Tag: Sex

Book Plunge: Stop Calling Me Beautiful

What do I think of Phylicia Masonheimer’s book published by Harvest House? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

This book was not what I expected. I honestly thought with the title it would be more about helping women to realize they’re beautiful. It’s really the opposite, and that’s a good thing. Masonheimer wrote this book about being tired of women’s conferences that seem to be entirely all about self-help.

She argues that women need something deeper than being told they’re beautiful. Ultimately, they need Jesus Himself. They need to find their comfort in God. Women bounce around from thing to thing, or in a sadder case from man to man, hoping to find something that will fulfill them when Christ is waiting there for them the whole time.

Masonheimer goes after this whole fake culture. One chapter is even about the Instagram Bible. How many women (And men) try to make their Bible study times look really good on Instagram or Facebook (The cup of coffee supposedly making it extra holy), but then they really neglect Bible study? When they do Bible study, they do it for the hopes that they will learn something about themselves and not really to learn about God.

The next part of the book is about different false beliefs for women in the church. Legalism is the first one where much is made for women about things like skirt length. Even if the rules are good, the rules can often seem to be equated with Christianity.

Next come chapters on grief and anxiety and how to handle them. This can be a challenging one for women who are usually emotional creatures, more so than men, and yet are told to not be emotional. Women need to know how to handle serious loss and how to handle anxiety.

Thankfully, there’s a chapter on sexual stigma which is needed. Pornography is no longer just a man’s problem. Many women are watching porn as well. Many women are also told if they have sex before marriage that at that point they are damaged goods since most guys want a virgin. Masonheimer deals with all of these.

She then goes on to talk about community. Women need a place where they can be women. They need a place where they can be accepted and be safe. I also want to stress in my opinion that online friendships are great, but women and men both need face to face relationships where they can get comfort as well.

After that, she talks about the fear of man. This isn’t man in the sense of the male of the species, but in the sense of worrying about what everyone thinks about us. We do that so much, that we don’t focus on what God thinks and getting to live a life that He approves of.

There are other chapters on shame and how to live now, but I think I’ve said enough to let people know this is important. Women don’t just need pablum. They don’t just need self-help. They actually need something deeper.

So if I would actually change anything in this book, I would say go deeper still. I would like to see some information on the doctrine of God, Christ, how to do Bible study, and other such things. That could be for another book. In essence, a sort of apologetics for women would be good.

Still, I agree. Women, and men as well, don’t need pablum. We need something real. We need Jesus.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

The New Baby It’s Cold Outside

Is the new one really an improvement on the original? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Yesterday, I heard about the new rendition of this old song by Kelly Clarkson and John Legend being released. Musically, they’re good singers. I can’t really comment much beyond that as I am not one with much of a taste for music. However, the idea was the old song was a creeper song. The girl is at the guy’s place. The guy is encouraging her to stay and well, the reason he wants her to stay is so he can have sex with her. Some went beyond that and called it rape, as if the woman will never play sly with a man and try to make him look like he’s seducing her when she’s really seducing him. Yes. Believe it or not, women can sometimes want to have sex themselves.

So here comes a new version meant to be an improvement. It’s meant to strike a blow against the patriarchy. I listened to it last night and then looked up the lyrics to clarify some matters, but as I listened, I thought, “This song is even worse than the other one is supposed to be.”

If in the old one, the guy was trying to get the girl to stay so she would have sex, this guy seems like he’s practically ready to hold open the door and throw the girl out. From the lyrics, he has taken her back to his own place and she has no car. Now today, if a guy takes a girl back to his place, well, we all know what that means.

So when she says she doesn’t want to stay, he’s calling her a cab immediately and even telling her the driver’s name. She talks about her parents and he’s thinking “What? You still live with them?”! (Did he possibly take a minor back to his place? If there is a minor, then why is she talking about drinking?) He even has a line in there at that point saying, “Your body. Your choice.”

Now of course, if any possible hint shows up that the girl could change her mind, he’s there to say how much he wants her. However, as soon as she’s ready to go, he’s ready to encourage her. The other version might have the guy trying to seduce the girl, which by the way is in many ways normal. Men even in marriage will often want to try to do anything to encourage the lady in their lives to have sex.

