Month: December 2024

Book Plunge: Irreligion Chapter 2

Is there design? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

One of the problems atheists have with design arguments is they think all of them are meant to be scientific arguments. If anything, the classical teleological arguments are more arguments of order. There is science in the sense that if you do A, B will follow, That does not require any of our complex science today.

It could be that Paulos gets closer to the idea when he starts out chapter 2 this way.

The trees swaying in the breeze, the gentle hills and valleys, the lakes teeming with fish, are all beautifully exquisite. How could there not be a God?

Paulos, John Allen. Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (p. 10). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

Actually, this is a good argument I think. Beauty is a powerful pointer to God. These are all material objects but there is something that transcends the matter somehow. It is interesting that normally atheists deny objective beauty.

Unfortunately, Paulos throws out any serious study of the argument by saying its best proponent is probably Paley. The problem is while Paley’s argument has a point to it, it is not at all something someone like Aquinas or Aristotle would have in mind by teleology. For those two, you could just have something like an iceberg floating in water and you could have the argument.

To make matters worse, Paulos then just goes on to argue Richard Dawkins’s Boeing 747 argument about how the creator has to be more complex. Why? Paulos I am sure holds to evolutionary theory which says the complexity we have today arose from simpler lifeforms. Why does he change it when it comes to God?

Not only that, but classically, Christianity has held that God is absolutely simple. (Of course, that would require that Paulos actually studied what he talked about.) I look at the argument and think that Paulos doesn’t know what he’s talking about immediately. Even if he did disagree with that approach, as even some Christians do, he should at least mention some Christians hold to divine simplicity.

But let’s look at how this goes for Paulos.

Suppose he claims complex things need a designer.

If so, then we have to ask how we have anything here since evolution is not a designer. If the reply is that not all complex things need a designer, then one could hypothetically say that God is also one of those things. I find that weak, but if Paulos can beg a question, why not the rest of us?

Paulos also tries to use the free market as an example of something without an intelligent designer, but as my friend David Marshall said in his Amazon review of the book:

Really bizarre is his illustration of how the Free Market accomplishes all kinds of complex planning without a Planner. Paulos goes on and on about this, citing Adam Smith and thinking he has scored a great point by cleverly citing an icon of conservatism. This is a “stunningly obvious” example of evolution working by itself, without need for a designer.

But of course, the free market involves millions of intelligent designers. Maybe that doesn’t matter to Paulos’ illustration, but that, too, ought to be “stunningly obvious,” and again, he ought not to just ignore this stunningly obvious fact.

So far, Paulos’s book is just awful.

But oh dear reader, it’s going to get much worse.

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

 

 

Book Plunge: Irreligion Chapter 1

Does Paulos have the cosmological argument right? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

So I started reading another atheist book. This one is by a mathematician named John Allen Paulos. A mathematician? They’re usually smart guys. Surely this one will be better than a lot of atheist material.

Hope swings eternal.

And then comes crashing right back down again.

Let’s start at the beginning, with the cosmological argument.

As I saw he was starting with the first cause, I was uttering that silent hope of “Please don’t say it. Please don’t say it. Please don’t say it.”

He said it.

1. Everything has a cause, or perhaps many causes.

2. Nothing is its own cause.

3. Causal chains can’t go on forever.

4. So there has to be a first cause.

5. That first cause is God, who therefore exists.

Paulos, John Allen. Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (pp. 3-4). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

At this point, and we’re only on page 4, I know this is someone who I can’t take seriously. It will get even worse in this book, but I will save that for when we get there. When we get there, you will know I have no respect for Paulos whatsoever.

For now, let’s note that no intellectual has ever made the ridiculous argument that Paulos put forward. Plato, Aristotle, Anselm, Plotinus, Augustine, Leibniz, Aquinas, Descartes, Plantinga, Craig, etc. I don’t care who you are talking about. This is not the argument. I don’t care what an ignorant pastor said from the pulpit one time. I care about what the actual argument is.

This is covered in great detail by Edward Feser here.

