A Prayer For Our Country

What is part of my prayers every night? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I pray every night before signing off of my computer and going to bed, and part of that prayer every day is a prayer for my country. I love America. I just don’t love what has happened to her. I still think that this nation can be a city on a hill once again.

When Israel was in the promised land, they were meant to be a kingdom of priests for those on the outside. They were meant to intercede for their pagan neighbors. When the nation was in exile, we see in Daniel 9 that it is Daniel who repents on behalf of the nation of Israel. There is a precedent of the righteous interceding on behalf of the wicked, especially shown in the cases of Jesus and Stephen.

Because of this, I pray every night for our country and it includes the following, which is centered on our children.

First, we have killed our children.

Wednesday while listening to the radio, and I only listen to talk radio, I heard someone talking about the massacre of the people at a concert in Israel and how that was the greatest act of evil he could think of in our times. I get what he was saying. It was a hideous act of evil, but I could easily think of a worse one.

Every day in abortion clinics across our country where hundreds if not thousands more are murdered every day in the name of freedom and reproductive rights. I have often said that we’re worse than the pagans were in the past. When they sacrificed their children, they did it for the good of the harvest or for the welfare of the nation. We sacrifice our children at the altar of convenience.

Pray for our repentance and forgiveness.

Second, we have mutilated our children.

More and more children are claiming that they are transgender and at a young age are being told they have such authority to say who they are. We have people having their bodies destroyed and letting themselves be sterilized for this purpose. it is an irreversible decision in many cases and don’t be surprised if within a few years, there are major lawsuits against “health-providers” for this. Even more amazing, we call it “gender-affirming care” when it’s exactly the opposite.

Pray for our repentance and forgiveness.

Third, we have groomed our children.

We have Drag Queen Story hours where we are normalizing children to sexual behavior they shouldn’t be normalized to. We have children celebrating Pride events at schools. Florida was blasted for a bill called by the media the “Don’t Say Gay” bill when all it said was sexual matters should not be talked about with children who are third grade or less.

Pray for our repentance and forgiveness.

Finally, we have indoctrinated our children.

We have a generation of people growing up who know next to nothing about the history of our country. They sit on laptops with their smartphones drinking at Starbucks and complaining about how evil capitalism is. They repeat cliches so much so that now in light of events in the Middle East, you have them saying “From the river to the sea” and talking about “There is only one solution” not even realizing where these terms come from. They are growing up to be more and more narcissistic and basing their lives on social media.

Pray for our repentance and forgiveness.

Then after this, I pray for something else.

I pray that the church rise up and be the church and change our society once more.

No. This is not a Catholic prayer in the sense of the Roman Catholic Church, but it is a catholic prayer in the sense of the church universal. It is the prayer that we who are Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox, will rise up and unite together in this cause. I have areas where I disagree with Catholics and Orthodox, but I have plenty more where I agree with them on and that’s where I choose to focus. I am blessed to meet regularly with some Catholics to study Aquinas and when I am asked what I believe about certain passages of Scripture, I speak freely. I doubt that I am agreed with, but I think they know I try to be as fair as possible. I am not antagonized. If anything, the joke I make is I am there to make sure everyone has their doctrine correct since I’m one of the ones asked about hard questions on Aristotelian thought.

It’s not about my being recognized as an authority in something. That’s nice, but the primary thing is I am recognized as a fellow Christian regardless of differences. Our country is at war fighting for the soul of our country and I want that to be our main emphasis.

I recommend that you join me in this nightly prayer for our country, but at the same time, don’t just make it a prayer and do nothing. Act. Do something to be the salt and light you need to be.

We can change this country. More accurately, Christ can change this country through us.

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

An Open Letter To Elon Musk

Has Twitter changed? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Dear Mr. Musk.

When you bought Twitter, I saw a breath of fresh air come in. Finally, conservatives could be just as free as anyone else to share their thoughts. No more would we see anything about hate speech. I found I could actually enjoy Twitter again. The first day, I came on saying statements such as if you were born a man you would die a man and vice-versa, that marriage is between a man and a woman, that Elaine Page was and always would be a woman, etc.

It felt good again to have a place to interact with some of my favorite conservative influencers. I was especially pleased to see when you freed the Babylon Bee. However, last night, I got disappointed.

