Category: Political

The Failure of Self-Esteem

Does it work to build up a child’s self-esteem? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I am going through The Bully Society now, among many other books. Something I am noticing in this book is the rampant problem of bullying in our schools. That’s not a shock. What causes it though is often making sure kids have the right fashions or that men are men and not coming across as feminine or “gay”. It’s odd that in schools, those who are educated are the ones who are the oddballs and the schools lavish everything on the athletes.

As I keep going through this, I have a dominant thought.

The self-esteem movement is a colossal failure.

We have spent so much time telling kids to feel good about themselves and be proud of who they are. Meanwhile, you have numerous kids around them telling them that they are shameful and embarrassing and they should not be proud of who they are. Who do children at that age want to please more generally? Their teachers and other adults, or their younger peers?

Knowing that, which voices are going to speak the most to them?

The problem with the self-esteem movement is that it is grounded in nothing. Think about how it is when you get a mass text or a mass email from a business that tells you how much they are thinking about you. You know they’re not. You’re just a name on a list. They don’t know who you are.

It is the same with the self-esteem movement. “Oh! You’re telling me all these wonderful things about me! Thank you so much! It means so much that you see me that way and….wait….you just said the exact same thing to them….and to that other person…and to the next one.”

At that point, you realize it has nothing to do with you.

Kids then want to go to the people who do know them and those are their peers. They will do anything because they want to be accepted and not rejected. They want to fit in. In principle, there’s nothing wrong with that. We all want to be accepted. We all hate rejection.

The problem can be sometimes these kids do things that they shouldn’t do because they want that acceptance. Status has been defined before as buying things you don’t want with money you don’t have to impress people you don’t like. It is really short-term thinking. It’s not about children building up good character, but about children being liked.

This also leads to them getting involved sexually. The problem is, they approach usually from very different standpoints. A man needs to be sexually active in society because that is what a man does. The man is not thinking about long-term commitment. He’s thinking about notches on his headboard and getting the woman naked. This is also why so many guys dump girls after they sleep with them.

Girls generally want love and often think “if I give the man what he wants, he will give me that love.” The sad thing is, it doesn’t work. The idea of feminist empowerment so that women can enjoy sex the way men does is a failure because women are not men. Women end up being used and the guy still gets what he wants most of the time.

So what are children chasing after for acceptance? Material things and sex. Why shouldn’t they? What else are they being given to ground their worth in?

The church definitely needs to improve. Often, our message is the same as the world’s, but with a Christian veneer painted on it. The goal is often to get young people to feel good about themselves instead of being good themselves. It is to determine how they stand with God based on their feelings instead of a sound understanding of Scripture.

That also means a whole teaching of theology and doctrine and the reasons behind it. Hard work? Yes. Would you prefer to keep doing what we’re doing instead? How is that working out?

Our young people are worth it. They need a solid foundation for who they are in Christ. Only then will they not chase after everything else for identity.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

 

 

Make It Engaging First

Does our material really connect? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I recently started reading Kevin J. Vanhoozer’s Mere Christian Hermeneutics. This is actually the first time I have ever read a book by him and I did not know what to expect. As I started going through, I found myself quite enjoying what I was reading.

There seems to be a hidden assumption among academics that their writings must be as dry and boring as possible. Yes. There is a tendency to think “Just the Facts” in Joe Friday style, but the prophets used vibrant language at times and the life of Jesus was put into the form of a story.

Consider these quotes from Vanhoozer:

“There are more things in discourse and text than are dreamed of in critical theory.” (p. 4)

An avid reader will recognize an allusion to Shakespeare immediately. Vanhoozer makes the point about how lacking critical theory is to the reading of Scripture, but does so in a way that sticks with the reader. The reader sees that and with a bit of bemusement goes on, but remembering the point.

Also on that same page:

“Consequently, we need not only to “test the spirits” (1 John 4:1) but also to test the hermeneutics. We need to conduct an experiment in criticism.”

Readers will here note a reference to Scripture, but others will note a reference to a work by C.S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism, in a book that is also itself a reference to Lewis in title, a take-off on Mere Christianity.

Things like this show up regularly in the work. The point is the reader feels engaged with then. If the reader is engaged in the material, they are more likely to remember the material and apply it.

About a year or so ago, I had Switch Online at the time on my Nintendo Switch and sat down and went through the first and second quests of the original The Legend of Zelda and then went through A Link to the Past. I could still do everything and find everything. Had I ever taken a test on these games? No. Was it even a necessity to find everything? No. You can finish the games without doing so. Had I been regularly reading material on those games to make sure I remembered where everything was? No.

I just engaged with the material and I learned it.

