Category: Political

Is Masculinity Bad?

Is it bad to be a man?

Recently, I was still going through The Bully Society and I was reading about the bully economy. While the book has a lot to say about the problem of bullying, it fails a lot in the area of solutions, and in this case tying the problem in with capitalism. Am I to think that if we went to socialism, all the kids in the world would join hands and sing Kum-Bu-Yah together?

Anyway, the author notes that some of the attributes given to masculinity are also similar to capitalism. Those are aggressive, competitive, and powerful. That is the way the market is seen sometimes. I could defend capitalism here, but I have done that in other posts.

For now, I notice that it seems that being aggressive, powerful, and competitive are bad things inherently. There is no doubt these can be used for evil purposes, but that does not mean that they are evil. I can use my car in my apartment parking lot to drive to work and church. I can also use it to drive over little old ladies crossing the street. The car is not the issue. The person is the issue.

You can think it wrong for a man to be powerful, but if a man is going to make a positive change, he needs some power. You can think it is wrong for him to be aggressive, but if he is going to go forward in pursuit of a goal and stand up to evil, he needs to be powerful. You can think it is wrong for him to be competitive, but if he is going to want to excel, he needs to want to be better than those who don’t.

I can say on my end that while I do not see myself as aggressive or powerful, competitive does ring true, but that is what has caused me to study academically far more. It is wanting to be the best at what I do that has got me here. Had I not had this kind of spirit in me, I would have heard the doom and gloom about a diagnosis of autism and said “Oh well. Guess I’ll never amount to anything.”

What would be better is to ask the question of what a man is instead of saying that those ideas of masculinity are bad, or at least implying that they are. This is part of the problem. We do not know what men are, but usually it is assumed that whatever they are, they are bad.

If society does not know what men and women are, it should not be a shock that we have issues like failing to understand marriage and relationships or that we have debates over transgenderism. I acknowledge that in some ways, the question of what a man or a woman is is a simple question. In another way, it is a complex question. It gets to a question of essences, which I consider a problem for a purely materialistic position.

So if a man does not have any indicator that he is a man, then what will he do? He will try to seek it elsewhere. He could do so by being powerful in a gang. He could do so by being competitive in sports or even video games. He could do so by being aggressive in business or with women. Some of these are fine, but some aren’t. It is fine to be competitive on the athletic field, provided you are not wronging the others out there. It is not fine to be powerful in a gang and seek to do wrong to other men and women. It is fine to be confident with women. It is not fine to be so aggressive that you force your way onto them.

If a man doesn’t know if he is a man, he could still try harmful ways. He could think he has to sleep with as many women as possible, highly persuasive since sex often leaves a man feeling like a man. He could be willing to cheat to get ahead in sports, say by taking steroids. He could seek power by trying to beat up other men or even kill them. He could try to get material possessions as a status symbol to everyone else.

By the way, women will also try counterparts, but seeing as I am a man, I am talking about them.

What he likely will not try is to try to build up character and be a man of virtue. We have lost sight of virtue as what builds up a person and ultimately a society. A society cannot last if goodness is not one of the goals of society. If all a society cares about is going for all that you can get and the vapid pursuit of pleasure, it will fail.

Unfortunately, not much is said about that. Everything else is blamed. It’s the video games. It’s the guns. It’s the schools. It’s capitalism.

No. The problem is us.

We need to change.

We need a return to virtue and men being virtuous men and women being virtuous women. Unfortunately, with moral relativism, we don’t really know what virtue is either. The more we blame everything else, the less we will care about virtue.

Masculinity is not bad, but anything we do without virtue will taint everything else. We must return to that and I contend only Christianity can truly give us the virtue we need.

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

 

Should Elon Be Wealthy?

Is it wrong to have wealth? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I got into a Facebook debate recently with someone talking about Elon Musk and all the wealth he has. Obviously, Elon needs to do more with the money that he has. He has so much money while so many people are suffering from hunger.