As a conservative, I regularly go to the Biden Twitter page to see what is being said there. Last night, I saw he had posted something about mental health hotlines. The people on them were trained to especially handle Veteran’s issues and LGBTQ issues.

Now with Veterans, many of us can understand. PTSD is not uncommon in the world of those who serve. Also, many of them do struggle with suicide if they have that. LGBT was an interesting inclusion so I just asked “Funny you seem to imply that a lot of LGBTQ people have mental health issues.”

Within seconds, BAM! I get hit with my account being restricted. Why? I had said something hateful.

Excuse me? How do you know the state of my own heart? What is this great power that Twitter has that they think they can read that?

You see, I am on the Autism spectrum. If you asked me if myself and my fellow human beings on this spectrum have a mental health problem, I would say yes. That’s not being hateful. That’s being honest.

Now if I say the same about the LGBTQ community, does that mean that I hate them? Not at all. I don’t hate them any more than I hate myself and my own community, which is not at all. If anything, I am an advocate for people in my own mental health community. If I meet someone who is absolutely convinced that they are a girl when they are really a boy, my thought is not hatred. It’s sadness. I want them to see themselves as they truly are, a boy. I want them to embrace their identity that they have by virtue of being born male. I want them to avoid what I think is a dangerous and horrible mistake.

You can disagree with me all you want. That’s cool. If there is disagreement, then we discuss it.

But if that is not allowed, then why should I think Twitter is any different from what it was in the past? The Babylon Bee got banned for making a statement that was deemed anti-LGBTQ. I was thankful when you brought them back, regardless of what anyone thinks of the Bee. The old adage is that it’s better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it.

As I write this, of course, I am sure that you, Mr. Musk, were not personally involved with the decision. You could see this and read it and immediately agree 100% with what I have said. If anything, you might actually disagree with my belief, but agree that I have the right to express it. I have in no way said anything that implies hatred towards a group or that we should bring violence to them.

I did appeal, naturally, but what good does that do? No one discusses my case with me. I have a small area in which to state my reasons why I did not violate any rules. I am not allowed to hear why they think I am wrong. Your staff becomes judge, jury, and executioner. If anything, you are making me guilty of fault crimes, which is very Orwellian.

I encounter beliefs every day that I disagree with. Some of them I think are quite stupid. I also encounter people who say things that are quite vicious about my Christian community. I have no wish to ban them from areas I am in charge of. When I was married, about the only way I dropped a banhammer on my Facebook was if someone insulted my wife. That was it.

Why do I do this? Because I really value disagreement. That leads to debates and that leads to discussing the issues that are important to us as Americans. Part of freedom means that even if I don’t like what you say, I will fully agree you have the right to say it.

Now I would agree if someone were threatening actual violence against someone, yes, something needs to be done. Even in that case though, I say bring in the police. Let them handle it. If someone says something completely ignorant against my belief system, I don’t ban them. If anything, I want them on display. I want people to see the other side for what it is.

When the LGBT community acts in this way, it becomes apparent that they are the sacred group of the day that you dare not speak against. How far does it extend? If we are going to start banning people from expressing opinions, we are going down a very dangerous slope.

I urge you Mr. Musk, if you read this someday, to make sure Twitter doesn’t become what it used to be. As far as I am concerned, right now, it is.

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

Will The Real Miss Netherlands Please Stand Up?

How do you demean women? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Too long, we have tried to say that men and women are not different. It has been said that to say women are deficient in any area in comparison to a man is something horrid to say. I still remember the time that a professor got in trouble for saying something along the lines of women not being as good at spatial reasoning as men. There were demands he apologize, which I think he did, but even though I don’t think I was studying apologetics or anything like that at the time, I still had one question.

Was it true?

If it is, then it’s true, and saying “I don’t like it!” doesn’t make it any less true. However, this does not mean that women are less valuable than human beings. There are many things women are superior at. Women tend to be more empathetic I find and compassionate. They tend to more naturally connect with children than men do.

The error many feminists made was to say that if two things are different, in this case, men and women, then that means that one of them must be overall superior and the other overall inferior. This doesn’t follow. All that follows is that the two are different, and yes, men and women are different. Thank God for that one.

