Month: July 2024

Do Most Christians Know?

Is your average Christian capable? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Reading through a lot of anti-Trinitarian material, something that strikes me is how many of these arguments are the same tired cliches. Constantine is to blame for everything. The Trinity was created at the Council of Nicea. What about passages like John 14:28? Don’t you believe that there is only one God?

These are all childish objections, but I was reading one such book today that while presenting these objections said that most Christians don’t know how to answer these questions. They only know what the person behind the pulpit told them. They never really study the issues for themselves.

I’m afraid that’s right.

Most Christians aren’t trained in this. Your average church teaches Christianity not so much as a doctrinal system, but as a pragmatic system. Here’s how you are to love your neighbor. Here’s how you are to pray. Here’s how you are to denounce sin. None of those things are wrong in themselves. They all have a place.

None of those are explaining the why of what we believe.

We are to love our neighbors. Why? Maybe my neighbor is a jerk. Well, Jesus tells us to. Okay. So why should I still? Who is Jesus that I should give Him that authority?

Get rid of your sin! Why should I? What if what I do is done in private and doesn’t hurt any one. It’s not that big a deal. Right? God forgives anyway. Right?

Even more, we are sitting ducks when the New Atheists come along or the Jehovah’s Witnesses or the Mormons. Your average Christian doesn’t understand why Christians disagree with the LGBTQ movement. Your average Christian will think they are not supposed to judge any one.

Why? Because first off, no one ever told them this information is available. Second, no one has treated them like they are capable of learning it.

There’s a theory I have that people often become the way that you treat them. If the people in the pew are treated like they are infants in the faith, that is what they will be. Infants in the faith. Go look at Hebrews 6 one time and read the doctrines discussed at the start that are discussed as elementary. For too many of us today, they would be the advanced course.

You do not have to be a genius to understand apologetics and Christianity. You don’t have to spend every waking moment with your nose in a book. You don’t have to go to seminary or enter the ministry formally. You can work a 9-5 job, spend time with your family and your hobbies, and still be informed.

Sadly, too many Christians know more about their favorite sports team, TV show, movie, or gaming series, than they do about the faith system they base all of their eternity on. That needs to be changed. In this day and age, there are more resources out there to educate yourself on most any topic that you want.

If you care about your faith, you will do it.

And pastors, start treating your congregations like they’re capable. We’re supposed to be raising up people who will go out and fight the good fight. We are not out there to just feel good about ourselves. We are out there to change the world and we are the ones who have the responsibility of doing it. God will not reward laziness on our parts. We have our orders. It is up to us to follow them.

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

 

How To Treat Enemies

How do we treat our enemies? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters.

If anything has been disturbing about the assassination attempt I wrote about last time, it’s been the response from many on the left about how disappointed they are that the shooter didn’t miss. There is a saying that when people show you who they are, believe them. What we have seen from multiple people is who they are and how they view their enemies.

What happens if you become their enemy?

As a Christian, I know Christ told me to love my enemies. Isn’t it interesting that He never denied we will have enemies? The Old Testament didn’t, even within the community of Israel. Exodus 23:4 told the people of Israel that if they come across the ox or donkey of their enemy wandering off, return it. This would be within Israelite territory most likely.

I hope many of you have known on this blog that I try to treat my enemies fairly. I have not held back in saying that I am a conservative Christian. Thus, I view people like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama as enemies. I have some extremely strong viewpoints about both of these people.

However, when I have seen something false being shared about them, I have answered it. I used to get email blasts from someone who would talk about the latest horrible thing Obama had done when he was in office. I would spend a few minutes researching it, find out it was false, and then send out an email response to everyone back documenting the claim.

Yes. Conservative Christians share fake news also.

Some of these people who were getting these emails were liberals. I know that some of them came to respect me even though they disagreed with me because I cared about getting facts right. I have often chided Christians, even on this blog, for sharing information that can easily be shown to be false by a five-minute web search. If you want people to believe you on a claim about what happened 2,000 years ago, they need to be able to believe you on what happened two days ago.

Some of these responses have been public posts. Consider when Reclaim America shared a claim about Hillary Clinton. Another one was about Muslim apologist Zakir Naik. Now if I oppose these people ideologically, why would I write posts defending them?