So what do I gather from this? That first off, if this is a blow against the patriarchy as it’s called, it’s a horrible one. Second though, it really shows me again that our culture is clueless when it comes to sex. We don’t know how to think about it. Perhaps some of us don’t understand the idea of a man and a woman dating with sex being off the table because it’s, you know, reserved for marriage.

Our culture doesn’t understand what sex is or the many purposes of it or why it should be reserved for marriage. Sex has been reduced to a recreational activity. Some people have said that our culture thinks too much about sex. This is false. It’s just the opposite. We think too little about it. Doing it, dreaming about it, watching it, and talking about it, does not equal thinking about it.

This is really a good chance for our Christian community to shine as well by doing marriage right. (Even though Shaunti Feldhahn exposed some myths about divorce, it is still way too common today even among Christians.) Doing marriage well is a service to God. Now I am not saying divorce is never an option. If you are in an abusive situation and there is no hope of change, get out.

Every marriage will also sometimes require hard work. This is normal and when the situation is worked out, the couple can very well be stronger than before. Part of that will be the proper understanding of sexuality.

The misunderstanding of sexual ethics is one thing that for those of us who live in America could very well lead to the breakdown of our society as it strikes at the heart of the family, the building block of society. People want to be loved and they want to have sex and there’s no sin in that. It’s how they are fulfilling those desires that is the problem.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Deeper Waters Podcast 12/14/2019

What’s coming up? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

The fairer sex have always been seen as worth pursuing in the eyes of men. Who can blame us? Have you seen them lately? Women are absolutely beautiful. Many an honorable man encounters a woman he is attracted to and comes to love and treats her right and marries her and spends the rest of his life loving her.

Sounds good.

Sadly, there are men out there that are less than honorable. We understand that. Some of them are teenagers in a rebellious state. Some of them are criminals that are behind bars. You can find them in all places. Fortunately, many a woman can find a safe haven in the church since the church does its job of protecting those women and….

Wait.

What’s that?

You mean that these people can be found in the clergy?

That many people who claim to follow Christ can also be mistreating and abusing women in a sexual way?

And the church tends to side with the accused more than with the victim?

What can the church do to make sure we are a safe haven for victims of abuse? How can we love victims of abuse? What steps can be taken to help someone overcome a paralyzing trauma that has the potential to wreak havoc on the rest of their lives?

My guest is someone who went through that abuse. Her story is both horrible and helpful. She is a survivor who has gone on to be a thriver and she wants to raise awareness. There are plenty of people in the church that sadly prey on others. It doesn’t have to be that way though. Her name is Mary Demuth and her book is called WeToo.

So who is she?

According to her bio:

Mary DeMuth is an author, speaker and podcaster who is passionate about helping you live a re-storied life. A survivor of neglect and sexual abuse, Mary was gloriously rescued by Jesus when she was 15. She has spent her life healing from trauma so she can help others not feel so alone. She is the wife of Patrick and mom of three adult children. For more information, visit wetoo.org.

I hope you’ll be watching for this episode. I hope by the end of the month to be all caught up. We’ll be talking about a lot of material that could be very adult-oriented so please be mindful of that if you have children around. Please also go and leave a positive review of the Deeper Waters Podcast on iTunes.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: The Art of Falling in Love

What do I think of Joe Beam’s book published by Howard Books? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Joe Beam has an interesting story. He was married and then divorced his wife and got remarried. However, when he remarried, he remarried the woman he had divorced prior. In doing so, he has also spent years studying love and what it is and how one comes about falling in love.

Many of us have this idea from our culture that falling in love is just something that happens to you and you have no say in the matter. Many of us know the experience of falling in love. The problem is we don’t realize that we can do things to help us fall in love with another person. This is known as the Love Path.

The path starts with attraction. This is basic enough for us to understand. For many of us, this is how our relationship began. I remember in my men’s group a question being asked what first drew us to our wives. Now I didn’t see Allie in person first but talked to her and spoke about that, but many guys came out and pretty much talked about their wife’s body. That’s not a bad thing. That’s not a guy being a perv or objectifying a woman. That’s him being a man and knowing that a woman has a beautiful body and wanting to get to know her better. If after some time in a relationship the body was all that mattered to him still, there would be a problem, but it’s fine to start there.