This kind of argumentation has a lot of emotional appeal. In our society, many of us have come to hate some people for having money. Of course, a lot of celebrities and athletes are exempt from this because, well, we get entertained by them. We also know that we can’t be them, but a CEO? That’s different.

Let’s look at the last part first. There are a lot of people dying from hunger. Yes. The problem is that this is not just a money problem. This is a problem because of wicked governments in the world. Believe it or not, some dictators out there don’t care if their people starve or not. It’s not as if people wanting to feed the hungry are allowed to go door-to-door in these countries giving out food to the poor. No. In many cases, the government will seize and goods that come in and use that as leverage to control the populace.

“Well, Elon has more money than he needs!”

Yet as I was told this, I asked back immediately if the person was using a library computer. Do they have a car? Do they have a smart phone? Do they have a place to live with a bed and with heat and air? Can they take a warm shower? Do they have food in their refrigerators and cabinets? If they answered yes, then they are actually themselves among the richest people in the world.

It’s awfully strange then that such people do not have to give away what they have. They do not have more money than they need. It is those people who are above them that are the problem. To paraphrase Thomas Sowell, it is amazing that Elon Musk is greedy for wanting to keep the money he has earned, but someone else is not greedy for wanting what they think is their share of the money Elon has earned.

Not only this, but it’s not as if Elon Musk keeps his money in Scrooge’s vault and goes swimming in it regularly. Usually, what we measure is the net worth of a CEO. He has money invested in his earnings and his business. Saying he is worth X billion does not mean he has X billion in his bank account.

We also have to ask how many people does Musk employ? There are plenty of people who have jobs today because of Musk. CEOs own the company, but who does a lot of the work also in the company? Middle-class employees.

Does Musk give to charities also? Yes. When the hurricane hit areas in the east of America, he was there to provide internet services and other goods for those in need. Someone could say Musk could give more, but when we stand before God, we won’t be asked about what Musk did with what he had. We will be asked what we did with what we had.

Let’s suppose that instead of investing in his company which would create jobs, Musk goes out and buys a yacht or a mansion. Doesn’t that hurt us? No. Hint. CEOs do not build yachts and mansions. Who builds them? Again, middle-class people. It is the rank and file that build them and thus, they have jobs. You can say they are temporary, but all construction jobs are temporary.

Let us suppose that Musk puts his money in a bank. You could say it is just sitting there, but you know who it provides opportunities for? You and I. We can take out loans from a bank because of money that has been put there by others. That money could be used to fund education or our own small businesses we want to start.

Does the Bible often seem to condemn the rich and the wealthy? Yes, but it is not because they are rich and wealthy. Plenty of heroes of the faith are also rich and wealthy. Abraham and the patriarchs were incredibly rich. David and Solomon were rich. Anyone who provided for a New Testament church and the copying of New Testament manuscripts was rich. Having wealth is not the problem. Wealth having you is the problem.

Also, in America, if you are poor, it is not because another person is rich.  If Elon’s money was equally divided among all Americans, we would all get about $777 one time. For me, that could pay my rent for one month and maybe one or two other bills and then that’s it. This is something people miss when they want to talk about going to college and getting free health care and just letting the rich pay for it. As Margaret Thatcher said, the problem with socialism is sooner or later you run out of other peoples’ money. Not only do the rich lose the money, but they have less they can do to hire other people.

Keep in mind as I say this that I am not rich myself. I have my own Patreon and I make minimum wage at my job. When it comes to voting, my policy is simple. Never vote for a new tax. Always vote for a tax cut. Does that include tax cuts for the rich? Absolutely. I trust that they can do more good with the money than the government can, a government that is $35 trillion in debt doesn’t have a lot to say about how other people should use their money. Government needs to reduce its spending, not take more from us.

Could Musk do more? I am sure he could, but that is an irrelevant question to ask. The question I should be asking is “Can I do more?” The question you should be asking is the same. When I meet someone who wants someone rich to give away all they own, but they won’t part with their smartphone, computer, automobile, etc. I just can’t take them seriously.

Do what you can with what you have. How someone else is spending their income will be between them and God.

