Category: General Christian Teachings

Book Plunge: One Gospel For All Nations

What do I think of Jackson Wu’s book published by the William Carey Library? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Would you like to hear the good news of the Gospel? You would? Okay. Long ago our ancestors Adam and Eve disobeyed God and were banished from His presence. In order to bring us back, God sent His Son to us. He lived among us and died on a cross, but God raised Him from the dead and all who believe on Him can find forgiveness in His name.

Such is the way that a Gospel presentation can usually go. Now of course, when presenting the story of the Bible, one cannot give a full presentation of everything in the Bible, but isn’t it amazing how much is left out of this? Where is the history of Israel in this presentation? Does Israel have no purpose in God’s story? Where is the mention of Jesus being a king? You can see Him as savior, but will you see Him as King?

Jackson Wu is a Chinese scholar who writes about how to interact with Scripture in a more practical way to present the Gospel to all nations. After all, such an approach might work fine here in America to an extent (And that extent is lessening), but go to a more Eastern mindset and you could find it less effective. Wu primarily shows his own people of China as a different culture that contrasts heavily with our modern Western culture.

In doing so, Wu takes us back to Scripture and says we must look for the themes of covenant, creation, and kingdom. Whenever the Gospel is presented, we will find something of this there. You might not find all the themes, but you will find at least one of the themes.

This means also that when we go to another culture, that we can see how they interact with Scripture and find grounds of agreement first. We can disagree with the Marxist ideologically for instance, but could we find something we can agree on? We can agree with the desire to find a perfect society together. We can agree with the idea of removing distinctions that separate people. We can then show that these are also part of the new covenant in Christ.

The book also contains some interesting insight into Chinese culture where the goal is often to save face. How you look to the people around you means everything and if you don’t have a good reputation, it is as if you were already dead. There is also emphasis on how one treats their family, especially their parents. Picture going to this culture with the Gospel of the man who talks about how He must be more important to you than your own family and suddenly those ideas take on a whole new meaning.

Wu’s approach is contextualization. It means that we don’t just read the Scripture at face value alone, but try to interact and see the culture behind the Scripture as well. An honor-shame context is a better approach to understanding the Bible and as Wu shows by an example of Chinese culture, is still very much active in the world today.

Wu’s book is an excellent resource for missionaries or for anyone serious about evangelism. After all, to do missionary work today, you don’t have to go to another country. You can find people of another culture in our own neighborhood and you can turn on your computer and find people of a different culture. Wu’s book is one to read to better understand how Scripture and culture should interact together.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

What Shiro Taught Me About Trust

Can our feline friends have something to teach us? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

If you’re a reader of my blog, there are facts about me you might have noticed. One you might have known is that my wife and I recently moved to Atlanta where I could assist my father-in-law, Michael Licona, with his ministry. The second is that we are cat owners. Our kitty is a white ball of fur named Shiro, the Japanese word for white.

Shiro

Shiropose

We moved on Wednesday and the Tuesday night before, we cleared all the furniture out of our old house. We spent the night next door with my parents. We did, aside from our little Shiro since my parents have two cats already and Shiro up there would have been a recipe for chaos. Shiro stayed at the old house on Tuesday night. We stopped by to feed him on our way home from going out to eat of course.

When we went down the next morning, and we had been eager to check on him, he really wanted nothing to do with us. It took awhile to even get him to eat anything, but he looked at us entirely with distrust. From a cat’s perspective, it’s understandable. He had just had his world turned upside down. Unfortunately, to get him in his kitty carrier, we essentially had to trap him in a room and I had to just grab him and he had to be put inside it, and of course, he never likes that.

We had given him something from the vet meant to calm him down and we were pleased that he did not whine as much as we thought he would on the trip, but at the same time, I wondered if he had a defeatist attitude. Had he resigned himself to a negative fate? After all, we had rescued Shiro at an apartment complex where his old owners had abandoned him. What if he had thought that was happening again?

All the while I kept wanting to explain to him that he would like where he was going. We were doing this to him because we love him and we wanted to have him with us on our journey. We got him here and I had Allie go to a master bathroom connected with the master bedroom and just stay with him. When we got more furniture in the bedroom, we were able to let him out and let him stay in those two rooms.

He ran and hid under the dresser.

The next few days were concerning for us. It was like we couldn’t get Shiro to eat anything. He stayed hidden all day long. We talked to our vet back home and several friends who are cat owners who assured us that this was normal behavior. It was really hard on us that we did all this for Shiro because we wanted to have him with us everywhere and yet he hid and treated us like threats.

Already now, it looks like things are back to normal. As I sit here and write this, it is almost time to feed him and he is doing his best to make sure that I know that. I regularly hear him whining. He has a new cat tree now courtesy of my mother-in-law. He still hasn’t really explored it yet, but give it time. He sometimes still wakes us up at night, but he’s just getting used to the timing.

So what does this have to do with anything?

The difference between a human being and a cat is quite large. What difference is even larger? The difference between God and a human being. We’re talking with God about a being who knows everything, including all of the future, and He knows how everything will work out. We’re also talking about, if we’re Christians, a being who has done more than enough to demonstrate His love for us.

And yet as soon as something happens that we don’t understand, we’re just as prone to think that God has wronged us or is going to abandon us or isn’t looking out for us. It never occurs to us that things that seem painful and disturbing to us could be for our good. We just look at what we’re going through and then think only about that experience and don’t look at how God will use it.

We cannot literally do it, but in some ways we try to hide from God. We don’t go about our lives as we normally would when we think we have His favor. Oh when we think we have His favor we can tell everyone about the goodness of God and we can pray and read our Bibles and worship happily, but when evil strikes or even just something we don’t understand, we quickly change all of that.

A lot of times we might want an answer, but could we really handle one? What all might God have to explain about the future that we couldn’t possibly understand? I would have loved to have been able to talk to Shiro and tell him why everything was happening as it was, but he would not understand. If I cannot explain the ways of man to a cat, how much harder would it be to explain the ways of God to us, mere human beings?

What’s really sad is that with a cat, we could say a cat doesn’t know better, and in essence we’d be right, but we do know better. We as Christians do know all that God has done for us in the past. We know that He sent His son for us, and yet when evil strikes, we forget all about that.

In fact, this is often where our pride steps in. We treat ourselves like the exception. Oh sure, God will do that for everyone else and God loves everyone else, but not me. It’s like we go to John 3:16 and see that God so loved the world, except there’s that little asterisk that has next to it supposedly “Except Steve” or “Except Kim” or “Except Mark.” We read in Romans 5 that God demonstrates His love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us, unless you’re John, Margaret, or Tyler.

Pride and shame are two sides of the same coin. In both cases today, we use them to treat ourselves as if we’re exceptional. We’re either exceptionally greater than we think or exceptionally worse than we think and we put whatever that is on God. Unfortunately, we are being just like Shiro. There is a world of good out there waiting for us and we refuse to come out and enjoy it because we do not trust in God.

