Category: Apologetics

Book Plunge: Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus.

What do I think of Nabeel Qureshi’s book published by Zondervan? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Imagine growing up a Muslim all your life and being taught Muslim beliefs all your life and having that thoroughly interwoven with your family life. Your family wants you to grow up to be a good Muslim and one who will share the perceived truth of Islam. This was Nabeel Qureshi’s life until he went on a trip once and met a friend who happened to be reading the Bible and for the first time, he encountered someone who actually could give some pushback to what he said. Nabeel began a quest to show his friend the truth of Islam. Instead, as the book title shows, he ended up bowing his knee to Jesus Christ.

I wish to give a disclaimer at the start. While I do seek to avoid bias in a work, I know many of the people involved in this book. I consider Nabeel a friend of mine. I know David Wood as well and consider him a friend and I know his wife too. (I know Nabeel’s wife too, but she isn’t mentioned much in the book as his wedding is more part of an epilogue, but she is a wonderful woman.) Nabeel also shares about his time that he spent with Mike Licona and Gary Habermas. Licona I am related to by marriage and Habermas is a friend of ours as well having introduced me to Mike’s daughter and then having married us. I ask the reader to know I am striving to go by content.

Nabeel’s book is just a fascinating book to read as it is full of good information, but it is also written in an exciting story fashion. Nabeel draws you into his family life and how he grew up and he explains Muslim terminology along the way. Nabeel grew up in a family that had great respect for religion and at the same time, they were a family that many of us would not mind having as neighbors. They were grieved by the actions of 9/11 and often were just trying to raise up their children in the Islamic faith out of their great devotion to it, including Nabeel’s Dad going with him to a church play when a friend invited him and joining him for a dialogue with Licona and Habermas. The family was one with great love for Nabeel.

Nabeel then goes on a trip and meets a friend there who his mother can tell is a good young man Nabeel should spend time with. That friend turns out to be David Wood and that is where the story really kicks off. When the two friends got to their hotel room, Nabeel saw David reading the Bible. Nabeel was quite stunned seeing as he’d never seen someone read the Bible as it were, for fun. (How many of our lives could be different if some people saw us reading the Bible?) This led to Nabeel going to his evangelism to try to convince David that the Bible had been changed. The problem for Nabeel was that this time, it didn’t work. David had his answers ready asking Nabeel where he heard that claim before and if he could give examples.

Still despite their religious disagreements, the two managed to maintain a strong friendship. Nabeel saw this as absolutely essential for his conversion. It was the kindness that David showed him in powerfully, yet gently, answering his questions and asking good ones of his own that got him thinking. David eventually invited Nabeel to join him to meet Mike Licona and Gary Habermas for a dream team meeting to discuss the historical Jesus. Nabeel brought his dad for the first one he went to and his dad presented the swoon theory. Nabeel saw his Dad as one of the most powerful debaters he knew.

And his star fell that night.

This started Nabeel looking at the data for Christianity and he had to admit it was convincing. The evidence for the resurrection is especially powerful, but Nabeel is not convinced as he tells David. Islam has much better evidence. David’s up for the challenge and says there’s another meeting of minds at Mike’s house before too long and it’s not just Christians, but seekers of all paths that are there. Why not come? In fact, Nabeel can come and give a case for Islam. Nabeel is thrilled with this and goes to give his presentation only to find out that his case doesn’t really stand up with Mike asking Nabeel how he knows the stories about Muhammad are accurate.

So Nabeel goes back to his studies again and this time decides to study Muhammad. He does not like what he sees and this from Muslim sources! When he looks at modern sources, they ignore these problematic passages and looking online doesn’t provide him much comfort either. Maybe the Koran can stand up better. Turns out for Nabeel, it didn’t. This left him in a tailspin wondering what exactly he should do.

That’s when he prays for God to show him what to do and as commonly happens in the Muslim world, Nabeel gets dreams. These dreams are incredibly convincing and end up with Nabeel finally converting.

You might think I’ve told you everything. I really haven’t. The content of the book and watching how the dialogues take place are everything. This is a book that is one that you do not want to put down. The chapters are brief enough that you could read one in a small sitting and then save another one for later. You will also not get bogged down by a lot of complex terminology. There is also a lot of good humor thrown in. I read some of the book in a very public place and as it turns out, started laughing out loud at a number of parts.

Most importantly, Nabeel ends with a real look at grace and what it means for evangelism and this is something I know he lives out. He also shows the pain that this had on his family to which we should all seek to pray for Nabeel’s family that they might come to see that God has revealed Himself in Jesus. Knowing Nabeel personally, I know that he prays for those who are outside the fold, including people in ISIS, and there can be no doubt that his family is on that list. Reading the book in the end will give you a greater wonder and appreciation of the grace of God, which I’m sure would please Nabeel.

