Category: General Christian Teachings

Why I Observed Halloween

Have I contributed to devil worship? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Halloween has come and gone and now after the holiday, I am hearing that a number of Christians did not observe. I find this to be simply tragic. At our house, we had gone out and got some candy for any kids that would come by. (Unfortunately, we didn’t get any. Now we have a moral dilemma. What are we to do with all that leftover candy? Tough problem huh?) We also had costumes. My wife dressed up as L, a character from her favorite anime, Death Note. I had gone to Wal-Mart and found a costume of a priest and decided to wear that. (Quite interesting going to one party and seeing a monk there)

Ah, but was I not contributing to the worship of the devil by going out on this day?

You can’t seriously be thinking that can you?

Unfortunately, I think some of you are.

As a kid, I went out regularly on Halloween. Heck, even as an adult I still liked a costume. I did not hesitate to go out wearing a red cape to match the Superman look in public even as an adult. Why? Because I don’t really care too much about what other people think. I like being uniquely myself and Halloween is a great day to just pretend. Often, we think on Christmas that we want to be kids again. I do that on Halloween. Had we had trick-or-treaters come by, they would have seen me in my priest costume this year.

Yes. Some of you do fear I gave in to the dark side. What I would ask is how many of you know some children that have gone into witchcraft because they went Trick-or-Treating? Whenever I went out, the thought of darkness was never on my mind. Instead, I simply had one thought. I want to go out with my Dad, show people my costume, let them try to figure out who I am (I often went as a ninja and the mask covered my face), and then get candy. (I was also a strange kid as I rarely could go through all my candy. I’m just not much of a candy guy.)

In fact, if there is anything that is getting our children often, it’s greed and materialism, yet few of you are saying “We refuse to buy Christmas and birthday gifts for our children!” Now when I say this, I’m not saying to ignore witchcraft. By all means, you want your children to avoid the occult, but dressing up and pretending for a day is not going to get them into the occult. Most children do know the difference between reality and fantasy. (I wonder with this if most adults know the difference.)

In fact, it is on this day that you could have children coming to your door. What message do you want to give to those children? My religion forbids me from letting you come to see me in a costume and give you candy? The day when you have people coming to your door and you have so many of them that you can show the love of Christ to and your option is to turn out your lights and have no interaction with them?

Why should we Christians be living out of fear on this day? When we do that, for those of you who are afraid of the devil, you are giving him a victory. You are saying that Jesus Christ owns 364 days of the year, but when it comes to this day, this is the day that belongs to the devil. Jesus Christ is Lord on Halloween just as much as He is Lord on Easter and on Christmas.

But Nick! The holiday has pagan origins!

Let’s suppose for the sake of argument that’s true. I don’t think it is. I’m going to assume for the sake of argument that it is.

My reply?

So what?

Seriously. We have calendars that have pagan names. We have days of the week that have pagan names. Our idea of carrying a bride across the threshold comes from paganism. What is the problem with this exactly? The only pagan activity you need to worry about is if you’re actually doing something like, you know, worshiping pagan gods.

If anything, what does it mean if a holiday was made for a pagan festival and now we celebrate it by dressing up in costumes, going to parties, and giving candy to kids. It seems like by doing this, we are making a mockery of a pagan holiday. We are saying a day dedicated to honoring a pagan deity then has been reduced to being a day to dress up in costumes and to give out candy.

Sounds to me like the pagan lost.

We are to go out as Christians and claim this world for Christ, and that means every day is to be claimed for Christ. That means that we are not live in fear on one day and isolate ourselves. Also, as I have read earlier, don’t be the house that just gives out tracts. That will turn kids off even more. Make sure you give out some of the best candy on the block. Let it be that the Christians are the ones who really know how to celebrate a holiday and have a good time. Don’t be afraid of Halloween. Jesus is Lord then as well.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Is Sandy Prophecy?

When a natural disaster strikes, how are we to understand the situation? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Let me say at the start that this post is not meant to give any consolation to people who are suffering from Hurricane Sandy. Prayers are with you. If you are hurt by this now, this is not the post for you to read at the time. This is providing a rational answer to a question that is risen and is not meant to deal with current emotional suffering. That is the area of a good counselor instead.

A friend of Deeper Waters told me yesterday that her brother is someone who is highly into prophecy and thinks that Hurricane Sandy is a fulfillment of prophecy. Now I have in the past stated that my view on prophecy is that of orthodox Preterism. For all who don’t understand that view, my position is that Jesus Christ is going to physically return some day and that there will be a future resurrection of all the dead. I will put a link at the end of this post to the web site of DeeDee Warren, the best I know of to explain Preterism.

Also, with regards to what I was told yesterday, I have indicated numerous times that I am politically a conservative and that I do vote conservative. It is not essential to this post that you agree with either of the viewpoints that I present. I can easily picture a liberal who is a futurist agreeing with what I have to say.

To begin with, I’m not sure what prophecy Sandy is said to fulfill as none was given, but I do know the habit of going to the Bible, finding one verse that agrees with you, and then wresting it from its historical context and plopping it right down in modern times and saying that it is a fulfillment of prophecy, because we all know that in ancient Israel 2,500 years or so ago, God was warning them about a hurricane that would happen in a totally separate country today.

This does not mean the prophecies are irrelevant to us if they have already been fulfilled. We can still see a precedent on the kind of behavior God universally opposes, particularly when He speaks about behavior outside of Israel. Why? Because that nation is not one that is under the law of Israel that is civic and ceremonial, although to be fair, most of the criticisms of Israel were the failure of the moral law.

The problem is that when we have these disasters, there is always someone claiming it was a fulfillment of prophecy. It doesn’t matter that this “prophecy” has been fulfilled several times before. This time, this is it. This is our generation! We are the one! It’s irrelevant that every other generation has had someone who has thought that before. We are obviously the exception this time.

Of course, this could be the generation that the kingdom comes into full realization. We should always be open to that. We dare not proclaim it without clear revelation from God however. We play a dangerous game when we do that. There were numerous books that were written that showed Saddam Hussein was the antichrist. Some were saying Bin Laden was the antichrist. What are those books doing now? They’re gathering dust on bookshelves somewhere. They have embarrassed the Christian faith and the authors are going to go out and try it again. To use an extreme example, what do you think someone like Harold Camping does to the Christian faith?