Unfortunately, if you try to blur all the differences, then don’t be surprised if people take it to the next level. Most recently, this has happened with the transgender movement. The case in point here is going to be the Miss Netherlands beauty pageant.

For now, we’re going to put aside the morality of beauty pageants themselves. They happen. There’s an obvious reason they do. Women are beautiful. This is hardly breaking news. Sex sells and usually if you want something to sell, it’s not by having handsome men in your ad, but having beautiful women.

In the book of Genesis, when we hear that everything was good, that also includes beautiful. The last creation of God in the week is woman, who is the crown of beauty on God’s creation. Look up many of the noble women in the Bible and what is a common trait that they share? Beauty. Even the quick reference to the daughters of Job at the end of his book. No more beautiful women could be found in all the land than Job’s daughters.

It’s as if one of the most praiseworthy attributes a woman has is her beauty.

Now again, not talking about the morality of beauty pageants, imagine being a woman in the Netherlands and competing willfully in a contest to see if you are the most beautiful woman in the Netherlands. You have taken care of yourself all your life, practiced good hygiene and make-up, ate properly, exercised appropriately, and did all you could to reach this moment. This is going to be your chance to stand up among your fellow women.

Yet you are told that all that natural beauty that you possess emphasized perhaps by make-up (I really don’t care for it as I think it more often hides beauty) is said to not compare to the real winner of the contest. Who is that?

A man who says he’s a woman.

I really wish I was making this up, but I’m not.

What a great insult to a woman to tell her that her born feminine beauty cannot compare to what surgical operations do to the body of a man.

In cases where a woman loses to a woman, a woman can look and see what she can do to improve and do better next time. This applies to beauty pageants, but it also applies to sporting competitions. If she loses to a man who thinks he’s a woman, she cannot do that. She goes home and knows that she lost and there is nothing she can do about it.

Devastating.

What our world is doing to women is cruel. We are changing language to make sure we “include” less than 1% of the population all the while insulting and demeaning all the women out there. It’s not breastfeeding now. It’s chestfeeding. It’s birthing persons. It’s people who menstruate. It’s lady parts being referred to as bonus holes. It’s men being chosen to be promoters of women’s products.

For a society that says they want to fight the patriarchy, they sure don’t mind negating women.

Unfortunately, in the Netherlands, the real winner won’t be acknowledged. That’s the real woman, whoever she was, who should have won the pageant. Our women are being erased more and more in the name of inclusivity and “progress.” It’s honestly getting that if a man is competing in any women’s event, put your money on him. He’s likely to win, even if just because judges want to show how progressive they are.

May we all wake up soon.

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

Coming For Your Children

Have we gone past the idea of equality? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I had to look to find a video I could use. Why?

Because some of these are not fit for a blog of this type. They actually contain nudity that many of you would not want to see. However, if you did for some reason want to see it, where could you go?

A pride parade.

You might think “That’s disturbing.” Most of us would agree that having young children be in the presence of such a scene would not be good. Unfortunately, even that has to be defended now. It certainly needs to be explained to George Takei.

Some of you who haven’t heard about this can probably tell I’m holding something back. Okay. The title is coming for your children. Marching nude in a parade isn’t exactly targeting children.

Yet in the video I am about to show here, that’s not what is going on. They are explicitly saying “We’re here. We’re queer. We’re coming for your children. It’s not just one person. It’s a whole group saying it.

When someone shows you who they are, believe them.

Back when marriage was redefined in the eyes of popular culture to throw out the sex-specificity of it, we were told that that was it. Many of us who are Christian conservatives knew it wasn’t. You give an inch and a mile will be taken. There was even a joke meme at the time that indicated the only thing that would happen if gays got married. There are many such examples. Here’s one.

See that orange unit? The family unit was already falling apart sadly, thanks to no-fault divorce, but this did further damage to it. One other chart like this had as an option that was supposed to not happen was “Teachers will teach children about gay sex.”

Whoops.

And as is said at FreedomToons, if anything didn’t happen, it was gays getting married, because marriage is a man and a woman.

There are plenty of people who consider themselves LGBTQ+ and they want nothing to do with what is going on. Ultimately, they just want to live their lives in peace. They don’t want to be glamorized. Most likely, they don’t want their sexual desires to be on the front of everyone’s mind.

