How do historians work? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
If you want to see where ignorance of history dwells, just go on the internet. Look for people who want to say that Jesus never existed. There is where you see the problem the most. Never mind that this is a position that 99.99999% of scholars in the field who have Ph.D.s and have passed peer-review, including non-Christian scholars, have rejected. The interwebs has brought to life an idea that died long ago. Even many of the strongest critics of Christianity that were more liberal than the strongest liberal today would not go this far. Sure, Bruno Bauer did, but even he wasn’t accepted by his own colleagues.
Today, one of the claims you’ll hear is about contemporary witness. Unless these people were contemporary with Jesus, we can’t trust their accounts. Of course, the writers of the Gospels and Paul are written off immediately because these are in “the Bible.” It’s an ironic twist. People who think this way treat the Bible just like a fundamentalist does. The fundamentalist says it’s a book that is beyond historical inspection and we should not use it that way. The skeptic can often say the same thing. The only difference is one believes everything in it. The other one is hyper-skeptical of everything in it. Both are not treating the book according to rules of history.
Let’s suppose Jesus died in 30 A.D. Does that mean that if Josephus was born in 29 A.D. he’d suddenly be valid, but if he was born in 31 A.D., he doesn’t qualify? This is part of the problem of what happens. Where do you draw the line?
Never mind that you’d throw out much of ancient history with that. You would not know about Hannibal, Queen Boudica, or Arminius. If you wanted the real accounts of Alexander the Great, those come 400 years later. Most of the writings of Plutarch are about people who were dead before he lived.
One of my favorites is how when presented with a comparison between the resurrection and the crossing of the Rubicon by Caesar, that Richard Carrier, the prominent internet blogger, has argued at one part that every historian of the age wrote about Caesar’s crossing. What he doesn’t mention is that none of those historians were alive at the time.
Now of course, contemporaries are wonderful to have and I would contend we have them in the Gospels and the epistles, but they are not a requirement. In fact, the earliest material that we have on Jesus is incredible compared to other ancient figures and that’s the creed in 1 Cor. 15. Even the skeptic James Crossley on the Unbelievable? show referred to it as a gold mine.
When we’re confronted with this rule we have to ask who views this rule as authoritative? Is it qualified historians in the field or is it people on the interwebs who don’t study history? Something highly ironic about all of this is that these skeptics would likely consider YEC a joke, and yet they too follow the Ken Ham rule. “You weren’t there!”
If someone comes to you with the idea that you have to have a contemporary, while I do think we have them in the Gospels and in Paul, it’s best to just ask “Who set this rule?” If we want to know the rules of establishing evolution, do we go to Ph.D.’s in the field or do we go to people on the interwebs? The same thing with how to do history in answering mythicists.
Why do we do that which is right? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
I’ve noticed something a lot more recently that shows that we’ve become a society that looks to consequences to see if a decision is right. For instance, I’m a gameshow junkie. When my wife is done watching something and says “Turn on what you want” I inevitably go to the Game Show Network. Now let’s suppose we’re watching a game of chance on there, such as Catch 21, which is built around an idea of Black Jack. I don’t need to go into the details, but in the final round, the winner can choose to wager what he has that he will get 21 on up to three different hands of cards. If he ever busts, he loses everything. When he decides to walk away, the host will still say “Well let’s see what would have happened?” I don’t blame them for that. We all want to see that, but if a bust comes, it is told “You made the right decision.”
Maybe, but is that why?
Yesterday I commented on a post by Sheila Wray Gregoire on her blog, To Love, Honor, and Vacuumwhich my wife introduced me to. In it, I put up a link from the Family Feud which happens to be a favorite one. You can watch it here:
Now if you’re somewhere where you can’t watch that right now, the host Steve Harvey is asking the question about what 100 married men said in response to this. “I would blank for sex.” This is one that usually gets me cheering and the men for the most part, get it right every time. The women give answers like “cook” and “clean.” When Sheila posted it on Facebook you had women saying “Well if he cooked and cleaned, I’d be more likely to have sex.”
Is this doing the right thing?
What do these both have in common? They all appeal to consequences. They don’t look at the action itself. They just look at the result.
Let’s suppose in the above example, the guy could have had the cards drawn and walked away with the grand prize and won all the money. Does that mean he made the right decision if he kept going? Not necessarily. After all, it could have been the odds were stacked majorly majorly against him. He made a decision that happened to have a good result, but it was a random fluke. In fact, it could be he made the right decision by stopping because that was a wise decision. He could have won about $5,000 already and it would have been foolish to put the rest on the line because of a slim chance.
Or how about what I described above from the women? Now don’t get me wrong. I am not saying a husband should not help around the house if he can by cooking and cleaning. (Of course, if the former requires visits from the health and/or fire department, that could be an exception.) Still, let’s suppose he doesn’t do that. Does that mean the wife can say “Well I’m not going to do what I should do for you because you’re not doing for me what you should do for me?” The sad thing is many a husband could say in response “Well why should I cook and clean for you if you’re not willing to have sex with me?”