Quick. Try to think of two words that can be used to describe a long and boring talk. Two that I can easily think of and the ones you might have are sermon and lecture. If you go to a church on Sunday, what is the message often called? A sermon. If you go to your college or seminary classroom what do you get? A lecture. Quiz time. How much do you learn from those? If you’re like me, not much. Most of us the next day can’t remember what the pastor preached on yesterday. Some people can’t even remember a few hours later.

I watch a lot of gaming news and I am particularly interested in how my culture is responding to DEI. One such channel is the Kilted Cajun. I am going to use a slogan of his in talking about making good games and that is “Make it fun first.” I am modifying that a bit to say “Make it engaging first.”

We often have made this mistake in Christian media. How many of you have ever got together with non-Christian friends to go see something like a superhero movie? Sure. Most everyone wants to see those. How many of you have ever got together with some non-Christian friends to go see a Christian movie? Right. When was the last time you had people excited about a new Christian movie coming out?

The only one I can think of is something from The Chronicles of Narnia. Lewis was a master of this. Lewis was engaging. In Christianity, Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox all like to read Lewis. Atheists enjoy reading Lewis. I recall the account of one atheist who was stunned years later when she realized that Aslan was meant to picture Jesus. How many times had she been reading those books and unbeknownst to her, she was learning Christianity at the same time?

In the gaming field, this is the big mistake that the DEI crowd is making. They are forcing DEI into everything so that it’s artificial. To refer to another YouTuber, they are all about doing whatever they can to get in “The Message.”

Consider the case of Concord. This was a game that Sony spent at least $100 million on. Some places say as much as $400 million. It was at least eight years in the making. It was hoped to produce a major franchise.

Most FPS franchises nowadays are free to play and buy with the money coming from in-game purchases. That was the first strike against Concord. The major problem seems to be that the game was incredibly woke pushing things like pronouns.

DEI is so bad that there has even been a website set up to warn people about games that have DEI in them. I used to play Pokemon Go regularly, until they had a developer come in who remade the avatars and pretty much erased male and female from them. All the bodies had to look exactly the same.

There was recently a remake released of Dragon Quest III. I loved the original game, but I am not getting the remake. Why? Woke is in it. Instead of male and female for your character, you have type A and type B. Nothing uplifts women like referring to their bodies as Type B.

Why is this ruining games? Same reason. The material is not engaging. The message comes first and then they try to strap a narrative or a game on top of that. No one wants it. It would be interesting for a company like Square Enix to release another version of the Dragon Quest III Remake and have it be one without the woke stuff in it and see if it sells better. Prediction. It would.

In all of this, I am not at all suggesting that we lower the importance of facts and data. I am saying we need to consider how the material is coming across. We can have the best material in the world, but if no one wants to engage with the material, no one will get it. No one will learn it.

A teacher can have the best information, but if his students aren’t engaged when he teaches, then they won’t remember it long-term. They can study and learn it for a test, but they will forget it after. A preacher can work hard on a sermon, but if the audience does not feel engaged, they will not recall it or practice it. How this is done is up to the speaker and producer of whatever material is there, but it needs to be done.

We have a long history of bad media being made because we focused on message instead of the packaging. Now the woke are making the same material and we can see what we were doing for years. Let’s learn from our mistakes and their mistakes.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Why Do Christians Doubt Science?

Why are so many Christians skeptical of science? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

When I say Christians, let me be clear at the start that I am speaking largely of lay Christians. There are several devout Christians in the sciences. Also, I do not think a lot of Christians doubt everything in science. Most Christians still cook food using tools of science and drive cars and travel by airplane.

Yet somehow, it seems there is an increase in the skepticism of claims of science.

In all honesty, I’m one of them also.

Why?

There are two great tragedies I think have happened in scientific history. The first is that there was a false warfare started between science and religion. This meant people had to choose one or the other normally. Atheists would ignore anything religious and quickly dismiss it and miss out on eternal life from a Christian perspective. On a more pragmatic level, there are Christians with great minds who could have gone into scientific fields, but were told they had to choose science or Christianity.

On the other hand, Christians bunkered down a lot more in their own circles and didn’t invest enough in the scientific enterprise. They perpetuated a myth that had been started. Christians could have been doing wonders in science, and yet the warfare continued. Christians got injected with a heavy dose of scientific skepticism.

The second great tragedy I consider far worse for the scientific enterprise.

That was when science married politics.

At least, on the outside looking in, that’s what it looks like.

Let’s go back to 2020 and the Covid controversy going on. Narratives were controlled then. If you said the virus came from a lab in China, you were a racist and a conspiracy theorist. Now, that is accepted truth. Many of us were skeptical of masks and school shutdowns. Looking back, it seems that we were right.

Any mention of hydroxychloroquine was off-limits, especially since it was espoused by the bad orange man. The same happened with Ivermectin. I remember active debates with people who were arguing that people were being encouraged to take horse medication.

