Month: June 2015

Honor and Shame in Marriage

Does an honor and shame dynamic help you understand your marriage? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

One of the most fascinating areas in Biblical studies today is the work of the context group in understanding honor and shame. Honor is basically your view of your self combined with the views everyone else has of you to judge your rating, as it were, in society. Shame is being thought of lowly in society. In the ancient world, honor and shame were everything. You would rather die with honor than live with shame. I think much or our thinking is still unknowingly honor and shame based, though we are moving more and more towards an individualism that causes each of us to be a god unto himself. Our high school culture for instance could be like this where we have peer pressure. People do what they can to fit in and not rock the boat. Deviancy is viewed as something to be shunned.

How can this apply in your marriage?

My wife recently had dental work to get a wisdom tooth removed. Honest question here. Who will you allow to stick something in your mouth? Would you let a random stranger do such? No. You leave that to people that you do trust. You could let your spouse give you a passionate kiss along those lines or you could let a friend place a bit of food for you to try in your mouth, but the fact that you let someone have that kind of access indicates a degree of trust. You let a dentist do that or a doctor stick something like a tongue depressor in your mouth because these are people who have the ability to do things that need to be done. It’s not because you think they’re particularly good people. (My wife thinks I’m great after all, but she’s sure not going to let me remove a wisdom tooth from her mouth.)

So let’s apply that further. For a husband and wife, what is being given is total access to one’s body. That means that person who you are giving that access to is one that you are giving a high degree of honor to and worth to. (In fact, some marriage vows have said “With my body, I thee worship.) You do not get more vulnerable physically than you do with sex. (This is also one reason rape is such a devastating evil) While a man has to be vulnerable, there can really be no doubt that the woman is the one who is making herself the most vulnerable. This means the wife is showing her husband a high degree of honor. A good husband then is to honor that commitment and treat his wife like the treasure that she is.

This also impacts how we interact in public. If one person says to do something in public and all things being equal, the other disregards it, the one who made the request is shown to the rest of the world to be someone not even honored by their spouse. Now I am one that does believe in male headship, but that means my wife is to be treated like a queen. If a wife thinks her husband is the head and disregards him in public, then the message received by the public is “So this wife doesn’t think her husband’s requests are worth honoring. Why should I pay attention to this person?” (This is also a reason why I think all things being equal that if a parent sets a requirement and the child does not follow, the parent needs to follow through with the consequences they said they would follow through with.)

If a wife does in fact honor her husband (And keep in mind a wife is never to break the law of God) in public, then she will improve the way that her husband is seen in public. Of course, if you don’t hold to male headship, you can say that goes both ways, and a husband in turn must honor and respect his wife in public, meaning he must be careful to not hurtfully belittle her. (Although those of us who do hold to male headship should know that Peter tells us to treat our wives with special care and we must honor her in public as well) In the marriage relationship especially, each person should make it their point to show the other how much they care for them. (And keep in mind for we men, respect actually means a whole lot more than love.)

Marriage is hard work, and the best way to make it work is if both parties give 100%. Perhaps a mindset outside of our own has a lot more to teach us.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: In The Beginning God

What do I think of Dr. Winfried Corduan’s book published by B&H Academic? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

“In The Beginning God”. Most of us upon hearing that think “Created the Heavens and the Earth. Yeah. We know. Can we move on?” Dr. Corduan’s book doesn’t want to move on. It wants to stay right there in the beginning, but what beginning? This time not the beginning of the universe, but the beginning of religion. Today, much of the world is monotheistic, but how did we get to that point? Did religion just evolve from a primitive state of animism all the way up to the point where eventually one God came out to be supreme and now many of us today are monotheistic? Or, did religion start out as monotheistic and men moved away from that until later on, we returned to it?

Of course, when we say that religious systems have evolved, it must be clear that this is not saying anything about the scientific theory. For the sake of argument, it could be that scientific evolution of non-life to life in a sort of theistic evolutionary sense could be true and Dr. Corduan’s argument in this book is entirely correct as well. The truth of Corduan’s argument does not rely on that. However, he does want us to realize that evolution being true in one field does not mean that it will necessarily apply in every other field. (In fact, it would seem a whole plethora of gods would be much more complex than one major deity.)

For the research of this book, it will involve looking at the traditions of tribal peoples around the world and seeing what they believed. We will also look at those who have been impacted by Christian missionaries to see if missionaries might have changed any of the beliefs of these people on these major areas. We will also see if the evidence is being allowed to change the ideas, or if the ideas are changing how the evidence is viewed. Corduan will contend that too often the latter is happening. For this, Corduan will rely especially on the work of two in the field, one a Christian and one not. The Christian is Wilhelm Schmidt and the non-Christian is Andrew Lang, though Lang was open to something that would be called “supernatural.” (Regular readers of my writings know that I do not like to use that term.)

Corduan contends in fact that when Lang and Schmidt did the work to show an original monotheism, that their work was for the most part ignored. Of course, it could be for Schmidt that since he wrote around 11,000 pages that few people took the time to read. Corduan also shows that it would be wrong to think that missionaries showed up and changed a central core belief of the people and that the people then left everything else intact. What happens more often is that sometimes other gods can get added later on or other spirits in an animistic sense (Monotheistic religions do believe in other spiritual beings after all like angels and demons), that when you start talking about the one supreme God, that they know who you’re talking about.

