

Edited to add: After writing this, I did speak to Marcia Montenegro who is my go-to person on the New Age movement and I am quoting her from our Facebook conversation with permission:

Actually, what you quoted from Shirer I’ve heard from others like John Mark Comer, I think, and maybe Tyler Staton, and other contemplatives. The Trappist monk Keating said you can’t think of God when you’re praying and the goal is that there is no subject-object distinction. I’ve been trying to warn about this stuff for over 20 years but hardly anyone paid attention. Now the contemplative stuff is all over the church. Shirer was influenced by Jan Johnson who likes Rohr. Johnson also is the president of the Dallas Willard Foundation. They are all on the same page which I consider to be a counterfeit of Christianity. So I would call it is more Contemplative than New Age because New Agers don’t really pray. Some Christians who are really into New Age beliefs might pray but prayer makes no sense in the New Age. So I would call this Contemplative. I’ll look up Verney.

I then asked that many Christians might think contemplative prayer sounds good. We are to pray and we should contemplate on our prayers. Right? So what’s the problem? She has several articles on the topic and recommended this as a start.

We now return to what I originally wrote.

The favorite passage is always “My sheep hear my voice” in John 10. Question. Who in the audience that day heard Jesus speaking?

Answer: Everyone.

So all of them were Christians?

No.

The voice is the call to salvation and it is not a literal voice. It is a hideous misuse of Scripture to take the call to salvation and turn it into personal guidance everyday.

That’s all we have for this chapter. We’ll see what happens in later chapters.

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

How To Select Books?

What’s the process for choosing a book? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I walked into my therapy session with a book finishing a paragraph and closing it up.

“How do you choose what books to get?” my therapist asks.

Now that’s a good question.

I was reading a book by Christopher Rufo on how the left took over pretty much everything. I told my therapist that in reading about Herbert Marcuse, who I had heard a lot about before, in the book, I decided to read some of Marcuse’s books. That was a pretty simple process to follow. I just went online and looked for the books at the best prices I could find and ordered them.

Many times I go to Amazon, but sometimes I also go through EBay and through Thriftbooks. (You can use my special code there and we can both get blessed.) I try to look for the cheapest price and when I do, I take into account shipping. Yes, I do order more books than I have time to read. It’s not addiction if it’s books.

So how do I choose from there?

Recently, I had a student at the seminary ask me about Black Hebrew Israelites. I had to say that this is a movement I haven’t looked at much. I went to Amazon to see what books I could find on it. At this point, I usually try to skip the people that are responding to the movement. I go instead straight to the source to find which one I think is best. Not knowing the authors in this area, I would look in a google search and see if the person I found was someone who was a writer in that area. When I had my choice, I purchased it and plan to start it tomorrow.

Also, it’s not always possible, but generally, I prefer to get an academically published book over a self-published one. I say that knowing I have self-published books on the internet. Academic publishers tend to have higher standards as they put their reputation behind what they publish.

Also, talking to friends and family is a great place. If someone mentions a book and it sounds interesting, look it up. If you can’t buy it then, put it on a wish list so you can remember it.

If you are reading a book or as I sometimes do, listening to a book, and they mention another book, look it up. Sometimes in a book I own, I will highlight a book so I can make sure I can come back to it later. Good books will often tend to lead to other good books.

Also, if you have a Kindle, you can subscribe to several email lists. With these, you will get notified of discount books that are on sale every day and also some books that are outright free. That way, if a book I buy isn’t great, at least I didn’t spend a lot on it.

Those are some of my tips with buying books. Check out the author, the publisher, and see what your friends recommend.

Happy reading!

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

 

Opening Thoughts on School Shootings

What causes school shootings? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I have been doing a research paper for class on the alleged link between video games and violence and what better place to look than what people always point to, school shootings. I have read a number of books on the topic and plan to until I finish the paper. Right now, I want to share the conclusions I have come to thus far.

First off, too often, we make our solutions way too simplistic. Violence has always been a part of mankind. It’s not going anywhere until Jesus returns. Also, the genie can’t be put back in the bottle. Whatever we might think of things like video games, television, movies, and social media, they are here at least for the long term.

It’s foolish to think “If we eliminate XYZ, then there will be no more school shootings.” No. That’s just looking for a scapegoat. I also think there’s no hard and fast rule in these cases. People are different and you can’t push XYZ buttons and guarantee that someone is going to be a school shooter. Kids can grow up in the same household and turn out radically different.

Getting to my thinking on this, I have discussed this with professors here including the counseling one who thinks this is quite valid. My theory is that there are three levels of interaction. If you don’t have level 1, 2 and 3 are more likely to affect you. If you don’t have 1 and 2, 3 is more likely to affect you.

Level 1 is the family and worldview unit a kid grows up with. Note a kid can have seemingly good parents and still have a problem if he thinks his parents don’t understand him. (I use he, but it’s interesting to point out that these shooters have been male consistently anyway.) On the other hand, a broken family unit is a problem. Mitchell, one of the Jonesboro shooters, had a biological father who was horrible.

