And Then Jesus Showed Up

Where do we go from here? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Like several of you, I’m quite depressed today. Let me tell a little bit about where I’m coming from.

My birthday is September 19, 1980. That means politically, that when I was born, Carter was finishing his term as president. I grew up then in the Reagan years. My dad worked for USA Today and my mother worked at an Elementary school. I also have an older sister. Now, she lives in Nashville and is trying to make it in the music business. (She goes by the name of Angela Ross over there if anyone is interested in finding her music.) My family is conservative and I grew up conservative, but they said nothing about politics really growing up. They decided to let me make my own decisions. I did grow up in church, and I did make my faith my own at the age of 11. Today, chances are both of my parents would say I know more about both politics and the matters of the church due to a large amount of reading.

We did have financial struggles growing up. My father lost his job when the company was being transferred seeing as my sister was about to graduate. Things have been more difficult since then. The reason I got to go to college was because of disability (Asperger’s). Vocational Rehabilitation was willing to help me. I did graduate and was the first in my family in a long time to have a college degree.

I went on to SES to pursue a Master’s in Philosophy. While there, I got married to Allie, who as readers know is the daughter of Mike Licona and his wife. I bring that up because about a year after that, a controversy broke out over if my father-in-law was denying Inerrancy or not. Readers know I spent much time writing up on that topic. I don’t let anyone mess with my family. It did mean that my education there was pretty much done on my own part as well. I was sure I’d developed some opposition.

Also, three months before my wedding, I had lost my job. It was later that I got a part-time position at a Wal-Mart which later became a job on the night shift. Unfortunately, that job was too stressing for me. Before too long, I got fired, and that has been a black mark on me. I had appealed to managers and told them about the difficulties of the job beforehand, but they did not listen. My wife and I moved back to Knoxville and we live in my grandmother’s old house. (She passed away in November of 2010) We are right next door to my parents. We depend highly on our families to make it as no job has come in yet and donations are down to Deeper Waters. (Keep in mind that any reader who is interested in our newsletter can leave a comment and let me know. Also, we have a page on Facebook that you can like and support)

Seeing all of this, I was hoping for a conservative win last night. I’ve seen the economy dropping and people are not hiring. Any time I have gone on Careerbuilder or Monster, I have been disappointed. My skills are in the area of ministry and there are many jobs I cannot do and do not have the credentials for. Meanwhile, in my field, I see several in the church who have no business being in that position.

So last night, it looks like much of our path got cemented. Not only that, for the first time, marriage lost in some states. We dropped our guard. So the questions are two.

How did we get here?

What do we do now?

Let’s start with the first.

I have several speculations on how it began, but I’ll list a few points.

When the Reformation began, which I think needed to be done, there were still unintended consequences. People tend to move on a pendulum and make great swings from one side to the other. We had trust in the authority of the church and then all of a sudden, that authority was gone. The sad reality is that often at those times some can think “Well what else have we been misled about?” Unfortunately, few people were willing to look for the answers that needed to come. This led to the coming of the Enlightenment. In many ways, our societies were acting like rebellious teenagers. We didn’t like what our parents did so we would grow up and rebel against them.

Like rebels, we sought to see how much we could do on our own. Let’s try to make it without God. Let’s see what we can do. It’s my stance that this led to a greater emphasis on the material world to exclude the world of God. What could be done then? Science is pretty much eventually the only answer. In saying this, it does not mean that science is bad. It most certainly is not. It just means that our society had a wrong focus. We started thinking of science without philosophy or sound metaphysics. After all, to do those could get us into the realm of the divine again.

Next came evolution.

The church made a big blunder here. Let’s realize something immediately at the outset.

Evolution is either true or false.

That’s not too difficult is it?

Evolution can be proven true or false by science.

That’s also not too difficult is it?

The problem is we too quickly took evolution into the religious field. If there’s something I’ve seen lately, it’s been the danger of the Inerrancy of interpretation. Now let’s suppose a macroevolutionary theory would contradict our reading of Genesis. Does that mean that Genesis is wrong? Not necessarily. It means that our interpretation is wrong and what we have to ask is “Is our interpretation correct?” Note that to establish that, we can also use literary methods to study the text.

In fact, recent studies are showing that our interpretation could be wrong. Some works on this include John Walton’s “The Lost World of Genesis One” and Henri Blocher’s “In The Beginning.” Does this mean they’re right automatically? No. But like anything else, we need to just say “Bring forward your case and let’s examine it.” Too often, the church has had a habit of deciding the case before the evidence has come in. This can only cost us.

What our actions did made it a case of science vs. the Bible instead of realizing that if we believe the Bible is true, then if something is true scientifically, it will contradict the Bible. Instead of firing shots, we should have said “Okay. We’ll wait and see what the evidence is on your side.” If the Bible is true and Inerrant, nothing in science can go against it. If we believed in the Inerrancy of Scripture, there would be no need to worry. We could wait and see what happens.

Note also that Darwin’s argument was meant to counter Paley, who had a design argument different from that which has been the case historically. The fifth way of Aquinas, for instance, is not about the internal make-up of objects, but about things working for a final cause, the cause that Aristotle said was the most important cause of all. Darwin dealt with an argument that is not the one the church should have been relying on to begin with.

Note also that neither argument is metaphysical.

When we made a battle go on between science and religion, some decided to return the favor. This includes the works of Draper and A.D. White whose works have largely been found to be lacking in substance, but at the time, people were believing them simply because they did not do the background work and check up on what was said. This is always a problem for us. In fact, it’s a problem for anyone.

Well what happens if we think the external world is no longer our friend?

That’s right! We go to the internal world. Christianity then became a system that is meant to give us good feelings and became a more personal belief system than one that described the world as it is. Religion slowly becomes a personal preference just like a favorite ice cream flavor. We were in fact doing Stephen Jay Gould’s NOMA long before he came up with it. There was an emphasis on internalization to demonstrate that Christianity is true. In other words, we became anti-intellectuals. We withdrew from the world.

And this rift has grown. The church has become less effective in its approach. People have grown more individualistic and more focused on what is going on internally.

Those of us watching last night should see the results of this. A lot of Christians were saying that we cannot support a Mormon. If that is the case, then why did we not have a Christian out there? Could it be because we have so isolated ourselves from the world that we are no longer raising up good Christians in the area of politics? How is it we are to be salt and light in the world and think that we cannot directly influence the governments of our world?

Instead, we became a society that was interested in what can be done for us, or rather for each of us, me. Claims were not studied. Few people have really read anything on economics. People often go by what is going on with them personally instead of looking at the big picture of all the world. We should not be surprised if the world has a self-focus. We should be extremely disappointed if the church is doing the same thing.

As we were sitting here today watching a movie with Allie trying to lift up my spirits, Allie’s Mom called her. I had the phone on speaker as I was sitting here, which is what I usually do, and she wanted to speak to Allie. She told Allie that she was thankful for her. Why? Because she’s seen too many who are compromising with the world. They are looking out for themselves and the great example she had was the marriage debate and how it turned out in some states last night. She was thankful Allie had not compromised and agreed to meet the world halfway. I’m thankful for that as well. She did her own research to decide, something a lot of people don’t do.

That gets us into what we do from here, the second question.

Mike Licona wrote a piece that made it onto Parchment and Pen. I will have a link to it at the end. One term showed up in there. Before the claim, let me show what he said.

“In the first century, the Roman Empire was, for most people, a brutal place to live. Rome ruled with an iron fist and crushed everyone who challenged it and even many who didn’t. An overwhelming majority of those under Roman rule lived below the poverty level.”

This is a hopeless situation. What happened then? Mike Licona goes on to say:

“And then Jesus showed up.”

That changed everything. The world has been going up because Jesus showed up. Jesus turned everything around. Today, we are asking what is going on in our world. Where is Jesus?

He’s not showing up.

Now does this mean I expect Jesus to physically return to save us? Well he will eventually, I know, but I’m not saying that that was the only solution and until that happens, we give up. No. Not at all. There is one way Jesus can show up and that is the way He has not been showing up.

That is, we have not been showing up.

We are to be the body of Jesus, and how are we showing Jesus? We are not. We are withdrawing into ourselves when Jesus went out into the world and confronted others who disagreed. He raised up disciples who went forward with his message. The Roman Empire was a hopeless situation and unlike us, the Christians could not say “We’ll wait until the next election comes about and then we’ll get our Christian choice for emperor on the ballot and we’ll make sure he gets the vote.”

What hope did they have? The government was against them. Heck. It was persecuting them regularly. The other people were looking down on them. They were in the minority. They were a new group and they could not look to past precedent. None of them could say “We can look at the past Christians hundreds of years ago and see what they did.” What did they do? They first off made the arguments that they needed to make. The apologists were busy constantly.

Not every Christian could do this of course, but several were then busy being what the apologists proclaimed. When plague struck, Christians would often care for those no one else would. The lives of Christians were a constant testimony to the world around them. It was unbelievable to people that they were so willing to die for the faith that they were claiming. As Tertullian said “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.”