Corduan’s book is highly accessible and entertaining. I do wish to thank him also for sending a personal review copy. I had read a recently re-released work of Schmidt’s, but I must say it’s easy to get lost in the jargon of Schmidt and Schmidt wrote as if everyone was familiar with the people in the field. That’s understandable, but it makes it difficult for those of us who do not know the names in the field. Corduan’s work gives you a history of the field and introduces you to the major names. It also ends with the importance that this can have for Christian apologetics with some cautions as well on what we can and cannot say.

I found the work to be highly interesting. If anything, I would have liked to have seen more on what other cultures believed that we don’t hear about regularly, but I know that wasn’t the purpose of the book and probably would have expanded it greatly to an unnecessary degree. For those curious about this kind of area, this is a work that you can enjoy. It’s got good information in it, but you won’t likely get lost in technicalities save for perhaps a few areas.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Will Your Murderer Be In Heaven?

Is Heaven going to be a place for murderers? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Lately, there’s been an image going around the internet. It’s certainly one that grips people powerfully, but it is fundamentally flawed. The image can be seen here:

atheistforgiveness

For the atheists that share this online, this seems unthinkable. God will allow a murderer to be in Heaven? He will not only allow a murderer to be in Heaven, but the people he murdered or whose loved ones he murdered will have to spend all eternity with this person? What kind of God is this?

At the start, it looks like for the atheist, you can’t win for losing. I’m not going to really debate on the view of Heaven presented here, but consider that if God sends people to Hell, well he’s wrong for doing that supposedly. If He snuffs them out of existence, well that’s pretty cruel. He’s wrong for doing that. If He lets them into Heaven, well look. People have to spend eternity with such evil people and they get a free pass.

So no matter what, it looks like there’s an excuse to argue against God.

But notice what’s going on here. It’s this assumption that you could never be happy to see someone who murdered you or a loved one of yours in eternity. What’s going on here?

Years ago, Christopher Hitchens issued this challenge.

A fair challenge we have been told. You don’t need God to be good. Atheists are just as good as Christians.

In many cases, I can agree. The argument has never been that you need to be a Christian or a theist to be a good person or to know good from evil, but Hitchens’s challenge does say that atheists can do good just as much as you religious people can.

So how about forgiving people?

Because what atheists are assuming is that little Timmy in the above photo will be just as he is now. He will be just as prone to sinful tendencies as he is now. He will harbor hatred in his heart just as much as he is capable of doing so now.

But the Christian claim is that Christ transforms us entirely. He takes away all that isn’t us. He makes us to be like Him. He makes it so that we can love those who wronged us. He reveals to us the grace we need.

As C.S. Lewis would say, we forgive others because God has forgiven the unforgivable in us.

And you know what? We have some real examples of that.

How about Corrie Ten Boom? She was in the holocaust. Her sister died in a prison camp and one of the guards from that camp came to see Corrie and asked for forgiveness.

She gave it.

Does someone think this is a bad thing?

Steven Gahigi was able to forgive in Rwanda, even though many members of his family had been killed by genocidal people over there.

He forgave.

Does anyone have a problem with this?

Anthony Colon had his brother murdered by someone. Anthony through becoming a Christian found the forgiveness to forgive his brother’s murderer.

Kent Whitaker underwent a nightmare. Not only were two members of his family murdered, but the culprit behind the crime was his own son. Kent managed to forgive his son. Why? Because of Christ.

Do the atheists want to register a complaint?

Bert Baker’s sister was murdered by her estranged husband. While in prison, the husband, James, came to Jesus and asked Bert for forgiveness. Bert gave it. Today, Bert and James do prison ministry together.

Do you see a pattern forming here?

Remember a few years ago when the media was shocked by what an Amish community did for a killer who shot some of their children in a school? They practiced that Christian virtue of forgiveness.

It’s something real.

There is also the case of the forgiveness of serial killer Gary Ridgway. Ridgway murdered several and one of the victims stood up to say he doesn’t hate Ridgway, though he’s made it hard to follow the principle of forgiveness, and yet he still gave it. Why? Because God says this is the right way to live.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIkywrKVWAo

How about Gladys Staines? She’s the widow of Graham Staines. He and two of their sons were killed by a mob in India where he was serving as a missionary. She holds no ill-will towards the killers.

What about the story of Karla Faye Tucker? She found forgiveness in Christ in prison. Who else forgave her? Ron Carlson. His sister had been murdered by Tucker.

“It made me sick to know what they did to my sister,” Carlson recalls his feelings the day after the killing. “The bodies were mutilated…some twenty-five to thirty puncture wounds on each body…My sister was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

He remembers months of wishing, night and day, that he would someday have the OPPORTUNITY to kill Karla Faye; he wished he could have her at his mercy, with a pickaxe in his hands. Already having experimented with drugs, the loathing drove him deeper into the practice until his life no longer resembled what it had been before the tragedy.

States he: “I knew I had to do something with the hatred and the anger that was within me. It was consuming me.”

Strangely, as did the woman he despised, he found his faith in the Bible. Reading about the crucifixion of Christ, he realized the reality of the tests everyone is put to in this life. “I learned that if I want to be forgiven, I must learn to forgive,” he attests.

Another famous story is the story of Elizabeth Elliot. It was made famous in the movie The End of the Spear. Her husband Jim, along with his companions were killed by a tribe in South America that they were trying to evangelize. Later, Elizabeth and the wife of one of the companions went to South America themselves to this same tribe. The tribe eventually became Christians and one even apologized for what was done to Jim.

Would anyone object to the idea behind Desmond Tutu’s Forgiveness Project? We might disagree with some theological matters, but many of us know forgiveness is the right way to live.