In fact, both the husband and wife are being selfish in this case. It’s saying “I will do what I should do for you if you will do what I want first.” It’s also got sex being used as a weapon, which should never happen in marriage. Instead, only one question needs to be asked. “What is the right thing to do?” If you know the right thing to do, do it. James in the Bible holds no punches. If you know the good you ought to do and don’t do it, you sin.
When we do this, we could say “I’d do the right thing, but what if XYZ?” What if indeed? So what either way. Are you saying “If it will not work out for me, then I will do the wrong thing? If so, then you are not really interested in doing the right thing but in doing that which you want to do.
And let’s be blunt, we all struggle with this. We all look out for ourselves. Lately, my wife has been wanting me to trust her more in the swimming pool. I am hydrophobic and I really get what I think is a localized PTSD when I get in the water. All the rationality goes out the window. I know the right thing to do is trust her, but then I think “What if I fall?” “What if an accident happens?” What if. What if. What if. Now to be sure, these are possibilities, but on one level, they’re also stupid. Am I to think that if something happened to me in the water and I went under that Allie would just stand there and say “Well it was a good marriage while it lasted. Time to go home and get on Christian Mingle.” No. Even if she didn’t do anything, there are several other people around who could and would do something.
Now of course, that doesn’t mean a fear gets bulldozed over. As it stands, I’m taking little steps right now to face my fear, such as when I get a shower I’m spending some time just soaking my face not for the purposes of cleaning, but for the purposes of getting used to it. A generous friend has also ordered me a face mask of sorts to help with my fear.
If there is a legitimate struggle and fear blocking you doing the right thing, I advise just keeping in your mind to do the right thing and make that your goal. If you want to do that which is right, pray and ask God to help. If instead it’s more a case of “You do X for me and maybe I’ll do Y for you” then you simply need to repent. That’s not the attitude to have. That’s only doing the right thing if it works out for you, which is ultimately selfish.
Consequences are a part of our actions and sometimes doing the right thing will not work out well, but it is still the right thing to do. If you want to know what excuse there is for not doing the right thing, bluntly, there isn’t. There can be reasons for not doing the right thing, but reasons are not justifications. When we stand before God, there will be no excuse for any time we’ve done the wrong thing. Of course, there are sins of ignorance and such, but the question is not over where we generally are unsure about the right thing to do, but when we know the right thing and come up with an excuse to do not do it.
Today, I recommend you start examining your life. What are you doing? Why are you doing it? What are you looking out for the most?
What do I think of Eric Eve’s book published by SPCK publishers? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
First off, my thanks goes out to Dr. Eve and the people at SPCK for publishing for being willing to place in my hands a copy of this book for review purposes. I have read Ehrman’s book and I saw a number of people I respect speaking about how they’d rather read Eric Eve on oral tradition. Trusting their judgment, I reached out and got a favorable reply.
Eve’s book really deals with a number of misconceptions we can have and this largely because of the way that we live in a text society instead of an oral one. (Although we might have even bypassed text to an extent now as we often more rely on videos.) Often, we take our modern ideas and we put them on to the ancient society and this is just an anachronism. One example Eve gives is one that we don’t think of.
We can often picture the writer of a Gospel or Paul sitting at a desk writing and having piles of scrolls all around and sifting through the material. This is false. People did not sit at writing desks and write out their materials. If they had a scroll, it would likely be just one and the rest of the time they would be working with memory. As I read this, I wondered if this could have something to do also with why many times sources were not explicitly cited as they were today. If all you have is room for one scroll and the rest is memory, you might expect people to catch allusions more than anything else.
Eve also provides good corrective on memory. To be sure, we can make a mistake of thinking oral tradition is infallible, but within a certain time frame, it is indeed quite reliable. In fact, if it wasn’t, we would really have to throw out much of ancient history. Many of the writings of Plutarch date to far after the time of the people that he wrote about.
Speaking of Plutarch, there’s plenty on him and how he did his work and what he wrote about. This is also in conjunction with the discussion of the genre of the Gospels. Readers of mine will know that Mike Licona is himself preparing to release a book on this very topic so I’m eager to see if Licona will interact with any of the material from Eve.
To get back to memory, Eve shows that memory was stressed in the ancient world. It wasn’t just the memorizing of stuff, such as we might expect for a trivia game of sorts. It was also being able to work with the information in one’s own mind. Perhaps you could quote a text backwards for instance. This showed real mastery of the material and would accrue one greater honor in the world.
There’s also a section on the Synoptic Problem. I am one who is more open to Mark Goodacre’s thesis on Q and I’m quite skeptical of it. (In fact, I was really surprised to hear in my recent interview with Richard Bauckham that he’s now skeptical of Q as well.) It still is something I have never really sat down and looked at myself, but I’ve just been suspicious of Q. Eve provides food for thought.
Sometimes I wish Eve was more conservative than he is, but for the most part, this is something that will provide good insights. It is a worthy edition to the library of any student of the New Testament. It is also something I wish more skeptics of the Christian faith would understand who critique a document from an oral-dominated society from the perspective of a textual one.
Is rape really a big deal? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
A lot of people are talking about a news story of a Stanford swimmer convicted of sexual assault. What has made it even more noteworthy is that the father of the boy has come forward and written a letter that people are just outraged by. For the sake of discussion, I’m going to assume that the boy is indeed guilty and the girl really was raped by him. Sometimes, new evidence comes out later that shows otherwise but from what I gather, the evidence we have is convicting enough. Of course, even if I am wrong, what I say on rape will still stand regardless of this particular.