Still, I would not be surprised if someone like Pat Robertson will go out or has already gone out and said that the east coast is being judged and Hurricane Sandy is the proof. This lady I was talking to about her brother said that we are being judged with this election. Look at the states that are hit the most. Those states are New York and New Jersey. These states are blue on the map and so they are being judged for supporting Obama.

Now I find this just odd. To begin with, you’d think if this was the kind of thing being done, we’d see the disaster on the West Coast which is even more liberal. We don’t. Instead, we see the hurricane come and people say “Obviously God is directing this hurricane. This hurricane has to be judgment. Why could these states be being judged? Look! They’re both blue states! That has to be it!”

I was also told that hurricanes aren’t common at this time of year. Common? Perhaps not. Unheard of? No. Hurricanes have happened. Back in 1993 here in Tennessee, in March, we had a blizzard come. Blizzards don’t normally come at that time of year and I as a young boy thought I would never see it again. The reality is, I did. I saw it in APRIL of 1996. Should I have concluded both were a divine act of God for some reason? To say something is unusual and uncommon does not mean that it is a judgment of God.

Of course, this does not mean that God cannot use a hurricane to judge, but I need a clear reason to think that it is. What message we can get out of such things is to realize the fragility of life and we dare not grow complacent where we are. We can look at Luke 13 where tragedies happen and the reply of Jesus is “You repent just in case!” (And from my viewpoint of course, they had a really big disaster come 40 years later and unfortunately, they did not repent.)

When we have situations like this happen, it leads to further embarrassment of the Christian faith and more attention paid to non-essentials. As I told my friend yesterday, it is a tragedy that Christians today tend to spend more time seeking to understand who the antichrist is rather than spend that time seeking to understand who Christ is.

Having said that, I do want to make it clear that I have no problem seeing my futurist friends as Christians. I would rather you be right on the Jesus question and wrong on the eschatology question, than be right on the eschatology question and be wrong on the Jesus question. This is an in-house debate. I have no problem with futurists. I’m married to one after all. I do have a problem with dogmatism either way. I have a problem with preterists seeing futurists as second-class Christians and I have a problem with futurists who like to accuse me of just wanting to “Allegorize” or “spiritualize” the Word of God.

Let’s be careful with how we are presenting ourselves to the world and handling our interpretation of Scripture. We must always try to first find out what it meant to the people then before finding the application for our own day and age. If we are reckless with how we interpret it, we will pay the price. Let’s also remember that there are people who are hurting from Sandy and the last thing we need to tell them is that God is judging them.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

The preterist site can be found here.

The Resurrection And Sex

Can there be any connection between these two? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Generally today, if you talk about religion, you won’t get people’s attention too much. However, once sex enters the picture, people are suddenly interested. At a job I once worked at, I came into the break room one day reading the book “Smart Sex: Lifelong Love In A Hook-Up World” by Jennifer Roback Morse. The books I’d read hadn’t got too much attention but suddenly that day the talk in there was “Nick’s reading a book about sex!”

So what does the resurrection then have to do with the national obsession?

The first place is that as we learned recently, our bodies matter. That means that what you do with the body matters. Paul tells us about this in 1 Cor. 6. Some people were of the mindset that the body will pass away so it does not matter. What you do sexually is not much different from what you eat. Paul is aghast at the very notion! He tells the Corinthians that their bodies are part of the body of Christ. How can one join Christ with a prostitute?

In other words, in the resurrection, one’s whole being is to be caught up in the identity of Christ. It is not just that you give Christ your soul, spirit, what have you, and then your body doesn’t really matter. Your body matters because Christ rose in His body and your body is to rise one day and to be transformed to be fully like His body. Your body should be being prepared for that day just as your soul, spirit, etc. are being prepared. (I use different terminology since I’m sure people have different beliefs on the nature of man in that area. I do not wish to argue for any one at this point)

If your body is to be the body of Christ, you are not to join them with a prostitute. It is important to notice that right after this, Paul does go on to address questions on marriage and despite what some people say, he is not a prude. He does not condemn the coming together of the man and woman. In fact, he says that the husband and wife should only withhold themselves from one another by mutual consent and then to devote themselves to prayer and come back quickly lest they be led astray. In other words, Paul knows how strong the desire is between husband and wife and he does not condemn that desire.

Even more radically, he says that a man’s body belongs to his wife. Of course, that goes the other way as well, but such a thought would have been unheard of in Paul’s time. It was the man alone who were in charge. Now I do hold to the position that a man does lead his household, but the man does not live for himself alone. The man is to live for his wife and that includes living bodily. His sexual energies are to be spent on her.

Just shortly before writing this, I was even debating this with someone who was telling me I should not worry about fantasizing and looking elsewhere. Faithfulness should be a choice and not an obligation. If you are married, faithfulness is an obligation you have chosen. It is not an added bonus. It is essential to your marriage. What good is it for you to say “I have remained sexually faithful to my spouse” in your body, but have not done so in your mind and fantasy life?

Does this take hard work? Absolutely, especially for us men who tend to look for many partners by nature. When we are out together, the Mrs. knows that I will regularly look away at times just so I can make sure that my mind stays pure. I have to be very careful with what I watch on TV and if a program is getting to be too showy at one scene, I can look away or else just cover my eyes at that point. Faithfulness is a choice, it is an obligation, it is a battle, and it is totally worth it.

The resurrection also shows us that sex is not to be avoided as a punishment like the Gnostics would have thought. There is no harm in bringing new life into the world. This does not mean that every married couple will do so or even want to do so, but it certainly means that the Gnostics were wrong in their position. Even those Christian couples who choose to not have children would not say that other couples are ipso facto wrong for wanting to do so.

It also means that since this is part of the creation, and since God is in the business of re-creating through the resurrection, a point we will get to lately, we should celebrate the good gift that He has given. Christians are not to be prudes about sex. There is a time and place to talk about it of course, but we Christians have often acted like we cannot say anything about it. The reality is the non-Christian world has a message about sex just as much as we do and if we do not share our message, then a questioning world will only get one message and it is a message they will be quite eager to hear and obey.

If anything, we should be leading the world in this just as we should in environmentalism. I am not saying we go to results alone, but if the message is true from Christ, the results should be good. If we are the ones that uphold sex as the good gift of the creator, then we should be the ones who treasure and value it the most and treat it as the sacred activity that it really is. We often can watch TV and movies thinking the world is really getting in some exciting sex. Would that they heard about what goes on in our marriages and thought “Dang. The Christians really know how to get the most out of sex.”