This will also include the worldview that students grow up with. No. Bringing them to church every Sunday is no guarantee. Michael, who did his shooting at Heath High School in Paducah was apparently a churchgoing boy with his family. Mental illness was found to be a factor in that shooting later on, but there were other signs that were missed. (Read the book Rampage on this end.)

Kids don’t just need to be raised in the church, but have Christianity lived out with them and explained why it matters. There is a gold mine of information to help children with holy living if they will just see to it. We can’t just say it’s the responsibility of the pastor and youth pastor.

That is level 1.

Level 2 is the kid’s outside community. This includes what he goes through at school and how his peers and teachers see him. A common theme in some shootings has been that athletes in schools often get special treatment, something I wrote about as a journalist for my high school newspaper.

This includes bullying as well. A major problem I find with the stop bullying approach is we focus on the bullies. The best place to focus is on building up the good children since the bad ones don’t care about breaking the rules anyway. I also do not mean the self-esteem movement. I consider that by and large garbage. The best way for Christian kids to see themselves is to learn to embrace their identity in Christ.

There is a downside kids today have that many of us didn’t. Normally, bullying ended at school. Now with social media, it can last much longer. Parents. Please do not get young children on social media. Also, watch what they are doing.

Level 2 doesn’t just include the school. It can include church life as well as life in the community. Do your neighbors know your children? What about their friends’ parents?

Finally, we get to level 3 and this is individual media they consume. Frankly, if violent media were the problem, there would be a whole lot more violence in the world than there is. Not only that, it would be ridiculous to blanket condemn all violence. Not all violence is wrong. Kids need stories where evil gets defeated in the end. The Bible itself has a lot of violence in it.

If a child has a good understanding on levels 1 and 2, then there will be far less cause for worry on level 3. Also parents, as a gamer, I suspect your children if they are like I was would absolutely love it if you played a game with them. If you want to understand their games, really seek to understand them. If a child thinks their parents are really interested in their hobbies, it will build up a greater connection with them.

Notice in this I have also said nothing about things like gun control. I personally don’t think more laws will fix the problem. I also think another contributor that is far more influential is that the media bombards us with information about school shootings. This can easily generate fame for the shooters and the next one will want to be even more destructive for even more fame. I personally think we shouldn’t even share the names of school shooters and if we have to name them something, give them some embarrassing name. When we call a mysterious mass murderer the Zodiac Killer, that sounds mysterious. Give them a shameful name of some sort. Give a name that makes people laugh at them.

Anyway, those are my initial thoughts. Now I open it up to you. What do you think about school shootings and what can be done about them?

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

Book Plunge: Liberty and the Things of God

What do I think of Robert Louis Wilken’s book? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

The subtitle of this book is the Christian Origins of Religious Freedom. At the start, Christianity was not treated well by the Romans. Tertullian was the first to actively speak about the freedom of religion in his apology for the Christians. (For those who don’t know, an apology is a defense in the ancient world. He is not saying the Christians had done anything wrong.)

As Tertullian says in chapter 24 of the work:

Let one man worship God, another Jupiter; let one lift suppliant hands to the heavens, another to the altar of Fides; let one — if you choose to take this view of it — count in prayer the clouds, and another the ceiling panels; let one consecrate his own life to his God, and another that of a goat. For see that you do not give a further ground for the charge of irreligion, by taking away religious liberty, and forbidding free choice of deity, so that I may no longer worship according to my inclination, but am compelled to worship against it. Not even a human being would care to have unwilling homage rendered him; and so the very Egyptians have been permitted the legal use of their ridiculous superstition, liberty to make gods of birds and beasts, nay, to condemn to death any one who kills a god of their sort. Every province even, and every city, has its god.

And thus, we have the first argument for freedom of religion, fifteen centuries before the Constitution.

Wilken also has an interesting section on conscience. The ancients would not find it sensical to say with Jiminy Cricket, “Let your conscience be your guide.” We read it individually in a passage like Romans 2. The ancients would have read it collectively. It was the idea that your actions had moral significance and could be judged by others. It comes from two words, scientia and con, meaning knowledge with.

By the time we get to the Reformation, this has changed in that conscience is more of an internal guide. (Now also, we often say it can be the voice of God, which is a much bigger problem.) So can one say that Luther was wrong when he invoked conscience in making his defense? If you do, you have to be aware that several Catholics at the time also invoked conscience for their own freedom to worship as they saw fit. Luther, like the Catholics of his time, was to some extent a product of his time.

From the Reformation on then, we have countless battles and controversies going on. The church used to be a solidifying factor of stability, but what happens when the church itself has divisions in its ranks? This is where the majority of the book looks. The main idea is often that there are two swords, the sword of the spiritual kingdom and the sword of the physical world and the kings have no jurisdiction on the former.

This is also why it’s such a big deal when the King of England breaks away and starts the church of England. All of a sudden, you have a king who is in charge of both spiritual and physical matters. What is to be done then?

When you read through the book, you also see that in all of this, both sides did awful things to each other. You will grimace at some of the ways that Catholics treated Protestants. It will be just as hard to read of the ways that Protestants treated Catholics. The freedom of religion that those of us in America today have is something we dare not take for granted.