So according to what I’ve read, the girl goes to a party and has a little too much to drink. To be fair, that part is on her. This is why you need to be careful with your alcohol at a party, especially a college party. In fact, the victim has said that this was something she owns up to, but that does not mean that someone was justified in taking advantage of her in a state where she was entirely vulnerable. Much of this she says in a letter that she has written.
What has amazed people is that the offender has been given a light sentence of six months and then three years of probation because of the judge’s worry about what a stiffer sentence would to him. Yes. We must worry about the psychological well-being of someone who takes advantage of an innocent woman instead of remembering that the law is in place not to cater to our feelings, but to dispense justice.
What has been more astounding has been that the father has sent a letter. In it, he spoke about what his son and dreamed about and worked to achieve and asked for probation. He reportedly said “That is a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action out of his 20 plus years of life.”
That statement just sticks out to me. 20 minutes of action. What are we talking about?
A lot can happen in 20 minutes. A man could pick up a gun and go and murder his neighbor in a 20 minute time-frame. A shooting spree can take place at a public place in 20 minutes. A photo taken wrongfully of a young woman in a position she would not want to be seen in can be shared all over the internet in 20 minutes. A good thief can break into your house and steal your valuables and be out in 20 minutes.
Can some greater evils take more time? Yes. They can. Some greater evils can take less time. The time has nothing to do with it. If it did, then I would want to ask this Dad how much time should have been spent in this action before it would be worthy of more jail time?
Now let’s look at the other part. Action. Twenty minutes of action. Really? Is that what you call it? Taking a girl out back behind a dumpster and raping her on the ground so much so that bystanders rightfully consider it an attack is referred to as just actions? Now to be sure, of course it’s an action. Yet it is not just an action. It’s an attempt to downplay it.
To give a different standard, suppose my wife and I engaged in some love-making that took twenty minutes and for us was entirely mutual and self-giving. Is that twenty minutes of action? Sure, but it is not just action. It is something incredible and wonderful.
I find it amazing that as a Christian, I’m often thought to have a negative attitude towards sex. I am seen as a prude who thinks that sex is this big dirty thing. I just want to control everyone’s sex lives.
Okay. Let’s start off. What is my view of sex? Sex is one word that I really use the word “magical” to describe and I hesitate to use that term. It’s just I can’t think of anything else. When I talk to young men about to get married and ask them if they think they know about what they’re getting into and they say yes, I tell them they don’t have a clue. They don’t know what a sexual relationship does to someone. Once Pandora’s Box has opened, it can never be shut again. Nothing is ever the same.
Like many Christian couples, my wife and I waited until we got married to have sex. I don’t regret that decision. In fact, I encourage every couple to go that route. I encourage it because of the awesome action that sex is. Sex is something that intimately bonds you to another person.
The thing about sex is that when it comes to the marriage act as it is called, you are really giving yourself to another person in the most vulnerable action possible. This is done willingly. You tell the person that you trust them entirely. You desire them entirely. You want nothing to come between the two of you.
One of the designs of the activity is to bond the husband and wife to each other. Sex is a bonding activity and you cannot choose for it to not be. That’s what happens. That’s why a husband’s love for his wife can shoot up even more after they have sex together and vice-versa.
Sex outside of marriage can no doubt be intended to be a message of love, but it can also be a message of testing. We often hear this with “Would you buy a car without taking it for a test drive?” Someone who says this misses the point and is thinking in a way sadly similar to this father. It is to dehumanize the person.
You see, you can’t have sex with another person and have it have no affect on them for better or for worse. If you take a car for a test drive and you don’t like it, the car will not be thinking about what you did. The car will not stay in the lot wondering why it wasn’t chosen. The car will not go into therapy hoping to learn how to improve itself so it will be wanted next time. The car doesn’t know or care. A person is not a car. When someone tells me they wouldn’t buy a car without taking it for a test drive, I just ask which one of them is the driver and which one is the car.
Do you really want to have your relationship work like that? What would it mean if you were not pleased sexually with the person you were dating? That they would be out? How can a person be truly giving themselves to you then in selfless love if they know somewhere that they are being tested? If they do not perform adequately, then they are out. If that is not your stance, then why do you need a “test drive”? A test drive implies someone could pass or fail the test.
If you wait until marriage, there is no pressure. Of course, both partners still want to please the other, but your relationship is not on the line. You are not going to end it because of how things go. In fact, this is really important because contrary to what you see in the movies, sex is something that improves over time as you get to know the person and your bodies get used to each other more and you learn what you like and don’t like.
Theologian R.C. Sproul in a book I saw several years ago talked about going to see his family a few weeks after his marriage or so. I do not remember how long exactly except that it was early and I don’t remember if it was his family or hers. Anyway, he talked to an older uncle there who asked how he “liked it.” Sproul said it was terrific. This uncle then said that he didn’t know the half of it. Sproul said he didn’t know what this old codger knew that he didn’t already know. Years later, he said he started realizing it.