Because truth matters. I will not take down my opponent with a lie. If they are as bad as I think they are, the truth about them is sufficient.

Let’s talk about present realities. You might be surprised, but I pray for the Biden family every night. I pray our president will have long life and health while he’s in the office. At the same time, I think he has done great damage to this country and the world and I do pray for justice, but that will come at God’s hands, not mine. I also realize we both have to answer to the same God one day.

If anything, the person I think has the roughest time in all of this in that family is Ashley Biden. Think about this. How many of you ever kept a journal or a diary where you would write down your most private and intimate thoughts. It wasn’t meant for everyone to see. Her diary was meant to be that, but now it’s public. Anyone can see it.

Would you like yours being open for everyone to see?

Now let’s get even more personal.

I have an ex-wife. I’ve spoken about my divorce. Does it hurt? Yep. Every day. Is it tempting to speak ill of her and even to think ill of her? Yes. I can easily say no other person on Earth has hurt me as much as she has.

I still pray for her well-being every night.

I challenge you even to come to campus and see if you can find anyone who has heard me speak ill of my ex-wife. If anything, I try to avoid doing that. I don’t even think you could find someone on Facebook who has seen that happen. That’s a bold claim, but I’ll make it.

Christ told me to love my enemies. That is unconditional. There are no exceptions to that rule. He didn’t say “Love your enemies, except that person who hurt you more than anyone else ever has. It’s cool to hate them.”

This is something I wrote about years ago in a post asking if your murderer will be in Heaven. I love how someone in the comments said that Stephen and Paul are together right now. That is the kind of radical love and forgiveness Christ calls us to.

Sometimes I see people on my Facebook feed say awful things about their exes. Every time, my thinking is the same. “I don’t know much about that person, but I sure know a lot more about you.” There are a lot of people I suspect in this election season who are seeing the reactions and saying “I wasn’t sure where I stand on Trump, but seeing how you all are reacting, I think I’ll stand with him.”

One tip I offer you all for your enemies is to pray for them. I mean real prayers for their well-being. It’s easy to say you will pray a Psalm of judgment on them. I have said before we often ask justice on our enemies and mercy on us. We hardly ever if ever reverse that and ask for mercy on our enemies and justice on us.

The way I see it anyway, if I live with anger and hostility towards my ex-wife, she wins. She’s still controlling me. She’s still dominant in my life. The more I let my hostility go, the more I am free.

Will I continue to pray for the Bidens every night? Yes. While I think Trump will win, if by some chance whoever the Democrat nominee is wins, I will pray for them every night too. I won’t pray for their agenda to succeed, but I will pray for them as a person.

When Obama was in office people used to ask me if I could meet with anyone in the world who would it be, and I said it would be him. Why? I would sit down and tell him the gospel. I would say the same about Trump when he was in office. I would say the same about Biden now. Something all of us have in common is all of us need the gospel.

Pray for your enemies. If not, you are more likely to become that which you condemn.

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

 

On The Assassination Attempt

What does this say about us? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I have an app that gives me points for walking that I can use to get gift cards, so I was walking at the student center yesterday here on campus when I hear my phone. It’s my Mom calling. I answer and she asks if I had heard the news. Well, I had heard that Richard Simmons had died as well as Dr. Ruth.  Which one was it?

Then she told me about the assassination attempt.

That got me opening up YouTube and Facebook and Messenger and many other apps piecing together everything that happened. When I got back, I watched several videos talking about the event. As a gamer, I have an Echo nearby so while I’m doing a game, I’m also learning about everything going on in the world around me.

So let’s get some things clear.

First, this is not a hoax. There are a lot of people on the left that have been saying this kind of thing. The problem with a hoax being a largely public event is that so many people have to be in on a cover-up. This would mean every Secret Service agent there was in on it and that the person who died as a result of being shot by a stray bullet and the others in critical condition had to be in on it.

No. This was the real deal. Also, let’s keep in mind that Alex Jones was sued heavily for saying that Sandy Hook was a hoax.

What happened was awful, but what was even worse in many ways was the responses that were going on. You can say with an assassin that there is one crazy person out there. However, my social media feeds yesterday were full of leftists regretting not that the event happened, but that the attempt failed. Trending on X were “How did you miss?” and “You had one job.”

