Month: December 2021

The Incarnation and Evil

Why talk about the vet and the problem of evil? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

So I wrote about Shiro this week because it does leave me thinking about the problem of evil. One story I thought of was a story about a farmer who wasn’t a believer and his family went to church one Christmas. He saw some birds outside in the cold and thought they would die so he would try to get them in his barn.

He goes out and tries to motion them to come in the barn lest they die, but he doesn’t have any luck. He then thinks about how much easier it would be if he could become a bird himself and then show the birds the rest of the way to come into the barn. It’s at that point he hears the church bells ring for Christmas and understands the incarnation.

It’s a good story, but is it accurate. Paul tells us to imitate him as he imitates Christ, but when we see Christ coming, we don’t see Him talking as if the reason He came was this. He showed us how to be good, but He doesn’t seem to say that’s why He came. He came to bring the kingdom.

When Christ comes, He really says very little about the problem of evil. I can only think of two times specifically. The first is in Luke where some people talk to him about the people whom Pilate mixed their own blood with their sacrifices. Jesus also brings up the Tower of Siloam falling on eighteen people and killing them and telling the people none of these people were worse sinners than anyone else in the city, but they need to repent lest they perish.

The second is in John 9 when the disciples and Jesus meet the man born blind. He is asked who sinned that this man was born blind. Jesus says that it wasn’t because anyone in particular sinned, but so that God’s glory might be displayed in his life. The whole chapter and story then revolves around God healing the man and how the religious elite responded.

Absent from any of this is an explanation for the evil in the first place. Jesus never even begins to move in that direction. Jesus doesn’t tend to get into the why of the suffering when it happens. He just deals with the problem.

So as I thought about taking Shiro to the vet, I thought also about if only I could speak kitty for the time and tell Shiro why this is happening. However, after awhile, it occurred to me that that might not be any good. Does a cat have the capacity to understand human thinking like that? I am pretty much saying that I want my cat to become a human and cease to be a cat.

Kind of defeats the purpose.

Is our wishing to understand evil this side of eternity that much different? God could explain things to me hypothetically about the suffering in my own life, but would I really understand it. Could the answer be so complex that it would be beyond me?

There’s a Woody Allen skit in a play or a movie where he and his wife are discussing their son who is coming for a visit and is an atheist and the wife says she wants Woody to explain the Nazis to him. He says something along the lines of “Explain the Nazis? I don’t even understand the microwave!” It’s funny, but it’s accurate. We can all think of some area in this life that makes no sense to us.

But we’ve convinced ourselves that we would understand the answer. Why else do we ask for one? Could it be we aren’t given one not because there isn’t one or God doesn’t care, or could it be that we wouldn’t understand it. If the distance between me and a cat is this great, how much greater between us and an infinite God?

Maybe the goal is not to understand evil. Maybe it’s just to trust in the evil. Right now, my cat is on good terms with me again. Last night I came home and all was back to normal. Now if I pick him up again and start carrying him outside of my room, he’ll know what’s going on again and resist it, but eventually, he will just choose to trust again. After all, if he lives in fear of me forever, what does he gain? If we live thinking God is out to get us everyday, what do we gain? After all, if He really is, we’re not changing anything by that. We can’t stop Him.

Ultimately, I’ve never really found evil to be a convincing argument against God, but I know some have. My suggestion here is that perhaps the wrong answer is being looked for. I encourage people to look at the positive evidences for the existing of God and for the resurrection. If those are true, there is an explanation for evil. You don’t have to know it. Maybe you couldn’t.

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

After The Vet

What happens after the vet? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

So yesterday, Shiro got a clean bill of health. All is good and I picked him up and brought him home. I had to stop and get gas and I could see him in his carrier while I was pumping. With every move I made, he followed me with his eyes watching to see me.

When we got him home, he came out of the carrier and ran under the bed. For the most part, he’s been scared of everyone. Shiro doesn’t really care for my parents more often just tolerating them, but usually he’s all over me. It wasn’t like that yesterday.

If I tried to get close to him many times, he would run. Sometimes he would let me pet him a little, but if I got way too close, it was running under the bed again. He had a bandage on his leg from yesterday and he was trying to get it off. Fortunately, he did come to me and I took it off, but then it was off to run and hide again.