Blinky Rodriguez was a world champion in martial arts and kickboxing. His son was killed by gang-related activity. Rodriguez met with the killers. To punish them? No. Surely as a martial arts and kickboxing expert he could have, but to forgive them. In fact, he worked with the gangs in the area even getting a treaty that greatly reduced gang-related crime in the area.

All of these tell the power of forgiveness.

And there are no doubt many many more out there. (And if you have one, please leave it in the comments.)

You see, it’s like the world is just now learning that the Gospel is about forgiveness. It’s about God becoming King over this world, not because He wants to destroy His enemies, but because He does want to forgive them and any who want to take part in that are free to. That forgiveness is something huge. It is cancelling the debt that exists that we owe to God. Now we could get into a debate on if God exists, but let’s consider the Christian story as it stands. As it stands, we are all guilty of something before God. Some atheists unfortunately have an idea that the Christian message is like this:

salvationfordummies

This is just nonsense. It’s like your only crime is not being a Christian. The reality is, God doesn’t exclude you from His kingdom for not believing in Jesus. God excludes you for all the other things that you’ve done. Even the most saintly atheist can look in the mirror and realize there are things he’s done wrong in his life and knows there are ways he needs to be improve in being a good person. The most saintly Christian can say the same thing. Believing in Jesus does grant you that forgiveness that you need. If you don’t have that, God judges you by the only thing He can judge you by. Your works. They have to meet His standard of perfection for no impurity can be in the Kingdom.

Forgiveness is the solution. We are forgiven for we could never make up for what we’ve done.

And this is why it’s so important we forgive one another. The stakes are serious. The Gospel destroys the gap between God and man. Whatever my fellow man has done to me, what I have done to God is far worse. If God can erase my debt, ought I not to erase the debt of my fellow man to me? If I do not, have I fully imbibed the Gospel message?

Note that this does not mean that all consequences for an action are removed. There could be a debt owed to society still. Some consequences I think are built into the system. If you sleep around and get an STD and pray for forgiveness, you will be forgiven, but there is no guarantee you will be cured of your disease. David was forgiven for his sin with Bathsheba, but the child born from the relationship still died.

I also encourage people for the most part to always have an attitude of forgiveness and show that forgiveness, but don’t pronounce it until someone asks for it. Why? Because you do not want to rob someone of something beautiful. Them coming to you thinking you could never forgive them and your still pronouncing that forgiveness. It will mean so much more if they ask for the forgiveness first, but you will only be able to forgive if you have already forgiven in your own heart.

So as we look back at the meme again, we have to accept it. Who will be in Heaven? Will murderers be in Heaven. Yep. Will rapists be in Heaven? Yep. Will adulterers be in Heaven? Yep. Will pedophiles be in Heaven? Yep. Provided they have repented and received forgiveness, all of these people will be in Heaven.

So will some of their victims who have done the same thing.

They would have it no other way.

Heaven is meant to be a place of unity and grace and love. It is not a place for hatred of your fellow man or pride or people who don’t forgive.

If you have a problem with grace, love, and forgiveness, Heaven is not the place for you.

IF you want to stay in anger and hatred towards those who have wronged you in this life, Heaven is not for you.

Your every action is preparing you for one of those places more and more. Of course, the central action is how you respond to Jesus which will affect everything, but how you spend eternity wherever you are will be based largely on what your actions are.

If you think a society where the chains of unforgiveness should be held onto is ideal, then Heaven is not the place for you.

I’m not going to pretend this is easy. My wife Allie means everything to me. If someone hurts me, I can take it. No sweat. I’m used to it. People will be jerks. I know this.

If someone hurts her, well it is on…..

But you know, I know with the Gospel that ultimately, when push comes to shove, I have to forgive, even if something horrendous happens to her. I pray it never will, but I also pray that if it does, I will be able to forgive.

Maybe if atheists are touting this meme like it’s an argument, it’s because we’ve found an answer to Hitchens’s challenge.

Maybe that answer is that we can forgiven the unforgivable.

Because you see, in the end, this meme is not an argument against Christianity.

It’s an argument for Christianity.

This illustrates that in the renewed Heaven and Earth, anger and animosity towards those who’ve wronged us will be so much a thing of the past, that murderers, rapists, pedophiles, and their victims will be able to walk in unison and joy together.

The lion and the lamb will lie down together.

And the murderer and his victim will walk hand in hand together.

Because that forgiveness thing, we take it seriously.

And we take it seriously because God takes it seriously.

If you have a problem with that, you’re not revealing anything about Christianity.

You’re revealing something about yourself.

Who has the problem now?

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Deeper Waters Podcast 6/13/2015: Albert Mcilhenny

What’s coming up this Saturday on the Deeper Waters Podcast? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Jesus mythicism is a virus that’s practically spreading across the internet. Note it isn’t doing so in the academy. There, the idea is pretty much a laughing stock. You wouldn’t know that from being on the internet where a huge number of atheists hold to this idea that Jesus never even existed and think it’s just an obvious truth. A few scholars like Maurice Casey and Bart Ehrman have taken the time to write against this, but for the most part, they haven’t. Fortunately, there is someone, though not a scholar, who has taken the time to write an in-depth series on mythicism that is still in the works. That’s my friend Albert Mcilhenny.

Albert Mcilhenny

According to his bio:

Albert McIlhenny is a retired IT support technician with a BA in Mathematics from Temple University. He worked in the Information Technology field both in network support and in teaching classes to prepare for Microsoft and Cisco examinations. He became a Christian in 1992 and soon began using his lifelong interest in history, logical skills, and ability to process large volumes of information in a short period of time in his study of the history and development of the Christian faith. His interest in the subject of Jesus mythicism goes back to a chance encounter with a conspiracy theorist shortly after becoming a Christian. He is currently in the process of writing a series of e-books titled A Christian Response to Jesus Mythicism that critiques all aspects of this movement.