The Christians were salt and light in their world. Intellectual grounds were being manned and people were living for Christ. Today, we are living for ourselves and not willing to face any discomfort. Meanwhile, in other places, the church is being persecuted and we are not really taking that into consideration. In fact, in those places, the church there is often praying for us to be persecuted. Why? Because that will get us going.

Many of us talk about dying for Christ. That’s a thought we might have to consider. Some of us could have to do that, and it is not a pleasant thought to think about. There is a great danger in some of us that are so quick to say we’d be willing to die for Christ. Let’s keep in mind that the head apostle also made the same claim and later denied that he even knew who Jesus was. There was a lot of talk, but there was no substance behind it. (Kind of like politicians and preachers today and it is a great fault of us that we fall for style instead of substance)

Dying for Christ is a moment and it’s done. Of course, there could be exceptions where a death is drawn out, but if anything is longer than that, it is life itself. Few of us talk about living for Christ. We cannot fault the world for acting the way it does. Yes. It’s sin. Yes. God will hold to account. The big failure last night was not on the part of the world. We cannot expect the world to live like Christians when Christians are living like the world. If there is no difference between how we live and how they live, why should we be surprised?

What that means for us is that we need a revolution. No. I am not talking about a physical battle. I do not oppose the right to bear arms. If we are in physical danger at times, I think physical fighting is justified, but it is not the final solution to our problems. We need a revolution of the mind. We need the church to stand up and say “We are here and we will not be silent any longer.”

We also need to avoid this fear we have of offending people. The world is more than ready to do what it can to the church and we think that if we bend over and do nothing, that the world will just stop what it’s doing. It won’t. We’ve got a long track record to show that. We cannot expect to live as non-Christians and have the world come to embrace the Christian message. Christ did not raise up the church to be reactive. He raised it up to be proactive.

The church is supposed to be a force that the gates of Hades will not stand against. Gates are defensive. We are to be offensive. Do we believe that we are to be that force?

The church is supposed to be yeast filling through the dough. We are to spread our influence. Do we believe that?

The church is supposed to be a mustard seed growing into a tree to fill the Earth. Do we believe that?

If we believe that, then we realize that there is no real “Game Over.” (Yes. I grew up a gamer as well and still am.) We just have to start playing a better game. We should realize that the person behind the game knows that in the end, the good guys always win. We can realize that our world is a really dark place, but that a dark place is a place where heroes can rise up. Right now, the church needs that. It needs us to stand up and lead the charge.

If you’re reading this blog and a Christian, I’m going to assume you’re a Christian who at least somewhat takes your faith seriously. Do it more so. Do your part. It could be tempting to lie down and surrender and I will say part of me is having a “Why bother?” attitude. What I write I write not only for you, but also for myself. This is not the case for us. The early church won the battle overall, and they did not have America to do it with. They didn’t even have free elections.

We can’t guarantee America will last. Great empires do fall. The gospel will not fall. If we believe that, we must live it. We must stand up to our age and say “No. You will not marginalize and bully us. You will not trample on us. You will not deny us our right to speak. We will get our message out. We will live our message. We are going to be what Christ wanted us to be. We will say what we believe and we will make no apology for it.”

It is only by the church standing up and being the body of Christ can we hope to make an impact. Let’s hope we do it here in America. If we do not, we can know that someone else will somewhere, maybe in China, but when we stand before God, the line of “It was someone else’s job” won’t work.

Let’s do our part. Our Lord deserves 110% and still more.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Mike Licona’s blog entry can be found here

Entertaining Our Youth To Apostasy

Are we failing our youth? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

A recent comment on my post on Do Youth Need Apologetics was about how our youth are being entertained to keep them in the church more instead of being given substance. This is an increasing problem in our church as more and more are falling away and it is not because we lack the resources to help them. We have all we need to win the battles. We’re just not distributing our weapons properly.

Of course, there is something to be said about how we package our material. There is no need to be boring. As much as I love Aristotlean-Thomistic thought, I have said that if someone wants to get a good night’s sleep, then all they need to do is pick up some Aristotle and read it for a little while. His substance is great, but his presentation is incredibly boring. Some have even speculated that Aristotle’s books could be the class notes of those that studied under him.

So making the presentation one that people can pay attention to is important. This does not change the most important part that is being neglected. There is much in the delivery, but the problem is that we are not delivering anything. We are getting youth often caught up in an emotional high and that will only last as long as the emotions do, and we all know that emotions do not last forever.

Of course, this does not mean that emotions are bad. Emotions should be in accordance with our reason. Too often, we have the tail wagging the dog instead of the other way around. If a person no longer feels Christianity is true, then they start thinking it is no longer true, when this is something your emotions cannot tell you. Your emotions can tell you about your response to something, but they cannot tell you about the external something in itself.

Our solution to the apostasy problem is to go with the emotional route. Let’s give our youth even more entertainment! If this works so well, it is a question why we don’t do it in regular services.

Instead of having a sermon, let’s have a comedy show done regularly instead. Adults like to watch Sitcoms after all. Let’s give them a new episode every week. We can make videos of them and let new members to the church see what they missed in past seasons.

Or, we can just find the music the older people in the church will enjoy and put on concerts regularly. We can bring in the greatest names in Contemporary Christian Music. The great entertainment will make sure the adults still keep coming to church.

If that doesn’t work, we can always make sure that every church service has a grand meal to go with it and have everyone bring whatever they like to it.

Surely if we keep entertaining the people in the church, then they will grow into strong and battle-hardy Christians who are ready to go and win the world for Christ.

Or maybe not.

They might be laughing and enjoying themselves, but when they’re out in the battlefield, what are they going to be able to do. They cannot just laugh and expect the threat to go away. That is a great way to shield oneself, but it will not defeat the opposition. Unfortunately, this seems to be our modus operandi in the church. If we just ignore the atheist movement and focus on preaching the gospel, then the atheist movement will just die on its own.

The only problem with this great scenario is that it’s not true.

Non-Christian forces are fighting for our youth and they are having an impact. If we think that we’re going to win the battle on entertainment, let’s just consider a simple question. Which one will the average teenager who is not a Christian want more to go to? Will they want to go to that youth group meeting where they will have pizza and play board games and talk about the Bible, or, will they want to go to that party with loud music, beer, drugs, and wanton sex?

Heck. There are some Christians who could quite likely choose #2, and not for witnessing opportunities.

If we think we’re going to win the entertainment contest, we’re not. This is especially the case if our youth are told they will face great guilt if they drink, do drugs, or have pre-marital sex. The reality is a lot of them when they do this just don’t. They can have pre-marital sex and feel just fine and then wonder “Well this was no big deal despite what the church says. I wonder what else I can do? I also wonder what else the church is wrong about.” Of course, some will feel this guilt, but not all.

This does not mean of course the youth group should never do anything entertaining. I have no problem with pizza parties and CCM concerts per se. The problem is that all of our eggs are being placed in this basket and none of our eggs are being placed in the teaching basket. When our youth go off to college, they are not going to be able to handle the opposition that they face because entertainment will not do it.

The sad truth is that this warning has been raised before and it has been disregarded. We can only hope that the church will wake up and start doing what it needs to do. We have the resources. We have the means. We just aren’t following through.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Miracles: New Essential Reading On The Topic

What do I think of the two volumes of Craig Keener’s “Miracles”? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

For my birthday back in September, my in-laws got me the two-volume set of Craig Keener’s “Miracles.” There are 884 pages of content here and several pages of notes. The message you should definitely get from that at the start is that Keener is not taking a lazy approach. Keener has done plentiful research on the topic of miracles. I can say without reservation that from now on, anyone who has not dealt with the claims found in this book is not qualified to speak on the topic of miracles.

To the surprise of most people, Keener spends relatively little time on the miracles in the gospels at the start and answering questions concerning early Christian claims of miracles. Why? Because he is not writing this to explain how the early Christians saw miracles, as important as that is, or the historicity of the miracles, also an important question, but rather to deal with the treatment of modern thinking today in regards to miracles. Many will say we cannot take the gospels and Acts seriously if they contain miracles since we all know miracles don’t happen. Well, all of us except these ignorant religious people. Educated people know better!

Keener is educated. It seems that he didn’t get that memo.

Of course, he does spend some time looking at the miracles and in conjunction with his main claim that miracles are possible and in fact ongoing, he states on page 25 that none of the sources in antiquity responding to the claim that Jesus did miracles tried to deny that. (Note also to some others out there ignorant on another related front, none of them tried to deny that he even existed) Most of them would say he did his miracles by dark powers. This is an important claim. They realized that strange happenings were connected with the ministry of Jesus and could not be denied. This would mean it was part of the essential historical kerygma, something central to the teaching of the early church, and something so well-attested that no one wanted to deny it.