This morning before I got out of bed, he had climbed on top of me for a little bit. Right now though, he is still under the bed. He does come out to eat, but fear is still dominating him. It’s as if he has completely forgot all the good things I have done for him in the past and is now only looking at the bad experience.

It’s a good thing we’re never like that!

Too often, we are. How many times when trouble comes do I forget the good that God has done for me and only look on that suffering? I don’t understand why God has done this thing to me or allowed it to happen to me, therefore, I will not trust Him. This brings us to how people see the problem of evil.

It all depends on how one looks at God. If one sees Him as a monster. The bad is so awful that if anything good happens, it is just a chance. For the Christian, it is that the good is so good, there must be an explanation for the bad. It reminds me of the book The Man Who Was Thursday by Chesterton. I’m trying to avoid spoilers, but it talks about some characters discussing the final main character.

““Then, and again and always,” went on Syme like a man talking to himself, “that has been for me the mystery of (Character whose name I have removed) and it is also the mystery of the world. When I see the horrible back, I am sure the noble face is but a mask. When I see the face but for an instant, I know the back is only a jest. Bad is so bad, that we cannot but think good an accident; good is so good, that we feel certain that evil could be explained.

For us, we know that there is a great good, so the evil must be explainable somehow even if we don’t know it. For the other side, the evil is central. Honestly, I would hope any skeptic would at least want to consider the Christian idea because wouldn’t you prefer there be some meaning to what happens instead of just random chaos? I know I would.

Will Shiro come out and realize that the suffering he experienced didn’t happen because I want to hurt him, but because I love him? I’m sure he will soon. He’s starting to warm up bit by bit. That’s the minor question.

The real question is, will I realize the same in my own life?

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

Shiro and the Vet

What can we learn about suffering from pets? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I’m taking a break from the series now to write about what is going on with me today. As I write this, it is around 8:35 and I am sitting at a Starbucks with my tea right next to me (None of those pagan coffee drinks) when I would more normally be waking up and have my little cat Shiro nuzzling me waiting for his food machine to go off so he can get breakfast.

Not today.

This morning, I got up at 6:30 instead, and called to Shiro when I didn’t see him. He came out from under the bed and I indicated to him I wanted him to jump up, which he eagerly did. A moment later, he regretted it. I held him and headed towards the door and then he knew what was coming. I had his kitty carrier in the bathtub in our big bathroom and had it already open as I put him in.

It’s a real chore honestly. It takes a lot of planning.

No. There’s nothing wrong with him as far as I know. He just has to have his regular shots, a dental cleaning, and I’m getting his nails trimmed while he’s under. Unfortunately, little Shiro understands none of this. For him, he’s gone without his breakfast and would much rather be at home and doesn’t understand why the only person in this world he now trusts is treating him this way.

You see, since the divorce, I have been with my parents and sometimes Shiro tolerates them, but he doesn’t trust them yet. I’m the only person he regularly comes close to and the only one who gets to hold him. He especially likes it if I lay down on the bed and he gets to be on top of me. He can sit like that for several minutes. He’ll often rub his face in mine, something I refer to as a kitty kiss.

This morning, I suspect he feels betrayed. If I loved him, I wouldn’t do this. Right? I would hear him crying on the way to the vet. I could picture him asking why I would do this if I loved him so much.

It’s interesting that we ask the why question.

In my Bible reading of the Old Testament, I am going through Job now. I contend that Job is not really about why bad things happen to good people. It’s asking why we are good in the first place. However, Job seems to want to know why what is happening to him is happening to him. Naturally, his friends think they have the answer which means of course, they were first-year seminary students.

It’s odd that Job argues against them while at the same time assuming to accept what they say. He wants his day in court. He wants to show he’s innocent. After all, the only reason he could be suffering is that he is being judged. Right?

Somehow, we often think a why answer would help us every time. Who is to say it would? Who are we to say we would even understand the answer.

As I type this, I think about my friend Ed. I spoke with him in person just last month at ETS and he has a hard life indeed as he has an unknown disease and a number of times has been at the hospital assured his time has come, but he is still here. Ed is a great servant of Jesus and in my own suffering in divorce has reached out to me a number of times.

And just after our meeting his 17 year-old daughter died suddenly.

I can’t imagine what that would be like. I’m not going to try. Even more unbelievable is he has contacted me through text message in this time saying he is sorry he hasn’t reached out to me. I tell him to please not worry about that and I mean it. I need to be there for him this time, and I do sometimes send him Bible verses about the resurrection.