In the end, there are also several smaller chapters written by people like Mike, David, Gary, and others. These give the reader a little bit more information and insight into Nabeel.

I cannot recommend this book enough. It is an excellent, enjoyable, and informative read. Why not pick it up from our Estore today?

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: How To Read Job

What do I think of Tremper Longman and John Walton’s book published by IVP? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Job. It’s one of those books that we often don’t know what to do with, but we think we know everything about it. The story seems straight forward enough. Job is a good and righteous man who is put to a test when the devil challenges God. As a result, Job loses all that he has and his health as well. His own wife says to curse God and die and his three friends who come to comfort him instead end up getting in a religious debate with him telling him he needs to repent. Job stands against them and in the end, God speaks to Job and Job recognizes the grandeur of God and he receives back all the wealth that he lost doubled. Through this, we better understand suffering in the universe.

Or maybe we don’t….

Frankly, if Job is meant to address the question of why we suffer, it did a terrible job. Job himself at the end of the story does not know why he suffered and while he does get back everything and more, it would have still left a lasting impression on him. In fact, we look at many times that Job speaks angrily in the book before God shows up and think “This guy doesn’t sound so righteous right now.” When God shows up, we’re even more puzzled. Rather than give an answer as to what happened, God looks more like He’s saying “Yo! I’m God! Sit down and shut up once you hear about all the cool things I can do!”

Maybe we’re misreading Job then. Maybe in fact the question is not at all about why good people suffer. Good people suffering is just what puts a deeper question in perspective.

What if the deeper question behind the book is “Why should any man be righteous?” Often times Christians are asked by atheists if they would be a good person if there was no God. That’s a valid question and it’s a question not just for Christians but for anyone. Why should anyone be good? Let’s also keep in mind that when we talk about this goodness, the talk is entirely about life on this side of eternity. Longman and Walton argue that Job is really not arguing for an afterlife even in some of our places where we think he does. The book doesn’t even hint at one at the end when it would make the most sense. Everything is about this life.

Job lives in a worldview with a basic principle that if you do good you can expect good and if you do evil, you can expect to be punished. A major difference between Job and his friends and the world around them is that there is no trace of polytheism being spoken about. There is no indication that there is a ritual that Job needs to undertake in order to be pronounced pure. The topic is all about moral shortcomings. In fact, contrary to what we might think, Job might not be as much of a saint as we think. The narrator tells us Job offered sacrifices for each of his children after they all got together in case one of them sinned and cursed God in their hearts. The problem is we have no indication that this happened and could such a sacrifice even provide for the children to begin with? Is this a hint that Job has a view of a capricious deity sitting at the computer ready to hit the smite button?

god_at_his_computer

Of course, Job is noble in that he doesn’t curse God when struck with calamity, but he is less than noble when he throughout his dialogue accuses God of being unjust and asks for an advocate. Note he’s not wanting what we often think he wants. We tend to see Jesus in the advocate. Job is not wanting someone to atone for his sins so he can be righteous before God because he thinks he already is. Job is wanting someone who will stand before God on his behalf and argue that God is unjust. It would be a wasted attempt anyway. What would Job gain if he showed God was unjust anyway?

Meanwhile, his friends and everyone else does seem to follow the principle above known as the retribution principle. After all, if Job is suffering, well he must have sinned in some way. It’s amazing that this book is one written that shows that our individual sin is not the cause of all the suffering that we go through in life, and yet we still hold to that doctrine. How many of us in a time of suffering start looking at our lives trying to find that one sin, even if it was a sin that was committed decades ago, that we think God is holding us accountable for? If so, what kind of God do we think we’re serving? That’s not to say that there’s never time for self-examination, but are we making God into someone spiteful?

The point we are to get out of the story is about the importance of wisdom, which is talked about much in this book, especially at the start of Job’s final long discourse. The wisdom in the end is to learn to trust God. God’s resume is not to just say “Hey! I can do cool stuff!” It’s saying “I keep this whole universe in motion. You do not. Do you think I don’t know what I’m doing?” Comparisons are drawn with the two animal creatures described also with the implication being that for the latter definitely, God is greater than this beast. You could not begin to know how to tame this beast and bend Him to your will. With God it is impossible.

This leaves us thinking about prayer. Many times in prayer we do try to manipulate God. I know I’ve been guilty of it in the past and it’s really hard to learn to come to God and realize there’s no magic formula where you can say just the right words and then God will give you what you want. You also can’t just say “Look at all my good deeds” and then think that God is obligated to give you something. The book should teach us that God has no obligations to us. He does not owe us a single thing. Everything that he gives us is an act of grace. This is something I will have to watch for more when I pray and no doubt, I will make the mistake again in the future.