You see, I can look at Shiro and think “Shiro. We do everything for you. We shower you with love constantly. We protect you from everything and give you so many good things. Why is it that as soon as we do something that seems different, you act like we’re out to get you?” Whenever I think like that though, I can often picture God looking at me and saying “Good questions. I’ve been asking you them for years.”

So right now, there’s a little white ball of fur in the doorway of my office here. I’m about to go feed him soon and he knows again that he can rely on my hand to take care of him. Will I not take this time to learn more that there is a hand greater than mine that is taking care of me even when it might not look like it?

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Deeper Waters Podcast 2/6/2016: Chris Tilling

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

“Who do you say the Son of Man is?” It’s a question straight from the Gospels and while it was answered nearly 2,000 years ago, that answer is still being discussed today. Hasn’t Christianity been influenced by Hellenistic ideas? Wasn’t the concept of Jesus as a God-man a rather late idea? Would it make any sense to someone who was Jewish to say that a man was participating in the divine identity?

About a couple of years ago I did a roundtable discussion with Michael Bird, Charles Hill, and Chris Tilling on the book How God Became Jesus. One of those guys has decided to come back and that’s Chris Tilling. We’re going to be talking about his book Paul’s Divine Christology. So who is Chris Tilling?

ChrisTilling

Dr Chris Tilling is Tutor and Senior Lecturer in New Testament Studies at St Mellitus College. He is also a visiting Lecturer in Theology at King’s College London. Chris co-authored How God Became Jesus (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2014) with Michael Bird (ed.), Craig Evans, Simon Gathercole, and Charles Hill. He is also the editor of Beyond Old and New Perspectives on Paul (Eugene, Or: Cascade, 2014). Chris’s first book, the critically acclaimed Paul’s Divine Christology (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012), is now republished with multiple endorsements and a new Foreword, by Eerdmans (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2015). Chris has also published numerous articles on topics relating to the Apostle Paul, “Christology”, “justification”, the “historical Jesus” and the theology of Hans Küng.

There have been many writers in the area of early high Christology and Tilling takes a view that is unique and one could say revolutionary. It is a classic example of how so many of us have missed the forest for the trees and it fits in to Second Temple Judaism like a hand fits into a glove. We will be discussing this new idea on the show and what it means for Christians.

The benefit of the idea is that it’s easy to connect it to the Jewish culture and not only that, it relies on the Jewish culture. Consider looking at how Israel and YHWH have their relationship in the Old Testament. Do we have any sort of parallel in the New Testament? Indeed we do and it’s one that we point to often. We have the relationship of Christ and the church, and yet how many of us have really considered using that to show an early high Christology? Tilling argues that this fits in in that Paul consistently puts the Christ-relation up in a central place in his writings showing that Jesus does indeed fit into an early high Christology.

If you are interested in the topic of Christology, and frankly why on Earth should you not be, then I hope that you will be joining me for this episode of the Deeper Waters Podcast. Dr. Tilling is a very enjoyable person to interact with. At the same time, he takes his Christology incredibly seriously. You won’t want to miss this episode!

In Christ,

Nick Peters

Does Jesus’s Prayer Show Christianity is false?

Is disunity a disproof of Christianity? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

It’s always interesting to me the arguments skeptics of Christianity will present. I prefer to always go back to the case of the resurrection to show Christianity is true, but too many skeptics go everywhere else. It could be something such as “Well geez, in the OT it looks like slavery was allowed and I don’t like that so Christianity is false”, though this doesn’t show how Jesus rose from the dead. Some think that if they can show an error in the Bible, then this means all of the Bible is thrown out and Christianity is false. Some think that if we can’t explain starving children in Africa, then Christianity is false, though this does not show Jesus did not rise from the dead.

Now I’m not saying that those are unimportant questions and objections. They are and we should be ready to answer them, but if you want to prove that Christianity is false, you have to go for the main point. You have to demonstrate Jesus did not rise from the dead. Unfortunately, Neil Carter did not get that memo.

Carter starts off his argument by saying that Christians love to move matters of faith from objective matters to subjective ones. For too many Christians, I sadly agree this is true. There are too many Christians that look at their lives and their emotions and experiences as proof that Christianity is true. Unfortunately, Mormons are also very good at saying the exact same things and Mormonism and Christianity are directly opposed to one another. Christians must move their arguments to objective matters. After that, it is fine to show what a difference Christianity has made in your life, but Christianity is not true because it produces good results for you. It produces good results because it is true. It’s quite revealing also that Carter says he himself was one of these people. (Think you see the problem showing up already?)

Carter then goes on to say that

These folks always seem to want to attribute our skepticism to ulterior motives because that fits what they were taught from the pulpit. This interpretation also reassures them that our reasons for disbelieving cannot be truly rational ones. If they are rational, then they themselves might have to do a major overhaul of how they see the world, and let me tell you that’s no cake walk. I guess I can’t say I blame them. The social repercussions alone can be devastating, depending on where you live.

I find this quite amusing. Carter wants to accuse other people of knowing other peoples’ motives for disbelieving. He could be right or wrong, but the point is in the very next sentence, Carter does this himself! He says that Christians do this because they want to believe they are the truly rational ones. What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. As far as I’m concerned, I don’t bring up a motive unless someone paints a very vested interest in something. Are there improper motives for being an atheist? Yes. Are there improper motives for being a Christian? Yes. What matters is the data.

Let’s go on.

Christian apologists insist that, strictly speaking, one cannot prove that God does not exist. But that depends on which God we’re discussing, doesn’t it? They rarely seem to understand why that detail matters so much. See, if we’re arguing whether or not a generic Supreme Being exists, devoid of any attributes whatsoever (is it a person? is it male? does it want things? does it tell us what they are?), then there’s not really much to debate. Generic Supreme Beings don’t make any testable claims.

At the start of his article, Carter had spoken of a claim as being unfalsifiable and here he is speaking of it not being testable. In this, Carter is likely turning the question into a scientific question when it is not. It is a metaphysical question. Could we do any scientific testing to demonstrate that the square root of 4,096 is 64? Could we do scientific testing to determine if a husband and wife love each other? Could we do it to determine that it is wrong to torture babies for fun? Could we even do scientific testing to demonstrate that the material world exists? None of these are questions answerable by science, but all of them are answerable.

I also find it odd that Carter says we insist that God’s existence cannot be disproven. I know many apologists who would disagree, including myself. What Carter would need to do is to show a disproof of all of the arguments, including the classical ones, and then a disproof, such as in showing a necessary contradiction in the nature of God. Thus, this is something that could hypothetically be doable. It just hasn’t been done yet.