This can also mean that in marriage still, we need to work on this. I have had to change my appearance in some ways since marrying for Allie’s sake. Many men and women sadly let themselves go after they marry. It’s the message of “I have them, so now I no longer have to try.” Sure, but that’s taking them for granted. Taking care of yourself to be attractive is showing love to your spouse as well.

The next step is acceptance. Attraction is never enough. Many of us guys have known being attracted to a woman and never doing anything with it and the relationship only exists in our own heads. When you act and speak to them, eventually both of you get to the place of acceptance where you decide to give one another a chance. Thus, the second place on the path is Acceptance.

After that comes Attachment. This is where you get more serious about your relationship. It could start with something like going steady. After that, you can get engaged and of course, get married. In this, you build a position where the other person becomes a more central part of your world.

Finally comes Aspiration. In this step, which is often neglected, both look at the dreams of one another and see what can best be done to meet those dreams. If the two contradict, as they often can, there is some compromise reached whereby both parties are happy.

There’s also something said on what love truly is. We often confuse it with what is called limerence. This is a super strong infatuation with another person you are not married to. When acted on, 99% of the time the limerence eventually fades and the person wakes up and says “What have I done?” Beam says marriages can recover from this and it is extremely common.

Falling in love is not just an emotional response. It’s a choice. It is a position of the will and a deliberate action that is done. I can say on my part my love for Allie has only grown over the years.

If you are in a marriage wanting to improve or needing to be saved, this is a very good book to get. I highly recommend it.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

The Draw of Beauty

What role does beauty serve? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Last week I didn’t blog due to the Thanksgiving holiday. We had someone who was super generous to us who paid for Allie and I go to the Gaylord Opryland Hotel in Nashville. We stayed there from Tuesday night to Thursday morning. We went on a boat ride in the hotel there and also went to the ICE program which had the movie A Christmas Story done in ice sculptures followed by a beautiful nativity scene done in ice.

The boat ride involved going through the hotel where there were several waterfalls and exotic plants. Our guide told us about so many of them and we were able to easily ride down the river that is inside the hotel. All of this leaves me thinking about the role of beauty.

We could say that all of this beauty is a draw to the customers and that would be something because there is no functional role to all of this other than that. Having a river in the hotel with exotic plants and waterfalls doesn’t improve the function of the hotel. It could possibly be said it creates more expense and leaves some other needs for the hotel that have to be maintained.

Yet this expense is probably worth it because it draws so many people in. We have this idea that it’s a waste to focus on making things beautiful. Think of the responses often given to the building of a magnificent cathedral, the one Bill Maher gives in Religulous. Couldn’t this have been given to the poor? What’s the point of all the grandeur and beauty?

The purpose is to draw us into the beauty of God. It is to leave us with awe. This is something I think we have missed in many of our churches today. I get that not everyone is going to come to a church that’s designed like a cathedral. I do think though that if we are presenting God, we need to make Him as beautiful as possible with what we have.

Consider also how this works with the opposite sex. Aside from men who are gay, we normally don’t say, “That is one good-looking guy. I want to get to know him better.” It is what we say with women. How many guys have wanted to get to know a girl and it has been started solely by her appearance? This is something that women know, but I don’t think they fully utilize to their advantages.

If you’re a single woman wanting to marry, let your beauty be a draw, because it will be, but don’t share all of that beauty until a wedding night. If a man is not willing to pursue you to that point, then he does not really want you for you. He wants your body mainly and he’s not willing to go the distance to prove he loves you.

For married women, you have a great power to enthrall and motivate your husbands. Even after decades of being married, many men are still enthralled by the beauty of their wives. I have been married nine years and the beauty of my own wife is still brand new. As someone with Aspergers, for years, people tried to get me to change my diet and I refused to budge. Allie did it and she didn’t even have to try. Why? Beauty. She is a motivation.

Let’s face it. If guys weren’t attracted to women, we really wouldn’t bother. We have to change so much of who we are and spend so much money and give so much of ourselves over and over. The relationship a man has with his wife is radically different from any relationship he has with a male friend. Why do we do it? Beauty. We want that beauty.