The figure with the dunce cap in the article is fitting for Paulos. Feser, after pointing out how no one makes this argument and even professional philosophers arguing against the cosmological argument get it wrong says:

And that, I submit, is the reason why the stupid “Everything has a cause” argument – a complete fabrication, an urban legend, something no philosopher has ever defended – perpetually haunts the debate over the cosmological argument.  It gives atheists an easy target, and a way rhetorically to make even their most sophisticated opponents seem silly and not worth bothering with.  It‘s a slimy debating trick, nothing more – a shameless exercise in what I have elsewhere called “meta-sophistry.”  (I make no judgment about whether Le Poidevin’s or Dennett’s sleaziness was deliberate.  But that they should know better is beyond question.)

Getting back to the dunce, I mean Paulos, he says:

A slight variation of this is the so-called cosmological argument, which dates back to Aristotle and depends on the Big Bang theory of the origins of the universe (or some primitive precursor to it). It states that whatever has a beginning must have a cause and since the universe is thought to have a beginning, it must have a cause.

Paulos, John Allen. Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (p. 4). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

Except Aristotle doesn’t think this. Aristotle thought the universe was eternal. Even the Christian Aquinas said that reason alone cannot establish that the universe had a beginning. He believed it did, but that was because he saw that in Scripture. Consider Aristotle first in book 8 of his Physics:

(Further, how can there be any ‘before’ and ‘after’ without the existence of time? Or how can there be any time without the existence of motion? If, then, time is the number of motion or itself a kind of motion, it follows that, if there is always time, motion must also be eternal. But so far as time is concerned we see that all with one exception are in agreement in saying that it is uncreated: in fact, it is just this that enables Democritus to show that all things cannot have had a becoming: for time, he says, is uncreated. Plato alone asserts the creation of time, saying that it had a becoming together with the universe, the universe according to him having had a becoming. Now since time cannot exist and is unthinkable apart from the moment, and the moment a kind of middle-point, uniting as it does in itself both a beginning and an end, a beginning of future time and an end of past time, it follows that there must always be time: for the extremity of the last period of time that we take must be found in some moment, since time contains no point of contact for us except the moment. Therefore, since the moment is both a beginning and an end, there must always be time on both sides of it. But if this is true of time, it is evident that it must also be true of motion, time being a kind of affection of motion.)

While he did hold to an unmoved mover, he did believe that there was something that was always in motion. That would be the universe. There’s a reason Paulos never quotes anyone who makes the ridiculous argument he claims is the first cause argument.

As for Aquinas:

n the contrary, The articles of faith cannot be proved demonstratively, because faith is of things “that appear not” (Hebrews 11:1). But that God is the Creator of the world: hence that the world began, is an article of faith; for we say, “I believe in one God,” etc. And again, Gregory says (Hom. i in Ezech.), that Moses prophesied of the past, saying, “In the beginning God created heaven and earth”: in which words the newness of the world is stated. Therefore the newness of the world is known only by revelation; and therefore it cannot be proved demonstratively.

That the world had a beginning cannot be proved demonstratively.

Hint Paulos. If you want to argue against a position, it helps to learn what that position is.

Of course, Paulos says “Why can’t the universe be the first cause?” ignoring that Aristotle and Aquinas would both reply because it is in motion and its motion needs to be dependent on something outside of itself that is not in motion. Asking “What caused God?” is the usual question which of course, Paulos never consulted these philosophers on to see what they said. It’s more like “Gotcha! Bet you never thought of that one, huh?!”

No. They did. I have something on this here.

He also goes on to go after Augustine for his answer to this question was “He was creating Hell for people who ask questions like that.” Never mind that that was Carthaginian humor Augustine engaged in. Never mind also that Augustine was the one who said it was a nonsense question because God created time. Also, never mind that Paulos gives no sources. Paulos also says that placing God outside of space and time would preclude divine intervention in worldly affairs. Why? Because I suppose. Paulos doesn’t tell us.

He also quotes Hume saying that A causes B means that whenever we have seen A, we have seen it followed by the effect of B. It seems odd Paulos would say this. If this is the case, we have no basis to trust science. Today, water boils at 212 degrees Fahrenheit. Maybe tomorrow it will be 130 degrees. Maybe tomorrow at that temperature it will turn into pink lemonade. Who knows?

As for natural laws, Paulos says either we need to know why God chose the laws the way that He did or if He did choose them, then God Himself is subject to those laws. Why? Again, we don’t know. Paulos sits on his atheist throne and speaks ex cathedra and hopes all his little atheist minions will bow down and say “Brilliant insight!” Those of us who enjoy thinking ask “Why?”