In fact, Paul in his epistles in Romans 15:18-19 speaks about working wonders, and there is no doubt that Paul wrote Romans. In 2 Corinthians 12:12, Paul lays claim to his right to be called an apostle by telling the Corinthians that he worked miracles amongst them. Note this is a letter where his credibility is being called into question. It will not help that credibility to make a claim that his opponents know to be false. He is appealing to knowledge that they already have.

Of course, when miracles come up, the question asked is “What about Hume?” As one who has done internet debates, I’ve reached the point several times in the debate when miracles comes up that I will say “Okay. Go ahead and give Hume.” You would think that no one else really said anything worthwhile about miracles after Hume came out, as if he put the nail in the coffin with an argument that no one has dealt with.

The reality is its more likely that in philosophy everyone and their mother has dealt with Hume. His argument was criticized then and it is being criticized now. People who automatically assume Hume is the last word are more likely looking for something to cement their beliefs that they already hold and are unwilling to go looking further. It is odd that these people will usually tell us about science being so much better since it can correct its mistakes and relies on the latest study (Which is true by the way, that is the way science works), but they seem to reject that when it comes to philosophical dialogue.

Of course, Hume being 200+ years old does not make him wrong. I am a Thomist, for instance, and I realize Aquinas was around 800 years ago. That does not make him wrong. The difference is I have also done some of the reading in Thomistic thought since then. I realize that people have critiqued Aquinas since his own time. (Yes people. Back in the medieval period, the theologians critiqued one another’s arguments and wanted only the best ones) There are several people who still hold strongly to Thomistic thought today, like myself, but it also does not mean we have to hold everything he did. (I’m Protestant, for instance, although some have argued that Aquinas would be considered a Protestant today as well. That is not the purpose of this review of course.)

In dealing with Hume, Keener does admit that he is not a philosopher, but his sources are the philosophical sources. This is important to admit. Keener knows when he is not speaking from his area of expertise, so he has gone to others who are experts and shared their thoughts. Most devastating is a critique he shares from David Johnson in Cornell University Press:

“The view that there is in Hume’s essay, or in what can be reconstructed from it, any argument or reply or objection that is even superficially good, much less, powerful, or devastating, is simply a philosophical myth. The most willing hearers who have been swayed by Hume on this matter have been held captive by nothing other than Hume’s great eloquence.” (Page 169)

Ouch. That’s quite an indictment.

Looking at the question of history, one statement that has driven my research in this area is that that Bart Ehrman gave to my father-in-law, Mike Licona, in a debate at SES. Ehrman repeatedly made a statement along the lines of “History can only tell you what people do. It cannot tell you about the actions of God.” Keener says in a statement that seems to have Ehrman in mind on page 186 that

“History as history might not pass judgment on whether or not an occurrence (such as the resurrection) was a miracle ( a theological judgment involving philosophic questions about God’s existence and activity), but it can seek to address whether or not an event literally happened.

In a radio debate on Unbelievable? with Licona, Ehrman was stating that historians can agree universally upon a number of events in history, but they don’t agree on the resurrection. How can we treat it as historical then? The problem would be that too many historians are likely approaching with presuppositions beforehand that state miracles cannot happen. Therefore, they come to the account of the resurrection and can say “I don’t know what happened, but I know right off it wasn’t resurrection.” This is no longer doing history. It is doing philosophy under the guise of history.

It is not fair history to come to the data beforehand saying “The conclusion of a miracle cannot happen” and then looking at the data and construing it in such a way to exclude the miracle. In that case, it is clear that the belief one holds is influencing the data rather than the other way around. Of course, for the sake of argument, it could be that the resurrection did not happen, but that needs to be determined on historical grounds and not philosophical ones.

Before we get back to Hume, Keener wants to point us to the Majority World, that is, the world that has not been saturated with Enlightenment thinking. On page 212 Keener states “The claim that no one in the modern world believes in miracles (a claim once seriously offered by some scholars as an answer to the question of miracles, as I have noted) is now too evidently irresponsible to be seriously entertained.”

Will Keener back this statement? Yes. It is a strong statement in the face of academia and if Keener is correct, as I believe he is, it is not because of new data or arguments per se, but it is because of an unwillingness on the part of the academy to consider perspectives apart from their own. It has been by an arrogance that has written off too many people as “uneducated” and thus not worthy of contributing to the conversation.

And sadly, this is shown well in Hume. On pages 223-4, we have a quote from Hume:

“I am apt to suspect the Negroes and in general all of the other species of men (for there are four or five different kinds) to be naturally inferior to the whites. There never was a civilized nation of any other complexion than white, nor even any individual eminent either in action or speculation. No indigenous manufacturers amongst them, no arts, no sciences.”

Some could answer “Okay. Hume was a racist. It doesn’t mean he’s wrong.” On its face, no. It doesn’t. There is something important here. Hume is automatically excluding the testimony of anyone that is not amongst his circle of people he considers educated. Who are the educated? Those are the ones who don’t believe in miracles. If anyone believes in them, surely he cannot be educated. He must be some backwater person. Therefore, all educated people don’t believe in miracles. It is a lovely piece of circular reasoning.

Hume goes on to say

“Not to mention our colonies, there are Negro slaves dispersed all over Europe, of which none ever discovered any symptoms of ingenuity, tho’ low people without education will start up amongst us [whites], and distinguish themselves in every profession. IN Jamaica indeed they talk of one Negro as a man of parts and learning, but ’tis likely he is admired for very slender accomplishments, like a parrot, who speaks a few words plainly.”

To say “‘Tis likely” indicates that Hume has heard a claim and has not bothered to really investigate it. He has just made an assumption based on his prior notion of the black race. Keener, however, does know who the Jamaican is and says “The Jamaican whom Hume compares with a parrot stimulating speech was Francis Williams, a Cambridge graduate whose poetry in Latin was well known.”

Sound like an uneducated parrot with slender accomplishments to anyone else? I didn’t think so.

Okay. But surely today claims or miracles aren’t common. If they are, it must be amongst the Pentecostal movement (Of which I am not one) and we know they really like to talk about miracles! No. In fact, under the sub-heading on page 239 of “Such claims not limited to Pentecostals” Keener writes “But those who would simply reject all healing claims today because Hume argued that such claims are too rare to be believable should keep in mind that they are dismissing, almost without argument, the claimed experiences of at least a few hundred million people.”

So let’s give a quick synopsis then of the data that Keener has because it covers several hundred pages all over the world. Keener admits he is not a doctor, but he tries to get medical documentation of such claims. Even if he does not have them, he realizes that we should not reject testimony ipso facto just because it disagrees with our beliefs. People may be wrong about seeing a miracle or interpret some event wrongly or have a psychosomatic healing. Some of these do not fall into this category. If someone knows someone who is blind, as an example, and prays for them, and they suddenly regain their sight, would that person not be justified in believing a miracle has taken place? Keener says some healings could be coincidence, but that they are consistently connected with prayer goes against the idea that they are coincidence.

Keener also points out that many people in these settings are in fact educated. He has testimonies of his own wife who is quite educated. PH.D.s and doctors and others all claim to have seen such events. Again, even if some people are uneducated who see these claims, they may not have the full knowledge of the natural world, but they know enough to know when something happens that does not normally happen.

Keener also readily admits that miracles do not always take place. I took special note to highlight several times in the book that he makes a claim along those lines. There are people who are not healed in response to prayer. That does not negate the fact of the many people who are. If just one of these numerous numerous claims is true, then it seems that the idea that miracles do not happen is highly suspect, and it is quite likely that more than one is true. (Indeed, I found myself praying for the healing of the loved ones in my life. My own wife suffers from depression and when I read about people being healed of depression, I made it a point to pray more for that. I realized in my own thinking I too had taken on more of skepticism than I realized. If God can raise His Son from the dead as I proclaim, then healing depression is simple. Of course, if He does not, then I must just trust He has some reason. He is not obligated to tell me what it is)

Keener also looks at healing ministries. One noted case he looks at is Kathryn Kuhlman. Many of you, like me do get suspicious hearing that name, but Keener wanted to be objective in his analysis. He does point out that Kuhlman said that not everyone gets healed and that she has no problem with modern medicine. God gave us brains and we should use them. She would not have objected to someone checking with a doctor to see about their healing.

In fact, he points out that some journalists sent to investigate the claims of Kuhlman came out believing the cases after research. Of course, not all cases are bona fide. Healing doesn’t always happen and there could be times someone thought themselves healed when they were not. Keener’s warning for times like this is that you do not look at the false reports and lump all the reports in with them.

Keener also does in fact tell of times when people had fingers grow back and legs grow right before the eyes of people. So in answer to the question of “Why doesn’t God heal amputees?” Keener would reply “Who says He doesn’t?” Keener has some cases of such events taking place. It is more likely that those who do not find such cases do not find them because they have not really looked, or perhaps think the only people worth listening to with such a claim would readily have access to YouTube and film such an event, because everyone knows when a miracle is going to take place after all.