Now I don’t doubt that God could show up and explain why this has happened. He could, but while Ed is a smart man, would he understand it? Would any of us? We’re talking about a being who knows the end from the beginning and can tell you everything that has happened in the story thus far and everything that will happen.

Also, is a good God obligated to prevent every kind of suffering we have here? I’m reading a book now called When Helping Hurts. It’s about how we can say we want to help the poor, but what we do really hurts them instead. Consider it like the little boy who wants to help the butterfly get out of the casing he’s in, so he breaks it. He thinks he’s helping. He’s just killed the butterfly. It’s in breaking out that it develops the strength it needs to be a butterfly. Without that, it dies.

One of the writers talks about being in a sort of slums area that he thinks is God-forsaken when he finds a church. He is invited to preach and being a good Presbyterian decides he will speak some on the sovereignty of God. He thinks that until he hears the prayer requests, such as a woman wanting protection since her husband beats her or for God to provide food for the children of someone in the congregation who are hungry.

This pastor knows about the sovereignty of God from his study of the text. These people know about having to depend on it for their very lives. One guess who really got the lesson on the sovereignty of God that day. Amazingly, those people, who are suffering far more than most of us in the western world are, have more trust in God and rejoice more in His goodness. Prideful skeptics here might call it delusional hope. Perhaps they should try to talk to those people some first and just really listen.

It’s part of our entitlement mentality. We all think we’re entitled to a life without suffering and God is there to aid in our joy and to keep us from evil and if He’s not doing that, well He’s not doing His job. Yes. God has His job and He is obviously our employee and if He doesn’t do the work, He’s not worth it.

It’s really an arrogant position.

It’s also not as if God does this for His enjoyment. Sure, I’m sipping a tea here in Starbucks and typing a blog and watching the people come in here, but if you asked if I would have rather been staying at home and doing all this work from there and then playing some Final Fantasy XIV with friends, it’s definitely the latter. I’m not a morning person. I’m a night owl. I’ve been going to bed earlier this week to prepare. (Fortunately, God in His grace let me have my Dad’s bronchitis so I didn’t have to work. Yes. Another interesting way suffering works for our good.)

I would like to be able to explain to Shiro that I love him despite what he sees. You who are reading this, regardless of your attitude towards cats, know that what I have done for Shiro is ultimately a loving thing and if I didn’t do it, you would have grounds to question my love for Shiro. It’s odd, but if I withheld this suffering from him, I would not be loving.

Part of my problem with arguments from evil is people who make them presume too much. They presume there is no good reason for this, that they have to understand the reason, and that God owes them to not have this evil suffering. It’s important to note that the problem of evil is the burden of the skeptic. They have to demonstrate there is no good reason for a particular suffering. Good luck with that. I don’t have to know why a particular suffering has happened and frankly, why should I know that? I consider myself a smart man, but I don’t think I would understand it either.

After all, I don’t understand yet why God allowed me to meet a girl who would ten years later shatter my heart in a divorce that was unjustified and call me abusive. I still don’t understand it, but I have held on to Him in the midst of it and that has been my hope. Friends assure me that sometime down the road, I will see this as a blessing, and in some ways, I do see good coming from it now, but I still wait for more. I especially hope to someday soon meet another girl who I can bring joy to.

And as I think about that, it brings me to something else about suffering and knowing why it happens. Most of us hate it if we’re watching a movie and someone spoils what happens in it for us. Strangely, we think we should have spoilers for our own life given to us. This is a story that we are in, but it is His story and we are just minor bit roles in it, though there is still something great planned even for us.

In a few hours, I will be picking up Shiro. Before too long, he will be snuggling with me again. Maybe not tonight as my Dad and I are going to see Christmas lights, but eventually, he will give me his trust again and be happy.

Will I give the one who watches over me the same and be happy just being with Him?

That’s up to me.

And for you, that’s your choice as well.

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

Lot’s Daughters

Why is this gross story in the Bible? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

The story of Lot and his daughters is one of those stories that skeptics of Scripture look at and ask why it’s in there. Often, there’s this idea that because the Bible records something, it is endorsing it. Not at all. The Bible contains the good, the bad, and the ugly.