If the body is good, then what is done with the body in marriage is also good when done rightly. (No. I am not talking about technique here, although I am not objecting to that) Keep in mind however that this requires more than just the physical aspect of sex. It has been said that sex begins in the kitchen. What this means is that a marriage that enjoys God’s gift of sex should be shown in all aspects of that marriage. It should be the case that the husband is seeking to love and honor the wife in all ways and the wife is seeking to honor and respect the husband in all ways. (Men appreciate more the language of respect than love. Vice-versa for women)

We dare not have the idea that we are just to have sex and not worry about everything else. Being a faithful spouse as has been said is more than just something that happens in one room of the house. It’s more than just something that happens in the house. Being a good spouse is something that takes place wherever one is and no matter how far away the other person might be at the time. If I, for instance, am one day speaking at a conference while my wife is home for some reason, and though I cannot call her or receive a call from her at the time, I am still to be a good spouse just as she is to be to me.

For those of us today who are concerned about defending true marriage and seeing what the world has done to it, let me say as I’ve said several times before, that if we complain about the way the world is treating marriage, I firmly believe it is because the church led the way. We dropped our guard and made our own justifications and what a shock that the world around us followed suit. (For those who wonder about how the new atheists abandoned rationality as another example, it is also because the church abandoned its intellectual grounds first)

Perhaps the world will treat marriage more seriously when the church does the same thing?

For now, celebrate sex as if the body matters, because it does, and your body and the body of your spouse are good things. Both of you will enjoy resurrected life together some day. You might as well enjoy your life together right now!

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Why I Am A Gamer

Why enjoy a hobby that has so much violence? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

The following blog entry is also a guest blog entry at NearEmmaus. Brian LePort who runs it started asking questions about football of all things and whether there are any theological questions. Now to be honest, I don’t care a bit about football. I watch the Super Bowl for the same reason several of you probably do. I want to see the commercials! The only sport I could ever get into any at all is Braves baseball. Yet I saw the question about football being violent and thought from a different perspective that I could handle that.

Why? Not because I like football, but because from as far back as I can remember, I’ve had a great interest in video games. For me, it started with realizing my parents had something called a ColecoVision (Some of you remember those I’m sure). My favorite game on it was not a fighting game but a puzzle game called Ladybug. (I would love to be able to download this game on the Wii today!) I could often reach level 100 on the game. I had it mastered from an early age. (It’s not as easy to do on the computer)

Being in Elementary School, I realized I needed to get a Nintendo soon and so like many others, I grew up playing games like Super Mario Brothers and the Legend of Zelda. Link of the Zelda series was a hero of mine growing up. I still remember taking a Nintendo Power magazine to the place I’d get my hair cut. In it, I showed a picture of Link from Zelda II and said that I wanted my hair to look like that.

And before too long, people at my school knew who was the main expert on video games. While there are puzzle games and some adventure games I still enjoy, far and long the games I enjoy the most are RPGs. I prefer Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Kingdom Hearts, etc. A notable exception could be multi-player games such as how in Charlotte I got together with friends every Sunday night to play Super Smash Brothers Brawl. When I visit my in-laws, we can play the Wii Sports or Mario Kart Wii. I also like to play the old classic games.

Now with puzzle games we don’t really have much problem of course. That my Dad and I can still play Dr. Mario today is not really a problem to anyone. What about a game where you get a sword and cut through monsters? Isn’t that violent?

Why yes. Yes it is.

Now note in this that for me, I don’t play games that have gratuitous violence. There are limits for me. I do not really like to see the sight of blood that much. I could take something such as playing Goldeneye on the 64 and seeing the blood come down when my character died, but to see someone get shot at regularly and have blood come gushing out would not be something that I want to see. Just yesterday my wife and I watched “Flags of our Fathers” and I had to cover my eyes a number of times because I can’t stand the blood. Watching “House M.D.” can be difficult and I have no idea how I got through the first season of Dexter. This could also be a question of conscience, which many of this is. Note that if someone reads this and still has hesitations and really doesn’t think they should play the games I play, that is just fine with me. I have no problem there. Let us follow a Romans 14 perspective and see this as a matter of conscience. Of course, if you have a real objection, then bring it.

Yet if we are to say that something is to be rejected because it contains violence, then frankly we Christians will have to reject the Bible as well which has much violence in it, something that we need to accept. God is a holy God and those who go against Him are dealt with in accordance with what they do wrong, and sometimes His instrument for doing that is human beings. This still goes on today. Romans 13 speaks about government being such a force that bears the sword. Yes. There are times violence is necessary.

Why?

It would be nice if we all lived in a world where everyone would sit down to peace conferences and be willing to do all that was necessary, but because we are still in the flesh, such is not going on. There are people who will want to get whatever they want and who cares about anyone else? There will be people who do not follow the rules of others and go forward on their own authority seeking to stomp on anyone who gets in their way.

But are we not told that blessed are the peacemakers?

Those familiar with Westerns know that Wyatt Earp referred to his gun as the peacemaker. Let’s suppose I had been out somewhere and came home and heard my wife screaming inside. I go in and find some man attacking her and getting a weapon, I manage to kill her assailant. In doing this, I have become a peacemaker the way Earp said his gun was. The person who I dealt with was someone who was violating the peace. By eliminating him, I have restored the peace that he shattered.

“But Jesus told us to love our enemies! Should we kill them?”

Most of us would not consider it loving to lock someone behind bars in a destitute situation for years or to charge a really hefty fine for something. This is what we do however! Why? Because love does not mean everyone gets to do what they want without any consequences whatsoever. Now some have argued that Jesus would forgive people. Yes he would. So should we. However, there is a difference between private and public forgiveness. Someone can privately receive forgiveness for what they’ve done, but they still owe a debt to society and that debt is to be repaid. For an example, David in the sin of Bathsheba was privately forgiven, but his son still died. Forgiveness does not automatically mean there are no consequences. In fact, the Christian narrative should remind us that all actions we do have consequences.

If someone is out there actively doing evil, you can be sure that they are NOT seeking forgiveness. They are not in a state of repentance. I hold that Christians should always be willing to forgive, but they are not to offer forgiveness until the person comes to them and asks for forgiveness. Some might think that is not a good attitude to have, but why think that when that is the exact position God Himself holds?

Yet are we not to turn the other cheek?