While Wilken goes through many thinkers of the time in looking at the topic of freedom of religion, I have one major criticism of the book. I would have at least liked to have seen one chapter dedicated to the American experiment. How did our Founding Fathers take all of these and make freedom of religion so important in our country? What has been the result? Are we in danger of losing that freedom? (By the way, the answer to that last question is yes.)

If you like history and political ideas, this is a worthwhile book to read. Many times, people in our times look at where we are and think that it’s obvious that all should have this position today. It rarely is. Books like Wilken’s remind us that there were a lot of hard questions to ask along the way.

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

Game Plunge: Legend of Zelda — Echoes of Wisdom

Is the new Zelda worth it? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Seeing as I have a YouTube channel called Gaming Theologian (And I’m looking for a video editor if anyone’s interested) and seeing as my planned PhD route is the study of video games and Christianity, I figured I would write on the newest Zelda. So is it fun? Is it worth it?

I have played the Zelda franchise from the beginning. I got the original Legend of Zelda back in 1988 for Christmas and I have played the overwhelming majority of games in the series. (I have missed some of the handheld ones) Link was always a hero of mine growing up. Interestingly, there’s a lot of Christian symbolism in the games and even a picture you can find of Link kneeling before a cross.

So yeah, it could be canonical that Link is a Christian.

This is the first game in the series where Zelda is the protagonist. On the timeline, it looks as if this could be the first game in the series as your character and the kingdom doesn’t seem to know who the hero wearing the green tunic is. He does get captured and Zelda sets out to rescue him.

I don’t consider it woke to say that a female is the hero. This has been part of a long tradition of characters like Samus Aran and Lara Croft. That being said, I am also pleased that nothing in the game indicated a “girl boss” persona. There was no indication that Zelda was an incredible character simply because she was a female. There was nothing to indicate Link was a complete moron because he’s a male. As it turns out, Link is still a hero in many ways through the game, but I won’t say how it all works out because spoilers.

This is refreshing because Nintendo could have easily gone the whole DEI route and I’m pleased that they didn’t. Zelda also has a unique style in that she doesn’t fight directly. She’s joined by a companion called Tri who enables her to create echoes of things she has seen and enemies she has defeated, starting with easy enemies beaten by throwing rocks, and then learning to summon those to beat greater enemies.

Hence, the game focuses much more on strategy than it does on combat. There are plenty of puzzles that Zelda has to solve and a wide variety of echoes she can use on her journey meaning the player has much to think through. I strived to use as little of the internet as I could and I only looked up one thing the whole time.

Is it fun? Definitely. There are plenty of side quests and other adventures you can go on and plenty of characters you can meet that will remind you of other games in the series. This one seems to me most similar to Link to the Past. I also saw some events happened that got me considering ties to the sequel to that, A Link Between Worlds.

So if you’re planning on getting it for your “kids” for Christmas, go ahead. I’m sure they’ll enjoy it. Oh. Make sure that they do get a chance to play it and it’s not just you the whole time.

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

Book Plunge: Cruel Logic

Can logic work against you? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Brian Godawa sent me a copy of his book Cruel Logic and I just recently got around to reading it. I am hesitant to review a fiction book since this is a thriller and there could be spoilers accidentally leaked out even if I have no desire. Either way, you have been warned. Let’s dive in.

Overall, there are three main plots going on and they all in their own way intersect. The main one in the book is a serial killer who was a philosophy professor who has escaped and is on a killing spree. His main game is catching former colleagues and seeing if they are willing to live out the philosophies they teach with a simple question. “Give me a good reason why I shouldn’t kill you.”

The second involves a professor at the university who knows the killer very well and his working with one of his students and a detective to track down the killer. In the meantime, as a professor of Western Civilization, he is getting into trouble with the faculty at the seminary. After all, his class is one promoting racism, the patriarchy, colonialism, capitalism, etc.

Finally, a young Christian who has come to the university for his first semester with his parents concerned about what impact the university will have on his faith. The student encounters new ideas he has not heard of before. He also comes to learn about DEI and how that works on a college campus.

Godawa has also one his research and cites sources for claims he makes about DEI. Also, for those thinking this will be a perfectly wholesome Christian novel, you are wrong. This is not a bedtime story to read to your children. This one has sex, violence, and profanity, not because Godawa is glorifying in sinful activities, but because he is trying to paint a real picture of what goes on in a college campus. At times, you could forget that this is a Christian novel, which is also a good thing.

There are also numerous twists and turns. There were times when I was going through the book when I was thinking, “This is all entertaining, but it seems too predictable. I think I know exactly what will happen next.” Most every time, I was wrong. Godawa has events happen that you will not expect.

Having said that, I think this is an important novel for parents especially to read who are thinking of sending their kids off to college. You need to know what is going on at a college campus and what your children can expect to see happen when they are there. Godawa’s book should be an eye-opener.

I definitely hope that something like this comes to the screen at some time as this would be a fascinating story to watch, though once again, I am sure it will not be kid-friendly. I have recommended some of my politically aware friends to read this book. Now I pass that suggestion on to all of you.

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