I also wish to add to this bio that he blogs regularly at Labarum.net.

One of the biggest mistakes Albert would say he’s made is in seeing the material that was used in the film Zeitgeist before it became extremely popular. He saw the material and thought that surely no one would take it that seriously. As it turns out, he could not have been more wrong. A lot of people did and that has sparked mythicism being a growing movement on the internet, but does it really have anything to it?

In reality, it doesn’t. Mcilhenny in his writings has traced the movement even going as far back as centuries ago when Jesus mythicism wasn’t even on the radar to see what kind of thinking led to getting us to the state where Jesus mythicism would be popular. Mythicism meanwhile resides largely in the realm of conspiracy theorists and in fact he would affirm that if you are going ot be a mythicist, you eventually have to be a conspiracy theorist.

As many of you know, I thoroughly enjoy talking about the bankruptcies of mythicism and exposing it for what it is. I hands down have to say that Albert’s series on the topic is just incredible and thoroughly in-depth and there can be no doubt that he has done his homework on this area. If you are wanting to debate mythicists, then this series is a must read and each one can be read in a relatively short time. This episode will also be a must to listen to. Please be tuning in!

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: The Meaning of Marriage

What do I think of Tim and Kathy Keller’s book published by Riverhead? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

This is the second Tim Keller book I’ve read and like the first one, I loved it and I hated it. I loved it because it’s just packed with excellent information and wisdom to help one be a good spouse and learn to appreciate marriage all the better. I hated it because in the midst of all of this, the Kellers smack you right between the eyes with what they’ve written so you have to take a good long look in the mirror and come to the conclusion that there are ways that you don’t shape up as the spouse that you are to be.

Tim Keller is the pastor of a church with thousands of people in New York and the overwhelming majority of those people are single, quite the rarity. Despite that, this book is based on a sermon series he did on marriage. Sermons on marriage are not just for married people. They need to be there for singles as well. Why? Because many of those singles just might want to get married someday and they need to learn to honor marriage the way God intended. If they don’t, they still need to honor marriage, such as avoiding having sex with other people, because they will be interacting with married people and even if you are not married, you can still work to build up the institution of marriage.

At the start, the Kellers want to dismiss with the idea of a Hallmark card. Marriage is usually treated like a fairy tale where you live your life feeling constant love for the other person. However, if this was what marriage was meant to be, then very few marriages would last. In fact, it could be the reason that many marriages do not last is because there are too many people who expect this. C.S. Lewis once wrote that the feeling of being in love is the explosion that gets the relationship started, but after awhile, it has to learn to rely on a deeper love that does not depend on the feelings.

The Kellers also give a history of marriage and show how in the Enlightenment, marriage came to be about fulfilling your own needs and not so much about self-denial. It came about fulfilling yourself as a person emotionally and sexually. Each person was entering more often for what the marriage would do for them and not what it would do for the other person. What a shock then that we wind up in a scenario where if the other person is not meeting our needs, well we just walk right out the door. Unfortunately, when we do this, we don’t realize that many of the problems from the marriage we still take with us and we just bring them into our next relationship, and then we probably bring even more since we’re trying to recover from a past relationship.

Tim Keller says that as a pastor, he points out to people that love is hard. Most anything that you want to do well, it requires sacrifice and effort. Look at the star athlete in any field. Could they have been born with some natural talent? Absolutely. Yet despite that natural talent, they had to work hard to do what they are doing today. We could in fact argue that love is very hard because it does go against our natural inclinations. Our natural mode of operation is to look to ourselves and take care of our own needs. Marriage calls you out of that to look to the needs of someone else.

The Kellers contend through their work that marriage is a picture of the Gospel. Of course, you can have a good marriage without knowing the Gospel, but if you know the Gospel well, it will improve your marriage. This is why they say that marriage is painful and wonderful. So is the Gospel. We can all appreciate good news about redemption in Christ and forgiveness, but with that good news comes the message that you are a human being who is not perfect and you are guilty of great wrong and need to seek forgiveness for your sins. We don’t like being told we’re sinners, and frankly, marriage has a great way of showing you the many things that you are doing wrong. I often tell guys that when you get married, it’s like God putting a big mirror in front of you and saying “Hey! This is what you’re really like! Do you like what you see?!”

The Kellers point out that at the heart of many divorces is a self-centeredness. You can see this because many times when someone divorces, they will often rail about what a jerk the other person was. Very rarely will they talk about all the things that they did wrong. (This is not to say there are no valid divorces. Sadly, there are.) This is of course our natural tendency. None of us really likes to look in the mirror and see who we are, but I often tell people who are married that the rule I apply in our marriage is when something goes wrong, I try my hardest to first look at myself and see if I did anything wrong. I’d like to say I always succeed at doing this, but I don’t.

Ironically, if we put the needs of our spouse first and seek their happiness, we can more often find our own happiness. The reality is many of us know this. A wife who provides a good romantic evening for her husband can enjoy the sexual act itself. Yet despite this, the greater joy she will often get out of it is knowing that her husband is going to bed that evening a happy man. (And yes ladies, we will go to bed happy men!) A husband will not normally enjoy spending money, but when he buys his wife some flowers, the great joy that he gets is not from spending the money, but from the joy that he brings his wife. We all know this! Why aren’t we living it more?