He then quotes Leibniz as saying:

The sufficient reason for the universe, he stated, “is a necessary Being bearing the reason for its existence within itself.” The necessary being is God, the first cause, who caused or brought about not only the physical world but also somehow Himself.

Paulos, John Allen. Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (p. 8). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

No. Leibniz does not believe God brought about Himself.

But whatever helps you sleep at night.

Based on this, it’s pretty clear why Paulos is an atheist. He does not understand the arguments and he does not read books that disagree with him. Sad, really.

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

The Story Is Just Beginning

What can we learn the day after Christmas? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Those who know my PhD study area is on video games and Christianity might be shocked to learn that in many ways, video games are secondary to the study. What is primary is studying stories. Not stories as in particular stories, but in general. What makes a story a story and why are we drawn to them?

Christmas is a story, but it is also a true story. While we celebrate the day, let’s remember that on that day, a war started. The forces of evil decided to do whatever they could to prevent the mission of the Son of God in the world. Jesus is the greatest protagonist of all time, but at the start of the story, He was dependent on His parents.

Sure. An angel could have whisked him and them somewhere safe to escape Herod, but that didn’t happen. An angel instead just told Joseph to run to Egypt. The responsibility was on Joseph to lead his family. Like it or not, Joseph was caught up in a cosmic battle at that point. He was a player in a far greater story than we can imagine.

Not only that, but the story is going on today. Remember how the book of Acts starts? It starts after the resurrection of Jesus and right before the ascension. What does it cover? Everything Jesus BEGAN to do and teach. In other words, the story is still the story of Jesus ongoing and we are playing a part in it.

As long as the return of Christ hasn’t happened, we are still in that story. The story continues past Easter up into the present. You and I are caught up in that battle still between good and evil and we have to choose with every action that we do which side we will serve.

Many of us might think we don’t play a significant role in the story, but actually, we do to some extent. Every one of us is shaping everyone around us and preparing the next generation. What can be a small move can actually have grand repercussions down the line that we cannot even fathom.

Yet we are told to play our part in this. Even in the coming of Jesus, ordinary human beings were counted on to make sure that Jesus’s mission went according to plan. Jesus also picked ordinary humans. He has to. There aren’t any others available.

I wrote an article when Final Fantasy XV came out and I started playing it. In this one, I noted that you go through a city, and people are going about their daily lives. You can hear the background chatter when you walk through places with a lot of people. Leave the city and soldiers from the empire randomly airdrop on you and your party in an attempt to eliminate you and you have to fight for your lives.

I think that’s where we are. Most of the world is engaged in day-to-day matters and are not aware that there is a war going on. They are then taken unaware by the enemy. We do know that there is a war going on. We also are told that we are to fight in this war.

Christmas is one of the major turning points in the story. The book of Acts is still going on. The book ends saying the gospel reached across the world unhindered. It is still reaching today. That’s not up to angels still. It’s up to you and I.

Let’s do it.

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

 

Are You Memucan?

Who? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

You might be surprised to learn Esther is my favorite book in the Bible. As a young man going through the text (I am unsure if I had hit my teenage years yet), I got to this book and knew nothing about it. As I started reading it, I could not put it down. It was like reading a modern adventure novel. I read through the whole thing in one sitting.

Something else fascinating about the book is that it never mentions God one time. That’s actually an added appeal to me. It’s not because I am opposed to God obviously, but because by this, you get to truly see how God is working behind the scenes. You know that some of the events that just seem to happen, are really the work of a divine hand.

I also wrote yesterday on your part in the story of God. At night, I go through a book of the Bible and read just one verse. This allows me to think on the text slowly. Right now, it is Esther.

If you had come to me knowing that I love the book of Esther and asked me who Memucan was, I would not have known. Who? Is that a video game boss or something like that?

No. He actually is a character in the book of Esther. At the start of the book, Queen Vashti refuses to do what King Xerxes bids so he has her banished from his presence. Then the question is asked what is to be done. Memucan comes up with the idea for this.

He gives a case why this is so and the king likes the idea and has Vashti banished. Thus, the king has no queen and it is because of the idea of Memucan. After all of this, what happens to him?

Nothing. His name never shows up in the rest of the book or anywhere else in Scripture. He is one of those bit characters that unless you were looking for him, you would not know he was there. He leaves the story just as quickly as he enters.