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

The Ouroboros of Feminism

Has feminism really helped women? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I have been reading The Bully Society and the book talks about how women are often treated, including by other women! Women live in a quite contradictory world. If you wish to remain a virgin until you’re wedding night, then you’re a prude. If you do sleep around with men, you’re a slut.

I have said that the self-esteem movement was a failure. Feminism was also a failure and has become an ouroboros. If you do not know, that’s the depiction you will see sometimes of a snake that eats its tail.

The first mistake is that it has been thought that men and women are different and therefore, one is superior to the other. This doesn’t follow. There are plenty of things that are different to one another, but it does not follow that one is superior. Cats and dogs are different and people have their preferences, but it does not follow that one is superior. The same could be said with various foods, colors, books, movies, etc. Sometimes there is a superior, but not just because two things are different.

There was also the question of men sometimes getting different treatment, such as in the workplace, but this was not because men are superior. It was because men and women are different in that women can miss long periods of work at a time when they have children. Men are not the same way. It was tempting to write “Do not have the same problem” but that assumes that it is a problem.

I happen to side with what the Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft said. Men are superior at one thing, being men. Women are superior at one thing, being women.

Keep that in mind as we go along.

Unfortunately, women started seeing their being a woman as the problem. While the pill certainly helped some, it was abortion that really got the ball rolling. With that, women were able to eliminate pregnancy. Thus, they could have careers like men.

Just pause to think about that. Innocent human lives dying for the sake of a career. We read in the Bible about the Canaanites performing child sacrifice, but we’re worse. At least they saw that as a real sacrifice and did it for the good of the harvest.

Baby: Why must I die?

Canaanite: We realize what a value you are to us so we are sacrificing you as a gift to the gods so that they will bless us with a bountiful harvest so we can all survive.

Baby: Why must I die?

Women: Because your mother didn’t want to have you and just wanted to have sex without consequences and if she has you, she can’t get that promotion she wants at work and go on to have a successful career. You are an inconvenience on her path to independence.

They are both wrong, but the Canaanites make a better case.

In The Bully Society, it is claimed that many of the early feminists wanted men to start treating sex the way women did. Generally, women seem more interested in building relationships. Men generally tend to be more interested in, well, sex. Not so, instead, women started to act more like men and why wouldn’t they? They had already killed their femininity with abortion.

Fast forward past that and the LGBTQ people start making cases. “Hey! If couples get married all the time without children and we allow abortion, then really children don’t matter. Right? If marriage is not really about children, but about the happiness of the people involved, then why can’t we get married?”

And if it is true that marriage is not about building up a stable family unit for a future generation, then they have a point. Why can’t they? It is as if the whole of society had ceased to really think about marriage and what it was and decided that whatever this is, we can just apply it to another group.

With that, the sexes in a marriage became interchangeable. You don’t have to have a man and a woman. You can have two men or two women. Now we have people marrying buildings and animals and other inanimate objects and even themselves. Before long, the Mormons will surely be pushing for polygamy, and why not? After all, if male and female are artificial ideas thrust on marriage, why stop at just two people?

It was only a few years after that we went the next logical step. Note in saying logical I am not agreeing with it, but I am saying that if you accept the premises already mentioned, the conclusion does naturally follow. If men and women are interchangeable in marriage, why not everywhere else? This gets us to the transgender movement.

Remember how I referred to Kreeft earlier saying men are superior at being men and women at being women?

This is no longer the case.

Men claiming to be women are winning sports competitions. They are winning beauty pageants. They are even winning poker tournaments. Not only that, but many women are defending this. Who are the superior women now?

Looks like men are.

Oh. What else do the men get out of this?

They still get to keep their jobs. They also get to have all the sex they want with the women who will kill the children so that men don’t have to have responsibility for them. They also don’t even have to marry the women any more to get to have sex.

Women meanwhile have lost their femininity and are being beat by men in what was supposed to be the areas for women.

This is the end result of feminism.

True femininity encourages women to celebrate being women. It tells them having children is not a hindrance but is a gift. It tells them to celebrate the differences they have from men. It tells them to have men earn sex with them by making lifelong commitments to them prior. It also tells them to stay faithful to the men that they do marry and build families together.