I am relieved to see that this is starting to be pushed back on. The nation’s children are as always, the greatest casualties. When I was in high school and had a cold, I had to have a doctor’s note to have cough drops at school, (Which as readers of the Princess Bride know, are the greatest thing ever.) and I had to go to the school office to get one. I could not be trusted to handle cough drops on my own.

But today, not only could a teen girl get an abortion, but now the student can be taught to change their gender identity at the school and keep it secret from their parents. If the parents push back, they are the problem. If the girls don’t want a boy in the locker room while they undress and shower, then the girls are the problem.

Don’t think this is the end of it also. Every step we give in is just another step and it will never be enough. If these people are willing to take your children, what will they take next? Where will it end?

I don’t want to find out.

It’s up to us to stand up now and not support businesses supporting this and follow the adage of Get Woke, Go Broke. Bud Light should show us that we are capable of this if we work together. Naturally, this will also require us learning, truly learning, and sharing the gospel. (Along those lines, see this video I did on The Legend of Zelda and evangelism.)

If you’re a parent, go look at your children now or at least pull out a picture of them.

Those are the stakes.

Game on.

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

 

Can We Stop Talking About Hate?

Is this term a distraction? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I have often said before that there are two words in our society that are practically meaningless. Those words are God and love. It is not because I deny the reality of those words. It is because in our society, we take them to mean whatever the user thinks they mean. If you meet someone and they tell you they believe in God, it doesn’t mean they’re a Christian. It doesn’t even mean they’re a monotheist. The Mormons will tell you they believe in God, but their god is a vastly different being than we have as Christians.

Likewise, we have such vapid sayings in our culture as “Love is love.” What if I told you, “Glork is Glork.” Well, by law of identity, that would be true, but it’s meaningless if you don’t know what glork is. Besides, if you want to say all love is equal, no one really thinks that. Do we want to say that the love by a group such as the North American Man-Boy Love Association is love? If a person wants to have an affair with their dog, will that be love? (Brace yourselves. If the path is not stopped, defending these will come soon enough.)

Another word along these lines is hate and it gets tossed around too much. For one thing, we treat all hate as bad. It isn’t. You ought to hate some things. I’ll go further and say if you don’t hate some things, you are a demented individual.

Really? Yes. I hate that children are sexually abused. I hate it when someone commits suicide. I hate it that innocent people are mistreated. As a divorced person, I definitely hate divorce.

I also hate all of these things because I love something else. If you love children, you don’t want to see them abused. If you love life, you hate suicide. If you love justice, you hate seeing the innocent mistreated. If you love marriage, you hate divorce.

In our day and age, and especially in “Pride Month”, if you say that you disagree with something, you are accused of hating the individuals. For one thing, this is really getting into mind-reading which has no basis. For another, it really has no point. It really gets the debate to be about the mindset of the person instead of the data.

Let’s take two people. The first one will be a white supremacist. He is talking about the unhealthiness of the black community and he talks about how many black boys are fatherless. He uses this to look down on the race. Now let’s take Thomas Sowell, a famous black economist. He goes and talks about the economic state of black America and that too many black boys are fatherless.

The claim is true in both cases. The reasons for holding them are different. Thomas Sowell has no joy in what he says. The white supremacist does. However, what matters is the data. Now you can be more suspicious of the white supremacist, but data is data.

Now talk about same-sex sexual behavior. On the one hand, you have someone who is a Fred Phelps type from Westboro Baptist. He makes a statement about rampant disease spreading in the LGBT community. He can do this with glee seeing it as a judgment of God. On the other hand, you can have a doctor, perhaps himself same-sex attracted, from the CDC who says that men who have sex with men are at a higher rate for disease. Both are making the same claim. Now you can say the doctor is better qualified to speak, and that will be granted, but the claim is the same.

Having someone say you have hate for a group doesn’t touch the data. It just talks about you and frankly, if they believe that, how could you convince them otherwise? Why should you really care if they think otherwise? It’s just as much a smokescreen as saying bigot or hater or X-phobe, whatever the X might be.

And too often it works.