But it is a good thing that he entered it.

You see, if Memucan had never entered the story, then we would never have had the search for someone else to be the bride of Xerxes. We would have never had Esther be chosen then and she would never be queen. When Haman decides to go after all the Jewish people, that has nothing to do with what happened with Vashti earlier. Had Esther not been the queen, there is nothing that she could have done to stop it. It could be that help would come from another place, but we don’t know what would have happened. All we know is what did happen.

It depended in part on Memucan.

For many people, if they read the book of Esther today, they would say “I’m Esther!” or “I’m Mordecai!” No. More likely than not, if you’re anyone, you’ll be Memucan. It will not be a part that has a lot of glory here to it, but it is an essential part anyway. It is in part because of Memucan that the Jewish people were saved.

But really, shouldn’t any part you play in God’s story be a part that you are honored to play?

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

Christmas Can Be Hard

The joyful time of year is not always joyful for everyone. Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and talk about it.

Holidays can be hard times. It’s my understanding that the idea that suicide increases during the holidays is a myth, but that does not mean that it is not difficult for some. For some people, it is really the absence that is most experienced.

For me, at least for my first Christmas after my divorce, I was with my family. I can’t imagine how hard it would be for those who weren’t with anyone. That being said, while I was thankful to not be alone, it was different. I used to share Christmas with my wife. Now I didn’t. That was a specter that was haunting me.

Recently driving here in New Orleans, there was bumper-to-bumper traffic on the interstate and when I got to the point of slow down, I saw that there was a horrible car accident involving multiple cars. I couldn’t help but wonder what Christmas would be like that year for them. Our pastor spoke of someone who went overseas in missionary work and his wife contracted a disease and died recently. What will the holidays be like?

We would like to think the internet has made us more connected, and in some ways, it can be so, but in others, it isn’t. I know many people online better than I do those in real life. I notice in my apartment complex on campus that many times, we all come home and then just stay to ourselves.

My encouragement to you is that if you have space for someone, reach out to someone else who you think could be lonely this Christmas. Give them a gift, but the best gift you can give them is presence. Let them enjoy getting to spend Christmas with another person.

Also, try to understand what they would like before having someone come over to see you. For instance, if you invited me over and you wanted it to be a big Christmas feast, I would likely sit there wondering when the whole thing was going to end. If I was invited over for a family game night where we just played games together, it would be incredibly memorable.

Christmas should be a time to share with the least of these. That includes those who are divorced and widowed. These are people who used to have someone they shared their lives with and now there is no one that they share with, at least to that level. Speaking as a divorced person, I can easily say that loneliness is a struggle that I experience every day.

Today, after all the fun is done, try to find someone you can reach out to and share the love of Christmas with them. If they would like a feast, bring them over a nice meal. If they would prefer a game night instead, invite them to join in with you and play some games together. You might even form a lasting relationship with them and start a tradition that your children can learn from.

Merry Christmas.

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

 

Was The World Waiting?

Was the world expecting the Messiah? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Sometimes we hear people say, and I might have said it in the past, that when Jesus came to Earth, the world was waiting for Him. There was a universal language, a universal travel system, and people were searching for hope. It sounds good to say, but as I pondered it, I wondered if that was true.

Even if we look at the Jewish people at the time, we don’t see them saying “Look! The 70 weeks of Daniel are almost over! The Messiah is coming!” Of course, they were expecting a Messiah, but there wasn’t an effort done to pin down when the date would be. When the wise men come to Herod, there is no urgency on the part of the Jewish people to go and see Jesus. There is no cause of celebration among them. If anything, we read the opposite, that they were troubled.

Jesus came into a world He wanted to save, but that doesn’t mean He came into a world that wanted Him.

Jesus came into a world where He experienced more rejection and suffering than any of us have. Even as an infant, He could not escape it as His family had to flee to keep Him from being killed. At this point, the only “crime” He was guilty of was being born.

Not only that, but for any of us, when we experience suffering, it is not as if we are perfectly innocent people. Jesus is the only one who there was no justice in what was done to Him by the people. He is the one who should have been received with the most love, but instead, He was condemned with the most hate.

Not much has changed in 2,000 years.