As Carter goes on, he is right to say that the God of Christianity does make claims, but unfortunately, it looks like he uses the same kind of fundamentalist reading as the Christians he critiques. We will see this more as we go on, but he speaks about messages shared on Facebook walls. Now I have no problem with someone sharing inspirational messages and such, but there are many of these that Carter should also realize we think are just horribly ripped out of context or misunderstood. You can see examples of that with Jeremiah 29:11 both here and here. That’s just a start.

So we go on.

If the Christian faith were true, we shouldn’t have to endlessly debate the historical reliability of religious texts written centuries ago. If the Christian faith were true, there would be evidence of it everywhere, here and now, not just buried under thousands of years of sediment, or between the pages of an onion skin book.

Okay…..

Why?

Is it because it would be easier to deal with instead of doing things like, you know, actual historical research. (Which would get us into that objective stuff instead of subjective material.) Despite this, I do think there is plenty of evidence of it everywhere. As Chesterton would say, if Christianity is true, everything is relevant to it. If it is not true, then it is of no relevance whatsoever. As I said though, Carter uses a fundamentalist reading of the text and we see that coming up now.

Hospitals and prisons should have fewer Christians in them than they have people of any other faith. Why? Because both Jesus and James said that if the church prays for its sick, they will be healed, and the apostle Paul claimed that the indwelling Holy Spirit would not let any temptation befall you without providing “a way out so that you can endure it.” If either of these things were true, there would be a statistically significant difference between the outcomes of one religion versus another. The cold, hard fact is: There isn’t.

I would like to know where Jesus said this. I suspect he is referring to the discourse in John 14-16, but even there we do not really see a blank check. This is a common misunderstanding of people who live in a modern individualistic society instead of interacting with the culture Jesus lived in. In Jesus’s time, if you wanted to get a blessing, it was up to the generosity of the patron and if it furthered his honor overall, he would be likely to give. To ask in His name would mean in accordance with the will of Jesus. Sometimes what we want is not really along those lines. I suspect one such passage he has in mind is this one from John 14:

13 And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.

If this was to be a blank check, how do we explain these?

John 16:33“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

John 16:2 They will put you out of the synagogue; in fact, the time is coming when anyone who kills you will think they are offering a service to God.

John 15:20 Remember what I told you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also.

Unfortunately, many lazy skeptics will look and just say “Contradiction!” and then conclude Jesus did not rise from the dead. The researcher though tries to understand what is being said. Could it be Jesus is using terminology that is understandable in His day and not as much in ours? Indeed. Removed from the system of Jesus, the message makes far less sense to us. (Unfortunately at this point, the same lazy skeptics will say Jesus should have been clearer and spoken in Ancient Israel with a modern 21st century American audience in mind.)

The James quote no doubt refers to this:

14 Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord. 15 And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven. 16 Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.

This prayer however is more connected with sickness. After all, the same James who said that also said in James 1:2 to

Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds.

Forgiveness and sin are however tied together in this passage which refers to a sickness due to sin in the life of the believer. Why go to the church? One good reason is doctors were expensive. You might as well go to a church. Oil was a medicine that was more available and nothing wrong with prayer.

Naturally of course, we have repeated the myth about more Christians being in prison. Carter also says that when we are tempted, there will be a way out. Indeed, there will be. Does that mean we will always take it? It’s as if in Carter’s world if everyone is not living a perfect Christian life, then Jesus did not rise. Maybe it’s just me, but it looks like this is a subjective disproof. I say the same about his main disproof in John 17:20-23.

I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you…that they may be one as we are one— I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me… (emphasis his)

Now this raises a number of questions, but first can we establish that this wish has most certainly not been granted? The church has done many things down through the centuries, but maintaining unity has not been one them. Jesus here likens the unity he wishes for the church to the unity of the triune God (a concept you won’t see so clearly in any other gospel, which is a problem in itself). But to date the Christian church has splintered into thousands (some would say tens of thousands) of non-cooperating traditions. Oh sure, they still read the same Bible (mostly), but they have proven incapable of worshiping under the same roof with anyone who believes or practices the Christian faith “the wrong way.”

We’ll ignore the thing about the Trinity for now since that will take us off course, though we could say Carter has not done any of the reading necessary in NT scholarship to realize that there are other ways to state something other than explicitly and Jesus’s actions would be definitely showing who He was in the other Gospels. As for the splintering into tens of thousands, this also is an internet myth. I would contend there is in fact more unity than Carter realizes. I happen to attend a Lutheran church and do the writing of the curriculum for them. Do I identify as a Lutheran? Nope. I don’t identify with any denomination honestly. I do ministry quite often alongside Catholics and people in the Orthodox traditions. I have zero problem whatsoever with this. I am happily married to a woman who I disagree with on some doctrinal issues. Are there always going to be people who major on the minors? Sadly yes, and such people need to look at Jesus’s prayer more.

Of course, this unity would be a way of showing the world that Jesus came from the Father, but that does not mean that if the unity is not reached that Jesus did not come from the Father. The ultimate establishment of that was in the resurrection of Jesus. What Carter would need to show is Jesus saying “If they are not in unity, then I am not the one you sent.” That is not what was said. (Let’s also not forget that Jesus had hoped for any way also to avoid the cross and yet He didn’t.) Carter goes on to say

That was a really, really bad move. Maybe even worse than the time when he promised that the people standing there in front of him would witness the Second Coming and the Judgment Day before the end of their lifetimes (see Matt. 16:27-28 and 24:34). Whoops. Lots of theologians have worked hard to explain that one away, and they can manage to cover some of it by referencing stuff that happened around the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. But some of the events Jesus foretold there most certainly did not happen within the lifetimes of his original listeners. It doesn’t matter how much you try to chalk up to apocalyptic language and metaphor.

It’s worth pointing out that neither of those passages are about the return of Christ. One is about seeing the Son of Man coming in His Kingdom. That does not say return. It is a fundamentalist reading Carter has thrown onto the text. The same with Matthew 24:34. Jesus hadn’t even left and His disciples would have thought He was becoming king. They had no concept of Him leaving so why would they ask about a return? No. This is also talking about the same thing and I would contend that both of those happened in 70 A.D. Carter says it doesn’t matter how much you try to chalk it up to apocalyptic language or metaphor. Yes. Because obviously Jesus should have spoken for modern 21st century Americans and if He didn’t, then we can just throw it out. Sounds again like a subjective criteria….

Now we get to what Carter says the excuses are. (None of them speak of reading good scholarship on the material of course.)

One could perhaps argue that this prayer of Jesus shouldn’t count as a “testable promise” in the same vein as the other things I mentioned above. But then why was it recorded for us in the first place, if not to be communicated to the world along with the rest of their message? Clearly we were meant to know of this request, so recalling it here is completely appropriate. Often the Bible says that Jesus went off alone to pray, and presumably we shouldn’t know the content of those prayers since no one would have been around to record them (and yet we still are privy to some of them even though Jesus didn’t write any of this stuff himself). But in this case we are told what he prayed because he did it out loud in front of his followers.