If anything, you could turn around and ask the person why they hate you for disagreeing with you. If it works for them, why not do it yourself? Could they ever prove that they don’t speak from a place of hate? No. It’s the exact same problem.

In every case, what really matters is the data. Name-calling and other such behavior is really just a way to avoid the issues. That is where the battle really lies, which is probably why they don’t want to talk about them.

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

A Tale of Two Flags

What flag do you recognize today? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Here is one flag:

Here is another one:

Many of you might not recognize that first flag. It is the flag of Germany. If you went to most people on the street for a sort of “Fun With Flags” game and asked them to recognize it, I’m sure the majority would not. People who like trivia or study that kind of subject would, but most of us would not.

The second flag is the Nazi flag, and I guarantee you the overwhelming majority of people on the street could tell you about that flag and that it represents Nazism. What’s interesting is that before Nazism came along, most people would be thrilled to see a swastika. It would for them represent something like good fortune.

Today, no more. We recognize it for the wicked ideology it got associated with. Many of us when we think of Germany will think of that flag. That flag has supplanted Germany as a whole for many of us.

It’s scary to think of an ideology overtaking a country like that. Surely that could never happen. Right? Well, it apparently happened in the UK. Look at this video.

So apparently wherever this is, the “pride flag” is more important than the flag of the country. It’s not even handled carefully. It’s just let go and dropped to the ground.

But hey, that’s the UK. Right? That’s not the good ol’ U.S. of A. Right? Surely such a thing like that could never happen here.

Oh, wait. It already has.

According to the flag code for the US, this should never happen. The American flag is always supposed to be central. Unfortunately, we have an administration now that ignores that in favor of “Pride.”

We as Christians should also be concerned because, like the swastika, the rainbow has historically been seen as a symbol of God’s covenant with man to never flood the world again. That rainbow represents the promise of God to His people. It is now being used in a way that directly opposes something Christianity stands for.

Not only this, but at the White House event, some of the demonstrators had to be thrown out of the event for lewd behavior. Yes. This is the same kind of behavior that they want to have normalized in your child’s school. This is the ideology that is trying to take over your society. There will never be a step where they say “Enough.” It will always be a demand for more and more and more.

We know this because this has been the pattern. “We just want to be left alone.” “We just want the right to be with the person we love.” We want to be recognized in society.” Now we have surgeries being done on minors where their bodies are being altered. Just a couple of years ago it was seen as a big reveal to show that some hospitals were doing this to children. Now it’s common knowledge.

Now you can hardly see a movie or TV show without LGBTQ representation in it. Now you can’t take your child to a store without seeing something. A Christian friend of mine showed how her young daughter saw something on Amazon today about a program about a boy’s new dress. With the Call of Duty controversy going on (Which is what it should be instead of the NickMercs controversy seeing as there is nothing controversial about saying “Leave children alone”), we are seeing it be the debate in the gaming community.

I am pleased that this month, I am seeing pushback, but it will have to be for more than just a month. Now keep in mind when I say this about the movement, I mean the activists. I know of plenty of people in the group who just want to live their lives and don’t want all the attention. Our struggle is against an ideology and those who want to push it.

The pushback must continue though. I have a hope that sometime we will have the last pride month ever.

Maybe it will even be this month.

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

 

 

 

Why White House Pride Flags Should Concern You.

It this just a harmless celebration? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Bud Light is losing. Target is losing. Call of Duty is losing. Even recently, Starbucks has said that they’re not going to have Pride material on display in their stores. (To which, if you can, stop by and get a drink then.) The line in the sand was drawn at children. Going after the children was way too much.

However, that memo hasn’t reached the White House where pride flags have draped the building. What does this mean? The problem with this is that it gives more power to the state.

Now all of this is going to be done from a viewpoint that will not use the Bible so no one can say that I’m just going by the Bible. I do contend the Bible does agree with my position, but I can make it without it.

So what about marriage? Sometimes people ask me if I believe in same-sex marriage. I always ask what marriage is. If you realize that marriage is a man-woman unit, then you realize you might as well ask if I believe in triangular squares. But why is it a man-woman unit?