Jesus’s statement was about an event in the private setting that constituted a simple insult. The idea was to end the cycle of retaliation before it starts. It says absolutely nothing about physical danger. It is not being like Christ to do nothing while someone inflicts serious injury on innocent people. If you are insulted, it can be a mark of character to simply not choose to retaliate in private. In public, matters are different. While it can be questioned whether Edmund Burke said it, I can easily agree with the idea that “All that is needed for evil to prosper is for good men to do nothing.” If we sit back and do nothing in the face of evil, let us not be surprised that evil flourishes.

So what about the gaming area since you are the one doing the activity?

And I have no qualms about it. Note for instance that in many games today, one is fighting monsters who are not rational human beings and seek only destruction. (Never mind in these worlds for some reason they all breed like rabbits and are all deadset on destroying you and your party) There are times you fight people, but again, this is in a public forum with fighting those who wish to do evil and are not repentance. There are times in RPGs where you can be given the choice to let a character go who seems repentant.

We also should realize that a game must be considered in the world that it is in. We can look and say that on Earth it would not be like this, but then on Earth we don’t have dragons flying around us and imps breeding everywhere. In this world, if one does not fight evil villains, then the good of the whole world will suffer and we must seek to bring about the good of the world and not just that of an individual.

Of course, we must be sure we are fighting for the good of the world. Are we doing that? If someone is going on a quest and slaying monsters but they’re only doing that so they can get to the hapless village and destroy it, then it would be apparent that while they could be doing good on the way, their overall approach is not good and is therefore something that should be condemned.

Now what about football with all of this? It’s also important to consider that men by nature do tend to enjoy violent activities. That’s the way we are. We’re warriors at heart. Men like something to fight for. One of the reasons I believe marriage can domesticate a man for instance is that it gives him something he can fight for. Many of us men would hopefully be ready for action immediately if someone were to do something that would endanger our wives. We have this instinct to protect and fight born into us. We grow up with toy guns and swords and all manner of activity like this.

What we need to ask is what are we going to do with all this aggression and energy that we can have? Football could be a fine outlet for some people, though I would advise them to be extremely careful. Several older people today suffer greatly because of injuries they got when playing football while young. Of course, on a field, one should only use enough force to take down an opponent. (Don’t expect technical terms from me on football. I couldn’t tell you) I do understand that there are such things as unnecessary roughness in a sport like football. It can be necessary to knock down your opponent. It does not mean it is necessary to pummel him on the ground to keep him down.

Of course, every Christian will have to examine themselves. My great concern for us gamers is not that we will become violent people, but that we will spend too much time with our hobby. I make it a point for instance that when game time comes here, I usually listen to an MP3 at the same time so I can at least be educating myself as well. (Somehow, I don’t think this would work in a football game) Of course, that doesn’t hold if I’m playing a multi-player game with friends in which it’s just fun fellowship. Now if you really have serious qualms about this and you’re not even sure why, you can examine those, but you do not have to partake of something. This is the freedom of the Christian.

As we observe our freedom, let us be careful about how we approach another person’s freedom. What you might find questionable they could have no problem for and let each be fully convinced in his own mind.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Is Christianity Exclusive?

Is it a problem if Christianity is an exclusive belief system? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

I just started pondering this question as I was reading “New Testament History: A Narrative Account” by Ben Witherington on how Luke wrote to show an inclusive faith and that today, we are told that Christianity is an exclusive faith.

This is often seen as a mark against Christianity. If Christianity is true, why is it so exclusive? Some could want to support universalism in this case. I don’t doubt that many of us would like it if universalism is true. We would love to empty out Hell. Wanting it to be true does not make it true and at the start, we need to realize that just because we want something, there is no requirement that we get what we want.

Let’s start by comparing Christianity at the start to other religions. What was required?

To be a good Jew, you needed to observe the Torah and you needed to be circumcised. I think most men today in considering whether to choose a religion would be quite thankful if they did not have to undergo something like that.

Paganism also had its requirements. You had to practice the rituals in order to learn the secrets of knowledge to keep going forward. You would often have to offer sacrifices. (Aren’t you glad you don’t have to sacrifice an animal regularly to please god? It’d sure change the pet industry) On the other hand, some might consider it a benefit that to be a pagan in some cases, you had to have ritual sex.

There is no doubt that Christianity called for a life of holiness, but at the same time, the initiation rite was quite simple. You simply had to believe in Jesus and get baptized. Baptism could even be put off.

Friends. I have been hydrophobic all my life and I had my baptism years after I had surgery, a surgery that involved putting a steel rod in my spine. Despite having dread about going underwater and despite having a steel rod, I was able to be bent long enough for a good traditional baptism. Don’t give me excuses about why it couldn’t be done. (And I do not doubt that in some cases it could not be done that are extreme, such as paralysis)

Did it matter if you were a Jew or a Gentile? Nope. Did circumcision matter? No. Did you have to keep the Law? Nope. Did you have to offer up sacrifices? Nope. Did you have to look after secret knowledge? Nope. Did it matter if you were male or female? Nope. Did it matter if you were free or slave? Nope. Did it matter if you were rich or poor? Nope. Your social status did not matter one iota.

But yet Christianity is still claimed to be exclusive because we believe we are right on religion and everyone else is wrong.

So does everyone else who has an opinion on religion!

Even if you are an inclusivist, you think that people are exclusivist are wrong! They’re just included in the blessings of your system as well. It will not do to say “Christians think other opinions are wrong!” It boils down to saying “Anyone who thinks a religious opinion is wrong is exclusive.” If that is the case, then to say that someone’s opinion on religion is wrong is also a religious opinion and that is exclusive!

This is just the way that truth is. If you believe something is true, you are automatically excluding all that disagrees with that opinion. If you think 64 times 64 = 4,096, you are automatically excluding all answers that are not 4,096. Saying that that equation is exclusive will not change reality.

This is problematic if you want to go after Christians for believing that their belief system is true. What other reason should they have for believing it? Now some Christians could have dumb reasons for thinking it is true, but that will not change the fact that if it is true, then it simply is true.

“But why should it be that only Christians get the benefits of being Christians?”

Now in our society, you can get some benefits you have not invested in, but those are benefits equally given to everyone and not specifically given to you because of who you are. In the Roman society, everyone was allowed to use the Roman roads, but everyone knew who paid for those roads and built them. Today, we can all use the road system or systems like a public library. However, if there are some systems that you have to pay into, then only paying members get those privileges because they are the ones making the commitment.