In this deal, women get to have a future with their DNA passed down to their children, they get to be provided for by their husbands, they get to be loved and adored, and oh yes, they get to have the sex without worrying about the consequences because having a baby isn’t a problem to them. They can also tell men to get out of women’s sports and other women’s areas. They can work if they want to, but it’s not a requirement.

Maybe it’s just me, but it looks like women are better off with a more traditional approach.

If you are a woman, celebrate it. Don’t be a feminist.

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

 

The Failure of Self-Esteem

Does it work to build up a child’s self-esteem? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I am going through The Bully Society now, among many other books. Something I am noticing in this book is the rampant problem of bullying in our schools. That’s not a shock. What causes it though is often making sure kids have the right fashions or that men are men and not coming across as feminine or “gay”. It’s odd that in schools, those who are educated are the ones who are the oddballs and the schools lavish everything on the athletes.

As I keep going through this, I have a dominant thought.

The self-esteem movement is a colossal failure.

We have spent so much time telling kids to feel good about themselves and be proud of who they are. Meanwhile, you have numerous kids around them telling them that they are shameful and embarrassing and they should not be proud of who they are. Who do children at that age want to please more generally? Their teachers and other adults, or their younger peers?

Knowing that, which voices are going to speak the most to them?

The problem with the self-esteem movement is that it is grounded in nothing. Think about how it is when you get a mass text or a mass email from a business that tells you how much they are thinking about you. You know they’re not. You’re just a name on a list. They don’t know who you are.

It is the same with the self-esteem movement. “Oh! You’re telling me all these wonderful things about me! Thank you so much! It means so much that you see me that way and….wait….you just said the exact same thing to them….and to that other person…and to the next one.”

At that point, you realize it has nothing to do with you.

Kids then want to go to the people who do know them and those are their peers. They will do anything because they want to be accepted and not rejected. They want to fit in. In principle, there’s nothing wrong with that. We all want to be accepted. We all hate rejection.

The problem can be sometimes these kids do things that they shouldn’t do because they want that acceptance. Status has been defined before as buying things you don’t want with money you don’t have to impress people you don’t like. It is really short-term thinking. It’s not about children building up good character, but about children being liked.

This also leads to them getting involved sexually. The problem is, they approach usually from very different standpoints. A man needs to be sexually active in society because that is what a man does. The man is not thinking about long-term commitment. He’s thinking about notches on his headboard and getting the woman naked. This is also why so many guys dump girls after they sleep with them.

Girls generally want love and often think “if I give the man what he wants, he will give me that love.” The sad thing is, it doesn’t work. The idea of feminist empowerment so that women can enjoy sex the way men does is a failure because women are not men. Women end up being used and the guy still gets what he wants most of the time.

So what are children chasing after for acceptance? Material things and sex. Why shouldn’t they? What else are they being given to ground their worth in?

The church definitely needs to improve. Often, our message is the same as the world’s, but with a Christian veneer painted on it. The goal is often to get young people to feel good about themselves instead of being good themselves. It is to determine how they stand with God based on their feelings instead of a sound understanding of Scripture.

That also means a whole teaching of theology and doctrine and the reasons behind it. Hard work? Yes. Would you prefer to keep doing what we’re doing instead? How is that working out?

Our young people are worth it. They need a solid foundation for who they are in Christ. Only then will they not chase after everything else for identity.

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

 

 

 

Make It Engaging First

Does our material really connect? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I recently started reading Kevin J. Vanhoozer’s Mere Christian Hermeneutics. This is actually the first time I have ever read a book by him and I did not know what to expect. As I started going through, I found myself quite enjoying what I was reading.

There seems to be a hidden assumption among academics that their writings must be as dry and boring as possible. Yes. There is a tendency to think “Just the Facts” in Joe Friday style, but the prophets used vibrant language at times and the life of Jesus was put into the form of a story.