Some people were saying that if the shot had hit, it would have saved democracy. I’m wondering if these people know how World War I started. Our country right now is a powder keg and many of us fear that a Civil War is going to break out sometime. This could have been the match that sparked it all off.

The Babylon Bee was accurate when it said that a party that for years has claimed Trump was Hitler is shocked when someone tries to assassinate him. This is something many of us on the right have been saying in various other circumstances. All it takes is one person to believe the claims.

A major question is how this has happened and some former Secret Service agents are saying this was a failure on the part of the Service. Yes. They did their part to protect when it was clear what was happening, and that is honorable, but we have at least one witness who was there who saw what was going on and tried in vain to alert the people.

Then you have the way that many on the left were responding which is extremely problematic. Consider what Representative Steven Woodrow said on X shortly after:

He has since deleted his X account, but the internet never forgets. If you want to see more like these, you can go look at DefiantLs who has the best compendium of them on X that I know of. Also while there, you can see what various news outlets said about it:

USA Today:

Trump removed from stage by Secret Service after loud noises startles former president, crowd.

Yeah. Loud noises. That’s what it was.

CNN also had similar with a statement about Trump being led off by Secret Service after falling at rally.

So what happens now?

First, we pray. We pray for the healing of our nation. We pray for President Trump and we pray for the families of those who lost a loved one. We all need to know about Corey Comperatore who died protecting his family. For many of you who complain about men, real men do what Comperatore did.

Second, we also pray for our enemies as well. If it were not for the grace of God, any of us could have been them. Any of us could have been an assassin were it not for God’s grace in our lives. We have seen from history that anyone is capable of great evil if given the chance.

Third, we pray for ourselves that we will not escalate the situation in any way. I know I was angry when I heard the news yesterday, but I also realized that if I let that anger control me, I would be heading down the path that I was condemning. Christ told us to not hate your brother in your heart. Why is that? Because if you do, then if the benefits outweighed the costs, you would kill him. Keep in mind something I tell people. When you think you are incapable of falling into a certain sin, you are taking the first step to falling into that sin.

Political pundits will discuss this back and forth. I was too young to know about it when the attempt was made on Reagan, but I am not too young now to remember this attempt. Let’s hope that it’s another 40 years before another such attempt, but preferably let’s pray one doesn’t happen at all.

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

Capable

What can someone on the spectrum do? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I work at the seminary Post Office. Often students and professors come in for packages and to check and receive mail. Sometimes, the general pubilc comes in also wanting to mail something. Earlier this week, we had someone come in and in the midst of talking, my boss and I found out she worked at a school teaching autistic children.

Many people know I am on the spectrum here, but I am surprised some do not. I recently met with someone who works closely with our seminary president asking him if he could help me get speaking engagements as well as talking about the PhD program and possibly some undergrad teaching here after I get my Master’s. I mentioned speaking on video games and Christianity and then said I am also one of the bset to speak on Autism and Christianity.

“Why is that?”

I was surprised he didn’t know. In some ways, that’s a compliment. I blend in so well that people can’t tell. Many people who come into the seminary are like that. It’s often a mystery to them. If they ask “How are you?” I say nothing in response seeing as I abslutely despise the question. I also do realize I am often sort of staring off at something else when I am communicating with someone.

My boss tells me after the customers leave that she has a godchild on the spectrum and wants to know more about my process of finding out I was on the spectrum. I have to call my Mom on this one seeing as I don’t remember much of it. I get the relevant information and then start telling my boss about what my mother was told about me.

I was told I would never graduate from high school and definitely never go to college. I wouldn’t hold a job and I would always be living at home. I would never get married.

All wrong.

Sometimes, I still think about that. I think about that when I raelize I am driving in my own car to my job at the seminary that I live at dwelling in my own apartment. These were things the experts said would never happen, but my parents and I never accept3ed no for an answer. I was a fighter always wanting to push onward.

Now I realize I am not everyone. There are things I am not capable of and things I struggle with. I can do them or hopefully will do them someday, but for now, it’s a struggle. I am not saying to deny reality, but I am saying that people can do great things if they are willing to many times. I consider it a testimony to others that I refused to be a victim, which is why I hate how our culture celebrates victimhood.