Keener spends most of book 2 dealing with objections to his idea, and these are quite weak. He does point out objections even from Christians who would often want to discredit healing ministers who came through an area. Now of course, one should always be cautious. One must also realize that healing does not mean all the particulars of theology are correct. There are healing at Lourdes, a Catholic site, and there are healings in Protestant communities. Still, too many have stacked the deck in advance by saying they will only accept natural explanations or some natural explanation must be forthcoming eventually and one day we’ll find out what it is. Such thinking would fall into a “Naturalism-of-the-gaps” paradigm.

Also, there is the stigma against miracles in the academy where one by claiming a miracle has happened can automatically have their intellectual stature lowered. Such an approach encourages scholars to not really be open to the claims of miracles, which is a tragedy for the history department since one is no longer doing history at that point but more philosophy. Keener contends we need more openness to opposing ideas in the academy. I agree.

Keener also takes the time to answer the question of “What about video tapes?” I find such an objection quite absurd, as one does not normally know when a miraculous event will take place, nor can one set one up as if God was a machine to respond the way we want Him to when we want Him to. Still, there is an obvious problem with video tapes we all know about today.

A show my wife and I have watched together numerous times is “Fact or Faked?” It has a group of investigators trying to see if an event normally caught on video tape is in fact a paranormal event or if it is a mistake or a hoax. There are some times where they approach someone about the video they’ve made and asked “Is this a hoax?” and get the answer of “Yes.” People do hoax videos quite often. We live in a day and age where we can go to a Cinema and watch events that would supposedly be “filmed” that we know are not real. We know about what photoshop can do. Yet with all of this, some people still think that if there had been video tape, that would conclusively settle the matter. Keener does point to some sources on video, but I will contend that to those who are not open, the response will be “faked!”

Finally, Keener ends by looking at cases in the appendices of exorcisms, demonic activity, visions and dreams, and how people saw the natural law in antiquity and later on prior to our time. Each of these sections is worthwhile in themselves. Going through these sections, as well as the rest of the book, I found myself thinking that I need to realize that God could be active in far more ways than I realize. No doubt, I’ll still be skeptical of a lot of claims, but I’ve found myself for my own research asking people if they know of any miracle claims, and it’s quite amazing to see how many people do have such examples.

Overall, Keener’s book is essential reading on the topic of miracles and the question of if they have them today. No one in the academy will be able to argue against the possibility of miracles without dealing with Keener’s excellent research.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Is Sincere Action Enough?

What role do good works play? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

My thanks yesterday to commenter David C. for this comment on my blog why every church should have apologetics.

“Thank you for bursting the overly large bubble of the sincerity myth.

“We need to be really loving to them and do as many good works as possible.” “If we do these, they will see the sincerity of our beliefs and repent.”

As stupid as that sounds, it is pretty much the common response of most pastors and other church leaders I have heard in my decade as a Christian. This is unnerving to me as a Christian, and I can only imagine how much it irritates professional apologists, like yourself. If this myth is not delt with, I fear how it may affect the children and adolescence. Especially the one in public education institutions, like public high schools and universities, where secularism runs rampant”

David is right about this. We have bought wholesale into the sincerity belief. Many of us can admire someone to holds sincerely to their beliefs, but not always. The reason the twin towers were hit in 2001 on 9/11 was because the terrorists flying the planes sincerely believed in Islam. Many of us could say Christians should have that level of devotion to their faith where they’d be willing to die for it, but we would not say that we greatly admire the sincerity of those people.

As has often been said with sincerity, someone can sincerely believe in their beliefs, but that sincerity is not enough. David’s comment speaks of the attitude that Christians just need to go out and do good works and that will be enough to get people to repent. Now note in saying this that no one is condemning good works. There is no outcry that says Christians should cease to be out there doing good. Everyone should agree that Christians should be doing good.

The problem is that good works are not going to lead someone to repentance alone. These people need the gospel, and our wanting to go straight to the gospel conclusion without meeting the person where they are in their doubt, is far more likely because of our hesitance to think that we are capable of defending the gospel, or that it is even defensible at all. It would be interesting to have a study done to see how many students in church youth groups would respond just at the possibility that there could be historical evidence that Jesus rose from the dead.

“But Nick!” someone is saying. “What about Saint Francis of Assisi? He was the one who said to preach the gospel and use words if necessary!”

Did he?

I contend that he did not.

The reality is just doing a good deed for someone might get them to second guess their perception of Christians, but not necessarily of Christianity. You are not going to get past a historical objection by one good deed. You are going to have to work and that will mean your study. You will need to learn something about the gospel in order to share it with someone. You can’t just go and do a good deed like you’re supposed to and think that by doing that, someone automatically entails that Jesus Christ is Lord of all. You are leaving the work to them that belongs to you. You are the one who is a slave of Christ. You are the one who is to study to show yourself approved.

The church has the resources it needs to counter the onslaught from all sides that is facing us today. The only reason it’s not winning the battles is because it’s not properly equipping itself. That is sloth on our part, it is sin, and we need to repent and seek the favor of God so we can go out and win the battles like we’re supposed to be doing.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Why I Observed Halloween

Have I contributed to devil worship? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Halloween has come and gone and now after the holiday, I am hearing that a number of Christians did not observe. I find this to be simply tragic. At our house, we had gone out and got some candy for any kids that would come by. (Unfortunately, we didn’t get any. Now we have a moral dilemma. What are we to do with all that leftover candy? Tough problem huh?) We also had costumes. My wife dressed up as L, a character from her favorite anime, Death Note. I had gone to Wal-Mart and found a costume of a priest and decided to wear that. (Quite interesting going to one party and seeing a monk there)

Ah, but was I not contributing to the worship of the devil by going out on this day?

You can’t seriously be thinking that can you?

Unfortunately, I think some of you are.

As a kid, I went out regularly on Halloween. Heck, even as an adult I still liked a costume. I did not hesitate to go out wearing a red cape to match the Superman look in public even as an adult. Why? Because I don’t really care too much about what other people think. I like being uniquely myself and Halloween is a great day to just pretend. Often, we think on Christmas that we want to be kids again. I do that on Halloween. Had we had trick-or-treaters come by, they would have seen me in my priest costume this year.

Yes. Some of you do fear I gave in to the dark side. What I would ask is how many of you know some children that have gone into witchcraft because they went Trick-or-Treating? Whenever I went out, the thought of darkness was never on my mind. Instead, I simply had one thought. I want to go out with my Dad, show people my costume, let them try to figure out who I am (I often went as a ninja and the mask covered my face), and then get candy. (I was also a strange kid as I rarely could go through all my candy. I’m just not much of a candy guy.)

In fact, if there is anything that is getting our children often, it’s greed and materialism, yet few of you are saying “We refuse to buy Christmas and birthday gifts for our children!” Now when I say this, I’m not saying to ignore witchcraft. By all means, you want your children to avoid the occult, but dressing up and pretending for a day is not going to get them into the occult. Most children do know the difference between reality and fantasy. (I wonder with this if most adults know the difference.)

In fact, it is on this day that you could have children coming to your door. What message do you want to give to those children? My religion forbids me from letting you come to see me in a costume and give you candy? The day when you have people coming to your door and you have so many of them that you can show the love of Christ to and your option is to turn out your lights and have no interaction with them?

Why should we Christians be living out of fear on this day? When we do that, for those of you who are afraid of the devil, you are giving him a victory. You are saying that Jesus Christ owns 364 days of the year, but when it comes to this day, this is the day that belongs to the devil. Jesus Christ is Lord on Halloween just as much as He is Lord on Easter and on Christmas.

But Nick! The holiday has pagan origins!

Let’s suppose for the sake of argument that’s true. I don’t think it is. I’m going to assume for the sake of argument that it is.

My reply?

So what?

Seriously. We have calendars that have pagan names. We have days of the week that have pagan names. Our idea of carrying a bride across the threshold comes from paganism. What is the problem with this exactly? The only pagan activity you need to worry about is if you’re actually doing something like, you know, worshiping pagan gods.

If anything, what does it mean if a holiday was made for a pagan festival and now we celebrate it by dressing up in costumes, going to parties, and giving candy to kids. It seems like by doing this, we are making a mockery of a pagan holiday. We are saying a day dedicated to honoring a pagan deity then has been reduced to being a day to dress up in costumes and to give out candy.

Sounds to me like the pagan lost.

We are to go out as Christians and claim this world for Christ, and that means every day is to be claimed for Christ. That means that we are not live in fear on one day and isolate ourselves. Also, as I have read earlier, don’t be the house that just gives out tracts. That will turn kids off even more. Make sure you give out some of the best candy on the block. Let it be that the Christians are the ones who really know how to celebrate a holiday and have a good time. Don’t be afraid of Halloween. Jesus is Lord then as well.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Is Sandy Prophecy?