The good thing about the covenant is you have the rest of your lives to improve, and you will improve. The more the self-giving and desire keeps going on, the better the relationship improves. This is not a test. It is something beautiful.
Unfortunately, some people can steal this away before its time. It tells me in the case of a man raping a woman (And to be fair, women can rape men too.) that the man is really not a man. If you want to have a woman, you need to do the work for that privilege. Be a real man for her.
This is the part the women can really change in the culture. For the most part, men are usually the most aggressive ones with sex. We are the go-getters. If we consider who is in charge of an economy, who is it? Is it the buyers or the sellers. Does the buyer determine the price of an item, or the one who gives the item? It is the latter.
So ladies, when it comes to sex, you are deciding how much a guy has to give you before you will give him yourself entirely. Is it dinner and a movie? Is it three dates? Is it a month? 6 months? Engagement? Or is it marriage? I recommend you go with the final one. Go with marriage. You tell a man he has to make a covenant with you that he loves you and you alone and is not going to ever leave or abandon you before you give him all of you.
Our culture has that backwards. It’s been said that the great temptation when a couple is dating is to look for any excuse to have sex. When they are married, the great temptation is to look for any excuse not to have sex. It is a shame that unmarried people look to have more sex than married people. It’s one reason people view sex as dry and stale. If the church wants to see the world honor marriage, we have to lead by example, and one of that is not just having a marriage, but doing marriage well, including sex.
As wrong as I think having sex outside of marriage is, having rape is worse. This is where we get to the analogous part to buying a car. Rape is the ultimate way of treating someone (And I’m going to presume a woman for the most part) like an object. It is not looking at the person as a human being, but looking at them as a tool of sexuality. You don’t really care about them so much as getting your kicks.
Can that happen in twenty minutes? Yep. Men will do the most incredible mind-blowing things in order to get sex. Consider for instance this favorite clip of mine from the Family Feud.
If you want to see more of this, just consider looking up vines on YouTube, which I generally hate as a rule, about the topic of “But I’m home alone.” In each case, the girl calls her boyfriend wanting him to do something and he says no only to be told “But I’m home alone” and then no task is too much. That doesn’t just change for boyfriends. It happens in marriage as well.
What I want to establish with that is that yes, sometimes the passions can easily take over. That’s why men need to develop self-control as much as they can. This boy might have wanted to be a great swimmer, and he could still do that, but at this moment, he wanted something else more. He was willing to do whatever it took to get it, and he made the choice.
We are often told with abortion that consenting to sex does not mean consenting to pregnancy. In fact, it does. You remain open to that even with the best contraception because nothing is foolproof save vasectomies and hysterectomies. In life, you can choose your actions, but you can’t choose your consequences.
Some consequences you will have little control over. If you look both ways before crossing the street and someone comes flying around a corner and hits you, you have no control over that. If a child of yours gets cancer through no fault of medical lack on your own, you have no control over that. The sad part is we spend a lot of time crying about things we do have control over if we will do something different and that is to change our behavior. This isn’t a light switch that turns off and on, but if we want to do it, we will have to do the work for it.
So let’s get back to the action that we’re talking about. Rape is in fact stealing. It is a form of theft and dishonoring and the shaming and dehumanizing of a person. While the father is talking about the consequences for his son, let’s think about the consequences for the woman. In fact, she hasn’t gone far enough. She’s not the only one affected.
When we start with her, she is saying now she sleeps with a light on and she wants to have protection with her always. Now, she will be tempted to look at every man with suspicion. One guy at a party seemed innocent enough, but maybe he isn’t. Maybe he’s just like every other man. (Because now built in is an idea that all men are like this.) Maybe all men are just predators. (We have an idea even in Christian circles that because men think about sex so much that all men are perverts. Not true.)
I don’t know about this woman’s boyfriend. I don’t know if they were sexually active together or not, but so far it looks like he’s been a very honorable man. He’s going to pay for the sins of this other man. She’s going to have to learn to trust him. He will be held responsible for their sins and he will not be able to repent for he cannot repent of a sin he has not committed.
If she breaks up with him, any future man will be seen with suspicion. The root reason is that this woman has been violated. She has been treated as an object. She is not some inflatable blow-up doll. She is a person. She is someone who lives and breathes and has thoughts and feelings like most everyone else. To treat her as less than a person is to dehumanize her. (Which always men in marriage as well, make sure you don’t treat your wife as an object or someone just there to satisfy your desires. You are to care for her as well.)
In the end of this woman’s letter, she does say the story isn’t over for this man. She’s right. He will be a registered sex offender, but he can change. He can learn from this action and overcome it. (I have no desire to call it a mistake. A mistake is locking yourself out of your car. Raping a woman is not a mistake. It’s a deliberate wrongful action.)
The story is not over for this woman either. As a Christian, I would first listen to her. I would hear her cry. (Note I would honestly prefer to have my wife do this. As someone in ministry I try to avoid counseling women apart from her.) I would let her express any painful emotions she’s feeling.
Then, after all that was done, i would tell her about Christ and how she can be made a new creation. No. Her past is not undone, but she doesn’t have to be a victim to it any longer. No. It’s not guaranteed to be immediate, but she does not have to be alone and she never will be truly alone. I would be able to assure her that as awful as this event was, the God of creation can take it and use what was intended for evil for good. In fact, this is already starting to happen as she’s apparently speaking to try to raise awareness of this danger so other women don’t have to undergo it.