Our society knows this well. This is why we have a make-up industry. Beauty sells to people. Now I’m personally not a big fan of make-up, although there was a time recently Allie’s eyes were quite stunning with some, but some guys are. I also remember one time Allie wanted to get a dress that was on sale at Wal-Mart. I waited outside of the dressing room while she tried it on. When she came out, my jaw just dropped immediately. This was my wife? Seriously? She looked like she walked right out of a fashion magazine and it was incredible.

Maybe all this beauty doesn’t help the woman in any other way, but it does help her draw a man who will love her for her. Doubtless, it doesn’t really start that way, but it does change over time. Most of our loves start with selfish reasons. We want the other person for ourselves for some reason. In time, the habits we do to get that person end up changing us. Through the use of these habits, I now say easily I love Allie more than I did on our wedding day. Love has been a practice. It has been a choice.

Some people deny objective beauty. This is a ridiculous position. It means a stick figure drawn by a small child is more beautiful than the Mona Lisa. It means a pile of dung is beautiful just like a bouquet of flowers is. It means that nothing in this universe is truly beautiful. It is just an idea we have created and imposed on the universe. If such is the way we think, then be consistent and say nothing is truly beautiful, but I suspect many of us don’t want to do that.

I regularly give thanks for beauty. Being a married man, I particularly give thanks for the beauty of my wife and think that when God made women, He knew what He was doing and did it good. Beauty serves to draw us in and may it draw us into the beauty of God.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Where Are The Adults?

Are there any adults in the room? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Recently, a school in district 211 in Illinois allowed for a transgender boy to have full access to the girls’ locker room. This was voted on by people who are called adults and after, you see the boy crying as he’s so happy about this decision. You see another student crying, but it’s for a different reason and she’s a girl, so what do we care. Right?

You see, this girl actually has some concerns about being naked around a boy, and in particular a boy she doesn’t know. You could say for all we know many of these girls get naked around boys often, but that would be by their own decision. Outside of marriage, I still think it’s wrong, but nevertheless, it is something different.

The girl in the video is scared about this prospect and who can blame her? Many women have a hard enough time getting naked in front of other women. Just yesterday I was reading an article by Shaunti Feldhahn on how she encourages women to let their husbands see them. Leave the lights on and don’t hide from him. Why bring that up? Because even Christian women in Christian marriages to Christian husbands have a hard time sharing their bodies sometimes.

After years of being married to a woman, I have come to the conclusion that when a woman shares her body willingly with a man, something sacred is going on. It is the ultimate message of trust that she is giving him. She is putting everything on the line knowing she could be rejected and the more freely she does it, the more she sends the message that she knows she won’t be. (Hint women. That’s very appealing to us men when you’re confident in yourself.)

Keep in mind that in marriage, this is talking about adult women.

The school district has teenage girls.

Who’s going to protect them?

It used to be a thing of chivalry for a man to protect a woman. Feminists might get angry with me, but I don’t care. I still hold open the door for a woman when I go somewhere. When I used to work at a movie theater and we would all get off work at midnight, I would walk out with everyone else and I told the girls the same message. If someone comes after us, run. Don’t look back. Don’t worry about me. You just run and protect yourself. After all, the theater was at a mall and who knows who could be out there late at night?

Who was supposed to protect this girl and others like her in District 211? Adults.

Where were they?

You see, most of us still hold to the common-sense reality that a boy is a boy and a girl is a girl. You don’t change your sex based on how you feel any more than you can change your age or your height or your weight. We still hold that we need to show love to people who say they are transgender, but we’re not doing favors by giving into what we think is a delusion.

We also know that this has no end really. So this boy who identifies as transgender gets to have access to the girls’ locker room. How many guys in that school district now are saying to the others, “Hold my beer.”? (And again, they shouldn’t be drinking, but we know it happens.) How many will identify as girls just because, well, this might be a shock to you, but men and boys typically enjoy seeing naked females?

Who is to say that these boys aren’t transgender after all? Could they not claim discrimination? What is the test for someone who is truly transgender and who isn’t? Hint. There isn’t one. All we have is their say so.