Things are tough sometimes, but I am still making it. I have been through several crises, the latest being a divorce, and I still play on. (If you want to support the work I am doing here, there is a Patreon below) The biggest reason has been my strong Christian faith I love the verse in Corinthians about God using that which the world shames to bring Him glory.

If you have someone in your life on the spectrum, watch them. They could be capable of something great. Give them a chance to shine.

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

Book Plunge: The Myth of the Divinity of Jesus Christ Part 2

Why didn’t He just say it? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

News flash! Jesus never came out and explicitly said, “I am God!”

This is something cultists and Muslims and others expect, to which I say “Why should you?” Think about this. What would it have meant for Jesus to say that? Would they hear Him saying He is the Father? As soon as He says “I am not” then they ask “Well if you’re God, but not the Father, who are you?” (Assuming they hadn’t already stoned Him.) With each answer, more and more questions come out.

No. Jesus handled this the same way as He did His being the Messiah, which He also very rarely came out and claimed for Himself. Others were claiming it of Him before He was claiming it of Himself. Could it be because like the God question, people had an idea of who the Messiah was to be as in what kind of person he was to be? Could it be He didn’t want to be tied to that image?

It’s not a shock that John 10 is pointed to as Jesus denying that He is God. (You know, that place where He said “I and the Father are one.”) I have already covered this one here. Not only did Jesus not deny it, He really upped the ante on His claim.

Iqbal goes on from there to make a number of other nonsense arguments, such as Moses being called a god. Yes. That was an analogical sense. No one understood Jesus as ever speaking in that way. This is also an argument Jehovah’s Witnesses make and it’s just as awful when they do it.

Israel is the firstborn. Yes. And?

Israel is referred to as the children of God. Yes. They are. Context determines meaning. In an analogical sense, we can say Jesus is the one who is the true Israel of God seeing as He is the true Son of God.

David is begotten. Yes. All kings of Israel were declared to be begotten, but again, this is not in the same way. David is a type of the greater one who was to come. The greater one of Jesus is begotten in the most unique way of all, eternally begotten from the Father and declared to be the king forevermore.

The righteous are called children of God. Yes. Our righteousness is not found in ourselves. It is found in the one who is the most righteous of all, the spotless lamb Christ. He is the righteousness and if we are in Him, then we are declared to be righteous. The sad reality is that if Iqbal had bothered to really understand these passages, he would have seen that they really argue against his position more.

I really wish I had more to give you all, but really this is it. The bulk of the argument that Iqbal had was based on John 10 which is a pathetically weak argument. I know I have often gone after internet atheists on here, but in a way, Muslim argumentation is often sadly worse.

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

 

 

 

Nope. No Indoctrination Going On Here!

What is being talked about with history? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I was going to continue looking at the Muslim book, but I want to comment on a mailout that I got yesterday from Tom Woods. It’s actually going to take place right here in my own New Orleans. I saw a list of some of the topics he said were going to be spoken on and so I went and looked them up. Yep. They’re there.

You know how we’re constantly told that there’s no campaign going on to indoctrinate your kids?

They’re lying.

You can see the program here.

Doing a Ctrl+F, the word “Queer” shows up fifty-one times and LGBTQ shows up twenty-five times. There’s even a talk Woods pointed out on how to support “Pregnant-capable” students in abortion-ban states. That leaves me wondering what that has to do with American history. Check it out women. Now you are known as “Pregnant-capable” people. How’s that war against the patriarchy going?

Now I’m not saying all of the talks are like that. There could be some that are just fine to go to. I am saying that when you look at the bulk of these, they are more ideologically driven than anything else.

Remember, it was just within the past thirty years that we were told that all that was wanted was tolerance. Many of us at the time knew that was a lie. How can we tell it was? Because as soon as the party crying tolerance got into power, they treated anyone who disagreed with them with anything but tolerance. Cries of “Please just let us be!” became “Bake the cake or be ruined, bigot!”