All in all, this whole story shows how our culture really does not understand sex. Someone once said the problem with our culture is we think too much about sex. It isn’t. The problem is that we think too little. We dream about sex, fantasize about it, make TV shows and movies of it, talk about it, just plain do it, but we don’t think about it. We don’t sit down and ask about what sex really is and what it means when we do it and why that is so important and why it shouldn’t be taken so lightly.
If we don’t think about it, then we are just as guilty of treating sex as just an action. It’s just something you do for fun together with no long range consequences. It is just a way of expressing love. No. Sex is in its own unique category. It stands apart from everything else.
That’s in fact why we Christians have such boundaries about sex. We put boundaries around it for the same reason we put our valuables in a safety-deposit box and not our garbage. Sex is valuable and we don’t want to mistreat it or misuse it. I compare it to nuclear energy. It’s wonderful and very efficient when used in the right time and place and circumstances. If you do it wrong, you get Chernobyl.
I hope that all this will lead to us doing and thinking about sex right. Part of the problem is our philosophy of sex has led to a culture where sex is treated cheaply. When sex it treated cheaply, real women are treated cheaply. They are not cheap. They are wonderful creations in the image of God. I love my wife, but my wife is not to be seen as a means to have sex. Sex is meant to be seen as the way that I have her. I express my love intensely in that action and want to show her every time how serious I am about my relationship with her and how much I desire intimacy with her.
I look forward to a day when we realize again how sacred sex and marriage are.
What do I think of Jonathan Leeman’s book published by IVP? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
It’s said that there are two things that should never be talked about and that’s politics and religion. If so, then Jonathan Leeman has stepped into dangerous waters by writing this book. Churches can often have their own share of squabbles and religion can have a bad reputation today with new atheist soundbites running throughout our culture. Now you tie that in with politics, which comes from the word poly, meaning many, and ticks, referring to blood-sucking organisms.
Leeman points out that politics is unavoidable and we all come into the arena of debate with gods. The difference is the Christian comes with a big one and the secularist comes with several little gods that aren’t metaphysical claims and thus pass the muster. It could be then that when we argue on the grounds of appeal to conscience, we’re setting ourselves up for trouble. Whose conscience will win the day? If we say our conscience is tied to our God, then our opinion will be cast aside in the end and the more “objective” person will be the ones whose gods aren’t so readily apparent.
Leeman wants us to see what the making of covenants means for us today and that politics has been with us from the beginning. As soon as you have relationships going on, you have politics. People have to learn to live orderly in a society somehow. Unfortunately, we’ve often gone with a more pragmatic approach instead of an approach rooted in truth.
Leeman also brings this to how it affects our Christian relationships and I think this is the most important part of the book. This gets to the doctrine of forgiveness. What does it mean to forgive and how does that relate to politics? Forgiveness is in fact all about our relationships with one another and much of the material here can be quite convicting, especially if you have a hard time forgiving someone.
The book also comes from an approach that I think is gently Calvinistic and presuppositional, but the good part is if you don’t agree with that perspective, you can still accept the conclusion which is where many of us will end up about God being necessary for the good society. I found myself disagreeing with how Leeman reached some conclusions, but I agreed with the conclusions. I suspect many readers would be in the same boat.
Also, I thought criticisms of the New Perspective on Paul were not that strong. I don’t think they offer anything that would go against justification in the sense that we usually see it. The difference is more about what it means to be justified. I myself lean towards the New Perspective and I did not see the problems that I think Leeman thinks he sees.
Still, this is a good book to read and certainly thorough. It’s difficult to think about how a book could be more thorough on the topic. The experiential aspects are also quite helpful as you can learn to see forgiveness in a whole new light and really think about how you relate to your fellow man.
Do you really need to love something a little bit less? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.
C.S. Lewis once wrote that the problem we have is not that we love something too much. It’s that we love what we ought to love too little. Our loves get out of order. I thought about this today as I saw my sister put up a meme about the two things women want. They want to eat and they want to lose weight. Many times, we do want things that are contradictory. We want to study the way that we should, but that new show came out on Netflix and we really want to binge watch it.
Right now, at the apartment complex we live in, the pool has just opened up. This is wonderful for Allie because she loves to swim and that’s good exercise for me. It’s a challenge for me because I really do not like water at all. I say this mainly because I want you to know I have to apply this in my own life. I had a frightening experience with water as a child growing up and so it takes everything to get me to function well in it. Still, it means a lot to Allie and I’m not sure how many people out there have noticed it, but women can sure be awfully persuasive to men.
So here I am caught between two things. I want to please Allie as much as I can, but there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to step out of my comfort zone. I want to stay safe. I want to avoid pain. Now to be sure, it doesn’t mean that it’d be wise to say “I’m going to do the right thing right now and get over this and just jump into the deep end.” No. That would be foolish. It means step by step I overcome the fear. For me for now, I’m working on getting used to getting my face to come into contact with water more and more until I’m comfortable with it.