These adults who voted were supposed to protect the girls in their district. They didn’t. If the girls feel betrayed, it is for good reason. They are being told that their feelings are subservient to those of a boy. Are you listening feminists out there?

The district should be ashamed of itself for this horrid treatment of the women and especially the young women in their midst, but what can be done? Everyone talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it. What can be done to help stop the insanity?

First, protesting peacefully is always good. Let the district know what you think. Contact Congressmen and Senators. Pull your children out and homeschool them or get them in other schools.

Second, if you’re a student at the school, do what you can to protect. Try to encourage real manliness at your school if you’re a man. You see, if a real man wants to see a woman’s body, he wins her heart. He doesn’t claim to be transgender to get a free peep show or ask for sexts from her or sit at a computer watching pornography. A real man protects a woman’s body and allows her to share it when she wants to and with who she wants to.

Third, if you’re a girl, if you have to quit the sports teams. You can practice at a gym elsewhere and if the sports start losing support, the school starts losing support. If you don’t change anything, then nothing is going to change.

Ultimately, most of this falls with the parents. There weren’t adults in the room apparently when this vote took place. Be the adults. If you need to, run for school board yourself. Take charge of what is going on around you. Be as gungho for reality as others are for a delusion.

There was an age when men protected women.

We can still have that age.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: Wired For Intimacy: How Pornography Hijacks The Male Brain

What do I think of William Struthers’s book published by IVP? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Women are beautiful. Seriously. If the only evidence I had for the existence of God was my wife’s beauty, I would say the case is closed. I honestly can understand why some men get obsessed with pornography. We want to see beautiful women and they are such a mystery to us.

Pornography seems like an easy fix then. You get to see women and you get to experience their beauty. You don’t really harm anyone either. Right? What’s the harm.

Struthers writes that there is a great deal of harm. I want to stress at the start that I know pornography is becoming more of a problem for women as well and Struthers would not deny that I’m sure, but his main focus is writing about men. Men are often the ones who are much more the pursuers when it comes to sexual love and men don’t tie sex to emotions as much as women tend to. Men and women on average tend to treat sex very differently.

Struthers writes from a biblical perspective, but also from a psychological perspective. He writes about how men view sex and how pornography is degrading to them as men and degrading to the women. Pornography doesn’t enhance the joy of sexual pleasure. Instead, it winds up diminishing it. This book is ten years old and I think even more now it’s diminished than it was before. Today, there are men who are in their 20’s on viagra because they can’t get an erection watching real women because they’ve been watching women in porn for so long.

Struthers writes about the psychological and chemical effects that pornography has on the brain. He talks about how it is that a man experiences sexuality and how women should be aware of that. He writes about how many men experience shame with pornography and how it affects them. Sadly, there are too few men today who do not have any experience with pornography.

He also helps build up a worldview of sex and how it should properly be exercised in a marriage covenant between a man and a woman. This doesn’t mean that single people don’t have to have a proper worldview of sex. A single person has ways of bringing glory to God in their celibacy that a married person doesn’t. A married person has ways of bringing glory to God in their marriage and sexual intimacy that a single person doesn’t.

Also is the need for good masculinity. Today, we hear a lot about toxic masculinity. For many sadly, masculinity is measured by how good a man does in the bedroom. Naturally, a man wants to do good in the bedroom, but his masculinity is measured by far more than that. The measure of a man is really how much he can love, and when it comes to marriage, that will include showing love in the bedroom, but it also includes showing love everywhere else.

Also, men do need intimacy and by that is not just meant sex. There is a myth among women that all a man wants is sexual release when it comes to the act of marriage, which is just wrong. A man really wants to feel close and connected and loved by his wife and sexual intimacy is one of the loudest ways that a man gets the message that he is loved and accepted like that.

Finally, there’s a section on rewiring and restoring. There is hope and redemption for those whose lives have been damaged by pornography. Repentance and forgiveness is available to all who have stumbled.