If we want to talk about where our country really went off the rails, if I could point to one major event that started everything, I would point to the sexual revolution. Nothing has led to the breakdown of the family unit more than this disastrous event. Sadly, we in the church have not responded well as we are often just as informed on sexual matters. If anything, divorce and living together before marriage are too common in the church. (Keep in mind, I say this as someone who is divorced. In many cases, if you want to meet someone who hates divorce, find someone who was wrongfully divorced.)

Nowadays, your kids are not being taught history. They are being taught history and politics. They are not being taught science, but science and politics. I remember when I was in school learning about environmentalism in the fifth grade. (I also remember learning about fears of a coming ice age.)

The solution is also the same every time. More government. By the way, this is also something that goes along with redefining marriage. Since the State made up an artificial idea of marriage, they are the ones that have to defend it and force it on everyone else. Change the idea of marriage for one and you change it for all. All of this gives the state more power and more control.

Who knows? Maybe I’ll talk to some people here on campus and see if we might attend this event just to see what it’s like. It could be an interesting experiment, though before too long, we could be branded as heretics for not supporting the new orthodoxy.

Kind of like what cults do.

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

 

 

Book Plunge: The Myth of the Divinity of Jesus Christ Part 1

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

So at the start, Iqbal is an Ahmadiyya Muslim. I understand this is not a sect that many Muslims consider orthodox, but the arguments are still incredibly similar. Also, they do have a promised Messiah figure already from their own number. Finally, many quotes will have names that have an “as” right after them, which is a way of wishing peace upon the person.

So the first chapter is about the Bible. Right off, we’re told that the scholars generally agree that the Gospels are written around 40 years after the crucifixion and are not eyewitnesses. Unfortunately, none of these scholars are named. No arguments against the authorship of Matthew and John are given. No interaction is done with Richard Bauckham’s work. We are not told why we should trust the Qur’an which is around 600 years later. If the Muslim wants to say Allah is behind the Qur’an, a Christian could just as easily say the Holy Spirit is behind the Gospels.

He then lists some requirements for writing history and they are:

It is necessary for a historian to avoid exaggeration; secondly, there should be no weakness in his memory; thirdly, he should have sound judgment and not be a person confined to superficial thinking; fourthly, he should be a researcher and not confine himself to shallow matters; fifthly, whatever he writes should be eyewitness testimony, not a compilation of good and bad material.[

Iqbal, Farhan. The Myth of the Divinity of Jesus Christ (Kindle Locations 349-352). Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama`at Canada. Kindle Edition.

I don’t know of any historian who uses these criteria and Iqbal doesn’t tell me who they are. I don’t know of any ancient historian who did this. Exaggeration would even be seen as adding color I suspect to an account. Readers recognize exaggeration.

So what examples does he give that show the accounts aren’t historical? In John 21:25, we are told that Jesus did so much that I suppose the whole world couldn’t contain the books that would be written if all He did was told. I have spent many years debating atheists. I have not met one who would say this is a problem text. All of them would know that whoever wrote this is using exaggeration to say something and credibility doesn’t rely on it.

The second is Luke 9:58 saying the Son of Man has no place to lay His head, when Jesus had a money bag and several patrons. Again, not a problem. Jesus is comparing Himself to Wisdom and saying He has no full habitation on Earth.

The next is in Matthew 2:23 where the prophets said Jesus would be called a Nazarene. Now this is a real one that has been raised. My look at this is the only place where Matthew says that this was done to fulfill the prophetS with a Scriptural citation. The idea then is that Jesus would be seen as a rejected figure in His time, a Nazarene.

Next he goes to Matthew 5:43 where Jesus says it was said to love your neighbor and hate your enemy. Iqbal is right in saying this is not found in the Torah, but the thought is that this is how Jesus’s contemporaries understood the text. If you love your neighbor, then the corollary to that would be to hate your enemy. Jesus tells us to love even him.

He later tells us that if someone goes to a tomb expecting to find a dead person and he’s not there, there are two possibilities. They went to the wrong tomb or the person wasn’t dead in the first place. There are more possibilities I can think of easily and even skeptical scholars have thought of them. It’s worth pointing out that the Ahmadiyya think that Jesus went to Kashmir, India after recovering from the crucifixion, but more on that later.

Next, Iqbal goes to 1 John 5:7-8 to go after the Trinity and cites Bart Ehrman in his defense. Most every evangelical scholar if not all of them knows that’s not something in the original text. It’s not a problem to go to multiple texts to show a doctrine like Iqbal thinks it is.