Consider these quotes from Vanhoozer:

“There are more things in discourse and text than are dreamed of in critical theory.” (p. 4)

An avid reader will recognize an allusion to Shakespeare immediately. Vanhoozer makes the point about how lacking critical theory is to the reading of Scripture, but does so in a way that sticks with the reader. The reader sees that and with a bit of bemusement goes on, but remembering the point.

Also on that same page:

“Consequently, we need not only to “test the spirits” (1 John 4:1) but also to test the hermeneutics. We need to conduct an experiment in criticism.”

Readers will here note a reference to Scripture, but others will note a reference to a work by C.S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism, in a book that is also itself a reference to Lewis in title, a take-off on Mere Christianity.

Things like this show up regularly in the work. The point is the reader feels engaged with then. If the reader is engaged in the material, they are more likely to remember the material and apply it.

About a year or so ago, I had Switch Online at the time on my Nintendo Switch and sat down and went through the first and second quests of the original The Legend of Zelda and then went through A Link to the Past. I could still do everything and find everything. Had I ever taken a test on these games? No. Was it even a necessity to find everything? No. You can finish the games without doing so. Had I been regularly reading material on those games to make sure I remembered where everything was? No.

I just engaged with the material and I learned it.

Quick. Try to think of two words that can be used to describe a long and boring talk. Two that I can easily think of and the ones you might have are sermon and lecture. If you go to a church on Sunday, what is the message often called? A sermon. If you go to your college or seminary classroom what do you get? A lecture. Quiz time. How much do you learn from those? If you’re like me, not much. Most of us the next day can’t remember what the pastor preached on yesterday. Some people can’t even remember a few hours later.

I watch a lot of gaming news and I am particularly interested in how my culture is responding to DEI. One such channel is the Kilted Cajun. I am going to use a slogan of his in talking about making good games and that is “Make it fun first.” I am modifying that a bit to say “Make it engaging first.”

We often have made this mistake in Christian media. How many of you have ever got together with non-Christian friends to go see something like a superhero movie? Sure. Most everyone wants to see those. How many of you have ever got together with some non-Christian friends to go see a Christian movie? Right. When was the last time you had people excited about a new Christian movie coming out?

The only one I can think of is something from The Chronicles of Narnia. Lewis was a master of this. Lewis was engaging. In Christianity, Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox all like to read Lewis. Atheists enjoy reading Lewis. I recall the account of one atheist who was stunned years later when she realized that Aslan was meant to picture Jesus. How many times had she been reading those books and unbeknownst to her, she was learning Christianity at the same time?

In the gaming field, this is the big mistake that the DEI crowd is making. They are forcing DEI into everything so that it’s artificial. To refer to another YouTuber, they are all about doing whatever they can to get in “The Message.”

Consider the case of Concord. This was a game that Sony spent at least $100 million on. Some places say as much as $400 million. It was at least eight years in the making. It was hoped to produce a major franchise.

Most FPS franchises nowadays are free to play and buy with the money coming from in-game purchases. That was the first strike against Concord. The major problem seems to be that the game was incredibly woke pushing things like pronouns.

DEI is so bad that there has even been a website set up to warn people about games that have DEI in them. I used to play Pokemon Go regularly, until they had a developer come in who remade the avatars and pretty much erased male and female from them. All the bodies had to look exactly the same.

There was recently a remake released of Dragon Quest III. I loved the original game, but I am not getting the remake. Why? Woke is in it. Instead of male and female for your character, you have type A and type B. Nothing uplifts women like referring to their bodies as Type B.

Why is this ruining games? Same reason. The material is not engaging. The message comes first and then they try to strap a narrative or a game on top of that. No one wants it. It would be interesting for a company like Square Enix to release another version of the Dragon Quest III Remake and have it be one without the woke stuff in it and see if it sells better. Prediction. It would.

In all of this, I am not at all suggesting that we lower the importance of facts and data. I am saying we need to consider how the material is coming across. We can have the best material in the world, but if no one wants to engage with the material, no one will get it. No one will learn it.