Of course, Christians can be jerks just as much as anyone else can, but also we live in a world where we are hated for the positions that we hold today. If you defend marriage as a man and a woman exclusively, then you are a bigot. If you hold that human life is sacred from the moment of conception and should not be killed in the womb, then you hate women. Since we hold to the biblical miracles, we are also obviously anti-science as well.

We, like our Lord before us, are not welcome in the world.

Yet like our Lord before us, we are called to love this world and give ourselves for the cause of its salvation if need be. We are also called to love those who persecute us. We should consider that if Jesus was willing to go to the cross for those He loved, surely we are willing to be called a name for those same people.

Christmas should be a time to stop and remember not just that Jesus came, but why He came. By all means, have fun and celebrate with family and friends, but also remember Jesus came into a warzone. We still live in one.

The world didn’t want Him. It doesn’t want us.

Yet Jesus gave Himself for the world. We have the same responsibility to save the world He loves.

Let’s do it.

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

A Woman’s Worth

How should a woman view herself? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

“I don’t understand why she’s living the way she is. She seems to just get all of her joy from being with different men. What could I say to her?”

So someone asked me about someone they knew. It’s easy to say speak of such a person in negative terms, but I don’t want to go that route. The condemnation route from Christians is already known.

I thought back in reflecting on this question to a time I went to visit some friends from church when I lived in Georgia and their daughter came down to talk to me in the midst of a group conversation. She told me about a guy she was with and I asked if they were going to get married. She said not yet because he said he wanted to travel first.

Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!

If a guy is really interested in a girl, you have to wonder why he would put off wanting to be with her until after he “travels.” Besides, wouldn’t it be better to have a wife and go on those travels with someone? Wouldn’t the relationship come before one’s fun?

The parents were thrilled this was happening. I made it clear to this young lady that the guy was not really committed to her. She was good for some entertainment, but if he was committed to her, she would come first.

So we come now to the case of a young woman who is sleeping with men thinking that that is where her joy comes from. Is she seeking value? Is she seeking love? Does she think this is her purpose?

Now none of this is to say women shouldn’t enjoy sex. They absolutely should. However, like any good thing that can be enjoyed, it should be enjoyed in the proper place and context. It’s fine to enjoy a sweet every now and then, but if you make sweets your whole diet, you will suffer for it.

So what I would say to this woman is what is she worth?

If a woman wants to know if a man she is dating is really interested in her, there’s a simple way. Don’t have sex. Yes. I know that sounds revolutionary, but hear me out on this.

Men tend to be very self-sufficient. If it wasn’t for sex and also children, we would not really bother pursuing a romantic relationship. It’s not that we don’t care, but you can marry a girl and then she can divorce you and the state will back her and you could lose half of what you have and wind up paying alimony and child support for life.

What would be ideal for a man? A sexual relationship with a woman where he doesn’t have to risk everything. In other words, one where he doesn’t have to make a commitment. He can leave any time he wants and there’s nothing the woman can do about it. If he doesn’t want her to have children and protection fails, just get an abortion.

It’s a shame the way the feminist model has played right into the hands of the men they have such a problem with.

Suppose though a woman wants to be more than just a toy to him. Suppose she does want a commitment. Suppose she does want someone she can count on? Suppose she wants someone she can grow old with.

Then don’t have sex.

And yes, women are in charge of that one.

The question of when a woman has sex shows how much a man has to do to get her. A simple date? Three dates? Dinner and a movie? A month? Three months? A year? Engagement?

What if you say you have to make a lifelong commitment and it can only be me until death do us part?

If the man says “No,” then he’s not really interested in you. That’s good. You’ve eliminated a poser. However, if he says “Deal,” and then he works and works to get to that point for you, you know how much worth you have in his eyes. He is willing to go the extra mile and if a man really loves a woman, he wants to pursue her. He will climb mountains for the chance to demonstrate his commitment to her.

Not only that, but the man wins in the end to. A man gets a relationship that he has fought for. He gets to know that he has proven himself worthy of the girl he is with, although ask him later and he still will say he married a girl out of his league. The woman gets the lifelong relationship. She also in the end gets the sex too, just like the man does. In the end, both parties win. Both parties put the relationship first and then both parties get all of the benefits.

As it is, in the end, women are the big losers in the dating game today. Men don’t have to commit to them. They don’t have to step up and be actual men. They can come to the woman when they want to have some fun and then it’s off to do whatever they want to do.