Also, rather than be a book to aid us in suffering, this should be a book that is a boot camp for us before we enter suffering. It will cause us to ask the question if we properly read it of “Would I serve God even if there was no reward?” We could think of other parallels. Would the husband love his wife if sex was no longer part of the deal? Would the wife love her husband if he could no longer provide financial or physical security? How many of our relationships involve loving so we can get something that we want rather than doing the right thing because it’s the right thing? How many of us have a walk with God like that? Of course God promises to reward us for our faithfulness and even uses that as our motivation, but we are not to be purely mercenary.

Walton and Longman’s book will give you a lot to think about. The view I have of Job has been drastically changed by reading this book and I think in fact for the better. I now seek to ask myself why I strive to live a righteous life and make my motivations pure. Are you doing the same?

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Note: This book was freely provided to me by IVP for review purposes. You can purchase your own copy and support Deeper Waters here.

Book Plunge: Platform

What do I think of Michael Hyatt’s book published by Thomas Nelson? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

We all want to be heard today. Don’t think you’re going to go on the internet and make a statement and you don’t really want people to listen to what you have to say. If you didn’t want that, you wouldn’t be speaking anyway. If you have something to say and think it’s good and that people should listen, don’t you want to be noticed? Don’t you want people to hear it and share it? Don’t you think you’ll be doing a service for the world when you get a message out that is needed or sell a product that needs to be sold or provide a service that needs to be given? If you want people to pay attention to what you have to say, Michael Hyatt has some advice for you.

Be warned. This book is very exhaustive and some steps you will be able to follow right now and some you won’t and some will come with time. Some ideas I’ve had I’ve had to rethink, such as Twitter. I have my Twitter automatically set up, but perhaps I could send out a few more tweets. Generally, I have been hesitant due to the limitation of 140 characters, but that could be overcome by tinyurls. I still do not think that Twitter is the place for debates, but perhaps the service does more good than I realize.

I also want to start doing things to spice up the blog. As it is, my own service is not being the most reliable so I am looking to transfer it over elsewhere and the information in this book will play a good role in helping me decide what to do with it from there on. There are some points I’m not readily sold on yet and that could depend on the nature of the blog, but nothing should be discounted automatically. Michael Hyatt has a successful blog and a large number of followers on Twitter and actually brings in some good income through his blog so he is quite likely doing something right.

I do wish a little bit more could have been said about Facebook. I do agree that Facebook can alter what it means to be a friend of someone, but I’m not ready to cut down my list and have a fan page. I’ve found it’s been quite helpful to have personal interactions, especially with people who are struggling with questions and it’s only a major problem on the newsfeed if I am spending way too much time just scrolling through it already. No doubt that Hyatt would agree that time management is absolutely central.

If anything, someone might find this work too overwhelming at times since Hyatt has no shortage of lists of advice to follow. As said earlier, you won’t follow it all immediately and some will have to wait for future endeavors and some blogging will only come with time, but there are many steps that should be taken by everyone wanting to be heard and many that can be taken by anyone wanting to be heard.

If you have a good product, service, or idea to get out and want people to pay attention to you, you owe it to yourself to get this book. Why not in fact get it at the Deeper Waters Amazon store?

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Deeper Waters Podcast 10/17/2015: Ken Samples

What’s coming up on this Saturday’s episode of the Deeper Waters Podcast? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Let’s suppose you’re giving a defense of the resurrection using a minimal facts approach and you get to the appearances of Jesus. Now let’s suppose your opponent says to you “Look. I don’t doubt that the apostles were really convinced they saw something. Okay. I just don’t accept that testimony. After all, there are plenty of people who have eyewitness testimony about being abducted by aliens. If I don’t accept that, why should I accept your claim?”

What do you do?

How about find out about those alien abductions and for that, I spoke to my friends at Reasons To Believe to see if anyone wanted to come on and talk about alien abductions and the resurrection. From Reasons To Believe then comes Kenneth Samples.

Kenneth Samples Image

According to his bio:

Kenneth Richard Samples began voraciously studying Christian philosophy and theology when his thirst for purpose found relief in the Bible. He earned his undergraduate degree in philosophy and social science from Concordia University and his MA in theological studies from Talbot School of Theology. For seven years, Kenneth worked as Senior Research Consultant and Correspondence Editor at the Christian Research Institute (CRI) and regularly cohosted the popular call-in radio program, The Bible Answer Man, with Dr. Walter Martin.
As a youth, Kenneth wrestled with “unsettling feelings of meaninglessness and boredom,” driving him to seek answers to life’s big questions. An encounter with Christian philosophy in Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis led Kenneth to examine the New Testament and “finally believe that Jesus Christ is the divine Son of God, the Lord and Savior of the world.” From then on, he pursued an intellectually satisfying faith.