The Kellers then go on to speak about the people who ask why a piece of paper should matter so much. Keller says that if you say “I love you, but let’s not ruin it by getting married”, it’s a way of saying “I don’t love you enough to close off all my options. I don’t love you enough to give myself to you that thoroughly.” Getting that piece of paper is a public declaration with solid evidence that there is no one else and that all other doors are closed. Yes. The piece of paper does mean something. (Also, the Kellers are strongly against any idea of living together before marriage as that also increases your odds of divorce.)

Keller also talks here about our idea of passion and uses sex as an example. He writes that if you only have sex when you feel a time of great passion, then you will rarely do it and there will be fewer times of great passion as your spouse feels deprived. Why should they try to ask you for sex if they’re quite sure they will get a no answer? I happen to agree with those who say that many times someone should have sex even when they don’t feel like it. Once again, this is not about your needs. This is about the needs of your spouse. William Lane Craig has emphasized this as well.

There’s also the emphasis on what it means to honor your spouse. Breaking faith with your spouse means breaking it with God. It’s a shame that many couples enter the covenant of marriage and before a year is done, they’re looking to get out. When you got married, if it was in a church, you made vows to God and you made vows to man and you made vows to each other. Does that not mean anything to you? Those vows, the Kellers point out, are not just a vow of how you feel today, but they are meant to be vows that you will in fact keep loving your spouse in the future as well.

The Kellers also want us to know that in marriage, our goal is to shape the other person to be all that Christ wants them to be. We don’t just love them as they are. We love them as we see them becoming. We love to see what Christ is doing in them. You must be committed to your spouse’s holiness. As you do this, you will experience romance, sex, laughter, and fun, but those are not the cause of the great marriage. They are the result of it. The more that you are getting from your relationship with Christ and becoming like Him, the more also you will be able to impart that to your own family.

Aside from Christ, your marriage must be first. If your spouse does not think they are being put first, then you are not putting them first. That sounds hard, but it’s the truth. What would it mean if you have to convince your spouse that you are their first love? It would mean that you have done something to them to demonstrate to them that you are indeed not their first love. There has been someone or something else invited into the marriage and the person who feels rejected is just drifting into the background. You will not be able to have a great marriage if this is going on.

The Kellers also write about loving the other, and this in two chapters with Tim writing one first and his wife writing one on being a wife in the relationship. Tim writes about the power to transform, pointing out that he never really felt manly until he married. This is something I can relate to. I never did either, but now that I have a wife, I can fully delight in the masculinity that I do possess. This is also another reason why the sexual component means so much. It is the loudest way that a wife can scream to her husband “You are my man.” The rest of the world may look at me and see nothing special, but if Allie is looking at me and saying I am her man and her rock and the one she turns to, then I’m ready to conquer the world at that point.

Keller also writes to never withhold the primary love language. This goes both ways. A wife should not use sex as a weapon, such as punishing her husband by withholding herself when she doesn’t get her way. On the other hand, the husbands can often be quite guilty of this when they give the silent treatment.

The Kellers also have a chapter on the single life and marriage. It’s important to realize that if you are single, you are not looking for another Jesus. Your spouse is not supposed to be your savior. That is expecting too much of them. It is tempting to put your spouse in the place of God, but that is a recipe for disaster. Your spouse will not solve all the problems in your life. In fact, your spouse will quite often cause all new problems in your life.

The last chapter is on sex, and I think this is the way to go. OF course, this is the chapter most of us men want to skip ahead to, but we need to know all about marriage before we get to one of the greatest fruits of marriage. The Kellers write that sex is a covenant making activity. There’s a reason why in the bedroom, you will often get the greatest cries of love and passion. It is a passionate time and each person is practically under a spell. Earlier in the book, the Kellers write that it doesn’t necessarily start out this way. The Kellers write they were virgins when they married and the first time was frustrating, but like any other skill, it improves over the years. One of the greatest ways to improve it is to focus not on your happiness but on that of your spouse. Don’t try to perform. Just love one another. If you love one another, then there will definitely be times in enjoying that sex that you will indeed rock each other’s world.

Finally, sex is enjoyable not because it just includes awesome and incredible physical sensations, but because it reflects to the Trinity and the delight that our soul will have before God. Sex is often the closest we get to a moment of true ecstasy and an out-of-body experience in this life. (Is it any wonder some have even said that sex could be used as a proof that God exists?)

In conclusion, I highly recommend this book by the Kellers. I suspect I will be going through it again sometime, this time with my wife.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Why Is Bruce An Exception?

What do you do when a man’s very being says he’s a woman? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

My wife shared on her Facebook a meme of some soldiers going to say they were going to congratulate Bruce Jenner for his courage, obviously said in sarcasm. Some of her friends from high school showed up to try to correct on her on this point which naturally means that her apologist husband has to go to work. I spent some time telling one that Bruce is still a man and why should we think otherwise? The reply I got was that “her” very being said “she” was a woman. Well that’s interesting. What about these other cases then?

Here for instance is Jerusalem Syndrome.

In this case, someone goes to Jerusalem who has otherwise been a normal person, and then believes themselves to be a biblical figure, like Jesus, Samson, or Mary.
If we are loving to such people, should we treat them like they are such figures, or should we seek to get them the help they need even though their very being says they are such figures?

Here is Cotard Delusion. The person with this delusion is convinced that they are dead and often have evidence from their own experience to back that! Their very being again tells them they’re dead. Are we loving to them if we treat them like they’re dead?

Here is Capgras Syndrome. In this, the person thinks their loved one has been replaced by a double or impostor. Is the loving thing to do agree with them even though they are mentally convinced of this?

Fregoli Delusion:
In this case, the person thinks that multiple people are really one or two persons in disguise. Is it loving to go along with this belief?