When a natural disaster strikes, how are we to understand the situation? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Let me say at the start that this post is not meant to give any consolation to people who are suffering from Hurricane Sandy. Prayers are with you. If you are hurt by this now, this is not the post for you to read at the time. This is providing a rational answer to a question that is risen and is not meant to deal with current emotional suffering. That is the area of a good counselor instead.

A friend of Deeper Waters told me yesterday that her brother is someone who is highly into prophecy and thinks that Hurricane Sandy is a fulfillment of prophecy. Now I have in the past stated that my view on prophecy is that of orthodox Preterism. For all who don’t understand that view, my position is that Jesus Christ is going to physically return some day and that there will be a future resurrection of all the dead. I will put a link at the end of this post to the web site of DeeDee Warren, the best I know of to explain Preterism.

Also, with regards to what I was told yesterday, I have indicated numerous times that I am politically a conservative and that I do vote conservative. It is not essential to this post that you agree with either of the viewpoints that I present. I can easily picture a liberal who is a futurist agreeing with what I have to say.

To begin with, I’m not sure what prophecy Sandy is said to fulfill as none was given, but I do know the habit of going to the Bible, finding one verse that agrees with you, and then wresting it from its historical context and plopping it right down in modern times and saying that it is a fulfillment of prophecy, because we all know that in ancient Israel 2,500 years or so ago, God was warning them about a hurricane that would happen in a totally separate country today.

This does not mean the prophecies are irrelevant to us if they have already been fulfilled. We can still see a precedent on the kind of behavior God universally opposes, particularly when He speaks about behavior outside of Israel. Why? Because that nation is not one that is under the law of Israel that is civic and ceremonial, although to be fair, most of the criticisms of Israel were the failure of the moral law.

The problem is that when we have these disasters, there is always someone claiming it was a fulfillment of prophecy. It doesn’t matter that this “prophecy” has been fulfilled several times before. This time, this is it. This is our generation! We are the one! It’s irrelevant that every other generation has had someone who has thought that before. We are obviously the exception this time.

Of course, this could be the generation that the kingdom comes into full realization. We should always be open to that. We dare not proclaim it without clear revelation from God however. We play a dangerous game when we do that. There were numerous books that were written that showed Saddam Hussein was the antichrist. Some were saying Bin Laden was the antichrist. What are those books doing now? They’re gathering dust on bookshelves somewhere. They have embarrassed the Christian faith and the authors are going to go out and try it again. To use an extreme example, what do you think someone like Harold Camping does to the Christian faith?

Still, I would not be surprised if someone like Pat Robertson will go out or has already gone out and said that the east coast is being judged and Hurricane Sandy is the proof. This lady I was talking to about her brother said that we are being judged with this election. Look at the states that are hit the most. Those states are New York and New Jersey. These states are blue on the map and so they are being judged for supporting Obama.

Now I find this just odd. To begin with, you’d think if this was the kind of thing being done, we’d see the disaster on the West Coast which is even more liberal. We don’t. Instead, we see the hurricane come and people say “Obviously God is directing this hurricane. This hurricane has to be judgment. Why could these states be being judged? Look! They’re both blue states! That has to be it!”

I was also told that hurricanes aren’t common at this time of year. Common? Perhaps not. Unheard of? No. Hurricanes have happened. Back in 1993 here in Tennessee, in March, we had a blizzard come. Blizzards don’t normally come at that time of year and I as a young boy thought I would never see it again. The reality is, I did. I saw it in APRIL of 1996. Should I have concluded both were a divine act of God for some reason? To say something is unusual and uncommon does not mean that it is a judgment of God.

Of course, this does not mean that God cannot use a hurricane to judge, but I need a clear reason to think that it is. What message we can get out of such things is to realize the fragility of life and we dare not grow complacent where we are. We can look at Luke 13 where tragedies happen and the reply of Jesus is “You repent just in case!” (And from my viewpoint of course, they had a really big disaster come 40 years later and unfortunately, they did not repent.)

When we have situations like this happen, it leads to further embarrassment of the Christian faith and more attention paid to non-essentials. As I told my friend yesterday, it is a tragedy that Christians today tend to spend more time seeking to understand who the antichrist is rather than spend that time seeking to understand who Christ is.

Having said that, I do want to make it clear that I have no problem seeing my futurist friends as Christians. I would rather you be right on the Jesus question and wrong on the eschatology question, than be right on the eschatology question and be wrong on the Jesus question. This is an in-house debate. I have no problem with futurists. I’m married to one after all. I do have a problem with dogmatism either way. I have a problem with preterists seeing futurists as second-class Christians and I have a problem with futurists who like to accuse me of just wanting to “Allegorize” or “spiritualize” the Word of God.

Let’s be careful with how we are presenting ourselves to the world and handling our interpretation of Scripture. We must always try to first find out what it meant to the people then before finding the application for our own day and age. If we are reckless with how we interpret it, we will pay the price. Let’s also remember that there are people who are hurting from Sandy and the last thing we need to tell them is that God is judging them.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

The preterist site can be found here.

Do Youth Need Apologetics?

Do those young people in your church need apologetics? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Yesterday, I wrote on apologetics and the layman. I was specifically focusing on adults, but what about the younger crowd in the church? I’m mainly thinking college age and teenage youth. Do they need equipped? Well let’s look at some scenarios.

Sean has graduated from high school and is getting ready to go to college. He has had excellent grades all his life and decides that he will go to Harvard. He applies and is happy to hear that he has been accepted. Sean has grown up in the church all his life, but he has received no training in apologetics. He would not even know what the word means. He is unaware at this point of how many of his professors are atheists, have been for years, and are ready to let his Sunday School faith be knocked down. Is he ready?

Bill is nineteen and out with his friends on a Saturday night. They decide to get some chips to get together for a night of video games at one of their houses. While at the store, Bill is told to step back as they prepare to go to the check-out line. When he asks why, Bill is told that the oldest member of their group, the only one who is 21, is going to be buying beer. They will be having a party tonight. Bill is a Christian and knows his friends underage should not be drinking, but he doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t want to be embarrassed.

Rick is seventeen and is in his high school biology class. His teacher is teaching him about evolution and is saying “It is because of this that we know that evolution is true.” Bill has no real problem until Sunday when he’s in school and learns that God created the world in 6 24-hour days just 10,000 years ago. Bill doesn’t know what to do. He’s heard one thing in school and another in Sunday School. Science is such a powerful authority. What will he do?

Anne is sixteen and out with her friends shopping one day. They are going through the cosmetics section when Anne notices one of her friends is slipping some items into her purse. Anne tells her that that’s stealing and she shouldn’t do it. Her friend tells her that she’s being a prude and that all the other girls are doing it and unless she wants to get made fun of, she’d better keep quiet. Anne wants to keep her friendships, but she doesn’t know how to confront them.

Kyle is eighteen and he and Jennifer have been dating for two years. One day, they’re over at her house together when her parents say an emergency has taken place and they have to go out for awhile. They are on the couch together and kissing each other heavily when Jennifer starts to reach for Kyle’s pants. Kyle hesitates for a bit. She asks him what’s wrong. He says he’s a Christian and believes in waiting for marriage. Jennifer says she understands but that they’re in love and they’re surely going to get married someday. She knows that her parents have to have some “protection” around the house so it will be safe and no one will ever know. Kyle looks at her. He loves her deeply and his hormones are raging. He has often wondered what Jennifer looks like under all those clothes and what this great experience of sex would be like. He knows all his friends have mocked him for being a virgin after dating for so long. He hears somewhere in the back of his mind that marriage is to be honored by all and the marriage bed kept pure, but those hormones are overpowering him. Jennifer pulls him in for a long and passionate kiss and he wonders what he’s going to do.

Craig is a fourteen year old who has just returned from a church trip where he heard his favorite Christian band in concert. Unfortunately, he did not have enough money to buy a CD, so he decided to settle for the poor man’s version and get on YouTube and look up the song. While he is rocking his head to his favorite tune, he notices a video on the side called “Why the Bible is not the Word of God.” He wonders about that. He’s never heard that before. Maybe he should click it.

Eric is thirteen and is on the school bus heading back when he hears his friends talking amongst themselves, though somewhat quietly. He asks the guys what’s going on and finds that they’re passing around a magazine. He looks and sees a woman totally naked. His hormones start racing. He knows something from the Bible about not having lust, but these are his friends and he doesn’t want to look like a prude. What’s the harm in taking a little look?

Frank is eighteen and in high school and preparing for finals. He is incredibly stressed out and one of his friends notices and asks what the problem is. Frank says he’s just been studying hard and wants to get into a good college, but is just nervous about finals. His friend says he understands and suggests that he try some drugs that he has that have a really powerful way of clearing someone’s head. Frank is a Christian and doesn’t want to get involved in drugs, but he does realize he needs the edge. What’s the big deal if he did this?

Gary is nineteen and is in college and has been approached by someone asking him if he will join the group that is trying to give homosexuals the right to marry. Gary says he won’t. When asked why, Gary says that he’s a Christian and God’s Word is clear on the matter. The person looks at him and says “Dude. This is the 21st century. That’s an old and antiquated book. You need to get with the modern times. Why don’t you come to this seminar this weekend? We’ll be having a talk on atheism and why we know God doesn’t exist.” Gary doesn’t want to be afraid, but he is.