If anything, this text shows us how depraved Lot’s own daughters had grown to be living in Sodom. It is a further indictment on the people and it shows the consequences of Lot living where he had. Had Lot not ever ventured close to Sodom, what happened here and later in Israelite history would not have happened. Amazing how one man’s actions can have such long-term consequences. Isn’t it good that none of ours today will have such an effect?

Anyway, Lot is living in a cave alone as his wife is now gone and his daughters are there and they say that there are no men in the area. More than likely, they just don’t want to go out and get them. The two of them then decide that what they will do is to get Lot drunk and have him sleep with the older one first and then the younger. They seem to have no moral qualms about this whatsoever.

Hey. At least our society isn’t at that point where people can have romantic relationships with a parent. Right?

Sadly, we do have that. In this story, a woman reports that her husband is sleeping with her mother, and she’s fine with it. The respondent is practically celebrant over the whole matter. Fortunately, the same doesn’t happen in this case where a woman finds out her mother is pregnant. Who got her that way? The woman’s husband. The same happens with fathers and daughters. Many are the cases of child molestation. Fathers have often gone to their young daughters and molested them and threatened them if a word is said.

For the consensual cases, it’s known as genetic sexual attraction. It’s already here with us and more and more, people in society will accept it. At this point, they really have to. If it is admitted in any way that some sexual behaviors are forbidden, then that will mean that there is a right and a wrong way to view sex and to have it. Can’t have that.

My fear is that honestly, before too long, the molestation will become a no big deal thing. Some of you might be aghast at that thought, but keep in mind what we consider worth celebrating today was within the lifetimes of people alive today something shameful and not worth talking about. What is shown on TV today is what you had to go to a magazine rack discretely to see before. What is taboo keeps getting pushed further and further.

Lot’s daughters had already reached that point. Sleep with Dad? No big deal. It’s just sex. We’ll get our Dad drunk and wrong him. No matter. Right? We gotta have kids after all. Right?

That is exactly what they do. They had gotten out of Sodom, but Sodom hadn’t gotten out of them. The older one has a son that became the father of the Moabites and the younger had one that became the father of the Ammonites. A number of times, Israel had struggles with both of these nations.

All because Lot got too close to a bad situation.

Let’s not have any of us think we’re above that today. Readers of my blog know that I am single again and I’ve already decided when dating, assuming I am living at my own place, I don’t want to bring a girl back to my place while I’m alone here nor do I want to go over to hers when she’s alone. I know I am prone to temptation. Why risk it? It might never happen, but I don’t want to take the chance. Many times, we try to see how close we can get to temptation without falling into it. We should instead ask what we can bother to gain by getting close anyway.

Lot’s daughters is meant to show us the disastrous consequences of our bad choices. Israel would know if they listened to Genesis to not follow Lot’s example. It would be amazing how different their history could have been had they done that.

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

The Sin of Sodom

What was the sin of Sodom? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

So we’re going back a bit because I was mentally going through Genesis recently and realized I had skipped this story and the next one. This starts in Genesis 13 which tells us that these cities wlil be destroyed and assumes its readers already know that. (Which tells you this had to be a most memorable destruction meant to stay in the minds of the audience.) We could picture it as if a person was telling about the history of New York City and said “This was before the World Trade Center towers were destroyed.”

When the story begins for Lot, he pitches his tent near Sodom. We don’t hear from him again until lo and behold, now he is living in Sodom. Lot’s first mistake here was not keeping his distance from a city that had a wicked reputation. How often do we fail to keep our proper distance from something or someone wicked when we should?

Now move forward to Genesis 18 where God reveals that He is about to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah to Abraham. God gets to the point of saying that if he can find ten righteous people in that city, he will spare it. Unfortunately, those ten righteous people cannot be found.

So what was Sodom being judged for?

We go over to Ezekiel 16 and what do we see?

49 “‘Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.

Well, here you have it! They were prideful and thought only of themselves and didn’t help the poor and needy. That fully backs the inhospitable reading that we often see. Their sin wasn’t homosexual behavior obviously! It was not being kind to others.

Before we just dismiss this, let’s consider some matters. They definitely were inhospitable and that in the ancient world was a great sin. Also, all Christians should definitely agree that pride is a great sin. Lewis called it the greatest sin actually.

Yet if we stopped reading at that verse, we would miss out.

50 They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen.

The word for detestable is the same as used for the abominations in Leviticus 18 and 20 and does refer to homosexuality. We can then say that if it wasn’t the only reason for destruction, it was a big reason. Perhaps we could say pride was the main reason and this pride led to the inhospitality and to homosexual practice.