Today, as senior research scholar at Reasons to Believe (RTB), Kenneth uses what he’s learned to help others find the answers to life’s questions. He encourages believers to develop a logically defensible faith and challenges skeptics to engage Christianity at a philosophical level. He is the author of Without a Doubt and A World of Difference, and has contributed to numerous other books, including: Lights in the Sky and Little Green Men, The Cult of the Virgin, and Prophets of the Apocalypse. He has written articles for Christianity Today and The Christian Research Journal, and regularly participates in RTB’s podcasts, including Straight Thinking, a podcast dedicated to encouraging Christians to utilize sound reasoning in their apologetics. He also writes for the ministry’s daily blog, Today’s New Reason to Believe.

An avid speaker and debater, Kenneth has appeared on numerous radio programs such as Voice America Radio, Newsmakers, The Frank Pastore Show, Stand to Reason, White Horse Inn, Talk New York, and Issues Etc., as well as participated in debates and dialogues on topics relating to Christian doctrine and apologetics. He currently lectures for the Master of Arts program in Christian Apologetics at Biola University. Kenneth also teaches adult classes at Christ Reformed Church in Southern California.

Over the years Kenneth has held memberships in the American Philosophical Association, the Evangelical Philosophical Society, the Evangelical Theological Society, and the Evangelical Press Association.

The son of a decorated World War II veteran, Kenneth is an enthusiastic student of American history, particularly the Civil War and WWII. His favorite Christian thinkers include Athanasius, Augustine, Pascal, and C. S. Lewis. He greatly enjoys the music of the Beatles and is a die-hard Los Angeles Lakers fan. Kenneth lives in Southern California with his wife, Joan, and their three children.

This Saturday then, we’ll be tackling the question. The show will only be an hour long so we won’t get to cover everything, but I hope what we will cover will help to add to your apologetics arsenal and improve your witness for Jesus.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: Near-Death Experiences

What do I think of J. Steve Miller’s book published by Wisdom Creek Press on Near-Death Experiences? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out!

Near-Death experiences are one of those interesting things to talk about. There really is something going on. There are people really convinced that they are having an experience and it would be hard to deny that the experiences are often life-changing. Some people have had their entire worldview altered by having a near-death experience. (NDE from here on) Some people have also claimed to see things going on that they would have no way of knowing about and when compared to people who did not have NDEs but just went by whatever they saw from TV shows and things of that sort, the people with NDEs were far more accurate.

In this book, Miller has gathered testimonies from many researchers of NDEs, including those who started out originally skeptical and decides to also go all over the world for them rather than stick to NDEs in a Western Christian context. Miller’s main point that he wishes to highlight is how the experience is different from what people who went in would expect and how there are so many similarities to the experience. In doing so, he also looks at naturalistic explanations of what goes on, including looking at Blackmore, and decides that ultimately these fall short to explain the data.

The emphasis on subjective experiences is interesting, but I would have liked to have seen more accounts of people who see items and events that can be verified when we have all reason to believe that they were “dead” at the time. The case of Pam Reynolds is one such case. There are also cases of people who come back and report seeing people on the other side who had died before they entered a state where they were subjected to an NDE and that they would have had no way of knowing. Many of these have too many perfectly timed events to just chalk up every time to coincidence.

Also included are looks at studies of people who are deaf, color-blind, and blind, and how they are able to see and hear and experience things that they had no place for prior to that in their life. If people want more, the authors suggests trying to talk to people in your area to see if any of them have had NDEs or if they know someone who has had an NDE. Miller tells us that here in America, about 1 in 25 could be expected to have an NDE and many people are hesitant to talk about an NDE to a doctor lest they be identified as crazy. Hopefully such a stigma is starting to be removed from our culture.

Miller’s book is interesting and also I think he would agree that it is a starting place. That’s why he gives further references at the end for people to do further research and that includes both sides. If you are interested in NDEs, this is something worth checking out.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: Scripture and Cosmology

What do I think of Kyle Greenwood’s book published by IVP? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I always have an interest in books on science and faith and books I think could be related to inerrancy and books about the worldview of people who lived in Biblical times. With Kyle Greenwood’s work, I have all three. The heavy emphasis is on the third part with a still sizable portion on the first and just a touching on the second, but the reader who goes through this book will be informed on the topic under consideration better.