Women deserve better. They deserve the best. They deserve a man, not a boy.

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

 

 

Is God Relational?

Does God really care about me? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Something people ask me when they think I don’t think hearing the voice of God is normative today is if God really cares about them. Is God relational? Does He really love me?

It’s always interesting to see that we have 66 books and the coming of Jesus and yet we still ask about that. One can read the Old Testament and see praises of God even before the coming of Christ. One of our most popular hymns, Great Is Thy Faithfulness, comes from quite likely the saddest book in the Bible, Lamentations.

It’s also strange to me to say “Well, if God isn’t interacting with me the way that I think He should, does He really love me?” God loves you the way that He loves you. Who are we to say that the way He loves us is not sufficient?

That being said, let’s look at the question. For one thing, it would have to be explained what is meant by relational. If you mean God brings about a change in me and I bring about a change in God, then no, God is not relational. You cannot change God. You will not make God better if you live a perfect life. You will not make Him worse if you live a life of sin and rebellion. You cannot bring Him more joy than He has in the Trinity. Your sin cannot destroy the joy He has in the Trinity.

It is true that many times, the Scriptures describe God as emotional, but they also describe Him as physical too. Many Christians rightly see that the description of God as physical is not to be read literalistically, but suddenly switch when it comes to the descriptions of God’s emotions. I read them both as anthropomorphic language. I’m consistent.

Some will also point to Christ as being emotional, and He was and is, but He is also fully man. The Father and the Spirit are not human at all. However, Jesus’s emotional responses can still show us the kinds of things God loves and the things He hates.

However, God loves you. In fact, God cannot love you more than He does right now. That would be impossible. You will never increase His love for you and you will never decrease it either. Not only that, but God is outside of the timeline and is eternal and unchanging, so His love for you has always been and it will never cease. It is the most active love of all.

That being said, love does not mean everything will work out the way you want. We dare not set up standards to test the love of God to say “Well, if God really loved me, then He would do XYZ or He would not do XYZ.” It would be easy to say “If God really loved me, He would not let me go through divorce.” It would be easy to say, but it would also be wrong.

Could it perhaps be that our modern thinking has led us to have a sort of entitlement mentality with God Himself? “Well, I see the way God spoke to all these great saints in the Old Testament and surely God cares about me just as much to speak to me.” Evil has always been a question for Christians, but could it be worse in a time when people think they are entitled to live a good life? If God loves them, surely He would not let them suffer in such a horrible way!

You have no claims on God. The only things God owes you are things He has promised you in covenant. God does not owe you a moment of existing. God does not owe you a good life. He could have sent us all to Hell and He would have been just and right to do so. That means all He gives you is grace ultimately.

In any case, however you imagine God loves you and however I tell you that God loves you, it is still inadequate to describe it. No words can ever fully describe such because God cannot be contained even by words. The question we should ask is not if He really loves us, but if we really love Him.

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

Did God Reveal That To You?

Is it safe to say that God revealed X to you? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I am going through a book by an advocate of Black Hebrew Israelite teaching. I know some students here at the seminary who asked me about it and so I figured I would get a book on the topic and see what I thought seeing as I had never really looked at that area. The book is full of nonsense and most every conspiracy theory out there.

Today, I am reading and I come across this quote:

God revealed to me things that were hidden from us; the truth about our history in relation to the bible and the Ancient Hebrew Israelites.  The theories I had about black people, the Curse of Canaan and the Curse of Israelites were right all along.  God also revealed to me how Satan is covertly deceiving mankind and we have no clue as to what is going on.

Dalton Jr, Ronald. HEBREWS TO NEGROES: Wake Up Black America (p. 1002). G Publishing LLC. Kindle Edition.

The problem I have with a quote like this is so many of my fellow evangelicals use the exact same language. It would be easy to say “Yeah, but what this guy is revealing is crazy. I am not saying crazy stuff.”

Maybe you’re not, but your language is the same and why should I discount what he has to say and immediately accept what you have to say? The point is I discount him already because where I have looked at what he’s talking about that I already know something about, it’s nonsense. If I can’t trust him on the areas I am sure of, why trust him in the areas I am not.

But both of you speak the exact same language and both of you attribute your thoughts to God giving them to you.

Stop back and think about what you are saying.

“Friends. I want to tell you that this bit of information I am saying, this comes from God Himself.”