Iqbal also asks how we can trust Paul when he says that to the Jews he became like a Jew and to the Greeks, a Greek. Such a person doesn’t understand Paul is really talking about cultural sensibilities and not doing anything to needlessly offend a group. If you want to reach Jews, you don’t go in eating a pork sandwich. If you want to reach Hindus, you don’t invite them over and share a hamburger. You might even love those foods, but you don’t do it in front of them. I love my tea, but I avoid it in front of Mormons.

On the crucifixion, he says that such an event would bring doubt about the message of Jesus since He would be under a curse. Exactly! That was the point! His enemies wanted Him to be seen as under the curse of God and thus everything He said is called into question. However, a divine resurrection reverses all of that and seals the deal that everything He said is absolutely certain.

Iqbal says the Sign of Jonah can’t apply to Jesus since Jonah went into the fish and came out of it alive. Jesus however has said that one greater than Jonah was there. Jesus would go into the Earth dead and come out alive. The point is made stronger.

So thus far, I’m not impressed a bit, but next time we’ll see what Iqbal says Jesus said about Himself. Maybe it will be better.

But probably not.

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

 

 

Is Jesus A Friend With Benefits?

Do we treat Jesus as someone who is just there for us? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I don’t remember what it was I had been thinking about, but the thought that came next was so startling that that was what stuck. I think it was something I have been thinking about lately where people like to say what God is doing in their lives, when I want people to tell me what they are doing in the life of God. After all, when we say “This is what God is doing in my life”, many times that’s our opinion of what’s going on. We could be wrong. However, we do know what it is that we are doing and we have to ask if we are serving or not.

We often talk about what it means to love someone and if you love them, you want to know them more and more. If you aren’t really invested in the relationship, then you don’t care about learning more about the other person. You’re just in the relationship for what the other person can do for you.

Many marriages are falling apart because people go into the marriage not thinking “What can I do to build up this relationship with this person?” but rather “What can this person do for me?” To some extent, we all seek our own good and it’s unavoidable and not always wrong, but when we do it at the expense of others, we have a problem. When we treat people as objects while denying their personhood, there is an issue.

Yet this is often how we treat Jesus. Do people really want to learn more about Jesus? It’s easy to figure that out. Think fast. When was the last time you heard about a church service offering a course on the doctrine of the Trinity? If you’re like me, your answer will be, “I can’t remember such a thing.”

Now think about this. When was the last time you heard a church offer a course on improving your marriage, getting your finances straight, being a better parent, etc. I am not saying those are wrong. The church should be offering those things. We should not be ignoring the weightier matters of knowing who Jesus is.

Dare I say it, but if we knew more about who Jesus is, maybe we would actually need less of the other seminars.

I remember as a child who didn’t go on overnight trips seeing kids in the Methodist Church come back from a big youth event and they were on fire for Jesus! They were super-excited! They wanted to go out and spread the gospel!

For about two weeks.

Here’s another question to ask. What did your pastor preach on yesterday? (If you are not reading this on Monday, just think to the last Sunday you were in church.) Honestly, many of you might have forgotten by the time you got home on Sunday what your pastor preached on. Could it be because it wasn’t anything new? Have you heard it before? Now think about that TV show you’re watching you really enjoy. What happened in the last episode? I’m sure you can tell me that.

We live in a culture where the church doesn’t really know who Jesus is. We just speak about what Jesus does. Sadly, the person no longer matters. This is one reason groups that come with anti-Trinitarian ideas can easily demolish Christians. Christians tend to only know Jesus by what He does instead of who He is.

Going back to the title, this is where it comes in. What do you call a relationship where you go to the other person just for what they can do for you and you don’t invest in them? You claim to love them, but your commitment is based on what they do for you. In modern terms, we think of this as friends with benefits.

Dealing with depression and anxiety? Come to Jesus. Want to get some extra money coming in? Come to Jesus. About to have a painful operation? Come to Jesus. Need to learn to crucify yourself and die to the world? Let’s not be hasty.