Such an idea might seem shocking to modern readers. Aren’t homosexual relationships all about love? In the ancient world, not necessarily. They were often a way of showing social dominance. We say the same today in some cases. We often say rape is not primarily about sex. Rape is about power and showing the dominance a rapist has over their victim, whatever sex the criminal and the victim are. Anyone could easily find someone willing to have sex with them, even if they had to pay money, but rape is not about that.

In these cases, a man would often be seen as feminizing another man by having homosexual intercourse with him. Such was the case going on with Sodom. There was no reason to think that strangers showing up in town were showing up to have sex with other men. Instead, the men want the men who visited Lot to come out so they can “know” them.

And yes, while know can sometimes refer to knowledge, in this and many other cases in the Old Testament, it’s clear it refers to sexual intercourse. This is clear when we see that Lot says his daughters have never known a man. Their Dad is there with them and they are engaged, so surely they know men, but they have never had sex with men.

By the way, there is also no defending Lot’s offer to them. Good guys in Scripture don’t always act like good guys. People make stupid mistakes in stressful situations, and your house being besieged by a personal army of angry men does count as such a situation.

Fortunately, Lot’s angelic visitors save the day. Everyone is given a chance to flee the town as destruction starts. Lot’s wife is the one who suffers since she looks back to the city as she was told to not do.

So why was Sodom destroyed?

Pride?
Inhospitality?
Immoral sexual behavior?

Yes.

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

Tamar’s Redemption

What happened with Tamar and Judah? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

In our last look at Genesis 38, we talked about the sin of Onan. As the chapter goes on, there are aspects that an ancient person would understand that we miss today. For instance, none of this happened in a vacuum. Everyone in the community would know that Tamar’s husbands had both died. Why? What was going on? Was she perhaps killing them? Was the family of Judah just wicked?

Judah is also frightened. He has only one son left. What happens if he gives him to Tamar and he dies as well? There’s nothing left. Judah doesn’t want to risk it and sends Tamar back to her father.

Tamar is living with shame, however. She is supposed to have children and she does not. She has had two men in her life and nothing has happened and the man she was supposed to marry again has grown up and has not been given to her. She is a stigma.

Well, a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.

Tamar hears that her father-in-law is out and about so she goes and sits at a gate, much like a prostitute would, and disguises herself. Judah comes along and falls for her trap thinking she’s a prostitute. She asks for his seal, cord, and staff, as assurance he will pay her for her “services.” After he has his fun, he goes to get the goat for her and when he returns, she is not there and he is told that there have never been a prostitute there.

A few months later, he is told that his daughter-in-law, Tamar, is pregnant. He knows that his son has not been with her, so what does he do? He says that Tamar must be burned in the fire immediately. Hey. It will take care of the problem and his son can have a normal marriage to someone else then. Right?

Tamar has her trump card. She presents the cord and seal and staff and says “The man who got me pregnant is the man who owns these. Do you know whose they are?” Judah is shamed. He knows whose they are indeed, and everyone else knows whose they are. Judah has been caught having a liaison with his daughter-in-law.

In the end, Tamar does give birth and these children are twins. It is through these twins that eventually, Jesus will come about. After all, what happens here is really unrelated to what happens in the rest of Genesis for the most part. You could take this chapter out and you would not notice anything different in the story of Joseph.

When we read the genealogy in Matthew, there is no painting over of this. Tamar is mentioned in the text and every reader would recognize Tamar and what happened in the family line of the Messiah. God took the wicked action of Judah and still used it for good. He is still doing the same with any evil done today. No evil can truly overcome the way of God overall.

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

Why This Series Matters

Why are we studying marriage in the Bible? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I was listening to a radio talk show yesterday with the host talking about what our enemies should do if they wanted to destroy America from within. I agreed with many of the statements that were made and think they are happening right now, but there was one glaring omission I was shocked didn’t make the list and that is what is happening right now. That omission is the destruction of the family unit.

Ultimately, the sexual revolution in this country was one of the worst things that ever happened. When the pill came, everything changed. No, this is not a blanket condemnation of contraception, but it is one of our lack of self-control. We actually believed in sex without consequences. The reason we did so was we had somehow already had a diminished view of sex and I do not know exactly where that began, but it started coming out a lot in the late 60’s.