Eva is sixteen and has spent all her life in Sunday School. She’s been taught all the things she should do right. She doesn’t want to drink alcohol. She doesn’t spend time alone with boys in her house or their house. She wants to wait until she’s married for sex. She doesn’t do drugs. She doesn’t cheat on her classes at school. She is an all-around good girl. Unfortunately, she’s never been taught the rational side of her faith and why she believes what she believes. For her, Christianity is all about being a good person. She is unaware that the next good person she meets will be an atheist. This atheist will tell her it’s fine to keep all that good behavior if she wants to. She just needs to get rid of God. He’s not necessary for that after all.

These examples, again, could be multiplied. There are numerous problems facing our youth today and while they are in their formative years, we are wasting their time. There is more emphasis on going to concerts and having pizza parties than there is on learning the Scriptures and how to defend them. There is nothing wrong with concerts and pizza parties from time to time, and indeed our youth should know they can have fun as Christians. The problem is that we are making the basis for Christians be entertainment.

When our youth come to youth group, they are getting entertainment, and God is an add-on. The lesson that they are getting most often is simply ethical. I am not opposed to ethics of course, but ethics need a foundation. I think back to a time in Sunday School when I was in college and we were going through the book of Joshua and were told that the book was written so the Israelites would know to “obey God.”

Of course, the listing of kings who were killed and the division of the land and other such matters are necessary for that. Having all that history in there of what happened, the renewal of the covenant, the miraculous conquering of Jericho, and other such matters was all written just to make that one point. Of course, Joshua teaches us to obey God, but it certainly teaches us much more than that.

All we give people is years of entertainment. With this, we are also not preparing them to be slaves of Christ. We are giving them the idea that they should be always entertained and God will always be enjoyable. It would be worth noting that Paul was not probably thinking “I am having the time of my life” when he spent a night and a day on the open sea or when he was being given the 39 lashes with a whip.

This further feeds the self-serving tendency, the one we all naturally happen. What does that do when one gets the pressure to do something wrong so that one will appeal to friends instead of seeking the honor of God? What does that do when the person you love is really wanting to have sex, or heck, if you’re really wanting to have sex with the person you love, and you’re thinking “What’s the harm? It’s just sex.” For our youth, a few verses in Paul is not going to be enough to deter them when hormones are raging.

Our youth need to be prepared. Eighteen years of Sunday School will not prepare them to meet a professor who has twenty-five years of studied atheism under his belt. They will be more prone to see Christianity as just a set of ethics, and even then they will soon be shown to be outdated ethics, without any real connection to the external world. The youth are not taught what difference the doctrine of the Trinity makes or how they can know Jesus rose from the dead or what the purpose of saving sex for marriage is.

On that last one, I have a huge problem with too many even Christian leaders today using just the Bible. I have a stance on the Bible that says that something is not moral or immoral because the Bible says so. The Bible says so instead because it is describing an accurate state of affairs that exists independently of itself. You don’t need the Bible to know that sex is reserved for marriage. You don’t need it to know that homosexual behavior is wrong.

Yet so many Christians I know, and this includes the leadership, have as their only defense “The Bible says so.” If that is the case, what happens when the person decides to jettison the Bible? What happens when that person is in the public square and has to defend their views? They have to defend all of Christianity in total instead of just one point. Now of course, all of Christianity is defensible, but let’s not make more of a burden than we ought. When we argue for sexual ethics, we are not arguing Jesus rose from the dead, although that influences our ethics, we are focusing on that one battle right there. Let’s not think we have to win the war to win the battle. Let’s win the battles and let those lead up to the war.

Statistics show that around 80% of our young people lose their faith in college. This does not have to be. Why is it so? It is because the church is not doing its job. Our youth are the casualty and the next generation after them will have even more of a problem as a result. The answer to this problem is to start raising up our young people right now so that they can be equipped for the challenges that will face them.

We have several who could be leading the charge. Don’t let them fall in the name of entertainment.

Apologetics and the Layman

What does the person in the pew have to do with apologetics? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Yesterday, I wrote on why churches need apologetics. Unfortunately, I realize some readers are in areas where they cannot find churches that meet this need and will have to go it on their own. Why is it that the layman in the pew needs some training in apologetics? Let’s give some examples.

Tim is at work and is at the water cooler on his break when Bob comes up to him. Tim decides he’s going to share his faith in Jesus with Bob. His church has been doing a big series on evangelism and getting out there and sharing the Bible. Tim tells Bob about how Jesus came from Heaven, died, and rose again. Bob listens and says “I don’t follow copycats.” “What are you talking about?”, Tim asks. “Well,” Bob says. “If you’ll do some checking, you’ll find that Dionysus, Osiris, Attis, Mithra, and several others in antiquity did the exact same thing. You can also find books like Graves’s “The World’s Sixteen Crucified Saviors.”

Tim doesn’t know what to think. He goes home and gets on the internet that night and finds several web sites that say exactly what Bob said. He goes on Amazon and sees the book that Bob talked about. Well someone wrote a book and surely this is an educated author. Has Tim been misled all along?

Jake is on a business trip away from his wife and kids for a time and is having to stay at a hotel. Some of his co-workers tell him to come down to the local club with him for an evening. Jake tells them that he’s not really thirsty. They inform him that at this club, there are also going to be several strippers and he could have a really good time. Why not come? Jake tells them that he is married. They reply that he’s away from his home and his family will never know. Jake then tells them he just thinks sex is for a husband and wife. They tell him he can think that, strange as it is to them, but he’s not having sex. He’s just watching. What’s the harm? Jake says he doesn’t feel right about it. At this, he is laughed at by his friends, some ask if he is secretly gay, and they tell him what a prude he is.

Jake is confused as he closes the door and lies on his bed channel surfing and thinking about it. He knows the biblical mandate on sexuality, but why is he observing it when it is costing him so much? He doesn’t really know. He’s been told what not to do but not why. Besides, is this the kind of impression he wants to give to his co-workers? How willing are they going to be to listen to his Christianity when they think that it is all a joke?

Susan is a happy housewife with three beautiful children. Steven is 17. Mary is 12. Nathan is 5. She has been out enjoying her day and she comes back in from shopping with her friends to find out that there is a message on her answering machine. She listens and her face turns white. Steven had been out driving and there was an accident. A drunk driver hit him head-on. He is at the hospital. She drops everything and rushes over.

Susan is quite late however even though she came as soon as she could. She gets to hold her son, but the doctor tells her to say her good-byes. She prays, but nothing seems to happen. Steven dies as she hugs him. In tears, she goes to see her pastor. Her pastor tells her that everything that happens is God’s will and that it is just a mystery.

Susan leaves in tears. What kind of God has she been serving if he is willing to kill her son?

John is at work and is going through inventory. His manager comes to him and tells him to not record the goods that are damaged. They’ll lose money on it. Instead, treat them as if they’re just fine. John says that would be lying. He cannot do that. He is a Christian. His manager says “I understand, but I hope you also understand that I have to hire and keep around here people who are loyal to the company.”

Sherry is out with her friends talking about their husbands and one lady remarks about the same-sex couple that just moved in next door to her. Sherry remarks that she thinks marriage is only between a man and a woman. Her friend looks at her stunned and says “Are you some kind of bigot or something?” Sherry answers “I just think homosexuality is wrong.” “Why?” “Because the Bible says so.” “The Bible also says it’s wrong to eat shellfish and to wear mixed fabrics. Yet here we are having seafood and I bet your clothing is made of mixed material and you have no objections to that. Do you just pick and choose every time what you want to believe?”

Sherry doesn’t know what to say. Has she just been arbitrary? Most homosexuals she’s meet have been really good people. Is it really that big of a deal?

Edward and his wife Karen have just had a really big argument. Edward knows that many of the guys he works with have had the same kind of situation. Many of them are single now as well. He is told by them that he shouldn’t have to put up with the way Karen treats him. Just leave her and move on. Divorce is no big deal. Edwards knows that the Bible condemns divorce, but he’s just told that that was then. Times are different now. He needs to get with the modern age.

The cases could be multiplied. Many of us know of such examples. Especially when it comes to the problem of evil we can see more and more cases where that happens. Yes. I have heard of numerous pastors who have said that a tragedy that strikes is “God’s will.” We all know about the pastors who have gone on TV and said the same about national disasters being a judgment. No doubt, some are saying that about Hurricane Sandy right now.

If you are not getting a proper diet from your pastor of apologetics, and do not have a church in the area that will give it, then it is up to you to make sure you take care of yourself.

What are you supposed to do after all? You are a person with a full-time job. You have a family! You have kids! You also want to have time alone with your spouse, you want to enjoy your hobbies in life, you want to be with your friends. You can’t go off to school or spend all your time in study. You do not have it in you to be a full-time apologist.