The Jesus we have that is rooted in being all about us will not change the world. The good news we will share is the good news that will feed narcissism rather than crucify it. We can talk about a relationship with Jesus, but too often, it is a one-sided relationship. If your walk with Jesus is all about what He has done for you, then when the so-called benefits stop, so will you. If your walk with Jesus is built on who He is and His death and resurrection, then you will have a much easier time. You will have a true covenant relationship, a marriage if you will.

Bottom line is either Jesus is your king and you serve Him, or it’s the other way around.

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

Are We A Threat?

Do non-Christians view us as opposition in any way? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I’ve started reading Eric Hernandez’s The Lazy Approach To Evangelism and while I have just finished the first chapter, I liked what I read. He describes in the chapter talking with Filipino students via Zoom who had 2,000 members in their Christian group wanting to learn apologetics in their country, while the atheist group had 20,000. Eric was asked if he would debate the leader of the atheist group sometime. He agreed and being diligent, went to watch some of his arguments.

He found them incredibly weak.

That got him wondering why is it that he is using such weak arguments? Is this the best that they had? Apparently it was, but the sad reality is a weak argument is far more powerful than no argument. This group was more persuasive to people because they were at least saying something the people thought was credible.

It’s a problem I have often thought about. Do Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons seem frightened to build their buildings near churches? If anything, they want to! Say what you will about these groups, but they are also dedicated to their missionizing work. I have been to services for both groups. The Witnesses certainly spend hours at a meeting being indoctrinated. It is false, to be sure, but they know what they are arguing and they go beyond a personal experience.

The problem is these groups are truer to a false gospel than we are to the true gospel.

Consider going through your Facebook feed. Atheists aren’t really scared to share nonsense in public. Keep in mind I’m not saying all atheists are like this. There are powerful atheist arguments out there that Christians need to answer. I’m talking about the people who just throw out cliches like saying “You’re atheists to a bunch of other gods! I just go one God farther!” or stating that Jesus never existed or any number of other claims.

More atheists would be willing to go to a Christian organization I suspect than Christians would to an atheist organization.

Why is this? Consider what is happening at your average church service. Take someone who has been in church all of his life. If he is in the pew as a senior citizen, what is he hearing?

All things being equal, the same thing he heard as a small child.

I understand some pastors saying we need to keep it simple so that our people don’t get overwhelmed, but the reason you start someone off swimming in the shallow end is so they can soon get to the deep end. If you are just leaving them in shallow waters, they will never go beyond that. You are the ones to take them beyond that. If they say “I don’t want to go any deeper than I am right now” then that is telling you how committed they are to their faith.

Would we do this for any other relationship?

“Yes, boss. I know I could learn how to be a better employee, but I’m fine with where I’m at right now.”

“Honey. I don’t want to do a marriage enrichment seminar. Where we’re at right now is good enough for me.”

“I don’t care about a financial planning talk. I have enough money right now. I don’t want to hear about earning more.”

Pastors. If you want to see your parishioners out there doing more, then go deeper with them. I love my Orthodox brothers and sisters, but I remember my ex-wife’s priest in the Orthodox Church talking about the God he was reading in the church fathers and telling a friend that this was a God he could get excited about. I’m glad he did, but we as Protestants need to realize that theological heritage is ours as well. Go look up some of the early Protestant creeds and confessions and they are rich in theology.

Look at people like Edwards, Charnock, and others in early America and they had deep theology and they were teaching it to laymen. In the early American Revolution, ministers were often targeted by the British because they preached sermons that could rally laymen to the cause of the revolution. Yes. Those were largely Protestant churches. When was the last time you heard about a rousing sermon like that? Most of us can’t remember what the pastor spoke on the next day if not within a few hours of when he said it.

In America, we live in a country where we have had marriage redefined, abortion become the law of the land, many of our men struggling with pornography and increasingly many women, and any other number of ills. Why does it happen today? Because Christians let it happen. Christians are not a threat.

That doesn’t mean that we go out and use physical violence, but it means we learn the reasons why we believe what we believe and why we behave the way we behave. As a divorced man now, if someone asks me “Are you going to move in with someone before you marry them this time?” I’ll tell them no and then I’ll give them a long list of reasons why I think moving in before a marriage is harmful and even why sleeping with someone before marriage is harmful. It’s not just going to be “Well this is the way I was raised.”