One of the great problems we have today is people trying to read modern science into the Bible. Christians want to act as if so much of modern science was predicted by the Bible long ago, as if God had a great interest in teaching people scientific principles. That He does not does not mean that He does not care about science, but it does mean that He was wanting to get across a major message and was willing to leave the rest for us. After all, God told us things that we could not know on our own and left what we could discover for ourselves to be discovered by ourselves.

For non-Christians, there is this idea of course that if God spoke, God would speak in agreement with our modern science. One can only wonder what would happen if we were living 1,000 years from now and how much of our science might be different. Would we need a whole new Bible at that point because the science had changed? If the Bible supposedly does not speak about modern science and in scientific language, then it should not be treated seriously.

Greenwood writes to first off show how the ancients viewed the world with the main elements being land, heavens, and sea. Was their worldview primitive by comparison? Yes. What of it? God did indeed speak in that world and used the terminology that the people would be familiar with. Rather than give a whole discourse on the scientific nature of reality, something that would be largely unintelligible to the people back then and would have no way whatsoever to be discovered and backed back then, He instead chose to use the terminology of their time and culture in order to give His revelation.

Of course, in some ways, the Hebrews did not borrow from their pagan neighbors as much as they might have shared similar cosmology. This wasn’t attributed to the gods and there wasn’t sacred space for various deities out there. Everything was attributed to the one God and it was the one God who kept everything in motion by His wisdom and by His power. Naturally, this continues in the New Testament where Jesus Himself is included in this creative force as being the agent of God’s creation.

Greenwood also interacts with how the worldview of cosmology was changing. The first major change was brought by Aristotle and then more change came later on through minds like Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton. Through this, interpretations had to be changed and could it be they had to be changed because we were reading science into the text to begin with and had removed it from its original context? This is why I have been especially pleased with the work of scholars like John Walton as well that point out that works like Genesis 1-3 are not written to answer scientific questions but to answer questions on the nature of God.

To be fair, while I have not been an extensive reader on the medieval period and history, I have done some and there were a few parts that I thought I wanted to check up on. I would certainly want to make clear that the time was not really a dark ages time. There was indeed great scientific advancement going on and I think the work that Greenwood cites illustrates some fine examples of that going on.

Now we come to today. What can we learn? It’s not that science and faith don’t mix. Of course they do. I think Greenwood would mainly agree with Galileo. It is the role of creation to tell us how the heavens go and the role of Scripture to tell us how to go to heaven. Many times when we have married a scientific interpretation to the Bible, it has led to embarrassment mainly because that’s not what the text was trying to teach us in the first place. Does this mean the Bible errored? No more than there’s an error when we talk about sunrise and sunset today. We simply have God speaking in the language of the people at the time. The nature of their cosmological claims does not alter the truth being conveyed. (The glory of God reaching to the ends of the Earth does not change depending on the size and shape of the Earth. God is still the most glorious.)

This will be a fine book in anyone’s library working to understand the worldview of people of the Bible and how better to interpret the text today.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: Through A Man’s Eyes

What do I think of Shaunti Feldhahn and Craig Gross’s book published by Multnomah? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Years ago there was a movie released called What Women Want starring Mel Gibson who after an electrical accident found that he could hear what women were thinking. Finally a man was listening. Gibson’s character changed his life drastically seeing the way women think and what effect their inner lives was having on them. Of course, this is not a big surprise since frankly, men have always had a hard time understanding women and have been looking for a good resource that would help them understand them better.

How To Understand Women

Now I think a book has come out that really gets into the lives of men. For many women, men are simple. Give them sex and they’re happy. Okay. There’s a lot of truth to that, but why is that? What’s going on in the life of your man? Why is it that he struggles so much when he walks past the Victoria’s Secret store? If he looks at another women while he’s walking down the street, does that mean he doesn’t care about you? Why should you be more deliberate about thinking about the way that you dress yourself? And of course, why does a man get involved in porn and what can you do about it?

While there is a male co-author, I found the book definitely going inside of my own head which makes me think Feldhahn really does know what we men go through. It starts with the account of a man who gets up early and is thinking about how he was up late the night before but it was worth it. He hears his wife taking a shower and goes in the bathroom just in time to see her wrap a towel around herself to his regret and how even before heading out the door he tries to “cop a feel.” At work, there is the lady who is dressing and has her outfit unbuttoned to an extent that if he looks, his mind will wander. As he drives, he sees constant advertisements on the road with women and he has to deflect his eyes and pay attention for mile upon mile. Throughout the day, he strives to think of his wife and the fun that they had before. No. This man is not a pervert. He’s not a sex addict. He’s just a simple man trying to honor God and his wife and living in a world loaded with traps to lure him away. He’s walking through a sexual minefield as it were.