That’s fine.

Really. It is.

Not everyone is meant for full-time apologetics, but you need some of it. Consider it with diet and exercise. You may not have time to learn how to be a fitness guru or a personal trainer, but you can do little things throughout the day to make sure that you have sufficient diet and exercise. You can avoid that extra candy bar at work. You can go and walk a mile around your neighborhood when you get home. You can make sure that you sleep well and go to bed at the proper time.

Here are some of my suggestions.

Get some good books that will familiarize you with the scholarly material. I recommend “Case for Christ” as the starting point. A number of apologists are now writing books for the layman. These include books like William Lane Craig’s “On Guard.” Some books are compilations with articles by several people in the field to give you a good and broad look at various issues under discussion.

In the age of the internet, make sure you are using good resources. Do not use sources like Wikipedia. If you go on YouTube, make sure you know who it is you are checking out. If you are viewing something like J.P. Moreland giving a talk on objective morality, that is something more reliable. If you are viewing a teenager in their parents’ house giving a talk on why Jesus never existed, that is more questionable. Of course, a teenager can be right, and I know many educated ones, but you want to sift through the arguments carefully.

In our digital age, we can get information pretty much anywhere. What about that commute to work? Consider instead of listening to music on the radio, listening to a podcast. If you go on ITunes, you can find several podcasts on apologetics. Furthermore, if you go to ITunes University, you can listen to podcasts from Seminaries where you can hear scholars give you information on theology, the Old Testament, the New Testament, church history, etc.

Maybe you don’t have an IPod, IPhone, or a similar device. That’s fine. Go to your local library and try to find a series on CD like Portable Professor or Modern Scholar and listen to them on your drive to and from work.

Try to take some time out for that book reading. If the Mrs. wants to go to bed early, I will often get out the booklight and just enjoy my reading. That can be some of my best time as it is quiet and there is no interruption from anything. After all, nothing else can be on or else it might wake her up. You might have to sacrifice some time, such as time watching TV, but no one is telling you to move into an ivory tower.

If you can, do some internet discussion. Don’t be afraid to put ideas out there and see what other people are saying. You can get your tail kicked from time to time. That’s fine. It could just show you where you need to study.

Also, try to find other people who want to do similar study with you. If the church will not establish a small group for you, then you do it on your own. If numerous people study different topics, you can share your findings with one another and reach conclusions that way so you can all benefit from one another’s study.

As you can see, there are numerous things you can do. However, the examples show that it is important. Without an informed Christianity, you are set to be caught flat-footed at any moment and you do not want that. None of us want to be embarrassed, especially for our Christianity. Remember if people see your Christianity as shameful, they will see Christ the same way. Be your best to be a witness for Him.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Why Every Church Should Have Apologetics

Is apologetics a requirement for every church? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

This morning, I went out to the mailbox and found inside a note that was hand-written, but also looks like it was copied for everyone on my street. I first thought it was one of the neighbors but then opened it up and found something different. I am going to exclude names for personal safety of people involved, but I would like you all to know what it said. I will start by saying at the top in a larger print was the word “Revival.”

It starts on the upper left with saying “Please come and bring your lost loved ones so they may be saved at”, and then on the upper right next to “Revival” says “Time may be shorter than you think to get them saved before its too late.” (Yeah. I know the grammar is bad there. Don’t shoot the messenger my Grammar Nazi reading friends.) Going back to what was on the left, it reads as follows:

“at XYZ church starting on day A at time B nightly. Rev. C and D will be doing the preaching. The church is located at E, pastor F. Everyone is cordially invited and welcomed to an old-fashioned, country revival. We are just a small church, common people, saved by grace, trying to get the lost in and around the community saved.”

I thought about this while thinking about a post I wrote earlier on Why Apologetics Should Be A Requirement For Every Pastor I had planned to write today about apologetics for laymen, but this message I got in the mail is the perfect opening to why every church should have some apologetics in it.

I won’t deny that I highly admire the zeal of this church. I have no doubt these are good people who really are doing what they think is best. The fact that this was being hand-delivered rather than using the mail made me think a coordinated effort had been planned to reach the community, to which the community I live in is indeed a very small one. It would not be too hard to do, but it was still work.

Yet as I looked, the first big problem I had with what I saw was that it was assuming I was a Christian at the start. Fortunately, I am, but what if I had not been? I am quite skeptical in a community with a deep respect for religion like the one I live in, that there are people here who have honestly never heard the gospel. Now I realize that it is possible, but color me skeptical of it. The ones who have not heard it are those who disbelieve in it and I thought “If I was one of those people, what would I think of this message?”

Rightly or wrongly, I was sure I would think “Just a bunch of religious fundamentalists.” It would have been dismissed with a thought on how religion is the opiate of the masses and hopefully these people will pick up a book on science one day.

My second problem was with the emphasis on getting people saved. Now some of you are saying “But didn’t Paul have the same emphasis?” Yes he did. He was also a teacher who was writing regularly to churches making sure they were staying in line and setting up people who could teach the church after he was gone as well as having those who worked with him regularly go to churches and see how they were doing. Paul realized that he could not be everywhere and wanted to make sure a church had effective leadership when he left.

In our culture, we don’t do that. We place a big emphasis on conversion. I have shocked a number of Christians by telling them I have no interest in making converts. I don’t. The Bible never once tells me to go out and make converts. In the Great Commission, I am told to go forward and to make disciples. With what we do, it would be akin to Adam and Eve being told that since they were to go forth and multiply, that that means to have a kid, leave it there, and then go on their way to making the next one.

We do all that we can to get someone to the altar and then once the altar is passed, the work is done. We have won the battle! Let’s go on our way! At this point, I don’t care if you’re a Calvinist or an Arminian. Let’s consider that this person gets no training and then later on encounters those who are opposed to Christianity and then abandons their faith. If you’re a Calvinist, you would say it was not a real faith that they had to begin with. If you’re an Arminian, you’re going to say that they lost their salvation.

Either camp excludes you from the faith.

Getting them to the point of recognizing Jesus as Lord is important, but then we need to emphasize what it means to recognize Jesus as Lord. It is not just a simple proposition, but one that colors all of life. Imagine, for instance, how your life would be different if you believed that washing in water spread disease rather than removing germs. Your life would be drastically altered, and frankly so would the lives of everyone who had to be around you. Imagine still how much greater it would be if you thought all water was poisonous. At least those around you would not have to put up with the smell for too long!

Now take the proposition that Jesus is the Lord of all the universe. Surely it should affect your worldview even more than those beliefs! Here in America, we are about to have an election. Imagine how different this election might be if we realized that in some bizarre way, after the election, God would take our elected president and install him on His right hand to rule the cosmos. Frankly, as conservative as I am, I still would not like that prospect. The right hand of God already has Jesus sitting there. Let’s keep it that way.

If the scenario was the case, we would think even more about who we’re electing. This person is the ruler of the universe then. Do we want to make sure we know who that is? Do we want to make sure of what it means to have this person ruling over us? Many of us today will pay more attention to researching the candidates we are going to vote for to lead us for the next four years instead of studying who the person is who we claim is our Lord to lead us for the rest of our lives, even lives after death.

Once a person recognizes Jesus as Lord, we need to have them involved in learning what all that means for their daily life. What does it mean to say Jesus is Lord when the bills start pouring in and you don’t know how you’ll pay for them? What does it mean to say Jesus is Lord when you make your wedding vows to the person you love? What does it mean when you have a new child being born? What does it mean when you lose your job? What does it mean with how you budget the family income? Everything is touched by this first proposition.

It’s bad enough that most Christians don’t really know what they believe and why it matters, but they have even less knowledge usually of why they believe. This includes pastors. There are too many pastors out there who have no business being pastors because they have no clue why they believe.

I recently met one at a local concert going on here at a small baseball park, an outdoor one I used to play T-ball at. It was a simple event with a Christian group singing and food being given out. I was asking to find the pastor. Eventually, I found him and asked what the church was doing with apologetics and heard “Nothing now.”

“Why not?”

“Well we’re just preaching the Word of God.”

“And how do you defend that Word of God when it comes under attack?”

“It’s the Word of God. It can’t be refuted!”

“Muslims tell me the same thing about the Koran.”

“Well the difference is we serve a living God and they serve a dead one.”

“They say the same about you.”

“Well we’re right and they’re wrong.”

“They say the same about you.”

“Well I guess we’ll just see in the end who’s right and who’s wrong.”

At this point, I said something about the blind leading the blind and walked off.

This is a pastor who doesn’t know why he believes what he believes, but he wants everyone else to believe it. We would not tell someone to vote for a political candidate without having a reason. We would not tell them a TV show they should watch without having a reason. We would not tell them about a place that they should invest their money in without having a reason. We would not tell them about how to raise their children without having a reason. We would not tell them to marry or not marry someone without having a reason.

Yet we expect to do that with what we claim is the most important decision of all?