Apotemnophilia. In this case, the person thinks they should amputate healthy parts of their body. Is the loving thing to do to rush this person off to see a surgeon?

After writing that, I found more delusions and I’m sure there are still more out there.

Here is Truman Show Delusion. If you’ve ever seen the movie, that’s what it’s like. The person thinks they’re living in a reality show with cameras and actors all around them.

There is also even a video game delusion. In this, the person, yes, thinks that they are in a video game. One case of this involved stealing a more powerful car at gunpoint so someone could get bonus points.

There is also clinical lycanthropy. In this case, the person believes that they have turned into a werewolf.

We recognize each of these as delusions and we do so by looking at reality. Why not do the same in the case of Bruce?

Because I do not intend to participate in the delusion, I will still be referring to Bruce as Bruce. I will still be using the masculine pronouns in description. I have no desire whatsoever to join the Cult of Caitlyn.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: An Atheist Defends Religion

What do I think of Bruce Sheiman’s book? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

It’s hard to know what to think when you see a title of An Atheist Defends Religion. You might think a similar title could be A Jew defends Adolf Hitler or A Christian defends Muslim terrorists. The two seem so antithetical. Why on Earth would an atheist want to defend religion? Isn’t religion the bane of the atheist’s existence? Unfortunately, if we start thinking out that way, we start thinking out wrong. In fact, we are thinking in a fundamentalist way that Sheiman in his book condemns that has created an us vs. them climate. Ironically, as Sheiman argues, this only makes the situation worse for atheism and in turn for science (Which is not to be equated with atheism either) since generally, for most of the public, if they’re asked to choose between religion and science, they’ll go with religion.

Sheiman does not hold back in saying he is an atheist in the book, but he also considers himself an aspiring theist. He does not like the worldview presented by atheism. I do appreciate greatly his honesty at this point. Sheiman wants to follow the evidence where it leads and while he would like to believe in God, he says he just cannot bring himself to do it now. I do not know what is holding him back and that could be another conversation some day to have, but I do know that belief is not a lightswitch that you can just turn off and on. We need to have people believe because they think something is more likely than not to be true.

Sheiman also does not see atheism as a form of intellectual triumphalism. I find this to be an excellent point to make as well. There are intelligent people on both sides, but I find way too often that the atheists I meet have the attitude that if you don’t believe in God, you’re automatically rational. My wife saw yesterday as we were leaving church a billboard for rationalists.org saying that if you don’t believe in God, you’re not alone. Now I have no problem with unbelievers getting together and discussing atheism and agnosticism. I have a problem with that being labeled as rational, as if if you are a theist, you are automatically irrational. This mindset I have come to call presuppositional atheism.

That having been said, if you’re interested in the God debate, you won’t find much in the book. Sheiman is not going to take you through the arguments pro or con and weigh them out. Instead, he’s going to defend religion as a cultural phenomenon. God might not be around in Sheiman’s world to do us good, but the belief in God is doing good. This will come out in ethics, in giving to charity, in the health of people who are religious, and even in the advancement of civilization and science. Atheism does not have this. It is bankrupt as an ideology. It does not inspire like religion does and it has a gloomy picture of the world, despite what many atheists say.

At this point, atheists might want to trot out the evils done in religion, but on location 186, Sheiman has an answer:

“Religion’s misdeeds may make for provocative history, but the everyday good works of billions of people is the real history of religion, one that parallels the growth and prosperity of humankind. There are countless examples of individuals lifting themselves out of personal misery through faith. In the lives of these individuals, God is not a delusion, God is not a spell that must be broken—God is indeed great.”

It’s easy to speak about all the evils brought about by theism if you just ignore all the good things and look at only what you think is evil (And much of that is misunderstood!). The same atheists who often do this tend to ignore the millions killed by atheist leaders such as Stalin, Mao, and Pol-Pot, all of which must boil down to a coincidence. When atheists want to see the real legacy of theism, they too often want to exclude any possibility that the Dark Ages idea is a myth, Christianity did nothing to bring about civilization, and want to happily ignore that as they drive down the street they can pass so many hospitals with religious terminology in their names. Have theists many times done evil? Absolutely. That is not because theism is evil, though it could be, but because of another belief we all have strong empirical evidence for. Humans are very prone to doing evil.

As we go through, the start is that religion gives some people meaning to life. Sheiman admits this saying he thinks religion is false and therefore he cannot embrace that meaning. He believes science is true, but it lacks that meaning. Science can tell us many fascinating and wonderful things, and then what? We can also learn that all that we have is going to die in the cold death of a universe that neither knows nor cares. As Bertrand Russell said

Such, in outline, but even more purposeless, more void of meaning, is the world which Science presents for our belief. Amid such a world, if anywhere, our ideals henceforward must find a home. That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins–all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.

(A Free Man’s Worship)

The caveat I have at this point, which will be expanded on later, is to say “Could not both stories be true?” As a Christian, I have no problem saying that science gives us loads of factual information about the world. On the other hand, I have no problem saying God has revealed Himself in Scripture, in Christ, in creation, and in morality. I just wish readers to keep this in their mind as we will discuss it later.

Sheiman also argues that religion leads to greater care of humanity. This is not because religious people want a “Get out of Hell free card” or want to earn bonus points with God. We know God would see right through such things after all. We do this because they see the ultimate example in God. This is especially so for Christians like myself who believe in the incarnation and see the way God lived among us. Who after all would be foolish enough to deny the impetus to good living that the life of Jesus has left on this world? (Unfortunately, I know many who would I think be foolish enough to do just that.)