Again, I question the testable claim, but how about saying this is shown because we are to know how Jesus handled the most important week of His life, the passion week. We are also to know Jesus’s prayer so we as good followers of His can do what we can to fulfill His desires. Carter assumes a modern scientific understanding of testing the claim, which again puts us in a bizarre world. It could be that there is sufficient evidence that God raised Jesus from the dead vindicating His claims and yet somehow Christianity is false? Huh?

What about the second one?

One could also argue that there’s still time for God to answer this prayer in the affirmative. After all, doesn’t the Good Book say that “with him a thousand years is like a day?” Isn’t that the very rationalization used by Peter after decades had gone by with none of the apocalyptic predictions coming to pass (see 2 Peter 3:3-9)? He argues there that God is holding off on incinerating the earth out of a patient desire to allow as many to change their minds as possible. Isn’t that gracious of him?

Never mind that Carter’s literalism is coming in again, but I also don’t take this passage in that way. Do some things take time? Yes. No need to jump to 2 Peter 3 for that. Carter will contend as he does that that means that people for 20 centuries had no reason to not buy into Christianity, but this assumes that Carter’s idea is true that this is the clinching proof of Christianity, and it is not. The clinching proof is the resurrection. (Again, Carter seems to like to use subjective criteria. Looks like not much has changed in his thinking. It’s only his loyalty that’s different.)

Perhaps the saddest part of all to me is how the more self-aware Christians will take a post like this and just use it as yet another tool for beating themselves up. If the Christian message teaches people anything, it’s to be responsive to guilting. But beating up the church for its inability to maintain unity down through the centuries doesn’t make sense, either, because aren’t prayers supposed to be asking God to make things happen that only he can do? If this is something miraculous, something which requires divine provision, then why are you guilting yourselves for the failure of this prayer? Which one of you is God, now?

No. This is not said to be something miraculous. If anything, for the time of Jesus, everything was thought to come from God or the gods. You were to give thanks in all things and there was no divide between the natural and the supernatural for them, which is another reason I don’t accept the distinction. The divine was involved in everything. The same would go with obedience. You were to pray to be faithful, to not be led into temptation, etc. This does not involve God shooting you with a magic power to make you do His will. This is just your prayers become a way of actively subjugating yourself to God and thus changing your will to work with His.

Does this mean there is no grounds by which the church should speak to itself? Of course not. We are to motivate one another to good works and this prayer should raise a desire for all of us to try to come together. Will we agree on everything? No. Can we agree on the essentials? Yes.

Now let’s hope internet skeptics up their game and try to go after the resurrection instead of, you know, this subjective stuff.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: Paul’s Divine Christology

What do I think of Chris Tilling’s book published by Eerdmans? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

For some time, names like Bauckham and Hurtado and others have been dominant in discussions of Christology as we have seen more and more movement to what is called an early High Christology. In fact, this Christology is so early and high that it has been said that the earliest Christology is the highest Christology. Jesus from the resurrection is said to be seen as within the divine identity and is fully God and fully man. This alone is a powerful argument for the reality of the resurrection as it would take something quite remarkable to convince devout Jews that a crucified Messiah figure was not only really the Messiah, but God incarnate.

Chris Tilling is also a voice in this debate. Tilling was one of the people who contributed to Michael Bird’s project of How God Became Jesus. Tilling is an enjoyable scholar to read who I think is serious in everything he does. Why? Because when you see his Facebook page and his own blog, he is often quite humorous and there is no contradiction between being humorous and being serious. Yet when it comes to the New Testament, Tilling is a force to be reckoned with and knows the material very well. In fact, a look at his argument for an early high Christology is a way of saying that we have missed the forest for the trees.

One of my favorite shows that unfortunately has not only gone off the air now but has had the book series come to an end was the series Monk about the obsessive-compulsive homicide detective. My parents always wanted me to see if I could solve the case before Adrian Monk. The episodes can be enjoyable to watch again and when you do, you can look back at the cases that are solved and see all the clues you missed the first time through and think “Why didn’t I see that the first time?” Reading Tilling’s book can be like that. It can make you think about passages in the NT and say “Why didn’t I think of that the first time?”

Tilling relies not on a philosophical idea such as the God of the philosophers, but notes that the identity of God in Jewish thought was based on His covenant relationship with Israel. Only God was said to be in that covenant. If that is the case, then what about seeing if someone else suddenly shows up in this relationship and has a similar relationship to Israel? What if they have a similar relationship to the church, which is pictured as in the covenant of Israel as well. What if we find analogies from the OT that are used of YHWH and Israel and yet when we find their counterparts in the NT, it’s Christ and the church?

It really is a simple idea, and yet it’s a remarkable one as the Christ-relation shows up all throughout the NT. Just look and see how Paul, who Tilling is focusing on, speaks so highly of Christ and never even really a hint of holding back. You never see Paul giving a warning about saying to not go too far in your adoration of Christ. Instead, Paul speaks as if it was his natural language of his devotion of Christ and His role in salvation history. We have phrases like “To live is Christ”, “I sought to know nothing other than Christ crucified”, and “Live to the Lord” with Christ as the Lord. This is not even counting the references that seem to explicitly make reference to the deity of Christ like Romans 9:5 or the maranatha in 1 Cor. 16.

In fact, thinking along these lines, just recently I was pondering marriage as it’s a topic I read up on a lot more now that I have my own Mrs. and was pondering the idea of how Christ loved the church and then thought along the lines of Tilling about why Paul says that. Paul could have easily said “As God loved Israel”, but he didn’t. He chose to use Christ and the church and in effect is saying that Christ is the supreme example of love and it’s not the love of God, but just the love of Christ. The Christ-relation is indeed a huge impact and it should be one that the scholarly world is looking at for some time.

Now for some criticisms. There were times in the book that I thought it looked like Tilling was going more for quantity than for quality. You’d have a shotgun approach I thought of several different passages but they weren’t engaged with as much depth as I would like. There were times I would have liked to have seen a few passages explored in greater depth and then you could find several analogous passages that are like that one.

Also, there are times a layman could get lost at a few passages. It would be good to see something like this reproduced on a more popular level especially for those laymen in the field who will be meeting groups like the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Christadelphians. An argument like Tilling’s would be an invaluable reference for the furtherance of the Gospel and answering those who wish to challenge the deity of Christ and the fact that the argument is simple and powerful and has loads of verses in support of it is extremely helpful.

Overall, this is a book well worth your time to read and I suggest you do so.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: Paul Was Not A Christian. The Original Message Of A Misunderstood Apostle

What do I think of Pamela Eisenbaum’s book published by HarperCollins? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I often read mythicist material so when I see a book titled “Paul was not a Christian” I immediately start to suspect that this is the kind of material I’m going to be looking at. I must say I was pleasantly surprised. She is actually a rarity in that she is a Jewish New Testament scholar and she does have a Ph.D. in the field. If someone comes here thinking they will find something along the lines of a mythicist argument or conspiracy theory nonsense, they will not find it. Instead, one will find interaction with other leading scholars in the field and a scholarly argument from Eisenbaum’s side.