I really encourage you to get this book and do something to address the problem of pornography. To sit alone looking at a computer screen to get aroused doesn’t require you to be a man. It just requires you to have a male body and a working computer with an internet connection. To go out and be a husband and maybe eventually a father as well, that requires you to be a real man. To have the desires for women but not feed them by viewing porn also requires you to be a real man. Go that route.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: We Too

What do I think of Mary DeMuth’s book published by Harvest House? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

A few years ago, the #MeToo movement started. It really gained a lot of momentum when the Kavanaugh hearings were going on and sadly, that’s when I think it also lost a lot of it. Many people started viewing the claims with suspicion. There are also concerns now that a guy and a girl can hook up somewhere and later on she can cry rape.

Despite this, no one would deny that sexual abuse is a problem today and it is sadly a problem in the church as well. This isn’t just the Catholic Church I’m talking about. It’s in other churches as well, including the Protestant ones, and our atheist friends are more than happy to point out when a pastor falls into sexual sin. Not only pastors, but many men in the pews are involved in this kind of thing. Even if a man is not actively using a woman in front of him, many men struggle with porn and women become objects.

Mary DeMuth writes from the position of a sexual abuse overcomer. I say overcomer instead of survivor because I prefer that term. Survivor refers to someone who lived through it. That’s great, but it’s even better when you pick up the pieces of your life and work on healing and overcome it so you can function still. The experience will always be with you, but God is a powerful healer.

DeMuth’s message is a simple one. I could sum it up this way. Listen. Really. Just listen. Too many times victims are not heard because the accused perpetrator is such a good man supposedly. When court hearings take place, the victim often stands alone while the church comes and sits on the side of the accused.

I was also pleased to see her reference the activity going on around Paige Patterson recently. That’s a topic I did some coverage on and what happened to him is a testament to how much more seriously we’re taking this now. The sad reality though is that women still often don’t think they can safely talk about what happened at church services.

By the way, that’s one criticism I do have of the book. DeMuth does state how much this happens to women. Something that is left out is that while it is rarer, men are abused too. I would have liked to have seen it pointed out that all abuse is wrong including that which happens to the male of the species. Men might be even less likely to report sexual abuse to them since that male pride kicks in.

I also do think it’s important that we teach women still some tips on safety. I know the victim isn’t to blame, but in this day and age, women need to be careful. If you’re a woman and your male boss invites you up for a meeting in his hotel room one night, I wouldn’t take it. We all know of stories about the casting couch at various places.

We men need to be protectors as well. A woman can feel much safer I suspect if she has a father, a husband, a brother, an uncle, a cousin, or some man who is willing to be there for her and let her know she’s not to be abused this way. We could all do our part to help fight the pornography institution and its constant objectifying of men and women both.

Sexual abuse is a shame when it happens anywhere, but especially so when it happens in what’s supposed to be the body of Christ. We who represent the one who honored women the most ought to be a place where any woman can come and feel safe. We also need to provide counseling and support to these women who have been through such abuse. Hopefully, a book like this will help us all be more aware.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: Primal Screams

What do I think of Mary Eberstadt’s book published by Templeton Press? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Wolves are not solitary animals. They travel in packs. They form families. They have tribes. They work together in a community. People might have believed the lone wolf was typical some time ago, but today those who know animals know that that is a myth.

People also tend to travel in tribes. For most of us, the first tribe is the family, but what happens if the family isn’t a tribe? What happens if the family is in disarray? What happens if you don’t know who your Dad is and you don’t have siblings to relate to and Mom is bringing home a new man on a regular basis?

Our culture has changed drastically since the sexual revolution, which is what Mary Eberstadt is writing about in this book. In the past, it was the norm for sexual behavior to take place between a husband and a wife in marriage. Today, no more. In the past, you used to see a man and a woman go into a room in a movie and heard a lock click and you knew what was going on. Today, you have to see them taking each other’s clothes off because that’s the only way you can know what is happening.

This leaves men and women wondering what it means to be a man and a woman, especially our young people. Is it any wonder there’s so much confusion? If I don’t know who I am, I will jump at any chance to have a rock I can put my identity on. I need something stable. This also assumes that God is not there properly understood. We are alone in a universe adrift and we have to figure out how we’re going to make it.

So here comes individualism and identity politics. Why do we have so many people running to safe places and talking about being offended and cultural appropriation? Because they really feel unsafe, they are offended, and they do think their culture is being taken from them. We’ve heard them complain about this and we have called them snowflakes, but how many of us have considered that while we disagree with what they’re saying, they really are convinced of it?