A teacher can have the best information, but if his students aren’t engaged when he teaches, then they won’t remember it long-term. They can study and learn it for a test, but they will forget it after. A preacher can work hard on a sermon, but if the audience does not feel engaged, they will not recall it or practice it. How this is done is up to the speaker and producer of whatever material is there, but it needs to be done.

We have a long history of bad media being made because we focused on message instead of the packaging. Now the woke are making the same material and we can see what we were doing for years. Let’s learn from our mistakes and their mistakes.

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

Why Do Christians Doubt Science?

Why are so many Christians skeptical of science? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

When I say Christians, let me be clear at the start that I am speaking largely of lay Christians. There are several devout Christians in the sciences. Also, I do not think a lot of Christians doubt everything in science. Most Christians still cook food using tools of science and drive cars and travel by airplane.

Yet somehow, it seems there is an increase in the skepticism of claims of science.

In all honesty, I’m one of them also.

Why?

There are two great tragedies I think have happened in scientific history. The first is that there was a false warfare started between science and religion. This meant people had to choose one or the other normally. Atheists would ignore anything religious and quickly dismiss it and miss out on eternal life from a Christian perspective. On a more pragmatic level, there are Christians with great minds who could have gone into scientific fields, but were told they had to choose science or Christianity.

On the other hand, Christians bunkered down a lot more in their own circles and didn’t invest enough in the scientific enterprise. They perpetuated a myth that had been started. Christians could have been doing wonders in science, and yet the warfare continued. Christians got injected with a heavy dose of scientific skepticism.

The second great tragedy I consider far worse for the scientific enterprise.

That was when science married politics.

At least, on the outside looking in, that’s what it looks like.

Let’s go back to 2020 and the Covid controversy going on. Narratives were controlled then. If you said the virus came from a lab in China, you were a racist and a conspiracy theorist. Now, that is accepted truth. Many of us were skeptical of masks and school shutdowns. Looking back, it seems that we were right.

Any mention of hydroxychloroquine was off-limits, especially since it was espoused by the bad orange man. The same happened with Ivermectin. I remember active debates with people who were arguing that people were being encouraged to take horse medication.

Then the vaccines came out. I thought that would be the end of it. I was wrong. Suddenly, you didn’t just need the shot, you needed several boosters of the shot. We were also told if we didn’t get a shot, we were a danger to those who had got the vaccine somehow. It made no sense to us.

Not only that, anything contrary was quickly shut down. Yes. We saw the emails between Fauci and Collins and others. We saw that the science was being controlled and if you dared raise questions, you were anti-science.

And yet, many of us thought raising questions was what science was about.

Many of us also knew people who suffered long-term side-effects from the vaccine. Those stories were ignored as well. The information was being controlled and people would be punished somehow on social media. I remember making a joke post about what the best place was to farm for vaccines on Final Fantasy IX only for Facebook to automatically put up something on my post about contacting the CDC.

Now let’s talk about global warming also.

Many of us have seen threats of doom and gloom and the funny thing is, every prediction in the past that the due date has arrived, it has proven false. I remember being taught in Elementary school back in the 80’s that an ice age was coming. Leonard Nimoy talked about it back in 1979.

Now imagine if we had done something radical back then and taken steps to warm the planet. Where do you think we would be today with the hysteria? The problem many of us see is that the solution is always the same and well, it always seems to come down to more government control and more power for politicians.

Funny how that works out.

We also see all these celebrities talking about the crisis and we all need to cut back while they fly off on their private jets. We see politicians talk about the oceans are about to rise and then they buy oceanfront property. It always seems like the environmental stuff is what everyone else is supposed to do.

By the way, none of this is allowed to be questioned either.

You can also add in transgenderism where we’re told to deny basic biology. It is interesting that it seems to be abortion where people don’t want to look at the science the most and really turn philosophical. It may be a baby, but is it a person? Again, all of this seems tied to one end of the political spectrum.

For me, I can say that since Covid, I have grown a lot more suspicious. We have also seen in our political news how quickly stories get covered up and buried. Many of us do get suspicious.