Frankly, if that’s still what you’re saying when you’re an adult anyway, you don’t have your own faith. You just have a faith you grew up with that you haven’t really made your own. It’s a sort of secondhand faith.

Pastors. If you think that could be too hard, consider then you can have classes on theology at your own churches. There are several people like myself who would be absolutely thrilled to get to go to area churches and speak with them about these matters. We want to see the churches equipped.

If anything, we should be the most equipped. Can you imagine what someone like Paul would have done if he had all the technological means we have to get the gospel out there? Look at all the books the church fathers and the medievals wrote when they had to do them all by hand. Even if they were using scribes, all the writing was still done by hand. Martin Luther was greatly helped in what he did by the printing press. We should have far more Luthers right now with all that we have.

When we look at the world, if we complain about the way it is, it’s not the fault of the world. The world does what the world does. It’s our fault for lowering our guard and not being the salt and the light that we were meant to be.

It was before the 2016 election when I had a lunch with my then father-in-law and we were talking about the upcoming election and he asked me my thoughts on the future of the country. I told him what I still stand by today. The gospel does not need America. The message of Christ will go on just fine if our country falls tomorrow. America, on the other hand, needs the gospel. Only the message of Christ can change the world and our country still today. If we are not seeing the change, it is because we are not speaking it or living it.

A childish theology will not stand up against adult opposition no matter what. We need to stop treating our church members like children. We need to treat adults like adults.

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

Do You Need A Dramatic Testimony?

How should your testimony go? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I really don’t care for testimonies. I think too often they go all into “me, me, me.” Personally, my struggle is I spend enough time focusing on myself anyway. I want to go to people and say “Enough about what you think God is doing in your life. (You’re probably wrong anyway.) I want to hear about what you’re doing in the life of God.”

Recently, I had a question come to me where someone was concerned about their salvation. Generally, when someone asks me a question like “How do you know you’re a Christian?” I don’t answer that question. There’s another question behind that. I asked “Why are you doubting you are?” The answer? “Because people give these really dramatic testimonies at my church and I’ve never had a major change in my life like that.”

There is a great danger when we give a testimony that we will make it greater than it is. Greg Koukl of Stand To Reason has talked about how if you played in a band in college before you came to Christ, you were suddenly a disenchanted rock star. If you smoked some marijuana before you came, you were a hardcore drug addict who got delivered.

Let me be clear on what I am not saying. I am not saying that some people lack a powerful testimony of something amazing happening in their lives like overcoming a powerful addiction or being healed of a deadly disease. I am not saying that one should never use a testimony at all. I am saying it should not always be a go-to. You need to have other reasons why you believe God is real and Jesus rose from the dead beyond your personal experience or what happens when you encounter another person with a similar experience from another position?

I tend to not talk about my divorce when meeting with people, but when I meet someone who is going through a hard time, especially through a divorce, it’s entirely relevant for me to share so they can know there is a fellow traveler. I also use it when I meet someone who is just struggling with rejection. There is a time and a place.

The danger is that many Christians don’t have a dramatic life change. We live in a culture where there is still a strong background Christianity. They are raised and taught Christian morals and don’t really deviate from them. Then they become Christians. Do they have a dramatic testimony to the world? No. There is likely no major life change. It’s just a progression of what they were already doing.

In our Christian culture, we often try to out-spiritualize one another. I think this is one way the talk on hearing the voice of God being seen as normative influences us. People think “Oooh. I need to know that I’m doing that!” and soon they’re listening to any subjective feeling and thinking that’s God and they’re about to find His will for their lives.

Also notice again, the emphasis is “Me, me, me.”

You don’t need to have a major testimony. You need to have a life of faithfulness and holiness. You need to be looking to grow in your faith every day. I’m not saying you will notice something every day, but you will look back and notice eventually. Few of us growing up would check our height every day, but eventually we reached a point where “Hey. I am taller than I was now.” Physically, I used to have to look up to my mother for instance. Now physically, she would have to look up to me. When did that happen? I couldn’t tell you a date, but it did.

Christians. Stop trying to make your testimony more glamorous than it is. Make it real. It could be simple, and that could be what someone else in the pew needs to hear. Be people of truth, even in your testimony.

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