We men are just drawn to beautiful women. A woman can be beautiful to us without being overt in what she does. That doesn’t mean that there’s not a struggle still, but it makes it easier. Feldhahn and Gross go into great detail as to what happens in the brains of men when they see something sexually stimulating. This will be a shock to some people, but as it turns out men and women are very different. This includes the way they respond to visual stimuli and the way they interpret sexuality. To be fair, while I thought the book was thorough on how a man interprets the signals he receives, I would have liked to have seen a little bit more on why sex is so important to a man and what a role it plays in the worldview.

Nothing said in the book is also meant to justify bad behavior on the part of men. A man is visual so watching porn is a lot more likely for him, but it is certainly not justifiable! A God-honoring man might take a second look at that woman who walked by, but that does not justify it. There are a lot of behaviors men need to work on, but a book like this can help women to better understand just what is going on in the head of the man that they married or are dating, or even in the heads of the man that they are raising, so that they can better support them in whatever battle that they’re in. (Hint: Don’t be like the woman who responded to her husband’s porn addiction by withholding sex and gaining 150 pounds.)

An important insight also is that the way to connect to a man well is through his eyes. Believe it or not wives, your husband does want to see you naked and while you might be hesitant about your own body, he wants to see you period. In fact, if you are concerned about your body, this is also why you can consider that diet and exercise to take care of your body is one of the best ways to say “I love you” to your husband. Your body is a gift that you are giving him. If you were cooking a romantic dinner for him, you wouldn’t be haphazard. You’d make sure you were doing all you could to fix it right. You should do the same with something much more lasting, your body.

Respect is also central to your man in this regard. A husband does not want respect just when you think he deserves it or has earned it. He would be foolish to love you on the same grounds, and yet for most men respect is far more central than love. Men gravitate towards respect. Remember women that you married or you’re dating a man. He is not meant to be a woman and part of his masculinity is his sex drive and his being visually oriented. If you please him with his visual orientation, you can be certain that you will build up his love for you. (Of course, being a Christian, this is to be with sex done in the confines of marriage.) Too many times women try to make their men like one of their girlfriends. It will not happen. Accept that you have a man whose primary stimulation is visual and learn to love him that way, because God wired him to be visual.

The book also does go into detail on the problem of porn and what to do if your husband or son is struggling with pornography or you think he is. It ends with a helpful FAQ that I largely think comes from Craig Gross which covers a bit of everything, including questions like “What if I find out my son has been putting ‘big boobs’ into the search engine on the internet?” Gross in this section really holds nothing back and is just blunt. The writers also stress they have plenty of other resources available at the web site menarevisual.com.

In fact, if anything, men are more visual than Feldhahn and Gross point out. A man can hear a woman speaking on the radio or on the phone and already be speculating about what she looks like. Yeah. That’s not much to go on, but a man will wonder. That’s how much this means to us and when women work with that instead of opposing it, they will find a way to get more joy out of their relationships. That means watching how you take care of yourself and allowing him to delight in you by seeing you and that you might actually have to turn the lights on sometimes when you have sex. Men want their women to be beautiful, but at the same time women don’t need to be as extremely self-conscious as many of them are. Your man just wants to see you and he wants to be wanted by you.

This is an excellent book and it will not take you long to read. I read it in about a day’s time and I found it to be quite spot on. I hope Feldhahn and Gross come out with another book together in the future explaining not just how men are visual, but what exactly sex means to a man and why.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Wow. Gender Neutral Bathrooms Lead To Disaster

Could anyone have possibly seen this coming? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

So apparently the University of Toronto has decided to reduce the number of gender-neutral bathrooms. Why? Because shock of all shocks, but there were cases of women showering and cell phones reaching over in an attempt to record them. Of course, this has led to absolute shock. Who on Earth could have possibly seen this coming? Did we have any evidence out there whatsoever that men will be capable of doing absolutely anything just for the chance of getting to see a woman naked? (You know, besides little pieces of evidence like the entirety of human history and the nature of our society as a whole)

Please note that this wasn’t a shock to anyone who did not believe the overarching narrative and actually knew something about human nature. I’d been saying when I first heard about these kinds of policies that there will be many guys in high schools that will “identify” as women just to get a chance to shower with the girls. This isn’t a modern thing. Give guys a chance like that fifty years ago and they would have taken it as well. The difference is that right now our society is giving them just that opportunity in the name of tolerance and who is the biggest loser in this? The women.