And yet, if the title is an indication of the message she wants us to get, I ultimately think she fails. Before I say why that is, let’s look at what she does say.

Eisenbaum is rightly concerned about a negative view of Judaism that too many Christians have. In this, she is correct. We often have this idea that Jews were suffering under the weight of the Law and wondering how they could be holy before a God who was just demanding so much of them and would have loved any chance of grace. This in spite of the fact that the OT regularly speaks about forgiveness and grace. This despite the fact that in Philippians 3 Paul describes himself as blameless with regard to the Law. Sure, there were disputes in Judaism over who was and wasn’t a Jew and what got one to be considered a Jew, but it was not really the legalistic system that some Christians make it out to be. More power to Eisenbaum in critiquing this view.

I also agree with Eisenbaum that too often we make the central message of Paul to be justification by faith. Is this a message of Paul? Yes. Is it the main message? No. His message would have also been that of Jesus and justification by faith was an outworking of that message. Paul’s message would have centered around Jesus being crucified and resurrected. The emphasis on justification by faith assumes the point above being contested, that Paul lived in a world where Jews were struggling under the Law and that they just wanted a way to be righteous before God. Most of them already saw themselves as righteous before God. The Law was not followed so they would be righteous, but to show that they were righteous.

Eisenbaum is certainly also right that we should take Paul’s identity as a Jew seriously, especially since he himself said he was one. Paul should be seen as a Jew who was well-learned in the Hellenistic culture of the time. One of the great realities that has had to be learned in the quest for the historical Jesus is that Jesus was a Jew. The same needs to be said about Paul as well. Paul was a Jew. It’s important also to note that while Eisenbaum wants to make sure Paul is not seen as anti-Jewish, and he is not, Eisenbaum herself is not anti-Paul. Nothing in the book is meant to put Paul in a negative light. In fact, Paul is highly respected throughout Eisenbaum’s work and she seriously wrestles with what he says.

Eisenbaum does say that the social context Paul wrote in was not monolithic or homogeneous due to multiple writings going around and the canon was a fourth-century development, but this could be a kind of all-or-nothing thinking. Were there disputes and factions and such? Yes. Were there however unifying beliefs that we find? Yes. We could be sure Paul would not include anyone in the body who did not believe in the resurrection of Jesus in a bodily sense. After all, in 1 Cor. 15 if Jesus has not been raised then our faith is in vain, which has the assumption that the faith of all of us is that Jesus has been bodily raised.

Eisenbaum is also right that Paul does not use the language of conversion. Does he speak of a call of Jesus and the appearance of Jesus to Him? Yes. Eisenbaum is certainly right that this does not mean that Paul ever ceased to be a Jew and too often we have used the language of conversion. In fact, Richards, Reeves, and Capes in their book Rediscovering Paul also agree and say we should speak more of the call of Paul than we should speak of the conversion.

I also agree with Eisenbaum that Romans 7 is not an autobiographical account of Paul’s personal struggles. I see it more at this point as a description of Adam who was the last named character. Paul would not have described himself as alive apart from the Law for instance and when we read his account in Philippians 3, we see no such idea of a struggle with Paul. This is something in fact that Westerners have read into the text.

Throughout the book then, the reader will find relevant material on the new perspective on Paul, what makes a Jew a Jew, and the early Christian view of Jesus. Now there were some points I did disagree with. I disagree with her view on Christology and I think the work of scholars like Bauckham, Tilling, Hurtado, and others have definitely shown that the earliest Christology is the highest Christology. I also disagree with her that the crucifixion would not necessarily have been seen as falling under the Deuteronomic condemnation of those who were hung on a tree. I think Evans has made an excellent case in his latest book, though to be fair this definitely came out after Eisenbaum’s writing.

So in all of this, why is it then that I disagree with Eisenbaum’s claim that Paul was not a Christian? There’s a very simple reason.

Nowhere did I see Eisenbaum state what a Christian is.

It could be tempting to say that of course we all know what a Christian is, but that still needs to be addressed. For instance, if being a Christian means citing the Nicene Creed and affirming a formulaic view of Trinitarian theology, then would we say that it could be there were no Christians and no Christianity until later in church history? This sounds like an absurd position to take. If we say that a Christian for Paul would be someone who saw Jesus as the resurrected Messiah and Lord of all, then we could definitely say that Paul was a Christian. The problem is that Eisenbaum argues throughout that Paul never ceased to be a Jew so he would not have been a Christian, but this makes it be that if one is a Jew, one cannot be a Christian, and vice-versa. Ironically, Eisenbaum who is arguing that Christianity does not mean opposition to Judaism has herself created an opposition to Christianity in her work. That one cannot be a Jew and a Christian both would certainly be news to many Messianic Jews today.

This is the main problem then I find. Eisenbaum has written that Christians have imposed a split and she herself has that exact same split the other way. This should not detract from the excellent material in her work and we should take the views of Judaism from such a scholar seriously and we should learn to read Paul as a Jew, but we should still also read Paul as a Christian and in fact, because he was a Christian, he was exceptionally Jewish. After all, if Jesus is the Jewish Messiah, and He is, what could be more in line with being a Jew than believing in the Messiah of the Jews?

So by all means go out and read this work for the scholarly insights within, but the main point is still not established. Much of what Paul said has been misunderstood due to what our culture has imposed onto the text, but the dichotomy is not really there and we as Christians should embrace the Jewishness of our Christian brother Paul.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: The Chosen People

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

As an IVP reviewer who has a passion for the NT and thinks that our modern individualism so often misreads the text, I took notice when I saw a book come out about election in Second Temple Judaism. I try to avoid the Calvinism/Arminianism debate with everything I have and have surprised a lot of friends by not jumping onto the middle ground of molinism. Thornhill’s book then sounded like something right up my alley.

Thornhill writes to help us see what election would mean for Paul and what would it mean to be a Jew and how would you be included within the spectrum of Judaism. It’s often been said that it was not Judaism that existed at the time of Paul but rather Judaisms. We could compare it to many Christian denominations today. There are some who will have an incredibly wide umbrella and accept most anyone in. There are some who will make incredibly small. I’ve heard the joke many times about Saint Peter welcoming someone to heaven and having them go by a room where they’re told to be quiet and when asked why is told “Those are the (Southern Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, etc.) and they’re somber because they think they’re the only ones here.

This is why Thornhill goes to the Jewish writings of the time to look and see how the Jews identified themselves. What were negotiables? What were non-negotiables? What did it mean to be elect and how did one maintain one’s role in the covenant with YHWH? Many times we have in the past thought that the law was this system put on Jews that they slaved under and struggled to follow and were just hoping that they were in the grace of God, but this really isn’t the case. Jews had quite different views and while no one would really say being born a Jew was a free pass, most were not trying to find a new way of salvation. Paul himself definitely wasn’t. After all, in Philippians, he writes that with regards to the Law, he was blameless.