This is ultimately why many Christians, and also many non-Christians are skeptical today. It’s not because we’re hiding thinking our worldview is in danger. It is because that science often seems to be science tied to an agenda. We live in an age where people are questioning narratives and if science seems married to a narrative, they will question whatever aspect is tied to it.

Until the average layman can tell that the two are not married, they will question whatever aspects of science seem tied to that union. Will this have worse consequences down the line? I am sure it will. Sadly, for many of us, it looks like the enemy came from within.

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

 

Opening Thoughts on School Shootings

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That is level 1.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Book Plunge: Liberty and the Things of God

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

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

As Tertullian says in chapter 24 of the work:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Nashville Manifesto

What are my thoughts on the shooter’s manifesto? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

When I found out the manifesto was available for reading, I decided to get it in wanting to be informed on the matter. Personally, I think the whole thing should have come out a lot earlier. Now this isn’t anything that’s formally typed out or anything like that so some parts were hard to read just for that reason.

Going through, I wanted to see what this person said about their mental state and really, that was also hard to read. So much was sad about this. This is a person who needed severe help and wasn’t getting it. Also, while I favor quoting material, due to the sensitive nature and not everyone wanting to see it themselves, I am not going to do that this time.

The first day I got it and started going through it, I remember reading it and seeing something said along the lines of “Love is not real if my Autism is.”

At that point, I had to close it up for a bit and get back to it later.

In some ways, I can understand. I watch society and I don’t know what people think. I don’t know what’s really going on with them. One of my favorite shows is The Big Bang Theory and even if you don’t like it, this is one of the best clips I have seen on that. I have read material behind the show and Sheldon is on the spectrum. They just didn’t want to say that officially. Look at what he says here and I give this to people as an example of what this is like.

For me, I don’t understand social cues. If my boss corrects me, is she mad at me and I am a disappointment? Is that girl flirting with me or just being nice? If I say something to her different, will she want to go out with me or will she think I’m a creeper? Do people really care about how I am doing or are they just saying that to be nice? Why do we greet each other in public but when we go home there’s no interaction?

Feelings are hard to understand, but I do know I do have people who love me and people who care about me. It can be hard to tell who they are sometimes, but it is real. I do know after a failed marriage, I am on guard around people more and just want people to be real. It’s painful when I think someone hasn’t trusted me.

Going through further, the shooter repeatedly said that everything hurts. They wanted to die. They also wanted God to forgive them. This wasn’t an angry atheist from what I see. This was someone very delusional wanting to take it out on the world.

The shooter also said that their father loved the cats more than the shooter was loved. I don’t know about their father, but fathers are extremely important. Kids need father love. I do remember they spoke some about their parents conservative values and that was extremely difficult for them.

Granted, I am only getting one side of the story, but parents need to make sure they love their children even if they think their thinking is delusional, and thinking you are the wrong sex is delusional. At the same time, too many parents panic. It’s understandable, but they do.

Years ago my wife was feeling suicidal and I took her to see a great therapist who taught counseling at the seminary. I was hoping he would see the emergency here, but I was stunned as he talked to her as calmly as if they were talking about the weather as if this was no big deal and added at the end, “I hope you stay.” Turns out, he was right. Not much of a shock. I learned from him that if you act panicked, the people you are trying to help will also panic.

This is also why when your children show up doubting their faith, don’t panic. Josh McDowell and Francis Schaeffer both were calm with their children and encouraged questioning and it worked both times. That being said, I do understand it’s more difficult now as most therapists will automatically affirm the delusional thinking and parents will be reported for not going along with it.

This was an incredibly sick individual. Sometimes, sex was described in ways that seemed tantamount to rape. They had some delusional fantasies, but overall, I think they just wanted to be loved.

Something we all want.

Here is something else sad about this.

The whole thing could have been prevented.

They wrote at one point they were surprised they were not arrested in 2021. None of those deaths had to happen. (FBI must have been too busy arresting grandmothers who went into the Capitol on J6 or going after pro-life protesters.) Friends. New laws won’t change this. Criminals do not care about the law and if you are sick enough to do something like what this person did, you definitely do not care about it.