Marriage is this because it is the building block of a society because within it is found the one act that is capable of producing children. We have made a mistake in thinking that we can have wanton sex without children and not have consequences. This does not mean that infertile couples or couples too old to reproduce can’t marry or even shouldn’t marry, but it does mean the public end of marriage is children. It is not the couple’s happiness, as good as that might be. It is not feelings of love towards one another, though that should be pursued. In the end, it is children.

The state does not come before marriage. Marriage comes before the state. No families? There can be no state. Marriage is a reality that we discover. Some people who want to bring the Bible into this will point to polygamy, but polygamy is if anything multiplying the man-woman unit beyond necessity.

This is also why interracial marriage was never invalid. Interracial marriage still has the man-woman unit in it. Removing that was actually a recovery of marriage and not a changing of it. However, changing the persons in the roles on an essential difference, their gender, DOES matter.

Now some can say that same-sex behavior exists in nature, as it does, but that doesn’t mean it is something we normalize for our species. After all, eating one’s own young also exists in nature. Are we going to pass a law saying that is allowable?

So the State creates something, an artificial reality, and they want to call it marriage also. The problem now is if the State produces it, the State will have to defend it. It’s their baby after all. In essence, this becomes a new religion of sorts. You do not question the dogma and if you do, the State comes against you.

And yet, in the new “marriage”, what benefit does society get? Why should the State care about the feelings of the people involved? When my ex-wife and I applied for our marriage license, we were never asked about our feelings or personal happiness. We were just to show that we were of age and of the opposite sex and not close relatives. That was it.

Redefining marriage gives the State more power and in the long run will have it be that if you question the dogma, you are guilty of treason. In the past, we destroyed the bodies of children in the womb. Now we are also destroying them outside the womb through “gender-affirming” care and puberty blockers.

The Bud Light pushback though has changed things. What this should show us is that when people work together and stand up, especially for their children, they can have an effect. Even if you are of the LGBT community, this should concern you. A state that can rule in your favor can make you the enemy the very next day.

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

Coming To A Pride Parade Near You

What is being shown to your children? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Parents. If you have children, please watch this video, but also make sure the children are not around. (Assuming they are underage.) Even if you don’t care for TimCast, this is a video of what is happening at a pride parade and at a school. All parents need to watch this.

I wish this was an isolated event, but I doubt it is. Remember Ron DeSantis said that there couldn’t be a parade in Florida if it would involve material not fit for children. They decided to just not have the parade. What is going on at these events that this needs to be shown?

Years ago when the Obergefell case came down, the case that decided to redefine marriage to include two people of the same sex, I remember all the memes going around. “All this means is that gays will get married. Nothing more.” Those of us like myself who are conservative Christians knew better.

We were right. The first step that came after the ruling was the normalization of transgenderism and now you have kids having their bodies mutilated and healthy body parts removed. These decisions are largely irreversible. These children will never be able to have children and many will never truly experience sexual pleasure.

Now also you have men dominating in women’s sports and in any other event meant for women. Men are getting access to prisons for women and to their locker rooms and everything else. You can be sued at times for “misgendering” someone.

Not only this, but in this video, take a look at what is happening in the schools. Children are being told Happy Pride Day and celebrating running under a rainbow. Do children even know what this is? Children at the age in the video?

Parents. You should want your children coming home and asking you questions about math, literature, science, history, etc. Do you really want them coming home and asking “Mom? Dad? What does Pride Day celebrate?”

Homeschool them now or get them in good private education where this is not being taught.

When you homeschool them also, make sure you teach them at age-appropriate levels about proper sexuality from a Christian worldview. You also need more than just “The Bible says so.” You need a whole worldview to explain why this is wrong. This is not to disparage the Bible, but you need to see how it applies to all of life.

After all, if you don’t educate your children, someone else will. Even if they’re homeschooled, they will have friends, they will have internet, they will have media of some kind. You can’t isolate them from the world nor should you. In a military situation, the troops are trained before they go out into the battlefield, but it is with the understanding they will see battle. Do the same for your children. They will see battle.

Keep in mind, this does not mean that individuals in the LGBT community are our enemies. It does mean the ideology is. I suspect there are some in that community who don’t want to see this done to children as well.