Then the vaccines came out. I thought that would be the end of it. I was wrong. Suddenly, you didn’t just need the shot, you needed several boosters of the shot. We were also told if we didn’t get a shot, we were a danger to those who had got the vaccine somehow. It made no sense to us.

Not only that, anything contrary was quickly shut down. Yes. We saw the emails between Fauci and Collins and others. We saw that the science was being controlled and if you dared raise questions, you were anti-science.

And yet, many of us thought raising questions was what science was about.

Many of us also knew people who suffered long-term side-effects from the vaccine. Those stories were ignored as well. The information was being controlled and people would be punished somehow on social media. I remember making a joke post about what the best place was to farm for vaccines on Final Fantasy IX only for Facebook to automatically put up something on my post about contacting the CDC.

Now let’s talk about global warming also.

Many of us have seen threats of doom and gloom and the funny thing is, every prediction in the past that the due date has arrived, it has proven false. I remember being taught in Elementary school back in the 80’s that an ice age was coming. Leonard Nimoy talked about it back in 1979.

Now imagine if we had done something radical back then and taken steps to warm the planet. Where do you think we would be today with the hysteria? The problem many of us see is that the solution is always the same and well, it always seems to come down to more government control and more power for politicians.

Funny how that works out.

We also see all these celebrities talking about the crisis and we all need to cut back while they fly off on their private jets. We see politicians talk about the oceans are about to rise and then they buy oceanfront property. It always seems like the environmental stuff is what everyone else is supposed to do.

By the way, none of this is allowed to be questioned either.

You can also add in transgenderism where we’re told to deny basic biology. It is interesting that it seems to be abortion where people don’t want to look at the science the most and really turn philosophical. It may be a baby, but is it a person? Again, all of this seems tied to one end of the political spectrum.

For me, I can say that since Covid, I have grown a lot more suspicious. We have also seen in our political news how quickly stories get covered up and buried. Many of us do get suspicious.

This is ultimately why many Christians, and also many non-Christians are skeptical today. It’s not because we’re hiding thinking our worldview is in danger. It is because that science often seems to be science tied to an agenda. We live in an age where people are questioning narratives and if science seems married to a narrative, they will question whatever aspect is tied to it.

Until the average layman can tell that the two are not married, they will question whatever aspects of science seem tied to that union. Will this have worse consequences down the line? I am sure it will. Sadly, for many of us, it looks like the enemy came from within.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

Opening Thoughts on School Shootings

What causes school shootings? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I have been doing a research paper for class on the alleged link between video games and violence and what better place to look than what people always point to, school shootings. I have read a number of books on the topic and plan to until I finish the paper. Right now, I want to share the conclusions I have come to thus far.

First off, too often, we make our solutions way too simplistic. Violence has always been a part of mankind. It’s not going anywhere until Jesus returns. Also, the genie can’t be put back in the bottle. Whatever we might think of things like video games, television, movies, and social media, they are here at least for the long term.

It’s foolish to think “If we eliminate XYZ, then there will be no more school shootings.” No. That’s just looking for a scapegoat. I also think there’s no hard and fast rule in these cases. People are different and you can’t push XYZ buttons and guarantee that someone is going to be a school shooter. Kids can grow up in the same household and turn out radically different.

Getting to my thinking on this, I have discussed this with professors here including the counseling one who thinks this is quite valid. My theory is that there are three levels of interaction. If you don’t have level 1, 2 and 3 are more likely to affect you. If you don’t have 1 and 2, 3 is more likely to affect you.

Level 1 is the family and worldview unit a kid grows up with. Note a kid can have seemingly good parents and still have a problem if he thinks his parents don’t understand him. (I use he, but it’s interesting to point out that these shooters have been male consistently anyway.) On the other hand, a broken family unit is a problem. Mitchell, one of the Jonesboro shooters, had a biological father who was horrible.

This will also include the worldview that students grow up with. No. Bringing them to church every Sunday is no guarantee. Michael, who did his shooting at Heath High School in Paducah was apparently a churchgoing boy with his family. Mental illness was found to be a factor in that shooting later on, but there were other signs that were missed. (Read the book Rampage on this end.)

Kids don’t just need to be raised in the church, but have Christianity lived out with them and explained why it matters. There is a gold mine of information to help children with holy living if they will just see to it. We can’t just say it’s the responsibility of the pastor and youth pastor.

That is level 1.

Level 2 is the kid’s outside community. This includes what he goes through at school and how his peers and teachers see him. A common theme in some shootings has been that athletes in schools often get special treatment, something I wrote about as a journalist for my high school newspaper.