Thornhill’s main thesis in all of this is that election is not about individuals but about rather a group and whether one is in the group or not. Today, we could say that there is only one who is truly elect in Christianity and that is Jesus and those who are elect are those who are in Jesus. For the Jews, it would have been recognizing who is truly in Israel and who isn’t. Our debates on free will and soteriology might in fact be a surprise to Jews if they were here today. Could it be that many of them would say “God is sovereign and man has free will and we just don’t know how that works out but that’s for God to do.”?

Thornhill does not speak on the Calvinism/Arminianism issue directly, but he does give food for thought. Could it be that perhaps we will move past this debate by realizing that our focus on individualism is something that we are reading into the text itself and try to approach it more the way the ancient reader would have read it, or dare I say it, more the way the apostle Paul would have been thinking when he wrote it?

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Deeper Waters Podcast 11/14/2015: YEC vs. OEC

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

This week, I’m going to be putting announcements up early for the podcast. Why? Because I’m visiting my in-laws for Thanksgiving and going early so that we can go to ETS/EPS together so if you’re there and you want to find me, let me know. We’ll see what we can do. Since I will be out, I do not plan on blogging and I cannot guarantee I’ll get the show in your ITunes feed ASAP, but I’m going to try! Today, I’ll be writing about what’s coming up Saturday and then tomorrow, who will be on on the 21st, and then the next day my guest for the 28th.

Christians are not without their share of disagreements. One that often raises its head up today is the age of the Earth. What does the Bible teach? Is it in accord with what we know from science? Does science tell us that the Earth is young or old? What does that say about questions like animal death before the fall? Would God have created a good creation that had predatory activity in it?

A few months ago I was contacted by Jay Hall who wanted to come on my show to promote his book on YEC. Now I do not hold to YEC so I laid a condition. I could have him come on if he would be willing to debate an OEC. He agreed and when I sent out a call for one, Ben Smith answered the call. Books have been exchanged and I’ve read both of theirs. Now we prepare for the second debate we’ve had on Deeper Waters. Also, while I am OEC, I will do my best to avoid any bias and it will be up to you and my guests to decide if I did a good job.

Our first debater to enter the ring in this next episode is Jay Hall. Who is he?

Jay Hall_pic

According to his bio:

Jay Hall is Assistant Mathematics Professor at Howard College in Big Spring, Texas. He has a Master of Science degree in Mathematics from the University of Oklahoma. Hall has 53 credit hours of Science courses in various disciplines. He has taught at the High School, Technical School and Community College levels. He also has experience in the actuarial field for a number of insurance and consulting organizations. Hall has previously published the Math textbook Calculus is Easy and has a paper on MathWorld. (One-Seventh Ellipse) He is also a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. You may contact Jay Hall at YoungEarthScience@yahoo.com, his website is YoungEarthScienceBook.com – go here to find the YES-YoungEarthScience YouTube page and connect on the various social media platforms.

As you’ve probably guessed, Jay will be arguing for YEC.

Our second contender in the ring is Ben Smith. Who is he?

Ben Smith current photo

According to his bio:

Ben Smith has been studying and teaching theology and apologetics for 30 years since becoming a Christian while attending Ga. Tech. He is the author of the book Genesis, Science, and the Beginning available now on Amazon and Kindle. He has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Christian Worldview and Apologetics from Luther Rice College and Seminary. He is the Ratio Christi Chapter Director at the University of West Georgia in Carrollton GA, teaches apologetics at Christ Fellowship Church, and is a regular speaker at the Atlanta chapter of Reasons To Believe ministries which meets at Johnson’s Ferry Baptist Church in Marietta, GA. He is president of Discovering the Truth Ministries.

We’ll be discussing the issues of science and Scripture both on this show. I hope to have a fair debate and I hope to have you listening.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

On Mental Illness

Is there an elephant in the room? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

What kinds of questions would an apologist most want to answer? Wouldn’t it be the questions that people are asking the most? Who wants to bother answering a question no one is answering? That makes sense, so why are we not answering the questions people are asking the most? What questions are those? Is it the question of creation vs. evolution? No. Is it the question of if the Bible is reliable? No. It is the question of did Jesus rise from the dead? No. Is it the question of just evil in general and why a good God allows that? No. If Jeremiah Johnston’s ministry is any gauge of questions, the #1 area of questioning that comes into his ministry of the Christian Thinkers Society is the question about mental illness and all that it entails. He has some fascinating information this in his book Unanswered.

And do you remember the last time you heard a sermon from the pulpit about reaching and helping those with mental illnesses and understanding them?

I can’t either.

It’s really quite sad how we treat these kinds of conditions. If we learn that brother Jim has come down with cancer, we’ll have the church put him on our prayer chain and we’ll bring some food over to his house so his wife doesn’t have to do all the cooking and we’ll visit him in the hospital and we’ll remind him that God is with him no matter what. If brother Jim instead had depression, we’d be more prone to tell him that he should just be reading his Bible more and to have a bit more faith and oh yeah, he also doesn’t need to worry about taking any of those strange medications for depression. He just needs to rely on Jesus. (I know that not all Christians would take this approach, but too many would)

There’s a reason that mental illness isn’t talked about much in the church and that’s one of them.

I am also in a unique position to write about this. Johnston in his book writes that most people you meet with mental illness will look and seem to act just like you. I know this well because I am one of them. Mental illness does not mean you’re stupid. Many of us can be very bright. It does not mean you don’t love Jesus. Many of us have a great love of Jesus. It does not mean you lack faith. Many of us strive to walk a life of faith just like the rest of you do. It just means we have something different in our brains that affects how we act much like someone with a physical disorder has something different in their body. You would not tell someone in a wheelchair that they have a lack of faith. (Okay. Again some would, but I hope most of you wouldn’t.) They just have something in some part of their body that prevents them from moving like normal. Why say the same to someone with a mental illness?

For those who haven’t been around my blog enough, the mental condition I have as well as my wife is Aspergers, which is a form of autism. It’s my understanding that the term Aspergers is being cycled out now, but I still prefer to use it. Force of habit maybe. What does it mean to be an “Aspie” as we call ourselves and not a “neurotypical” as we call you? Well we’re all quite different, but there are a number on the spectrum who are non-verbal and incapable of speaking much if any. That’s not my wife and I. It does mean we don’t understand social situations well and can have difficulty with eye contact and we can have fixations and get obsessed with matters easily. We do not have a mild interest in anything. We usually have an all-out interest in it. When you speak to us, chances are, we will not look you in the eye. I have found for me that if my schoolwork does not have some order or structure to it, I find it difficult to do it. We are also quite prone to taking terms literally when we shouldn’t. (Amusing since I am an orthodox Preterist who does not take many passages of the Bible in the “wooden literal” sense.)