This is the case even with instances that we don’t necessarily pay for. For instance, if somebody decided they wanted my wife sexually, I would not allow that at all. Why? I’m the one who has made a lifelong commitment to her and I’m the only one who can have that privilege. No other person no matter how close they are can have that. The same for me. I do not give myself to any other woman. Only my wife can have me sexually.

Does that mean I hate other women? No more than it means that she hates other men. It means that we recognize the commitment and what benefits come with the commitment. It would be cheapening to our lifelong commitment to say that other people can enjoy the privileges of the commitment without the sacrifice.

For the person on the outside of Christianity looking in, what good does it do to say Christianity is exclusive? You are not going to get Christians to change their belief system or the Scriptures just because you don’t like it. Christianity will always teach that Jesus is the only way a man can be justified. That would be for us an insult to the sacrifice of Jesus if we said otherwise and to the dignity and honor of God.

So you complain that you do not get the blessings of Christianity? Bear with this thought. If Christianity is not true and the Christian deity does not exist, then you definitely don’t get the benefits because there is no one to give the benefits. I see Islam as an exclusive faith, but I do not complain about not getting my seventy virgins when I die, simply because I do not believe Allah really exists as thought in Muslim thought and therefore, there is no one to give me those seventy virgins.

Likewise, Christian revelation to be true must come from the Christian concept of God, but if that concept is not true, then there is no blessing that can truly be given. If they are not given, then you are missing out on the blessings of Christianity to begin with.

Do you think you should get the blessings of Christianity without being a Christian? Upon what basis? Should you get the benefits of exercise without exercising? Should you get the benefits of study without doing study? I could bring up the benefits of marriage but several already think they should get all the sex they want without commitment. Still, I hope most would agree at least with the first two.

Our entitlement society often says otherwise so much so that we think the laws of the universe ought to alter in order to make sure that we’re happy. If you are one who thinks that God owes you the benefits of being a Christian without having to be a Christian, then on what basis are these benefits owed to you? State your case! Why should God have to do this for you? What obligation to you is He under? (Keep in mind, it won’t do any good to say He doesn’t exist since you don’t get the benefits any way then.)

In all this complaining about Christianity being exclusive, sadly there is one question that is not asked and it seems that the question of exclusivity is often raised to avoid this question. That is the question of if Christianity is true. If it is true, then asking it to change will not have any effect. One must accept truth as it is. If it is not true, then what do you care? Why complain that a false system is not giving you any blessings? Just forget it and move on.

But if Christianity is true, it is your duty to believe in it. To not believe in it when it is shown to be true is to live in a denial of reality. It shows that you are definitely one who Christianity would say shows what the nature of Hell is, reshaping the world so that your will and desires are paramount. If you come to the belief that God has spoken, you will have to decide if His will and way are better or if yours are. If you think yours are and that you want to live a life without the way of God impacting it, then He will grant you your wish. If you want to live a life that thinks His way is most important, He will also grant your wish.

At any rate, let us cease talking about attitudes of a system and instead just discuss the fundamentals of the system. Is it true?

In Christ,
Nick Peters

So What’s The Problem?

Why is there a gospel at all? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Last night, I wrote about what the gospel is. Often, when we do our evangelism, we tell people that they are sinners and that they need forgiveness and that God loves them and wants to save them. Yes. This is true. Yet at the same time, if we approach the gospels that way, we will miss a lot.

For instance, is the story of Jesus just meant to tell us that God loves us? We can say that actions speak louder than words, and they do, but while we can say that God is saying that in Jesus, and He is, could we not say that He is saying more than that? I recall being in a Sunday School class where we were told the reason Joshua was written was so that Israel would know to obey God.

Of course Israel needed to know that, but could there not be something about the one who comes after the Law guiding the people into the land of promise and providing deliverance from their enemies all around them and in the end asking them to remain faithful to the covenant?

Quite interesting that that person in the Old Testament is Joshua, which would also be Yeshua, the name of Jesus.

You see, in the second century, there arose a heretic named Marcion who wanted to separate the God of Christianity from the wicked God of the Old Testament. He only had the non-pastoral Pauline epistles and a highly edited gospel of Luke in his canon. He wanted nothing to do with the God of Israel.

Now many Christians today would not say the God of Israel is a bloodthirsty fiend like someone like Marcion or Richard Dawkins would, but many of them are in fact Marcionite in their practice acting as if the God of Israel has nothing whatsoever to do with the God revealed in Jesus Christ.

If we start with us, we miss a lot of the problem and we miss a lot of what the story of Jesus is meant to tell us. For instance, readers of the blog know about my fanaticism when it comes to the series Smallville. If you watched the final episode without seeing the series, you could understand a good deal of it. Yes. Clark Kent must defeat Darkseid. Yes. Lex Luthor must be stopped. Yes. Clark puts on the suit and flies. You know the story ends happily. Clark Kent has become Superman.

If instead you have watched the whole series you know all about not just what Clark did there but how he got there. You understand how the battle against evil for him started at the very beginning. You understand that the meteor freaks at the start were the way Clark learned to fight and eventually become Superman. You learn about all the trials Jor-El put him through and the friendships developed with people like Chloe, Oliver, and Tess. All of these make the story all the richer for you. You can get the basic enjoyment the person who just sees the final episode gets, but you get so much more because you understand where it fits in the grand scheme.

We have enough of a problem already with this in our world. We have taken the gospel with this and made it all about ourselves. The gospel is about how God makes a wicked people to be righteous so they can be with Him. It is about how they can live forever. It is about how they can be forgiven. Here’s something to ponder. Why should God care?

In Christianity, we do know that God would have been fully justified in letting us go our own way. We all deserve hell. There is nothing special about any of us in that regards. God still cares. Why? Go look repeatedly in the account of the Exodus and the wanderings in the wilderness and see what happens.

Why does God not destroy Israel out there? Moses tells Him that the Egyptians will see and know that God was unable to deliver. His glory will be cast down because of that. See why it would be said the temple was destroyed. It would be because the people were becoming a blight on the name of God. Their lifestyles were not honoring to Him. Why are they coming back? For God’s Name sake. It is not because God owes Israel a thing. It is because He has chosen them regardless and for the honor of His Word, He will save them.

It is the same for us. God saves us for His glory and so that we can reflect that glory. It is not about doing works just out of gratitude, while that is part of it. It is also about doing them to bring about the glory and the kingdom of God, something that is absent from our gospel presentations.