If you are saying that, don’t you think you had better make sure that you are right?

On my Facebook post where I discussed this, I was pleased to see one of my friends say that at their church, if someone says “God told me” publicly and they are wrong, they have to apologize publicly. That’s a good start, but isn’t that the problem? If this friend lived in Old Testament times, they wouldn’t just apologize. They would be stoned to death.

Yeah. God took it seriously.

Are we to think that God says “In the past, I took that seriously, but today, it’s no big deal.”

We can say God seems more gracious in the New Testament, which is false, but also, God can seem much more serious about sin on the other hand. The Old Testament says very little about Hell. The New Testament says a lot about it. The first two people to publicly lie to God in the early church were struck dead immediately.

Claiming God said something when He did not say it is a serious matter and we treat it all too casually.

Also, if you say that God told you something, unless it is something that is indisputable that could not be know any other way, I will not take it seriously. If anything, it makes your position look incredibly weak. It’s as if you’re saying, “I have no reason for you to really believe this, so I’ll just tell you that God told it to me.”

“But the prophets of the Old Testament spoke that way.”

Yes, and you are not them. Also, once again, if they were wrong, they paid for it with their lives. Are you willing to do the same?

If you say no, then don’t claim God revealed it to you or told it to you.

Sadly, I am convinced that many who speak this way do not really take the fullness of God seriously. I am convinced we have more of a concept of Buddy Jesus. God is not our king, but He is more of our friend instead. As a result, we treat Him in a way that is far too casual.

Again, I am NOT saying that God cannot do X. I am saying I do not expect it to be normative. I also hope that even if you disagree with me on that, you will still agree that we need to take such claims extremely seriously. God expects to be honored and spoken truly of in everything.

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

What Do We Learn From Games?

What life lessons are learned? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I recently did a research paper on the allegedly link between video games and school shootings. My conclusion is it does not exist. That being said, I was thinking about this recently some more. Right now, I am going through Persona 5 Royal and I am left thinking about relationships a lot. In Persona 5, my character gets special abilities the more he builds relationships with people.

I got the bad ending the first time I went through the game because I had built up level, personas, weapons, etc., but I had not built up relationships like that. Now I know I need to do differently. I find that by choosing what I want to say back and see the reaction I get, I am learning more as a man on the spectrum about what other people would think if I said XYZ. I am also looking more at my relationships and thinking about the benefit of building my relationships that exist in the real world.

I have the view that many times, games of all sorts build us up in ways outside of the games. My parents never had to sit down with me and teach me the value of money, but I think in playing games involving money, I learned what it meant to work hard, save up, and buy something I wanted. I knew what it meant to go and find a deal and I knew what it meant to conserve what I had.

While I have said this is largely the case with video games, we know that this happens in other games as well. How many times do we hear something about sports and hear about life lessons learned for on and off the field? As I pondered that, I considered how differently we treat such ideas. The idea given is that video games will teach you how to shoot people easily. Sports will help you build character. Strangely, no one seems to get the idea that football will teach you to tackle someone if they have something you want, even though that is an integral part of the game.

It’s as if sports are to be celebrated because they teach good things while video games are condemned because they teach wicked things.

In reality, it all depends on the person. By and large, school shootings I find do not come from games instilling a love of violence, but because students are angry and no one is helping them when it comes to bullying at schools. A suicide and a school shooting in response to bullying are highly similar events. The suicide is the student taking the anger and pushing it inward on himself. The school shooting is him pushing it outward on the world.

Yet how many athletes do we see that are actually horrible role models for young people? How many times do we see a city when a major sports title and the people go out and loot and ransack the town? Do I blame sports for these? No. I blame human stupidity. These are problems that need to be dealt with, but banning sports is not the answer.

What is best is to realize that there are good and bad things that can be learned in most any situation. In a perfect world, everything would only teach good, but we do not live in that world. The best solution is to have parents start teaching virtue at home. Also, get rid of the idea of self-esteem. It turns us more into narcissists than anything else. More often than not, good families will produce good kids. There are bad kids that come from good families and good kids that come from bad families, but this is a generality.

When that is there, good lessons can be found anywhere. They can be found in a student learning lessons kicking a ball across a field. They can be found in someone like me exploring mental worlds in Persona 5.

And those lessons work on and off the field and on and off the console.

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