I also am concerned about so many Christians who seem to hide under the rubric of love. “Well, they love each other, so what’s the big deal?” Or “Why do you hate homosexuals?” Disagreeing with someone does not mean hate. As for love, these people believe more what the world says about love than what they do Jesus and the Scriptures say about love.

Love does not mean you affirm everything someone believes about themselves. It also means you call them out if they are doing something harmful. It is love when a family stages an intervention for someone who is messing up their lives. It is love to let someone have it if need be when they are doing the same.

They also don’t understand the concept of marriage. If you think there is no essential difference between two members of the opposite sex and two members of the same sex joining together, then you do not see marriage as being about building up the next generation and the continuing of the human species and the nuclear family. It is at that point simply a glorified friendship.

Churches. On you then, we have to start teaching people this kind of material. We have too many sermons that are really about how to make it through your life with your problems. There is very little about Jesus. It is all application and sermons that are just application will not make a difference.

If this means having extra classes, great. This would actually be a great way. Start having classes that are not just marriage enrichment, but about what marriage is. Start really having teaching about sex in the church that will even explore why couples should not live together or have sex before marriage that will go beyond “The Bible says so.” Our young people today especially need to understand not just what the Bible says but why it says what it says.

Parents. You are in a war, and yes, they are coming for your children. If these people are willing to kill their own children in abortion and sterilize them in transgender surgeries, then the children will have to come from somewhere. Oh, if you think the idea of coming for your children sounds extreme, well….

The people that put this up took it down. They claimed it was just satire. Color me skeptical.

Folks. We are in a war. We are fighting for the next generation. At the start, they are defenseless and we must protect them.

Do so.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(I Affirm the virgin birth)

Doing No Harm

Is doing no harm a sufficient moral principle? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Often today, we don’t hear about if an action is good or evil. We hear about if it is harmful or not. Now, causing harm is one aspect to consider in morality, but it is not the only. When it comes to the idea of redefining marriage, part of the question asked is “Well who is it hurting?”

For one thing, changing the meaning of marriage for anyone changes it for everyone. Everyone’s marriage is shifted to not a union designed to bring about children for the prolonging of civilization, but rather to a sort of union from two people who are committed to one another. By this standard, we could say that two roommates could be married or a brother and sister who choose to live together are married or a son who brings his mother who is a new widow into his home are married.

However, while those are important situations to bring up, why not go back and question this principle about not harming anyone. Consider the scenario of a peeping Tom for example. he has found a peephole outside of a showering area where he can stand and watch naked women shower. He is never caught and the women never have any idea they are being watched? Are any of them being harmed? If not, then can we say this is wrong?

Consider also a dentist who has a private practice. To keep costs down, he doesn’t even have a secretary. He works alone and makes all his appointments. From time to time, beautiful women come in and he has to put them under for surgical operations. What they don’t know is that sometimes when they are unconscious, he undresses them and fondles them. The women never get pregnant and so never find out about what he’s done. Has he done any harm?

If you’re a Christian or even most any other kind of theist, you could say this man has damaged his standing before God in each case and so he has done harm at least to himself. He has lowered himself from being what a human being ought to be to being something less. If you are a secularist though, you do not have this option.

Not only that, but we know that there are times that causing harm is the good thing to do. I have a friend who just had a quadruple bypass operation. Right now, he is still in a lot of pain. I have told him some about my having scoliosis surgery and how I too was in a lot of pain and understood what that was like. In both cases, our doctors harmed us and left us with tremendous pain. The thing is, we knew this would happen and we went through it willingly and even paid our doctors for it. Why? Because we were not being harmed to be harmed. We were being given some degree of harm in order to get a greater good.

Another example is telling a loved one a hard truth. Sometimes, this is very harmful to the person for the immediate and short-term, but it is good in the long run. Again, consequences are not all that is to be considered, but they are a part of this. Consequences alone are insufficient. We need to look at the action, who is doing it, and why they are doing it.

No one being harmed by itself is insufficient. By this standard, the Peeping Tom and the dentist are both okay. By a Christian standard, they are in the wrong because they are lowering themselves as human beings and actually in the long run making themselves more likely to be the people who will take further steps to do actual visible harm to others.

Our moral thinking needs to go deeper than just utilitarianism. We need to look at who we are and why we do what we do.

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

Book Plunge: Strange New World

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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