Category: Christian Doctrine

Faith Aloud’s Victimization Complex

So is 40 Days For Life a threat? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

A group called Faith Aloud has a counter to 40 Days For Life called 40 Days For Choice. They have written on their web site (link below) about what 40 Days For Life is and that it is an intimidation force. Is this an accurate way to picture them?

Let’s start with the perspective of the person working for 40 Days For Life. Abortion is murder for them. Every single time a woman enters who’s pregnant, there’s a possibility that one person could not be coming out of their alive, and that would be the baby in the womb. What would you be willing to do within the teachings of Christ to stop that? 40 Days For Life believes in showing the love of Christ to such and let them know there are people who love them and are willing to take care of them and help them through this time.

Faith Aloud says that it is not loving to bring crowds of people to judge women in private decisions. The reality is that there is not judgment of women but judgment of abortion. And furthermore, since when it is that judgment exactly became a stigma in our nation?

I don’t know about anyone else, but when Mr. and Mrs. Peters go to bed at night, we lock the doors to our house. Right now, our car is in the driveway and the doors are locked. Whenever we have children, we plan on making a few judgments on who will get to babysit them.

Judgment is necessary and what the Choice group is saying to the Life group is essentially that their opinion does not matter. It is saying that they are not allowed to have that opinion publicly shown to those who think contrary.

Today as I was in a small grocery store here in the Tennessee area, I heard “The Old Rugged Cross” playing. Now let us suppose I heard something that I thought was offensive. Aside from it maybe being something sexually explicit or endorsing violence that I think would be harmful to kids, I don’t really say anything.

My thinking? It could be something annoying but so what? I can just make the choice we’re all told to make in Elementary School, and that’s the choice to ignore. It’s amazing that an age where people are always told to “Believe in yourself” also seems to have this message that you need to be concerned about what other people think.

Instead, today we play the victim game. It’s done constantly in the media. People who want to get ahead can easily paint themselves as victims. The best way to silence the opposition is to paint yourselves as a victim to them. After all, who wants to side with a bully?

This is not to say that victimization and bullying does not occur, but simple disagreement is not enough to qualify for that. Having another group disagree with you is not intimidation. If people thinking about getting abortions are reacting, could it be because they’re honestly realizing that what they’re doing is wrong and they have second thoughts?

Let’s suppose they say “Well Nick, how would you like it if we had several people come from Faith Aloud while you were at 40 Days For Life? Would you like that?”

I think my reply to this would be “Do you promise to?”

Seriously. I want them there. I want them there in droves. I want them to come and present the case for abortion and let us present the case against abortion. I would be absolutely thrilled. After all, a person confident in their position does not need to worry about being “intimidated.”

Perhaps instead of trying to silence by mischaracterization, Faith Aloud will be able to present an argument about why 40 Days For Life has a wrong stance on abortion if they think the can. Maybe they want the intimidation tactic because the argument is weak?

In Christ,
Nick Peters

http://40daysforchoice.weebly.com/about-40-days-for-life.html

Good Friday

What does this day really mean? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

My wife and I lately have been watching biblical movies on the Gospel Music Channel. I don’t really care for Gospel Music any more, and frankly I don’t care for much Contemporary Christian Music either, but by and large I find the movies can give an interesting look, though I regularly do state that a lot of liberties are being taken with the text.

The great danger that can happen with the movies is often we will see something like Moses parting the Red Sea and think “Wow! Isn’t that fascinating!” and go on our way. We can think it an act of special effects much like the X-Men or Iron Man performing an action. The film crew makes it look so real that we do in fact often lose sight of the fact that it is real.

If we watch a movie like “The Passion of the Christ” we can often forget that what we are watching is in fact history. This really happened. When we see something on TV, it often does not impress on us the way that it really should. For an example of this, which do you think would be more striking in your mind. Seeing 9-11 happen on television or if you had been in New York City and saw it happen yourself?

Our images we have of the crucifixion cannot do it justice. I recall being in a chat room on AOL when the Passion was about to come out and some one came in who was saying they were upset because they made the crucifixion so graphic. (Apparently, they saw a preview of the film) I replied that in reality, they could not show the crucifixion the way it really was. This person was astounded and in disbelief.

We often see Jesus on the cross and the skin is still well intact on His body. It would not have been so in reality. Chances are you would have very easily seen the internal organs of our Lord. It would have been a sight that would have made the bloodiest horror film of our day receive only a G rating in comparison. This was an action so vile most in society would dare not even mention its name. It was the most shameful act that could be done to someone who opposed the Roman Empire.

And yet, we call today “Good Friday?” One can think of the small child immediately who would ask “Why would you say the day Jesus died is good?”

The child is entirely right to ask the question. The sad reality is that the adult usually doesn’t bother. In our society, we have our holidays mixed up. People start shopping months in advance for Christmas. We have Christmas music and Christmas stores and Christmas vacations and people going back and forth from state to state to celebrate Christmas.

On Easter, we have very little. There is little exchange of gifts and Easter vacations are not common.

Biblically however, Easter is the most important of the holidays. Of course, you could not have Easter without Christmas, but if all we had was the birth of Jesus and no resurrection, we would not even be celebrating the birth of Jesus at all. It would have been a failure. Chances are, no one today would know who Jesus was if He had not risen from the dead.