It wasn’t a shock that the next step that came along was abortion. The most anti-feminine thing a woman can do is to have an abortion. It is an attack on the life of a human baby and it is an attack on her own body. Any woman who is truly a feminist should be 100% opposed to abortion other than saving the life of a mother in the case where the child will definitely die. Giving birth is one of the things that makes women completely unique, and that uniqueness is treated as a curse.

Around the time of Reagan, we had no-fault divorce come. This, unfortunately, made divorce even easier to come about and when people think marriage can be broken easily, they don’t treat it as seriously. Marriage was no longer seen as a permanent institution meant to be treated as till death do us part. There are too many divorces that don’t have biblical grounds. What happened to me is one such case.

Around this time also we had the GRID contagion spreading. You haven’t heard of that? Yes, you have. You know it as AIDS. It was originally called GRID, Gay-Related Immuno-Deficiency. The disease showed up primarily in homosexual men and in people using IV needles. Why change the name? Why, the original name would be offensive.

But this was the move being made. The book came out called After The Ball about how Americans will come to love and accept homosexuality in the 90’s. The playbook was followed perfectly. People didn’t even realize that their minds were being changed, but they were. Naturally, the media was the main methodology. I don’t just mean news stations. I mean TV shows, like Will And Grace.

In the past, if a movie had a “sex scene” it was a man and a woman going into a room and you’d hear a click as the door locked. You knew what was going on. Now, they have to show nearly everything. The internet has also increased the spread of pornography, one of the most dehumanizing things ever if not the most dehumanizing thing, even above slavery itself.

The homosexual movement keeps going and what do we have coming on then? We have to change what our idea of marriage is. Unfortunately, if you can change marriage to mean anything, then marriage essentially means nothing. People didn’t think enough about what made sex special and in turn, they didn’t think about what made marriage special. Marriage has become all about me and my happiness and not about the future of humanity and for Christians, the spread of the Kingdom.

As soon as that battle was won, the shift came immediately to transgenderism. After all, being a man and being a woman can’t mean anything either. If we say there is something objective about men and women that makes them different, well that hurts equality. We can’t have that. I get absolutely astounded today that I have to defend the fact that men and women are different.

Any time there’s a story about a boy causing trouble in a girls’ locker room, I am not surprised a bit. This is what happens. Unfortunately, you’re the bad guy if you point this out. Parents cheer when a boy is allowed to use the girls’ locker room, ignoring that the girls are absolutely terrified, and who can blame them?

I won’t deny there’s a personal element in this for me. Divorce hurts. It’s been the most hurtful thing I have ever been through and it causes me some pain every single day. Yes. I am recovering and yes, I have come a long way, but there is always healing to be done.

This is also to answer questions people have for me about remarriage. I plan on it. Is it biblical? I am convinced it is, but I am also pointing out my reasons for this. I also hope to stop more unbiblical divorces from taking place and to help those who have been unbiblically divorced, especially my fellow men who are often faced with pressure in a culture that says “Believe all women.” (Which is also very subjective depending on who the woman is.)

The family unit is a threat to anyone who wants to control society. It is a unit that is dependent on no one else save God alone. It is its own private little society. It doesn’t need the backing of the government to exist. It is separate from the state.

I want to see that unit protected and defended. I want to see it again embraced as a lifelong man-woman unit. I want to see the end of abortion and even the end of pornography. I want to see the honoring of marriage and unbiblical divorce condemned and those who are the victims being given comfort and grace. Too many men have told me that even years later, they are treated like they have committed an unpardonable sin.

The family is a unit created by God Himself and we should treat it that way. The family is meant to mirror the holy trinity. We mess with it only to our own peril.

That is why this matters.

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

The Sin of Onan

What was the sin of Onan? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Genesis 38 is a very odd chapter. I read it and I often wonder why Moses included this. Judah is the only son of Jacob besides Joseph that we have a feature section on. I can’t help but think God inspired Moses to write this because Judah is the one through whom Messiah Jesus would come.

There’s too much here to cover in one chapter, so today, I want to look at the sin of Onan. In this chapter, Judah has three sons. The first one is Er and all we know is he was wicked in the Lord’s sight, so the Lord put him to death. We don’t know what he did.