What are the statistics on this? According to the CDC:

About 1 in 68 children has been identified with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) according to estimates from CDC’s Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network. [Read summary] [Read article]
ASD is reported to occur in all racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups. [Read summary] [Read article]
ASD is almost 5 times more common among boys (1 in 42) than among girls (1 in 189). [Read article]
Studies in Asia, Europe, and North America have identified individuals with ASD with an average prevalence of about 1%. A study in South Korea reported a prevalence of 2.6%. [Data table] [Read article]
About 1 in 6 children in the United States had a developmental disability in 2006-2008, ranging from mild disabilities such as speech and language impairments to serious developmental disabilities, such as intellectual disabilities, cerebral palsy, and autism. [Read summary]

Chances are someone in your church is on the spectrum and in fact, while I would consider myself a Christian speaker who is on the spectrum and someone with some degree of authority in the field, I am not the only one. My friend Stephen Bedard announced that he was recently diagnosed with autism here. He has a number of books available on Amazon including one he wrote with Stanley Porter. He and I discussed how to make a church more autism friendly on my show here.

Another prominent figure who is on the spectrum is in fact Hugh Ross of Reasons To Believe. Dr. Ross has an incredibly encyclopedic memory of the things that he has read, which is something a number of people on the spectrum have and has been an advocate for awareness of autism. He also came on my show during Autism Awareness Month to talk about his life with autism and that can be found in the second hour of my interview with him here.

Of course, autism isn’t the only disorder, but before I move on to another one, I want to say something. Many times when I read someone saying something about me, they will say that I suffer with Autism or Aspergers. This is inaccurate. I live with a condition. I have some extra burdens from the condition from time to time. I do not suffer because suffering is a choice. I in fact choose to thrive with my condition and I like some of the advantages I think my different brain wiring gives me. Frankly, if there came out a cure for autism disorders tomorrow and I could be given it for free, I doubt that I would take it. This does not mean that some people do not suffer, but it does mean that suffering is not a term that should be put on someone immediately.

How about depression? We can often think that this is surely a spiritual malady. After all, aren’t we to have joy in all things? Indeed, we are, and to be fair, there are a number of things someone with depression can do to improve their mood, but at the same time, there are medications that can help as well. We could tell someone recovering from a surgery that they need to do some exercises in order to get their body back into good condition again, but that does not mean we won’t give them pain medication. I have been in the hospital before for scoliosis surgery, which means I have a degree of curvature to my spine. It was corrected by strapping a steel rod onto my spine. (I tell Allie she’s married to the man of steel.) When I got out of the hospital, I was increasingly given limited exercises to do to learn how to simply walk again, but I was also given medication because I was in a heck of a lot of pain. Why should my back condition be seen as something it’s okay to take medication for and yet depression isn’t?

So let’s get some facts clear of some things to NOT say to a depressed person.

Do NOT say anything to increase their guilt, such as saying “If you loved Jesus more, you’d feel better.” “If you prayed more, God would deliver you.” “If you read your Bible more, you’d get over this.” Now I do think all of those are good but the reality is we can ALL improve on them. I think if we love Jesus more we will do better in life. If we pray more and read our Bibles more, we will be stronger in life, but that does not mean that we will have deliverance from depression. Am I saying God cannot heal? No. Am I saying miracles cannot happen? No. I am saying that we are not guaranteed these things and it could be sometimes God does not do a miracle because He wants to show the world what He can do through flawed creatures, like we all are.

Also, do not please say such nonsense as casting a demon out of someone who has depression. It’s very easy to blame a lot of problems on demons. If all of our sin was due to demonic activity, that would mean we are not responsible for any of it. We often talk in the church about how the devil is tempting us to do XYZ. Frankly friends, the devil doesn’t have to do anything to have me be tempted to sin. It’s pretty easy to find temptation all on my own. This is indeed an area where we all, depressed or not, have to learn to practice the spiritual disciplines. That is also a battle that ultimately never ends because we are all always continuing in sanctification.

And also, do not try to help the person seriously if you are not trained in doing so. The reality is those who try to “fix” someone with a mental condition can be more prone to doing a whole lot more harm than good, despite what their intentions may be. Of course, you should seek to help someone who is struggling with this and one of the best ways that you can do this is in fact by listening to such a person. You don’t necessarily have to offer advice. If the person is okay with it, you can give them a hug or something and you can offer to pray with them. Many of these people would just like someone to listen to them and they can know they’re not alone. They don’t have to carry the burden alone.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH):

Major depressive disorder is one of the most common mental disorders in the United States. Each year about 6.7% of U.S adults experience major depressive disorder. Women are 70 % more likely than men to experience depression during their lifetime. Non-Hispanic blacks are 40% less likely than non-Hispanic whites to experience depression during their lifetime. The average age of onset is 32 years old. Additionally, 3.3% of 13 to 18 year olds have experienced a seriously debilitating depressive disorder.

Depression is much more common than you realize and with it we could include other conditions like bipolar disorder. Having depression or a condition like it does not mean you are a bad Christian. It does not mean God is angry with you. It does not mean that God is punishing you. We would not say this is the case immediately if someone had cancer. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with evaluating your life when pain strikes and seeing if there is anything you need to work on, but that does not mean we should jump to the idea that all suffering you have is because God does not care about you or is actively angry with you.

If you want to help someone like this, be in it for the long haul. There are no quick fixes save a miracle of God and you cannot bring that about on your own. Be prepared to walk and talk with the person who is suffering from depression and mainly be a friend and just listen to them. Of course, you can give advice from time to time, but make sure the person is really open to the advice. Fortunately, more churches are starting to open up to this kind of thing. This is especially the case since so many churches have groups now such as Celebrate Recovery to help people overcome any problems that they have.

Also, people might not necessarily get over something like this. It can be a lifelong battle. One time I took my wife to a Weight Watchers meeting to help her in her dieting. I know about the organization that everyone who is a teacher in the program or a leader in some capacity has been through the program. Many of them you would never guess by looking at them and I asked a lady at the counter “So you all struggled with weight loss?” She immediately corrected me “struggle with weight loss.” This is why you don’t go to an AA meeting and hear someone say “I used to be an alcoholic.” Instead, they say “I have been sober for X years.”

With this, we must go down a darker path still and realize that many times, someone with depression will be prone to committing suicide. Let’s not hold back at one area here. Suicide is a sin. It is wrong and it is condemned by Scripture since Scripture prohibits murder. Still, there is no Scripture that says suicide is the unpardonable sin. There is no Scripture that says that if you commit suicide, you are bound for Hell. That does not at all mean that we should take suicide lightly. We should realize that like any other sin, we should seek to prevent it from taking place and the reality is, we can do that.