After all, many women are very sensitive and protective about their bodies and don’t want them shared everywhere. When a woman is in a shower, she wants some privacy. Now men of course do care about their bodies, but women are often the most prone to being violated. Most of the time when you hear about rape, it will be the case of a man raping a woman. (We should definitely add that the reverse does in fact happen and one reason it might not be reported as much is because a man would not want to admit that he was overpowered by a woman.) Men also tend to be much more visually stimulated than women are. My words to describe the ways sexuality can work in marriage is that if a man wants sex, usually he needs to be attentive to his wife, caring about her needs, bringing home flowers, helping out with chores around the house, etc. If a woman wants sex with her husband, she just needs to even hint that she’s about to take off her clothes.

Now if we were thinking consistently and wisely about this issue, what we’d probably do is realize that the majority of women do not need to be put in a danger because of the concerns of a few individuals. If someone wanted “gender-neutral” bathrooms that could overall hold only one person at a time for instance, this would not be a problem, but when matters become public, we have a problem. My concern is that we could in fact blame the women for not being so sensitive to the people on the other end. Why should I think something like this won’t happen? It has in fact already happened with Planet Fitness.

In fact, some readers are probably thinking I’m pretty intolerant for just writing this.

If you think I am, then feel free to think so even more. As a married man, I have already decided I will not be going anywhere where I have reason to believe a man could legally go into a restroom or public shower where my wife happens to be. I care about her safety and well-being way too much for that. Am I intolerant in that sense? You bet I am. I am intolerant that there could be a man out there that somehow could possibly use a situation like that to take advantage of her and I have zero tolerance for that.

What many of us hope will happen back on planet Earth is that people will wake up and realize that gender is not a fluid concept and just because you say you feel like something does not mean you have all rights to that something. Our behavior is putting our women at risk in the name of tolerance and I suspect that it could be our children are not far behind. Again, a story like this has not been a shock to most of us, but it should be a huge wake-up call to anyone who has been buying into the narrative.

The question is now, what are we going to do about it?

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Deeper Waters Podcast 10/10/2015: Rodney Reeves and Randy Richards

What’s coming up on the next episode of the Deeper Waters Podcast? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Recently, we had Rodney Reeves and Randy Richards on to talk about Rediscovering Paul. They’re coming back again and this time they’re talking about Rediscovering Jesus, which I reviewed here. The book is a fun and unique look at Jesus asking what our Christianity would be like if we only had one source or one type of source and then what it would be like if we had some version of Jesus outside of the Bible. So who are the people coming on to talk about this?

Let’s start with Rodney Reeves.

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I’ve been married over thirty-six years to Sheri (Richardson) Reeves, who is a Speech and Language Pathologist for Citizens Memorial Hospital, Bolivar, MO.

We have three children: Andrew (28) lives in Kansas City, MO; Emma (24) lives in Chicago, IL; and Grace (19) who is a first-year student at Belhaven University, Jackson, MS. Sheri and I are members of the First Baptist Church, Bolivar, MO.

I’m in my sixteenth year at Southwest Baptist University, Bolivar, MO, as the Redford Professor of Biblical Studies, also serving as Dean of The Courts Redford College of Theology and Ministry. I teach courses in New Testament and Greek.

I’m an SBU alumnus (1979), and I graduated from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Ft. Worth, TX (MDiv, 1982; PhD, 1986). I did part of my doctoral study at Oxford University, UK (1985-86).

Prior to coming to SBU, I served as Senior Pastor, Central Baptist Church, Jonesboro, AR (1995-2000), and associate professor of New Testament at Williams Baptist College, Walnut Ridge, AR (1987-1995).

I have written several articles for scholarly journals, textbooks, dictionaries, handbooks, and magazines. I’ve written four books: A Genuine Faith: How to Follow Jesus Today (Baker Books, 2005); Rediscovering Paul: An Introduction to His World, Letters and Theology, co-authored by David B. Capes and E. Randolph Richards (InterVarsity Press, 2007); Spirituality according to Paul: Imitating the Apostle of Christ (InterVarsity Press, 2011). My newest book, Rediscovering Jesus: An Introduction to Biblical, Religious and Cultural Perspectives on Christ (once again co-authored by Capes and Richards, InterVarsity Press, 2015) was released this summer. And I’m currently working on a commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, Story of God Bible Commentary, ed. Scot McKnight (Zondervan Publishing, 2016?).

My hobbies are fishing, camping, golfing, and reading.

I made a vow to God many years ago to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and to minister to the Body of Christ. I have tried to keep that promise as a member of a Baptist Church, as a minister, and as a college professor. I study Scripture because I want to be a committed disciple of Jesus. I teach biblical studies in an effort to serve the needs of the Church. I’m a part of the academic community here at SBU in hopes of advancing the Kingdom of God, trying to encourage each other to fulfill Jesus’ commandment: to love God with all of our heart, soul, strength, and mind, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. Therefore, I see my work here as part of the whole kingdom enterprise of teaching students to be servants of Christ for a world that needs him.