Sheiman considers it a shame that while religion could motivate some people to do evil, that that is emphasized while all the simple small deeds done in the name of religion are ignored. Most of these will in fact go unnoticed because a lot of religious people who do them do not like to claim recognition for their good deeds. I myself have made it a point often to do a kind act for someone when they can’t see it and then to get away as soon as I can before they find out that I did it for them. It’s nice to be praised for something, but you should not do something because you will be praised for it.

Sheiman also argues that religious people give far more and he has the data to back it up. He gives an example of a Methodist bishop asking for $10 donations to help African children facing malaria. They wanted to buy nets to protect them from mosquitoes. Within minutes, $14,000 had been raised. Atheists can argue that they can give just as much, and no doubt they can, but the same incentive and motivation is not there. Sheiman humorously says on page 40 that militant atheists want the benefits of religion without religion, just like wanting the taste of chocolate without wanting to have the calories.

If someone wants to point to science here, Sheiman has no reason to listen to them. Science paints a dismal picture of selfish genes and the survival of the fittest and that we come from a blind evolutionary process that did not see us coming. The thinking of Harris and Dawkins that morality can be derived from science escapes Sheiman. He is not the only one it escapes. In fact, his chief example of this kind of thinking is Peter Singer. Sheiman says in response to Singer that while he likes the idea of treating animals more like humans, he just can’t have the enthusiasm for the idea of treating humans more like animals.

The next chapter is about religion being union with the divine. I do not have much to say here as I do not really have experience with mystical experiences.

Next we move to mental happiness and health. Those who are religious according to Sheiman tend to be healthier. They also tend to have better marriages. Both of these can be seen to fit because religious belief can often be optimistic. (Despite still many of my fellow Christians who I think are pessimists when it comes to prophecy.) Many of us believe the most awesome being of all loves us unconditionally. With our marriages, if we’re Christians, we believe that we have an example in Jesus Christ. Husbands love their wives as Christ loved the church and wives love their husbands as the church loves Christ.

Of course, there will be people who struggle in their marriages and who struggle with issues like depression who are theists, but the odds of being one are less if you are a theist. In fact, if you do struggle in these areas, your struggle could be made easier because of your theistic beliefs. You can always have someone to fall back on, namely God. Recently I started reading Tim Keller’s The Meaning of Marriage. He points out that if you enter marriage expecting your spouse to provide what only God can provide, you’re going to have a marriage that suffers. Those who look to God to be their savior instead of their spouse will have happier marriages. Overall, theism will mean a better life with marriage and health.

We next move to religion being a force for progress. In our day and age on the internet, it’s common to see the graph that is meant to indicate the hole left by the “Dark Ages.”

stupidchart

An atheist like Tim O’Neill has thankfully helped to shatter this into a million pieces. Despite what atheists think, science was on the rise in that period. I really do not think the Enlightenment contributed much new to the situation. Do we have any reason to think Christian scientists would have stopped studying creation? In fact, if religion has been a driving force in the world, then that we are here now and got to the point where science was possible should show that religion has not been the impediment it is said to be.

Sheiman also attributes to this the rise in the belief in equality of humanity and the abolition of slavery. The reason these came to be accepted was because of a religious belief in the equality of humanity, including passages like Galatians 3:28. If all mankind is in the image of God, should we not treat each person that we meet as if they were indeed someone who bore the image of God?

The sixth chapter is on fundamentalism and violence, and this is quite an amusing one as I contend there are fundamentalist atheists just as much as there are fundamentalist Christians. When it comes to the violence, Sheiman argues that much of the violence is political in nature rather than religious. It could use religion to push it further, but it could just as easily use, say, belief in evolution to push it further. This would not argue that evolution is false, so why should religion being used to promote violence be seen as an indicator that religious beliefs are false? Those stand or fall on other grounds. As Sheiman says on page 117:

“The militant atheists lament that religion is the foremost source of the world’s violence is contradicted by three realities: Most religious organizations do not foster violence; many nonreligious groups do engage in violence; and many religious moral precepts encourage nonvio lence. Indeed, we can confidently assert that if religion was the sole or primary force behind wars, then secular ideologies should be relatively benign by comparison, which history teaches us has not been the case. Revealingly, in his Encyclopedia of Wars, Charles Phillips chronicled a total of 1,763 conflicts throughout history, of which just 123 were categorized as religious. And it is important to note further that over the last century the most brutality has been perpetrated by nonreligious cult figures (Hitler, Stalin, Kim Jong-Il, Mao Zedong, Saddam Hussein, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Fidel Castro, Slobodan Milosevic, Robert Mugabe—you get the picture). Thus to attribute the impetus behind violence mainly to religious sentiments is a highly simplistic interpretation of history.”

Sheiman also argues that those who are violent and we would think psychotic tend to be some of the most normal people. The difference is they’re just constantly surrounded by like-minded people. Keep in mind the 9/11 terrorists blended in quite successfully with the American culture they were hiding in. Unfortunately, when these people get together, they tend to reinforce each other’s own radical ideas. This is not just the area of religion. Atheists can do the exact same thing. Atheists can even have their own Messiahs, such as a Utopian idea brought about through fascism, or the idea that science is the guiding light that is going to save us all. Consider these statements as well, On page 124 we read:

“Recent research cited by Cass Sunstein, for example, has shown that people with a particular political orientation who join a like-minded group emerge from that group with stronger political leanings than they started with. “In almost every group,” Sunstein writes, “people ended up with more extreme positions …. The result is group polarization, which occurs when like-minded people interact and end up in a more extreme position in line with their original inclinations.” And with the Internet added to the fundamentalist equation, it is now easier than ever for extremists of all types to find their ideological soul mates and reinforce their radical thinking.”