Now some of you will say that what you feel and experience is the reason. To which, I ask why aren’t you Mormon? They all claim to have an experience and a feeling, yet there are several who will say they know Jesus is real because they feel Him in their hearts, but will think the Mormon claims are obviously false and don’t buy into the burning in the bosom. With this, it is just special pleading. Why should your case automatically be the right one?

I wonder how many like this will talk about how foolish they think Muslims are for so blindly being willing to fly a plane into a tower and thinking how people will believe such bizarre things without stopping to realize that in many ways, we believe even more bizarre things. We are the faith that says the second person of the triune God took on the nature of humanity, died on a cross for the sins of the world, and then rose again.

What the church needs is to know what they believe and why they believe it and the presentation of “Just give them the gospel” doesn’t work the way it used to. People are no longer in a position where they already believe many things Christians believe and just need a little information about the claims. If anything, most people are in a position where they are opposed to the Christian faith even if they don’t realize it.

How about if the flier I got in the mail instead said something like this?

Come to church X tonight led by pastor Y to hear speaker Z who is going to be giving a talk on the historical case to demonstrate that Jesus rose from the dead. He will then be taking questions from the audience. Bring your skeptical friends to hear a presentation that is sure to give them something to think about.

I suspect that this would have much more interest as people generally do like to see something that is controversial and could think “I’ve never heard such a claim before. This is really intriguing. I need to go check it out.”

Consider another one.

“Come to church X tonight led by pastor Y to hear speaker Z on why marriage should be between a man and a woman. After making the case, Z will be taking questions from the audience. Bring those who are for and those who are opposed and come to hear an interesting presentation.”

In our day and age, this could be something that would attract even more people as this is really water cooler talk. The church needs to be talking about the issues that people are talking about.

Now some of you might think you won’t get as many numbers if you go that way. Possibly, but so what? Numbers are not everything. We have often turned churches into number games where you will have thousands of people in a church, but none of them know what they’re doing there. Instead, they are simply being sheep led to the slaughter. If you’re a shepherd and you have no means of defending your flock, it is actually worse for you to have a larger one. That is a flock where the wolves have even more targets they can go to.

When churches that have no defense face trouble, two things usually happen to the members. The first is that members can apostasize. Often, these apostate Christians are the hardest to talk to as they have a large chip on their shoulders that tells them that the Christian faith lied to them and they will not be duped again. The second that can happen is that the Christians will respond to intimidation by isolating themselves from the world. They’ll be very good at giving emotional assurance to themselves, but they will split themselves off intellectually from the world and will cease to be salt and light.

Only on the rarest of occasions will they actually seek to study their faith and learn how to defend it.

Here’s my suggestion.

First, every church needs apologetics. This does not mean that it has to be specifically mentioned, though I would have no problem with it, but it does mean that it needs to be brought up. The pastor in the midst of this sermon can give a historical background to a text and explain how we know some of what is said and even mention a book on the topic that someone can read if they want more information.

Second, the pastor should never ever discourage the life of the mind. The pastor needs to be clear that there is to be no separation between the Christian life and the intellectual life. What we feel and what we experience should work in tandem with what we think. The pastor should never reach a point where he says we have investigated a biblical claim enough or that we should not read such and such an author or that we should just ignore intellectual problems.

Third, the pastor should set up groups as well for those who are more interested. Not everyone in the church will have total interest in apologetics, but some will, some even more than the pastor. That’s fine. What he needs then is to set up a small group of some sort where these people can come together and learn and he should let everyone in the church know about this group. We have groups on learning how to budget your money, how to have a good marriage, how to raise your children, how to make a quilt, etc. We don’t usually have groups on understanding what you believe, why you believe it, and how to defend it, and this from an institution that claims to make an emphasis on belief.

Fourth, the pastor should have a well-stocked library for the church to use including books on apologetics and the church needs to know about this library. I can go to many church libraries that unfortunately I have to search high and low to find even one book on the topic of apologetics. I can find several good country novels or find the Left Behind series or books on dealing with your feelings and such, but to find a book that actually tells Christians about what they claim is the most important truth of all? Forget it.

Fifth, the pastor needs to be able to show the kind of lifestyle the church should have. The pastor should be a reading pastor seeking to study. The pastor should show in his sermons that he has done his homework and refer to experts and such that agree with him. The pastor should show involvement with the world around him and talk about the issues that are being talked about by his congregation and by the world at large.

Not everyone will be thrilled. That’s okay. We’re not out to please people but to please God by spreading His kingdom. Not everyone is ready for advanced material. That’s fine, but we need to get them started somewhere at least and the aware pastor will know all levels in his congregation and will include something for everyone. The pastor might not have as large a congregation, but he will have an effective one, and it will be better to have a dozen who know what they’re talking about and why than 1,000 who don’t.

A dozen is better? What can be done with such a small amount?

Perhaps we should ask Jesus. He spent three years training such a group and changed the world through them. Why can’t we train our Christians and change the world today?

In Christ,
Nick Peters

The Death of Death

The last enemy to be defeated is death. Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Let’s sum up our resurrection series by looking at death being the last enemy to be defeated. Last time I wrote about this topic, I wrote about how a great reversal has taken place. What we read in the Bible is that the last enemy to be defeated is death. What this means for us is right now the conflict is going on and more and more ground is being claimed by the Kingdom of God. We must realize that there is not one part in this world that each side of the battle wants to make a claim and say “Mine!” as C.S. Lewis said.

The great enemy that we have in this world is death. Most of us spend our lives trying to avoid it. If we are eating, drinking, exercising, trying to sleep well, etc. we are doing so to avoid death. We avoid pain because it can be a reminder of who we are. We don’t really like to think about our own mortality. It can seem amazing to us sometimes to think about all that went on in this world before we showed up. It is something to think about as well that the world will go on just fine without each and everyone of us after we’re gone.

This does not mean that our lives are meaningless. The world does not depend on us, but that is different from saying we have no impact. We are all to spread the message of the Kingdom of God. In fact, if my understanding of 2 Peter 3 is correct, this is one way that we can indeed hasten the return of Christ. We will all have some kind of impact. Everything you do is shaping you in some way and some of those actions will shape others. The kind of person you are will also affect how you are with everyone else.

Nevertheless, our light will end at one time. That will be in death. Depending on how you live your life, you could still have an impact after your death. Aristotle died over 2,000 years ago, and yet he still lives on in his teachings today. Who else lives? All the people we don’t know about who were a part in shaping Aristotle to be the person who he became. We speak of Jesus having the greatest impact of all, which He did, but His parents helped shape Him. Who shaped them? Several people lived their lives in anticipation for the one who was to come and in living a holy life, were preparing for Him.

Death ultimately is not the end, but there is still the problem of separation. At the time being, my wife and I live in my grandmother’s old house. There are times that I can think that this is her house and wonder what it would mean if she could see how Allie and I are living now. With what I wrote about Jonathan in my post on Jonathan’s Impact, I can wonder the same thing about him.

When it came time for my grandmother’s funeral, I knew that it was coming. Her death was not a shock for me. She’d been very sick and it was only a matter of time. I was sad when I heard about it, but I did not break down. I was being strong and had left Charlotte with Allie preparing for the service. It wasn’t until I walked into the funeral home and saw her that I just broke down. The reality hit me. I can never call her up again, tell her what’s going on, get to hug her, etc.

Death is incredibly saddening to think about.

Now as a husband, it is something I think about more and a reason I want to take good care of myself. What would happen to Allie if something happened to me? It makes me want to take care of myself, especially since I’m nearly a decade older than she is. Statistically, my time would come first. I still have the hope that my ministry partner has that she will die the day before I do.

We can be thankful then that death does not have the final word.

Jesus promised us in the resurrection that he had taken on death and that He had won. This means not just the resurrection of our bodies, but the resurrection of everything. Everything is moving towards resurrection. Our entire cosmos is to be resurrected in Christ. When we resurrect, we will resurrect in a way that death will be no longer capable of hurting us. It will be an old memory. We will live in a world where we will never have to say good-bye.

Death is dead at that point. It is no more. The life you live with the one you care about now will be one that is never-ending. I do not know what that means entirely. None of us do. That’s something I find fascinating about the biblical picture of eternity. There’s very little detail. Other systems often try to tell us exactly what we will be doing. For instance, in Islam, we have the one man with seventy virgins. From my perspective, this is just taking a great earthly pleasure and making it a heavenly one. In a sense, it is a heavenly one, but the true pleasures of heaven will fully transcend the greatest pleasures on Earth.

I look forward to the day when death is dead. I look forward to the day when I will never have to say good-bye. I look forward to the day when life will be a never-ending journey of knowing more about God. That last line reminds me of the continuity. I am shaping and preparing for that now. This life is not accidental. It is the preparation for the heavenly community. I intend to be ready. I know that if death cannot have the last laugh, nothing else is worth worrying about.

Isn’t that good news?

In Christ,
Nick Peters