We need a whole worldview change.

We need the gospel.

I urge you to be prepared if you want to read this manifesto. It is sad. It is difficult. Pray for everyone involved. Pray for the families of the victims. Pray for the family of the shooter. Pray for the survivors.

Pray we can stop the next one because one school shooting is one too many.

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

 

Saint Or Antichrist?

Are either of these accurate? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

In light of the recent assassination attempt, something humorous is both sides are using the Bible to try to back a point. The left is using this as proof that Trump is the antichrist. The right is using this as proof that Trump has an anointing of God on him. I’m not going to say either of those positions is false, but I am going to say the arguments I see being made are just horrible.

So let’s start with the easier one.

You all know I’m an orthodox Preterist so I wouldn’t be reading this in any futurist sense at all, but for the sake of argument, I’m going to take a more dispensational approach. To begin with, the Bible doesn’t say that about the Antichrist. It says that about the Beast. Now aren’t those the same person? They could be, but Revelation never says that they are. That is an assumption that is brought to the text.

For the second point, I am not saying that what happened to the president is a mere matter, but put it in proper context. The overwhelming majority of us that had a bullet graze our ear would survive. That is not surprising. What makes the Beast surprising in the text is that his wound is fatal and yet he survives it. (It’s also one of his heads as the beast has multiple heads, but again, I’m assuming a more dispensational approach here.)

About the only way you would die from a bullet to the ear is if you had hemophilia and your blood couldn’t clot properly. The fact that Trump survived this is not incredible. Had it hit him full on as it would have if he had not turned his neck and yet he survived would indeed be incredible. (And even still, it would not show he was the Antichrist.)

That one’s fairly simple, but the right side coming from evangelicals is more complex.

In the Bible the concept of blood on the right ear (Leviticus 8:22-24 and 14:28) serves as a visible mark of consecration, signifying that the person is dedicated to God’s service and has been set apart for a specific purpose. This act represents a physical and spiritual transformation, preparing the individual for their sacred role. Here’s a breakdown of the significance:

*Right ear: The right ear represents hearing and obedience. In ancient times, the right ear was considered the most important ear, as it was the ear that heard the words of God.

*Blood: Blood represents life, sacrifice, and atonement. In this context, the blood is a symbol of purification and consecration. *Consecration: Consecration means to set something or someone apart for a specific purpose, making it holy and dedicated to God. In this case, the blood on the right ear signifies that the person is being set apart for a sacred task or role.

*Priestly consecration: In Leviticus 8, the blood is applied to the right ear of Aaron and his sons, consecrating them as priests. This act sets them apart as mediators between God and the people.

*Purification: In Leviticus 14, the blood is applied to the right ear of the person being cleansed, symbolizing their purification and restoration to the community.

It’s really embarrassing to see evangelicals sharing stuff like this.

For one, yes, the right ear was anointed, but so was the thumb of the right hand and the big toe of his right foot. This was also an intentional act. No Jew today would accept being shot at to get the blood of someone. It was also done to consecrate someone as a priest, which is not the office that Trump is running for.

For Leviticus 14, it is for atonement, but it is the blood of an animal. Also, there is to be anointing oil placed on the body parts as well, and it’s the same parts of the body. In both cases, we only have one body part so this does not apply.

There are some who are saying that it was divine intervention that caused Trump to move when he did to avoid the bullet. Maybe. We don’t know. I am one who thinks it is foolish to speak when we do not know.

For those who are playing pin the tail on the Antichrist, please stop. It’s embarrassing. Yes. There have been some predictions made about Biden like that and if Kamala Harris starts running, they will be made about her. They have been made about most every political figure and every tyrant and they have all been wrong. (Aside from Nero as the beast which I hold was entirely correct.)

I am a conservative who votes that way, but I try to knock down bad arguments wherever I see them. The antichrist argument is a bad argument. The right ear anointed argument is a bad argument. If anything, the evangelicals making arguments like the above are the most embarrassing since they should know better.

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