When we look in the gospels, it is not a surprise, or at least it should not be, that the Old Testament is all throughout there. I’ve written much recently on how people don’t bother to understand the context of the Bible to see what is going on in the world. The Bible itself shows that is needed as to understand the New Testament, you need the Old Testament. Sure. You can get the message from just the New Testament, but you’re getting an incomplete story. Your understanding is enriched by getting the full account.

If we go to the gospels and read them like they were written to us today and have no understanding of the story of Israel, we will miss much. If all we understand is that we are sinners in need of a savior, we will get benefit of course, but we will not get all that we could. Surely we all want to get all we can out of the Bible! Then we must understand the story of Israel. It is not an accident that the gospels show us that Jesus is god with us and the Messiah. Both are essential. We can go and seek to establish the latter while ignoring the former as if being the Messiah was a side point. To take what Jesus Himself said, we should do the former without neglecting the latter!

Yet if we continue this inane approach, it will only make us more self-centered. It is already happening with several who wish to try to see where America is in the Bible or to see where “I” fit in in the Bible. To wrench the Bible completely from its time, culture, and context will make it say things it does not say and not allow it to say what it is meant to say.

If we want to understand the epistles, we need to understand the mindset from which Paul and the rest of the writers are arguing from. This is especially so in the book of Hebrews. If we want to understand Acts, we need to understand why the mission is spreading to begin with. If we want to understand the apocalypse of Revelation, we definitely need to understand the Old Testament. Revelation very rarely quotes the Old Testament, but it is alluded to well throughout the book. If you do not understand the Old Testament, you will not understand Revelation, PERIOD!

This will get us off of ourselves and onto the gospel. The gospel is not about God wanting to be with us as if we were so special, but about Him knowing we are incomplete without Him and wanting us to share His glory all the more. We are most glorious when we are in Him. Think of it as a marriage. A man and a woman can work quite well on their own, but when the two come together, they can far outshine what both of them could do separately. This is especially true in the sexual act. After all, it is only by their sharing glory with one another that they can bring about the glory of new life.

This also means that this is not about following a list of rules. It’s not about doing good just because that’s what good Christians do. You do good because it is how you win. We are told that Constantine had a dream where he was shown the cross and told that under this sign he would conquer. The reality is it was under that sign he had already been conquered. It was the cross that had overtaken the Roman Empire, not by the sword, but by doing good. This is not meant to ask if war might ever be necessary, but it is meant to show that when it is necessary, it is not as a means of evangelism.

The problem is not just your sin. That is a symptom of the problem. It would be like treating the flu by making sure your temperature stays down. You need to do that. You need to stay hydrated. The most important thing to do however is to kill the flu. The problem of your sin and mine is a symptom. It is a symptom of the disease of a world in rebellion against God. Let us be sure about how our lives are being lived. We are either advancing the kingdom of God or the kingdom of satan and if we are advancing our personal kingdoms, guess which side we’re really working for. It brings a whole new emphasis to good works when you see them as doing the work of the kingdom and conquering the kingdom of the devil.

Israel is not an accident. The whole point of the gospel story is not you. It is not even Israel to be sure, but Israel sure plays a much greater role in it than you do. If you are to know and appreciate the gospel, you will need to know what it was that God was doing in Israel in the Old Testament and how He deals with Israel in the New and what the person of Jesus really has to do with it all.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

The Uninteresting God

Why do so many of us want to sleep in on Sunday morning? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

N.T. Wright talked once about greeting undergrads at his college and how many of them would say they wouldn’t be seeing him much since they don’t believe in God. He’d ask which one they don’t believe in. They’d describe someone who lives in the sky and watches all that we do and sends good people to Heaven and bad people to Hell. Wright would tell them he doesn’t believe in that god either. He goes on to say he doesn’t think he’d bother getting out of bed to worship a god like that either.

Maybe those of us who sometimes drag ourselves out of bed think that we are in fact worshiping that god.

“But Nick! Doesn’t the Bible speak of our Father in Heaven and doesn’t it say that God is in Heaven and we are on Earth so let our words be few?”

“Yes. Yes it does.”

“Then that means God is in Heaven.”

This assumes that Heaven is some place in the sky and that when Jesus was doing the ascension, it was a kind of Star Trek idea where he was teleporting back to the home base or something of that sort. Do we really think Jesus could be flying through space like Superman and eventually reach a spot where there you will find where God lives? Once you reach that spot, just keep going down the street of gold until you reach the throne in the center and you’ll see God just sitting right there on the throne.

It sounds ludicrous, but it is what so many of us probably implicitly believe.

Then are the sayings about God being in Heaven nonsense? Not at all! They most certainly have meaning, but not the meaning of 21st century Americans.

Let us suppose as C.S. Lewis once said that instead of ascending, Jesus disappeared by burrowing underground. The disciples would have the picture of themselves being the authority in fact. Man has dominion over the Earth. God lives in the Earth. Man therefore has dominion over God. Jesus instead goes into the sky. Something you notice about the sky is that it’s transcendent. It’s limitless. No matter where you go, you see it, and you can never see the end of it. Today in the space age, we know even more that it’s greater than we’ve ever imagined.

That is the picture of God. God is limitless. God is transcendent. God overpowers us where ever we go. He cannot be localized to one place.

That does not mean that there are places where He does not make His presence more apparent. For the Jews, that would have been in the Temple. For the Christians, it is also in the Temple, but it is not the Temple of wood and stone, but rather the Temple of flesh and blood. First, it was the earthly body of Christ. Now, it is also the church body of Christ as we are God’s Temple and Christ is the cornerstone of that Temple.

What this means is we need to jettison from our minds the belief that God is just somewhere out there and He is living away at a distance and every now and then he’ll step in and do something great and then He’s back to doing whatever it is that He’s been doing, which usually consists of making sure people get good parking spaces who pray.

If God is not localized out there, then where is He? Where is He? Look around you. THAT IS WHERE HE IS! That’s right. God is omnipresent. Heaven and Earth cannot contain Him and in fact, every single ounce of space around you has within it the full presence of God. God is not an absentee landlord at all as in Deism. God is in fact always there and we are told that He not only created all things but He sustains all things.

This is one problem I can have traditionally with the Kalam argument that most people know about. It explains that God starts things off, but why think He is still there? Many people seem to think God’s only work with the material world is creation and once He creates, well the universe can get along just fine without Him.

This is absolute nonsense and don’t believe it for a second. This universe, you, and I, and everything else that is, even the angels themselves, depend on God’s sustaining of their existence for Him to be. He could be apart from everything else that exists. Everything else that exists could not be apart from Him.