Consider this with one of my favorite groups to show as an example, Jesus mythicists. It’s on the internet that you get this crazy idea being popularized that Jesus never existed and it relies on some of the worst conspiracy theory thinking. I put these people in the same group as 9-11 truthers or anti-vaccination people. Still, internet atheists can get together and applaud themselves as being rational people who see past the smoke and mirrors. Interestingly, these people who are often opposed to Intelligent Design (And I am not advocating that) because it is “on the fringe” do not realize that their belief systems are even more on the fringe. At least with ID, you have a number of PH.D.s in the field who hold to this, though definitely a great minority. In the field of mythicism, you could count them on one hand.

In fact, Sheiman in speaking of these fundamentalists say they’re often just as closed-minded as their counterparts. One difference is that I have met many conservative Christians, like myself, who actually read the other side and seek to understand it. I do not meet many atheists who have done likewise. (Sheiman is obviously an exception.) In fact, one question I usually ask is “When was the last time you read a work of scholarship in this field that disagreed with you?” Usually, I get just crickets and in fact if any such work is recommended, it is discounted immediately because the author has “bias.”

For now, let’s move on to science. I am interested in the philosophy of science and the history of science, but I do not speak about science as science. I could not, for instance, give you an argument that would show you should believe in evolution, nor would I give much of one that would show you shouldn’t. I choose to debate on questions that I know. If I woke up tomorrow and saw a headline that said “SBC all agrees macroevolution is a fact,” I would say “Cool” and move on. If I saw instead “National Academy of Sciences says evolution is proven false,” I would say “Cool” and move on. It doesn’t matter to me. My interpretation of Genesis does not hang on evolution.

In fact, I like the description I heard best of science and religion this way. Science and religion are opposed, much like a thumb and a finger are opposed, so that they can grasp everything between them. Unfortunately, if they are made opponents, atheists will only lower themselves. After all, if you say you cannot be a scientist if you are a religious person, then people will see science as the enemy. Sadly, there are a lot of great minds who are religious and these people will be excluded from the discussion of science and who knows what they could contribute to the field?

I am one of those who thinks science cannot offer the final proof on theism. It cannot prove or disprove theism. Hence, my wondering with what Sheiman says earlier. Could you not believe in both stories? There are many Christian scientists who do. Could not you not say both stories give truth about reality instead of having this idea perhaps unknowingly that the two stories are opposed? Science on its own would tell you that we will die in a cold death, but that’s assuming there is no outside interference. A religious person can believe that if God does not interfere, this will happen. (Note I am not using the term supernatural. I do not use it as I find it inaccurate.)

One response to this could be the one one often finds on the internet of science being either the only way to truth or the best way to truth. Sheiman says that this is scientism and not science, and rightfully so, and that this is just atheism masquerading as science. I agree wholeheartedly and such people do a disservice to science and religion both. It is as indicated earlier a belief in the salvation of science. Such people often treat scientific conclusions the way their Christian counterparts treat the Bible. I often refer to such people as not daring to question the words of prophets Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, and Dennett, and anyone else who comes along. The new atheists have spoken. The case is closed.

Many atheists look at the world of science and speak of wonder, but for those of us who are religious, science alone does not bring that wonder. It is wonderful what we see, but we consider it all the more wonderful to think about the mind behind this creation. I can drive down the road and think “Wow. God made all of this.” I am amazed at that point. In reality, we are often looking at the same data. It is the belief that we bring to the data that is changing matters.

As we go on looking at this topic, I do see Sheiman talk about the literal interpretation of Scripture. This is a term I do wish many times would just die. The word “literal” has come to be in some ways meaningless. Literal often refers to a hard wooden interpretation of a text instead of a look at the text as the author intended. I happen to agree with John Walton and think that the text should not be read in light of modern scientific understanding when it comes to Genesis 1-3, but should rather be read in light of the way ancient Israelites saw the world around them.

I also disagree with Sheiman that if theism and atheism was a matter of evidence, people would be converted all the time. I think there are many other factors that influence why people believe what they believe. People in cults, for instance, are given a mindset by the cult that affects how they view and interpret evidence, including counter-evidence to their position. We could look at many Christians who get such emotional solace from their beliefs that they really cannot handle anything that goes against them. We could look at atheists who would face a social stigma if they went against their atheism or even some who would not want to abandon atheism because a belief like Christianity has something to say about their sexual lifestyles. We all know people who believe what they believe for less than intellectual reasons. Pascal years ago said that if you take the most astute philosopher and put him on a plank of sufficient size and suspend that plank over a large chasm, watch and see how quickly his emotions overtake his reason.

I did find myself disappointed by Sheiman’s argument of “Who created God?” as a question he often asks. I hold to a Thomistic view which in essence sees this as asking “What created existence?” To ask who created God becomes a question that doesn’t make sense on that since God’s nature is to be.

I also did not find the last chapter convincing with Sheiman’s way on getting the universe we have that seems to have some design without God. I kept wondering in it why this should be the case, but to be fair, I will not claim to understand all the science involved.

If there’s one thing that would definitely improve this book, it would be seeing where the quotes can be found that Sheiman gives. Many times he can give a quote and give just an author who said it without being able to know where the quote can be found. If a book is given, many times a page number is not given. I saw a number of quotes I would like to have been able to look up, but I would not be as easily able to.

Still, this is a fascinating read and one that I wish more atheists would read. We could probably have better debates if we did.

In Christ,
Nick Peters