However, we know that his wife, Tamar, was barren at that point so Judah told Onan to lie with her and have children for his brother. However, Onan knew that any children that came would not be his. Therefore, whenever he was with Tamar, he would spill his seed on the ground so that she would not get pregnant.

So what did Onan do that was so wrong? Now let’s point something out at the start. It’s often said that the sin of Onan is either masturbation or birth control. I dispute both of those. At the same time, that doesn’t mean “This text doesn’t condemn masturbation or birth control, therefore both of those are okay.”

An important aspect of good reasoning is to be able to point out that not all arguments for your position are good arguments. I am a strong theist, but I do not think that all arguments for the existing of God are good arguments. I know some people who are Christians and critics of the minimal facts approach to the resurrection, but that surely doesn’t mean that they deny the resurrection.

So let’s look at what’s going on with Onan. Now this is not talking about masturbation because this is done when the two are together and there’s no indication that Tamar is giving him a hand job and if that was what was going on, why would it need to state that the seed was spilled on the ground? The reason it states that is because in sex, well there’s one place the seed is normally meant to go.

So is it about birth control? Again, I’m skeptical of this as the real question to ask is “Why was Onan trying to avoid pregnancy?” It could be hypothetically that trying to avoid pregnancy is wrong, but we should also ask regardless why it is being done. In this case, when we look at why Onan did this, we will see.

Onan was greedy.

Now that sounds confusing. Onan was greedy, therefore he engaged in coitus interruptus?

Yes. If Onan had any kids with Tamar, then Tamar would be the one to get the inheritance from Judah. Onan would miss out. Onan wasn’t only refusing his duty as a brother, he was trying to get all the benefits and look like he was still fulfilling it. In other words, Onan wanted wealth and was willing to cheat his family to get it.

If you want to condemn masturbation or birth control, you need to go somewhere else. This text is not about that.

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

The Missing Father

Where was he? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Joseph has grown up now and started having dreams. No. I’m not talking about what you get after eating too much pizza at night or about what happens when you are highly ambitious. (Although it certainly looks like Joseph was that.) These are dreams that get the rest of his family, including Jacob, angry. In these dreams, he would see representations of his family bowing down to him.

They weren’t exactly happy to hear all of this. Even Jacob was indignant. Unfortunately, Jacob did show special favor to Joseph though, such as giving him a fancy coat which no one else got. They could have seen it as a way of trying to make the dreams come about to be true.

One day, Jacob sends Joseph to his brothers and after some journeying, he finds where they are. When they see him coming, they decide to kill him, although Reuben does have second thoughts. (Maybe he remembers what he did with his Dad’s concubine and is trying to get in his father’s grace again.)

However, these brothers decide just killing Joseph wouldn’t get them that much. They can get rid of him and still profit some themselves. They just need to sell him into slavery. Fortunately, a caravan is coming through that will purchase him.

Reuben is apparently away while this happens and when he returns, he finds the pit that they had thrown Joseph into is empty and he thinks that the boy has been killed and he tears his clothes. The text doesn’t tell us, but I suspect this still has to do with Reuben’s transgression. Reuben wants to make up somehow for what he did.

However, the brothers still have a problem here. Joseph is gone, but their Dad is going to wonder what happened to him. Somehow, they have a hunch that the message of “We sold him into slavery” isn’t going to go over well. So, they take his special coat and dip it in the blood of an animal and show it to Jacob.

In the book Misreading Scripture with Individualist Eyes, the authors write about this story being told to a Middle Eastern group and when they get to the trouble between the brothers someone asks a question we don’t normally think of. “Where is Jacob?” To be sure, Jacob shows up in the text, but the father is supposed to lead his family and be aware of what’s going on. This father is so unaware of what’s going on that he doesn’t see the jealousy Joseph’s brothers have and don’t realize their desire to see him dead?

Sadly, Jacob’s special care for Joseph has blinded him to the reality of his other sons. You would think Jacob would have learned about the dangers of favoritism after the trouble that he had with Esau, which fortunately did end on a positive note. Unfortunately, he did not, and while God will use this for good, it doesn’t condone that Jacob should have been a more attentive father in the life of his children.

If you’re a father today, don’t make the same mistake. The consequences can be tragic.

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

Virgin Birth (Which I do affirm) debate

How did the debate go? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Not a lot of reading today, but some viewing. Check out a debate I did with John Richards on the virgin birth, which I do affirm.

You can watch it here.

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