To go to what my sister said, there’s a really simple principle I think to dieting. When you love health more than you love food, then you will start to get health. That might sound really basic, but I think you will find it holds up. Unfortunately, too often we like to cheat with things like this and say “It’s just a little bit.” How many of us have said “I’ll just spend a couple of minutes on Facebook” only to find out we’ve spent about half an hour scrolling through our news feed?
This is also what happens in marriage. It involves giving of yourself for the sake of the other. If I want my marriage to be the best, I have to look out for Allie first and myself second. Now for this to work optimally, Allie has to be willing to do the same thing. Unfortunately, there’s a tendency to try to look out for #1. For men, it can be “What can I do to get sex out of this?” For women, it can be “What can I do for that emotional closeness to my husband?” This is why it’s said that men usually give love to get sex and women give sex to get love.
So for getting past my fear of water, I need to seek to be more loving to my wife. How will this apply to other areas? Will I not be more willing to do anything for Jesus if I learn to love Him even more? Will I not want more of what He wants and live the way He would have me live?
Basically then, pick the area you want to succeed the most in and ask what you love the most. Whatever it is, that is the way that you will go. If you don’t like where you’re going, that’s the time for some real introspection to ask about your priorities. It’s something we all have to do, myself included.
Don’t seek to love something else less. Just love the greater good more. See the good in it for what it is and seek to pursue it regularly.
What’s coming up this Saturday on the Deeper Waters Podcast? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
One of the defenses of the resurrection is that all of the apostles died for their claim that they had seen the risen Christ, save perhaps John the Revelator who died in exile. The problem is many of us are caught flat-footed when it comes to defending this claim. Is it a true claim? Do we really have the evidence for it? Has someone looked into it?
Yes. Yes they have. That’s Sean McDowell. He’ll be talking to us about his book The Fate of the Apostles. Who is he?
According to his bio:
Dr. Sean McDowell is a gifted communicator with a passion for equipping the church, and in particular young people, to make the case for the Christian faith. He connects with audiences in a tangible way through humor and stories while imparting hard evidence and logical support for viewing all areas of life through a Biblical worldview. Sean is an Assistant Professor in the Christian Apologetics program at Biola University. And he is the Resident Scholar for Summit California.
Sean still teaches one high school Bible class, which helps give him exceptional insight into the prevailing culture so he can impart his observations poignantly to fellow educators, pastors, and parents alike. In 2008 he received the Educator of the Year award for San Juan Capistrano, California. The Association of Christian Schools International awarded Exemplary Status to his apologetics training. Sean is listed among the top 100 apologists. He graduated summa cum laude from Talbot Theological Seminary with a double Master’s degree in Theology and Philosophy. He earned a Ph.D. in Apologetics and Worldview Studies from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in 2014.
Traveling throughout the United States and abroad, Sean speaks at camps, churches, schools, universities, and conferences. He has spoken for organizations including Focus on the Family, the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview, Backyard Skeptics, Cru, Youth Specialties, Hume Lake Christian Camps, Fellowship of Christian Athletes and the Association of Christian Schools International. Sean has also appeared as a guest on radio shows such as Family Life Today, Point of View, Stand to Reason, Common Sense Atheism, and the Hugh Hewitt Show. Sean has been quoted in many publications, including the New York Times.
Sean is the author, co-author, or editor of over eighteen books including The Fate of the Apostles (Routledge, 2015), A New Kind of Apologist (Harvest House, 2016), The Beauty of Intolerance (Barbour 2016), Same-Sex Marriage: A Thoughtful Approach to God’s Design for Marriage, with John Stonestreet (Baker, 2014), Is God Just a Human Invention? with Jonathan Morrow, and Understanding Intelligent Design along with William A. Dembski.Sean has also written multiple books with his father, Josh McDowell, including The Unshakable Truth, More Than A Carpenter, and an update for Evidence that Demands a Verdict (2017). Sean is the General Editor for The Apologetics Study Bible for Students. He has also written for YouthWorker Journal, Decision Magazine, and the Christian Research Journal. Follow the dialogue with Sean as he blogs regularly at seanmcdowell.org.
In April, 2000, Sean married his high school sweetheart, Stephanie. They have three children and live in San Juan Capistrano, California. Sean played college basketball at Biola University and was the captain his senior year on a team that went 30-7.
If you want to know what happened to the apostles, this is the book to read right now. We’ll be discussing the questions related to the events on the show. I hope you’ll listen and consider leaving a favorable review of the podcast on ITunes.
Is marriage private or public? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
Recently, I was doing some more thinking about marriage, which isn’t a shock to most readers of the blog. There are some things I don’t think you really learn well about the institution until you’re in it. In this case, I was thinking about honor and marriage and the public and private aspects of marriage.
You see, a marriage starts off with a very public ceremony. In fact, it’s seen as kind of a necessity. No doubt, others have known about the love of the bride and groom for a long time, but now they publicly announce it and make a pact. At this point, they declare there will be no one else. It is the two of them together. This is done in the sight of God and man.
From there, shortly after you have a very private aspect of marriage. This takes place sometimes on the wedding night, but some couples do wait until the next day. Sexual intimacy is again a central part of marriage. In this case, the last thing the lovers want is for their relationship to be private. It’s not because of a shame of the act or themselves, although that can happen for some people. It’s because of a unique trust.