And as for Randy Richards.

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Dr. Randy Richards loves training students for ministry, both domestically and internationally. He has been teaching since 1986, originally at a state university and then abroad at an Indonesian seminary. Upon returning to the States, Dr. Richards has served at two Christian universities before joining Palm Beach Atlantic University as the Dean of the School of Ministry in 2006.

His wife Stacia has joyfully accompanied him from jungles of Indonesia to rice fields in Arkansas to beautiful South Florida. They have two fine sons. Josh (Ph.D. 2012, University of St Andrews, Scotland) is a university professor in English. Jacob (Ph.D. 2014, College of Medicine, University of Florida) is a medical researcher.

Dr. Richards has authored or co-authored seven books and dozens of articles. Recently, he has published Rediscovering Jesus (InterVarsity, 2015; Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes, with Brandon O’Brien (InterVarsity, 2012), “Reading, Writing, and the Production and Transmission of Manuscripts” in The Background of the New Testament: An Examination of the Context of Early Christianity (Baker, 2013), “Will the Real Author Please Stand Up? The Author in Greco-Roman Letter Writing” in Come Let Us Reason: New Essays in Christian Apologetics (B&H, 2012), “Pauline Prescripts and Greco-Roman Epistolary Convention” in Christian Origins and Classical Culture: Social and Literary Contexts for the New Testament (Brill, 2012), and a dozen articles in The Baker Illustrated Bible Dictionary (Baker, 2013).

He has just finished another popular book, Paul Behaving Badly, and is finishing A Little Book for New Bible Scholars, both with InterVarsity Press and due out in 2016. He is also completing chapters in two other books and several dictionary articles.

Dr. Richards is a popular lecturer, speaker and preacher, recently in places as diverse as Wycliffe Hall (Oxford), Kathmandu, and Kenya. He was a Senior Scholar at the IRLBR Summer Summit at Tyndale House (Cambride) in 2013. He regularly conducts missionary training workshops, and currently serves as a Teaching Pastor at Grace Fellowship Church in West Palm Beach.

This book is a highly enjoyable look at the life of Jesus that will lead to you thinking about it in a whole new light. These guys are really passionate about the book as well as I saw last time they came on and I hope you’ll be here to see round two of the discussion. Be watching for the next episode of the Deeper Waters Podcast!

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: How We Love

What do I think of Milan and Kay Yerkovich’s book published by WaterBrook press? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Love. Love. Love. Love is what makes the world go around supposedly. Everyone loves love. We all speak so highly of love and we assume love is a universal good. Wherever there is love, well you have something good for sure. There are many questions that go unanswered about love. One such question is how we love. In this book, the Yerkovich’s speak about various love styles highlighting five that have their own weaknesses and they say are from unhealthy imprints. This means that as a child, you learned a certain way to love before you could really evaluate that and that affects the way you love today.

I can’t say I’m sold on the hypothesis yet, but it is an understandable one. There are many people for instance who cannot relate to God as Father and they have a hard time doing such because they had bad fathers when they were growing up. The Yerkoviches then move us into the various love styles, such as the avoider who tends to shy away from contact and does not open up about themselves. There’s also the pleaser who has a hard time saying no to anyone and wants to please everyone, which is often done to cover their own negativity. The vacillator style is one that sees relationships as valuable for certain needs that they meet and when these needs aren’t being met, they tend to want to move on. Then we get into two styles that go hand in hand due to abuse which are the controller and the victim.

The authors look at each of these and discusses how each of these styles love. They tell each person in the style what they can do to change and they also say what can be done to help your spouse if they are in that style, although they do emphasize that you cannot directly change your partner. You alone are the one that can change and even if your spouse does not go along, you can still play your part. The version of the book I read also came with a workbook.

If there were areas I’d like more on, I would like to see more clarification at times on the styles. When I took the online test, I was pretty similar for three of them, which I considered problematic. I was unsure where I ranked too often and unsure where my own spouse ranked. This made it difficult for me to get the full benefit of the book since I could see myself and I could see my wife in many of the styles. (Aside from the last two.)

I also would have liked more said about sex. There was one section where it was mentioned for a bit, but in books that talk about marriage, we really do need to talk about sex more. I would have liked to have seen something on how each of the love styles approached sexual intimacy and how partners on both sides could better relate to improve this area in their marriages.

Still, this is a book worth reading and worth considering. I did end it with much to think about.

In Christ,
Nick Peters