We must look at who Jesus was in His time. I will not argue for this now as other blogs of mine have done such, but Jesus was the divine incarnation of God Himself living amongst us and bringing about the Kingdom. He was the Messiah sent to redeem the world from what had happened to it and restore it to the Father.

Now when we see Jesus in this way, we can only see the crucifixion in one of two ways which makes Jesus so extraordinary. The first way is that Jesus was a wicked blasphemer and as C.S. Lewis would say, the very devil out of hell. If that was the case, then the crucifixion was the most righteous act of all that put to death the most wicked man who ever lived.

Suppose instead we orthodox Christians are right. Jesus was the second person of the Trinity visiting His people. The people He came to did not receive Him and instead crucified Him. If that is the case, then the crucifixion was the most wicked act of all that put to death the most righteous man who ever lived.

Of course, Christians hold to the latter. Why do we call this Good Friday then? Because we know this is when Christ began dealing the death blow to the powers that be. Paul says this in Colossians 2. The powers did not shame Jesus on the cross and make a spectacle of Him. Instead, He shamed them on the cross and made a spectacle of them.

This good Friday period ends with the resurrection, but right now, we are at the turning point in the story that has been being built for us from the Old Testament. History is going somewhere and right now, it is going upwards because Christ has risen and He is taking creation with Him to reach that fullness. Good Friday is the start and throughout this weekend, we will see how it ends.

Thoughts On The Eucharist

Do we think about what it means to say the body of Christ is broken for us? Let’s see as we dive into Deeper Waters.

I have a job on the night shift now and on my job, I can listen to the radio or a podcast while doing something else, so last night I was listening to some N.T. Wright, and I was thinking about what he said about Christian unity. At one point, he brought up the Eucharist, also known as Communion, and I started thinking about that.

When I got back from my honeymoon, the first Sunday that we had was Communion Sunday and I remember my wife had hurt her leg somehow so we were in the back room of the church watching the service on a projection screen and then Communion was served. One of the deacons came back with the bread and juice each time for us and I remember that I took it from him and used it to serve my wife. I remember how much that spoke to me then realizing that I was in charge of a family now and that I had to use that position to raise my wife up in Christ as well as any future children we might have.

So last night, I thought about Communion again and I thought about what Christ says in that his body is broken for us. We all know that this happened in the crucifixion. It was there that Christ was made subject to the evil of the world in the form of the Roman Empire and of the Jewish authorities at the time.

Then you think about how we constantly hear about unity in the epistles. Christ tore apart the wall to unite Jews and Gentiles as one. You think about how Jesus prayed that we would have unity. Yet by contrast, you see in 1 Corinthians that some say “I follow Cephas.” Some say “I follow Paul.” Some say “I follow Apollos.” Others say, “I follow Christ.”

We can be tempted to think of Paul just randomly picking prominent names at the time, but Ken Bailey in “Paul Through Mediterranean Eyes” sees the text differently. Cephas would refer to Peter, who would be known as having a Jewish role. Cephas was a Jewish name after all. Apollos was a Greek name and would be a leading Greek seeing as he was from Alexandria. Paul of Tarsus had a Roman name and was a Roman citizen. You have allegiance then to Jewish culture, Greek society, and Roman heritage. Of course, there are also still the super-spiritual types who say “I follow Christ” and like many who say that today when popular teachers are mentioned, there is a lot of arrogance in that as the point is not to lift up Christ, but to show one’s self as superior in practice.

Divisions in the body. They’re a sad reality. Now that does not mean there is never ground for disagreement. That does not mean there is no chastisement. The purpose of such is to lead to healing. What we must remember is that we are all one body and that is the body of Christ.

Thus, when we speak about how in Communion the body of Christ is broken for us, then we should realize that when we bring about division in the body, that we are in fact crucifying Christ all over again. When we have bodies that attack themselves, then those bodies do not survive. So if the body of Christ attacks itself, it is in bad health. We do know that body survives however due to what Scripture says, but that does not justify our attacking that body.

How far are we willing to break the denominational lines? Am I willing to go to a soup kitchen in the name of Jesus if the person I’m with is a Calvinist or Arminian? Can I raise funds for the poor with an old-earther or a young-earther? Can I do street evangelism with a dispensationalist or a preterist? Can I visit those in the hospital with a charismatic or non-charismatic? Can I do Bible study with a Baptist, a Roman Catholic, or an Eastern Orthodox?

Some of us might say “I feel uncomfortable with some of those people.” If so, then do you want to spend eternity with God because being with Him eternally will also mean being with some of those people. They will be redeemed and renewed truly, but God will never destroy them. He will destroy what is not them. Them, the people themselves and not just their belief systems, are the ones you will spend eternity with. If that is the case, then ought you not to prepare for that now by learning to love your fellow brother and sister in Christ, no matter how wrong you might think their doctrine is?

Communion is meant to be for unity and meals are often times of unity, but what are we united in? We are united in the belief that Jesus Christ is the Messiah who died and rose again that we might be justified in the sight of God and bring about the restoration of creation to its full redemption. We are united on the question of Jesus and who He is and His relation to God. All else is secondary. Let’s keep it that way and be a unified front today.

In Christ,
Nick Peters