There is a unique trust in a woman trusting her body to a man and a man trusting his body to a woman. Both couples share something secret of themselves that they share with no one else on an intimate level. It’s also something that the details are not discussed. All that needs to be known about couples is that this is going on. There are two great demonstrations of this.
One demonstration is the love that is shown in private. It’s not just love, but it’s honor. A wife honors and respects her husband by saying “You alone I trust with this most vulnerable part of myself and you alone do I feel comfortable with.” Men respond to honor and respect for the most part. Nothing builds them up.
You see, my wife is working with me on a fear of water that I have right now. I absolutely panic when I get into a swimming pool. It’s going to take time. You know what one of my biggest motivations is for improving? It’s realizing that my wife trusts me so much that she gives me herself. How much am I willing to do for my wife back?
This is also part of the beauty of the mutual giving of love. My act then can motivate her to say “I’m so proud of my husband. How can I best show him how proud I am of him?” The beauty of marital intimacy is that it becomes a cycle that regularly increases the love and the trust. The more you have intimacy with your partner, the more you will grow in love and trust. The less you have intimacy, the harder it will be.
Oh. Please note that guys. The best part of this relationship is the intimacy. Sex is more than the physical sensations. It’s the connection you realize you’re building with your wife. It’s not just about getting something in the body, but getting something in the relationship.
I said that one way this love is shown is through the love the couple has for one another in public. What happens in the bedroom should stay in the bedroom but the results should be seen in public. One clear result often seen in public is children. One way the topic of sex is public happens whenever you see a human being. When that happens, you know that two people have had sex at one point.
Of course, not all children are the results of loving unions, which is a shame, but for the most part we’d think they are. The reason you are with your spouse right now if you’re married is because in part, your parents had sex one time and their parents had sex one time. The result was you on one end and your spouse on another.
The ideal of marriage then is to have that honor shone in both places. Husbands and wives should strive to honor and build one another up in public. In turn, they should do so in private where the most honor can be shown. As I said, it’s a great build up. I have regularly told my wife that I think my ministry shot off after I got married because I had her in my life and got to receive that private honor.
Marriage is not just a part of our lives that we compartmentalize. It affects everything that we do. I have often said that if we want to be good apologists, then we need to be honoring marriage. If you’re single, maintain sexual purity until you marry and honor marriage and respect the relationships of your married friends. If you are married, love your spouse as you’re supposed to. If couples should compete in anything, it’s to outdo one another in showing love and affection.
What are my thoughts on the Cincinnati zoo situation? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
My wife likes to watch the Weather Channel during tornado season and when I’m done with what I need to do on the internet, I tend to like to stay off of it. Therefore, I am somewhat surprised to see posts yesterday talking about a gorilla incident. Now I stroll on Facebook after reading more about it and it’s pretty much all that I see.
It really saddens me that on a day like yesterday when we should have spent more time focusing on the fact that our fellow human beings gave their lives for us, we were more concerned about a gorilla who died.
Now of course, none of us delight over what happened. None of us woke up and said “Wow. Today would be a great day to see a gorilla get killed.” Not liking an outcome does not mean that the wrong actions were done. Sometimes you can do the right thing and feel absolutely miserable. If that has never happened to you, then I wonder how often you are really doing the right thing.
I also happen to agree with many who are saying that there is outrage over the death of a gorilla, but how much outrage have you heard over the deaths of children in abortion? In fact, I have a suspicion that a lot of people raising the gorilla outrage really have no problem with abortion. What I see as a great danger is how our society is trying to put everything on an equal level.
Equality can be a great thing, but it only works if we recognize what is truly equal. We are all equally human for instance, but we have a lot of differences after that. We have differences in sex, race, body build, intelligence, athletic ability, artistic talent, emotional differences, genetic differences, etc. You could go on to add many more to this list. We can’t treat all of us as absolutely equal in every way. We’re not. We’re not supposed to be. If we were all exactly alike, this world would likely be a pretty boring place. (Not to mention our species would have died out long ago.)
What happens if you try to treat those distances like they don’t matter? What would happen if you wanted to put someone like myself, a man who just barely weighs 120, out on the football field to play a game because, hey, we’re all equal and those differences don’t matter? Then what would happen if you took the football player who would normally play that position and have them be studying NT Christianity in depth? (Now to be fair, that can be done, but most football players aren’t known for being experts in the NT.) There are ways men are different from women beyond physical characteristics and vice-versa.
The danger with the drive for equality is that we want equality of outcome instead of equality of start. We want in the end everyone to be equal instead of realizing what we all have in common at the start and then going from there. Now we extend it beyond humans and want to say that all animals fall into the same pattern.
For instance, when it comes to debates on homosexuality I get involved in, I often hear “This is natural because we see this happening in the animal world.” The hidden premise there being that if it is natural, then we should accept it. Let’s suppose that this is really what’s going on and there really is homosexual behavior in the animal world. (I have heard dissenting opinions, but I’m not a zoologist so I can’t state either way) Okay. We also see in the animal world that many animals happen to eat their own young. Do we want humans to start cooking their children for dinner? Now if you’re going to say that example doesn’t follow, then neither does the prior unless you have some argument to show that the above is a valid exception.