A sign of our problem is that so often we can think of how God makes too many demands supposedly on our lives. Yes. God makes demands. Guess what. If you go to work, your boss makes demands of you. If you are a student, your teacher makes demands. If you are a child, your parents make demands. People who are in authority do have the power to set requirements for us. God is not obligated to give us anything. We are rightly obligated to give Him everything.

It’s like treating God as an affront to our own existence. We saw off the branch of the tree we are sitting on. We have to have Him for our existence. He could do away with all of us and exist just fine. Some who believe in a tithe could complain that God wants 10% of their money. In fact, God has all right to ask for 100% of your money and doesn’t. We can think it a burden to give God about three hours on a Sunday, which is three out of 168 hours in a week. Strange we don’t see our time wasted that much if we go see a three hour movie or play a video game for three hours or anything else that takes time like that.

Why has this happened? We have accepted a pop theology view of God as if He really was confined to one place and was at a distance and is not a constant reality here on Earth. We know the saying “Out of sight, Out of Mind.” God is indeed that for us. We can’t see His form to be sure, but we see things existing and say “I don’t see Him active around here.” Yes. Of course you don’t, and I suppose you think those trees in front of you can provide their own existence. I wonder where from.

If evangelicalism is going to have an effect in America, it will need to be rooted in a God that is really worthy of worship instead of the weak God too many of drag out of bed to go worship on Sunday. Yes, this could be a failure in our churches, but could that failure in the church be because we have a failed theology to start?

In Christ,
Nick Peters

All Things Work For Israel?

Who are we that love the Lord? Let’s talk about it tonight on Deeper Waters.

This is another one of those blogs where I’d just like to share my thoughts on a topic I’ve been pondering and get some feedback on it. One of my favorite passages in Scripture that is most assuring to me is when I get to Romans 8 where we are told that all things work together for good to them that love the Lord.

As I thought about it one night, I started wondering just how it is that Paul knew this truth. It seems simple to us, but what was there behind it? I started asking the question about who those are who love the Lord and then remembered that if I was reading Romans, chapter 9 immediately starts off with talk about Israel.

What if all those who love the Lord are what Paul wishes to call Israel?

Let’s consider how the book begins. It starts with the first chapter about how the gospel is for the Jew first and also for the Greek. Keep in mind that in Rome at the time, it is quite likely that the Jews had just returned from being exiled out by the emperor and Paul was dealing with some who were thinking “We already have a church. We’re Gentiles. What about them?” There could have been some strong anti-Semitism going on here.

How does he begin? He begins by talking about how the Gentiles went away from God. Those Gentiles who are Christians should literally thank God because their past is not too pretty. Polytheism, idolatry, and homosexuality would have been abundant in the ancient world. The first was a theistic error. The second was a specifically religious sin. The final would tear apart the very family unit.

Okay. The Jews are liking this. Not so fast! Chapter 2 shows Paul doesn’t let them off the hook. They’re not exactly saints. In some ways, they’re worse because they have the Law and they have the covenant promise of circumcision and even while having the Law, sometimes the Gentiles are doing better than they are. Also, they have the commands straight from God and they still violate them!

Romans 3 begins then with what is the advantage in being a Jew? First, they have the very oracles of God. Notice that Paul says first. There is a second, but he never explicitly mentions it. Instead, he gets on his first point with the idea of “How does this help us with righteousness?” He shows that all are equally condemned and that salvation cannot come through the Law. Well how are we to be saved then?

For that, we bring in exhibit A, Abraham, the friend of God. If it worked for Abraham, it works for everyone. Paul makes a master argument establishing that the righteousness Abraham was credited with was granted to him before the covenant of circumcision was given! Thus, one can be righteous and be uncircumcised since Abraham was! Abraham was instead declared righteous by faith!

The next chapter is our response and how God reached out to us and why it was necessary. We have peace with God that Adam ruined for us. Christ was the perfect representative of the human race and he was what Adam had been meant to be. Adam had reached out for equality with God and lost it. Jesus willingly did not consider his equality something to be grasped, and thus it was truly declared of Him in His earthly life.

If this is all true, and we are all covered, why not sin anyway? We have grace! It has been said if you are ministering and people do not hear a message of antinomianism sometime, you really haven’t touched on grace. Of course, Christians are not anti-Law. Paul wasn’t. They are pro righteousness however and holy living exists apart from the Law. Romans 6 is about how we left a lifestyle behind that would have given us a death sentence. Let us not serve it any more!

Then comes Romans 7 where we hear about the futility of righteousness by the Law. Some have said in Romans 7 Paul is talking about himself. I’m skeptical of that claim. Others have said it is about Adam, but as I have thought about it, what if it was really Israel he had in mind? Now follow me with this to chapter 8.

Chapter 8 is about forgiveness, but also how all of this extends to the restoration of creation. He then gives us the verses this blog is about, but notice he speaks about those who God called. If Paul has been talking about the benefit of being a Jew throughout this, who would he have in mind? Who was it that was called in the Old Testament? It was Israel. Those who love the Lord are Israel!

Have I thought it through the rest of the way? No. That is still being pondered, but I do notice that Romans 9:1 is the first time in the book that Paul uses the word “Israel.” Until then, he has been just saying “Jews.” Could it be that Paul is not wanting to say that because someone is a Jew, they are automatically Israel? Could it be that Paul is wanting to widen the categories so that Gentiles can be truly Israel and this could help explain the “All Israel shall be saved” verse? Is it that those who truly love God and are the “remnant” are the true Israel and the Gentiles in Rome should in fact be friendly to the Jews because these Jewish believers are true Israel?

This is an exciting idea I think and I am going to be pondering it further, but for now I wanted to get the idea out there. All things work for us who love the Lord perhaps we are all now the Israel of God. The promises given to them apply to us and their past is ours. Keep in mind Paul does speak to a church with several Gentiles in 1 Corinthians 10 but at the same time says “Our forefathers passed through the Sea.” Has the gospel broken down the barrier between Jew and Gentile so much that a Gentile can be considered Israel?

Just something to think about.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Shocks in Mark’s opening

Have you ever been stunned by Mark? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

As I’ve said, I’ve been reading and listening to N.T. Wright lately and as a result I am really rethinking much of the NT. One night, I started thinking about the book of Mark as I was going to sleep and it’s been a thought that often pops back into my mind. I’d like to share some if it with you.