After all, if your culture defines you, what happens if someone tries to take your culture for themselves? They are really attacking your identity. How can that make you you if I can take it for myself? You thnk you need a safe place because you think you as a person are under attack. You see yourself being offended because you think you again are being attacked.

In this culture, men don’t know what it means to be men. Men don’t really know how to approach women and how to treat them. Big shock that they’re trying to just demonstrate their manhood and they think the best way to do that is to conquer as many women as possible, which leads to women becoming notches on bedposts. Pornography isn’t such a big deal then if women are just bodies to bring about pleasure.

Women also don’t know how to handle men. What does a woman think is going to happen when any man invites her to a hotel room for the night? The MeToo movement has shown that many women are not aware of how to handle things. Could women have come forward en masse because women didn’t know they were allowed to do that? Did women think this is par for the course with men? Did they also think that because men failed to be protectors and instead solely became predators? After all, in many of these stories about women being assaulted in some way, where are the good men?

This thinking also leads to transgenderism. Why not? The lines between the sexes have blurred so much that there is now getting to hardly be any distinction between them. As it turns out, now men are truly superior at everything. Men are superior at being women.

So it is that we have a culture that does not know who it is and Eberstadt’s book is sounding the alarm. The wolves normally don’t travel alone. Sometimes they leave the tribe for whatever reason and then you hear their primal screams of abandonment.

The culture is screaming.

Let’s do something about it.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: Fallen

What do I think of Annie Lobert’s book published by Worthy Books? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Annie Lobert’s book is all about how she got caught in sex trafficking and wound up escaping that and coming to Jesus. Now she runs a ministry called Hookers For Jesus to help women escape the sex trafficking industry. Her story is her personal memoir and is quite gripping.

I remember having it with me when I went to get a pizza for my wife and I and while at Little Caesar’s I’m just on page 8 and thinking, “Control your emotions. This is not a place to get sad.” That’s interesting because very rarely does a book emotionally grip me like that.

Her story is something different. It starts off with the story of a little girl who was scared of her Dad. Let’s say this upfront. Fathers. Please do not underestimate the role you play in the lives of your daughters. It’s amazing how much it matters if Dad is there or if he isn’t. That means active interest. You will influence her relationship with men greatly by how you act.

Annie winds up loving what she sees in boys and has dreams of the Disney type of love and marriage. Before too long, she decides she’s willing to sleep with a boy she loves. Shortly after that, he leaves her. This kind of pattern seems to keep happening.

When she leaves home, she goes to the big city and tries to get attention with her body, and she succeeds. One guy comes in who she wants to impress and she winds up going to Las Vegas with him to be with another friend who lives there with her boyfriend. She gets a job as an escort which he strangely approves of.

Then the truth comes out.

He demands all her money from all her work and if she doesn’t respond as he wants, the beatings come. Annie is trapped. She is in the sex trafficking industry now and this man is her pimp. From there starts a train of abuse regularly.

Not only that, in her adventures in being an escort girl, she has trouble after trouble. Police arrest her or she gets raped or even violent activity such as being put at gunpoint. In all of this, she is with an abusive man and believe it or not, she is insistent she loves him.

Eventually, she has enough and plans her escape. Still, even after this, she has more trouble coming her way with drug addictions and sickness and other abusive relationships. Finally, she reaches a breaking point and decides to let God be God and comes to Him.

From there, her story takes off as she learns more and more about what it means to be a follower of Christ. I don’t agree with all her exegesis in this part, but it’s hard to argue against the way her life is lived. As much as the first part of the book started bringing me sadness, this part started bringing me joy.

Annie’s book is a story of redemption for all who need it, which is all of us. For all who want to know about being loved and forgiven, this book is for you. Keep in mind sex trafficking doesn’t just mean being a prostitute or something of that sort. If you are willfully using your body to get love, then you are trafficking your body in some means.

The book ends with some testimonials from Destiny House, her ministry. These are all about women who have been damaged through the misuse of sex. Many of them come to the proper use in the end. So did Annie as she is now happily married to Oz Fox, the lead guitarist in Stryper.

Get this book and cry and smile both.

In Christ,
Nick Peters