Yet the point is still that there’s this underlying idea that we are all just animals. Of course, one could say that we are in Aristotelian terms, “rational animals”, but we are different from the animals around us not just by degree but by kind. We are capable of thinking abstractly. Animals are not.
Our effort to make everyone and everything equal isn’t something that lifts humanity up. It more lowers us. We aren’t raising up the animals either. The animals are still being the same. Treat them like gods or treat them like food. On the whole, the animals will behave the same way. What will be lowered will be the worth of the human species instead, and that is what we see happening when people are more concerned about a gorilla being killed than about the possibility of a child being killed.
“Well couldn’t they have just tranquilized?” We all would have loved to have seen that happen, but real life is not like what you see in the movies. A large part of why we think this way is we’ve seen so many Disney cartoons where animals have been turned into humans pretty much who walk and talk and have their own personalities and reason through matters like we do. That’s good fantasy, but bad reality. One other fantasy is that if you shoot a tranquilizer dart at a gorilla, that it will conk out immediately. Well no. It won’t.
Even if it takes just a few minutes, in those few minutes, this gorilla has been shot with something and doesn’t know where it came from and will be much more agitated than before. You know who’s at risk the most then? The child. Are you seriously willing to risk the life of a child for that? (And if you’re one of those who are actually saying yes, and they do exist, you are indeed part of the problem in our society.)
While I can’t speak as a parent, I can speak as a human being. If it had been someone like say my own wife who is more capable of reasoning and could have known more how to get away, I still would not want a chance to be taken. If I had to, I would have taken up arms myself and gone in and taken out a million gorillas to get to her and I would not have remorse about it. I would be in good company. The medievals are said to have said that one human being is worth more than the entire universe. They were right.
It’s a shame so many people spent Memorial Day arguing over something that should have been a no-brainer really. Our soldiers did not die so that animals could be free. They died for us. They died so we could be free and not free to protest about animals, but free to be good citizens and build up a society of virtuous people and pursue that which is good. How many of us are busy doing that? (And yes, I need to do that just as much)
By all means, be sad that this tragedy happened. If you’re wondering my thoughts on the mother involved, we frankly don’t know enough yet. If she left her child alone and went off somewhere else, well yes, that is a problem. Still, we all know stories from good parents who look away for just a second and their child has got caught in chaos. It can happen. Without knowing all about that aspect, I’m not ready to comment on the mother. Still, I would give her some time because right now, she just needs to rejoice that her child is alive and if it was because of neglect on her part, I would hope this experience would be all the lesson she needs.
I look forward to the day when there’s more outrage from people about abortion than about gorillas. Unfortunately, our society has reached a point where we have chosen to tolerate the evil of abortion and said we will not tolerate killing animals to save humans. Again, we have not lifted animals up. We have just lowered ourselves and our fellow human beings. We can only deny reality so much before we pay the price for it.
Is there anything to keep in mind with a cookout? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
Today is Memorial Day as I write this. I will be going to spend it with my in-laws at their place for a cookout and my wife is bringing Into The Storm for us to watch together. I have seen the movie several times and I don’t care much for food so aside from fellowship, I’ll probably be spending more time with my Kindle and my books.
Okay. So I’m the odd one out here, but a lot of you are doing something special for Memorial Day, and I’m not knocking that. That’s something to celebrate. It’s a special day, but let’s not lose sight of what this day is all about. This day is not about cookouts. It’s not about time spent on the lake. It’s not about even reading books. (GASP!)
This day is about people who have died serving our country. These are people who paid the ultimate sacrifice. They are not here to celebrate today. They can’t spend the day kissing their wives or hugging their children. There are mothers and fathers who won’t see their children, children who won’t see their parents, and spouses who won’t see their significant others. In fact, for them, this day could be very depressing.
Let’s not forget them. In fact, if you know someone like that, try to go and see them if you can. Bring them a homecooked meal. Center the day around them. These people have also made a sacrifice. They live without the person or persons that they love. They want to know that someone appreciated the sacrifice that that person made. They need to know that the person who sacrificed was a hero.
How many of us today are willing to face death? The reality is we all are facing it every day. There’s a commercial that I see on TV now and I think it’s about heart disease. It says that for people with heart disease, tomorrow is not a guarantee and in the background you hear the song “Tomorrow” from “Little Orphan Annie.” You know who tomorrow is also not a guarantee for? You and I. It is not a guarantee. If we want to live, the time to live is not tomorrow. It is today.
Today, hug your children. Today, honor your parents. Today, make love to your spouse. Take the time to celebrate those people who are in your life. Do not wait to live life. People died so that today, you could live. Not just exist, but live. Are you living? Do you want their sacrifice to be in vain?
People did not die just so we could have fun. They died because they thought that what they were dying for was indeed worth dying for. The question we have to ask of ourselves is do we think what they died for is worth living for? Our freedom as Americans? Our ability to love those around us? Our ability to enjoy our lives? Our freedom to worship as we see fit? Are these all goods worth celebrating?
Let today be a day you start living. They died so you could live. Don’t let it be in vain. If you’re Christian especially, remember the original hero who died so you could live. Don’t let His sacrifice be in vain either.