The first verse begins:

“The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”

Jesus begins with a hefty pair of titles! He is the Messiah and he is the Son of God! We are about to hear his good news, the gospel. Let us suppose we are people who know nothing about Jesus and are rather picking up the gospel for the first time. What do we expect? Well let’s move on and see. Verses 2 and 3 read:

“As it is written in Isaiah the prophet:

“BEHOLD, I SEND MY MESSENGER AHEAD OF YOU,
WHO WILL PREPARE YOUR WAY;
THE VOICE OF ONE CRYING IN THE WILDERNESS,
‘MAKE READY THE WAY OF THE LORD,
MAKE HIS PATHS STRAIGHT.’” ”

Ah! Eschatology! This is big stuff then! Today we know about 2012 hype. When people think a prophecy is to be fulfilled, they expect something dramatic. The Jews had been studying and expected a mighty warrior to rise up and defeat Rome and restore Israel to a golden age. How could it be anything less?

We see that a prophet has said something! Even if we do not know who Isaiah is, we can know that this is pointing back to someone in the past. This has been an event long foretold. If it was foretold, then surely it must be something important to us all.

But even before this Christ comes, we have a messenger making ready the way of the Lord. Ah! A king is coming! A king has been prophesied and a king deserves only the best! What kind of great messenger could come that will fulfill a prophecy about a king? Verse 4 reads:

“John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”

Beg your pardon?

This is the great messenger?

This is the preparation for the king?

We have someone in a river dunking people?

Where’s the chariot? Where’s the sword? Where’s the entourage? How is this messenger described? Let’s look at verses 5-6.

“And all the country of Judea was going out to him, and all the people of Jerusalem; and they were being baptized by him in the Jordan River, confessing their sins. John was clothed with camel’s hair and wore a leather belt around his waist, and his diet was locusts and wild honey.”

This messenger appears in Judea? A nowhere country? Not in Rome? Not in Athens? Not in Egypt? He is in Judea?

The people are coming to him? Isn’t a messenger to go to the people?

In the Jordan River? That’s not much of a river. If we knew our Bibles, we would have known it’s the river Naaman did not want to disgrace himself by bathing in. The other rivers were much cleaner.

Let us suppose we thought about all of this.

A Jew would have recognized the outfit of Elijah and would have thought about how Malachi said Elijah would come before the day of the Lord. Now Elijah has come. They can tell. What of the Jordan? The Jordan was representative of entering the Promised Land. Is this messenger making way for the Promised Land again?

The crossing of the Jordan would mean just that. This would bring to mind the Exodus and God restoring His people. Such had not happened since the exile. Oh they had been in the land, but they had not enjoyed the richness of a Davidic age. Now here it was at last once again! As Wright would say “The exile is over.”

We go on to 7 and 8.

“And he was preaching, and saying, “After me One is coming who is mightier than I, and I am not fit to stoop down and untie the thong of His sandals. I baptized you with water; but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

We have read this passage so much I think we overlook what John says about himself. “One who is mightier than I?”

We are looking at him and tempted to say “You’re just out there in the water dunking people. You’re not exactly Mr. Universe or anything.”

But this is someone mighty! He can pronounce the forgiveness of sins! He doesn’t even need you to bring a sacrifice. We don’t even know if he is asking about circumcision! All we know is that he is teaching about the forgiveness of sins and with authority. If it was not, people would not come to him.

It takes someone either mighty powerful or mighty foolish to pronounce the forgiveness of God Himself. John is one of the two. You must decide. Does his authority come from Heaven or from men?

We’re going to go to verses 9-11 then and end it for tonight. I do not know if we will continue through like this, but if we don’t, it is because I hope your flame has been lit to see the gospel for the first time on your own. Let’s see what happens in these verses:

“In those days Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. Immediately coming up out of the water, He saw the heavens opening, and the Spirit like a dove descending upon Him; and a voice came out of the heavens: “You are My beloved Son, in You I am well-pleased.”

Amazing juxtapositions take place here! Jesus from Nazareth? What kind of great leader comes from a little Podunk like that? This is the Messiah and this is the Son of God? Why would such a man come from such a place? If this is a prophecy, did they not have the chance to foresee he must be a loser coming from such an area like that?

From Galilee? That’s also nowhere. Why should anyone give a rip about that? Were we to know about the Sanhedrin, we could know that they say that no prophet comes out of Galilee! Why there’s no need to even examine the case! We know where he comes from and the case is closed!

And he comes to the messenger? Seems like things are backwards. The messenger should be acting under the authority of the king, but not the other way around. Instead, Jesus (Who by the way also has a common name. Not much noble about that) comes to John asking to be baptized under John! What nonsense!

And then we hear about the testimony of God. Once again, we are in a tough situation. It really isn’t, but for us, it is. How often we today know what God says about something, but it meshes with our conceptions at the time. We know that God says to not worry. We look at our checkbooks and bank accounts. We know God says He loves us. We question that and call it into question constantly. We know that His way is best, yet we continually seek our own. We know about the joy of God and we sing about how awesome He is and marvelous and His ways beyond understanding, yet we treat Him as if He does not matter and that He is uninteresting entirely. We claim that He is Lord of all, yet we live in fear of all that He has made. We know that He has told us to trust Him, yet we hold on to silly fears. We know His Word is true, yet we do not seek to take it in constantly. We know He is always there to help us, yet we rarely pray.

Oh the way the first century responded with skepticism and disbelief in the face of the evidence of this testimony and the miracles we read was wrong, but let us make sure we are not too quick to condemn. We say the case for the resurrection is incredibly strong and thus we have even more evidence for who Jesus was and is, and we have more wisdom in the epistles and the apocalypse, but yet we too have hesitation when it comes to believing what God has said and we too hesitate then when we face the claims of Christ. We may sign our names to the creeds, but do we sign our lifestyles to Him? Do our actions show what we say we believe with our mouths?

This is the juxtaposition of Christ. I often use a saying and my wife corrects me as she should when I get it wrong. I say that Jesus did not turn the world upside-down. The world was not right-side up. It was upside-down and instead Jesus turned it right-side up. He is still doing it and you and I are a part of that world that’s being turned around and too often, our thinking is still topsy-turvy and God gives us a huge contrast. What will we believe? Him or ourselves? If Mark has shown us anything at this point, it is that God does not act the way that we often expect or think He should. It is easy for us to trust God when He acts as we would like. Can we do it when He does not?

I hope this has given you much to think about and I hope as you read the Bible, you also will try to read it for the first time with new eyes.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

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