For those struggling with this, this is never the answer. In fact, someone who sees a loved one commit suicide never fully recovers. Most of us remember the news about Robin Williams committing suicide. When my wife and I were dating, I brought over the movie Patch Adams for us to watch and laugh over together. Now we suspect we will never be able to watch it again. Closer to the Christian community was the fact that a couple of years ago Pastor Rick Warren’s son committed suicide. Some of you may disagree with Rick Warren on some theological issues but this is not the place to discuss those. Rick and Kay Warren wrote about their struggles here and there is a fund to help fight mental illness here.

The effects of suicide never go away. I heard of a man in his 60’s whose Dad died by suicide when he was 8 and to that day, the man still asked everyday why his Dad did that. He didn’t understand. Why did his Dad not want to be a part of his life? You can learn to go on living after a loved one commits suicide, but you never really get over it. In fact, if a person commits suicide, they will increase the chances that a loved one of theirs will commit suicide. Please. If you are struggling with this, contact a health care professional immediately or call the National Suicide hotline: 1-800-273-TALK (1-800-273-8255). Please go and like their page. They somehow use Facebook to pinpoint locations to better help people. Their page can be found here.

Also included in this could be cutters. These are people who struggle with depression and relieve it by giving themselves bodily injury with things like knives, scissors, etc. This is also something that we should not accept in the church. Still, while we do not approve of the action, we should have compassion on those who struggle. Some of you might be hearing about cutting and think that that doesn’t make much sense. It doesn’t have to make sense to you. It is just the way that it is.

When American Sniper came out, PTSD became a major topic. It’s a shame that so many people who go and fight for our country come home and do not get the treatment they need when they start having flashbacks of a war they fought in. They can have night terrors where they wake up screaming and could even in a moment of panic hurt someone around them. This isn’t just veterans. Anyone who goes through a major trauma of some sorts could come down with PTSD. There can also be a localized PTSD. As a small child I went to the beach with my parents and while out in the ocean, suddenly found myself underwater thanks to the undertow. To this day, I am terrified of water, much to my wife’s chagrin, and as logical as I try to be elsewhere, I start screaming and panicking in a swimming pool. One time she asked me to walk from one end of the pool to the other with her and even near the edge. The greatest depth I’d get to was about 5 feet. I’m about 5 foot 7. Three times on the walk down there I asked her if she’d taken out a life insurance policy on me recently. Is it embarrassing? Yep. Do I look forward to a day when I can enjoy the water with my wife? Yep. It’s a localized PTSD I have though where I panic about drowning. It was only a few years ago I was able to wash my face in the shower. That’s how severe it is.

I can only imagine it’s worse for far more traumatic events, such as being a child and witnessing a school shooting, or being a soldier and watching your buddies die in a horrible event. This kind of situation can be treated. Of course, barring a miracle, it will take time and it does not mean a person will ever be completely over it.

The great tragedy in all of this is that the church is not seen as a place where people with mental illness feel safe. In fact, the church can shun people who have a mental illness and when we do that, we cut away from the body some of the people who can best show us the power of Christ. Many of us think it can be hard to face reality when we have bills to pay, unemployment, health problems, etc. Imagine facing reality where your own brain many times can be your enemy and you live with that constant enemy. People who are able to keep fighting on in the midst of this should be our heroes and receive our support.

This is especially worse since we are supposed to be Jesus to everyone and in no way can I picture Jesus shunning someone because they have a mental illness. How can we truly show the love of Christ if we are shunning someone for something they cannot help? Now of course, we can certainly agree they can do something about their problems, such as learning a good coping skill, but that does not mean we blame them for their problems or tell them they have a lack of faith. Maybe, just maybe, if the church can start being the church we can end the stigma against mental illness and give the people of the world a safe place that they can go to.

Please consider helping those with mental illness today.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

A Contrast On Suffering

If you’re suffering, is God angry with you? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Yesterday a friend shared something on my timeline with a pastor speaking about how much money he had and why some people were still poor in the audience. Contrast this with what I was reading in Jeremiah Johnston’s Unanswered about the church in China. For them, the book of Acts is a living reality as miracles are taking place. Not only are miracles taking place, so is persecution. Christians are targeted and killed for being Christians. That is also in the book of Acts. It’s really fascinating when you consider hearing about both of these accounts on the same day. One of them is honoring of the Gospel. One of them is a mockery of it.

It’s strange that we look at the suffering in our lives and think that that means something is wrong. When we start to undergo suffering, we look back and see if there is some hidden sin in our past that we need to repent of and God is waiting until we find that sin and when we do, God will restore us. Many of us will turn to the book of Job in this, not realizing that Job in fact has Job suffering not because of any sin and the very idea that all suffering is a result of our individual sin is in fact denied in that book. It’s really more about will you continue to serve God even when life is hard.

If we live in a place like America in the West, we treat our own lives as the norm. This is the way Christianity is supposed to be and has been and when persecution comes, (Which we really haven’t seen yet) we treat it as something foreign to us. We have this idea that everything is supposed to go well and then there’s a lost job or a fallen marriage or a death in the family or cancer strikes and we figure God must be judging us somehow. We pray and we don’t hear anything from God and we think that He must be mad at us. (It doesn’t help that unfortunately, the church is loaded with pastors who talk about how God speaks to them and how God communicates with them and calls them and where God is leading them to go.) We think that if we aren’t hearing from God or experiencing a miracle (Yes. I’m talking to you preachers on TBN who seem to expect miracles-on-demand) then there’s something wrong with us.

Have we considered that there are Christians all around the world who are dying and suffering in prisons for their faith and not getting miracles to get out and not hearing from God and even more amazing, they probably have more joy in their lives than we do?

Why is that so?

Because we have ultimately become ungrateful people.

We have got so used to our standard of living that we think it’s practically owed to us. Christian. God does not owe you a single thing. The only thing He guarantees you is that which He has already promised you. God will keep His covenant. The question is will you keep yours? Will you honor Him always? If you will not come to Him and worship and praise just because your life is hard, then are you really worshiping Him for who He is instead of what He does for you? Now this does not mean there’s no place for questioning and doubt and even complaint and anger. Go read the Psalms. They’re loaded with those. It’s quite fine to have that. What it means is that you still don’t withhold from God even when life is hard. Anyone can be faithful when life is going good. The question is are you going to be faithful when life is hard.

Maybe when we get to this point where we’ll realize God never promised us safety and doesn’t owe us anything, then we will realize that all that He has given us is a gift of grace. Maybe instead of then looking at all that’s wrong in our lives, we’ll look at all that is good in our lives regardless. We’ll be more like martyrs in China and elsewhere when we do that. As it stands, if we are here in America and whining because life doesn’t go the way we want it to go, we are not ready to be martyrs and we will not be ready for whatever comes down our way. If we want to thrive and make a difference for Christ, we must change our attitudes. He promised He would walk with us, but He never promised He’d remove every burden from us.

In Christ,
Nick Peters