This includes bullying as well. A major problem I find with the stop bullying approach is we focus on the bullies. The best place to focus is on building up the good children since the bad ones don’t care about breaking the rules anyway. I also do not mean the self-esteem movement. I consider that by and large garbage. The best way for Christian kids to see themselves is to learn to embrace their identity in Christ.

There is a downside kids today have that many of us didn’t. Normally, bullying ended at school. Now with social media, it can last much longer. Parents. Please do not get young children on social media. Also, watch what they are doing.

Level 2 doesn’t just include the school. It can include church life as well as life in the community. Do your neighbors know your children? What about their friends’ parents?

Finally, we get to level 3 and this is individual media they consume. Frankly, if violent media were the problem, there would be a whole lot more violence in the world than there is. Not only that, it would be ridiculous to blanket condemn all violence. Not all violence is wrong. Kids need stories where evil gets defeated in the end. The Bible itself has a lot of violence in it.

If a child has a good understanding on levels 1 and 2, then there will be far less cause for worry on level 3. Also parents, as a gamer, I suspect your children if they are like I was would absolutely love it if you played a game with them. If you want to understand their games, really seek to understand them. If a child thinks their parents are really interested in their hobbies, it will build up a greater connection with them.

Notice in this I have also said nothing about things like gun control. I personally don’t think more laws will fix the problem. I also think another contributor that is far more influential is that the media bombards us with information about school shootings. This can easily generate fame for the shooters and the next one will want to be even more destructive for even more fame. I personally think we shouldn’t even share the names of school shooters and if we have to name them something, give them some embarrassing name. When we call a mysterious mass murderer the Zodiac Killer, that sounds mysterious. Give them a shameful name of some sort. Give a name that makes people laugh at them.

Anyway, those are my initial thoughts. Now I open it up to you. What do you think about school shootings and what can be done about them?

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: Liberty and the Things of God

What do I think of Robert Louis Wilken’s book? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

The subtitle of this book is the Christian Origins of Religious Freedom. At the start, Christianity was not treated well by the Romans. Tertullian was the first to actively speak about the freedom of religion in his apology for the Christians. (For those who don’t know, an apology is a defense in the ancient world. He is not saying the Christians had done anything wrong.)

As Tertullian says in chapter 24 of the work:

Let one man worship God, another Jupiter; let one lift suppliant hands to the heavens, another to the altar of Fides; let one — if you choose to take this view of it — count in prayer the clouds, and another the ceiling panels; let one consecrate his own life to his God, and another that of a goat. For see that you do not give a further ground for the charge of irreligion, by taking away religious liberty, and forbidding free choice of deity, so that I may no longer worship according to my inclination, but am compelled to worship against it. Not even a human being would care to have unwilling homage rendered him; and so the very Egyptians have been permitted the legal use of their ridiculous superstition, liberty to make gods of birds and beasts, nay, to condemn to death any one who kills a god of their sort. Every province even, and every city, has its god.

And thus, we have the first argument for freedom of religion, fifteen centuries before the Constitution.

Wilken also has an interesting section on conscience. The ancients would not find it sensical to say with Jiminy Cricket, “Let your conscience be your guide.” We read it individually in a passage like Romans 2. The ancients would have read it collectively. It was the idea that your actions had moral significance and could be judged by others. It comes from two words, scientia and con, meaning knowledge with.

By the time we get to the Reformation, this has changed in that conscience is more of an internal guide. (Now also, we often say it can be the voice of God, which is a much bigger problem.) So can one say that Luther was wrong when he invoked conscience in making his defense? If you do, you have to be aware that several Catholics at the time also invoked conscience for their own freedom to worship as they saw fit. Luther, like the Catholics of his time, was to some extent a product of his time.

From the Reformation on then, we have countless battles and controversies going on. The church used to be a solidifying factor of stability, but what happens when the church itself has divisions in its ranks? This is where the majority of the book looks. The main idea is often that there are two swords, the sword of the spiritual kingdom and the sword of the physical world and the kings have no jurisdiction on the former.

This is also why it’s such a big deal when the King of England breaks away and starts the church of England. All of a sudden, you have a king who is in charge of both spiritual and physical matters. What is to be done then?

When you read through the book, you also see that in all of this, both sides did awful things to each other. You will grimace at some of the ways that Catholics treated Protestants. It will be just as hard to read of the ways that Protestants treated Catholics. The freedom of religion that those of us in America today have is something we dare not take for granted.

While Wilken goes through many thinkers of the time in looking at the topic of freedom of religion, I have one major criticism of the book. I would have at least liked to have seen one chapter dedicated to the American experiment. How did our Founding Fathers take all of these and make freedom of religion so important in our country? What has been the result? Are we in danger of losing that freedom? (By the way, the answer to that last question is yes.)

If you like history and political ideas, this is a worthwhile book to read. Many times, people in our times look at where we are and think that it’s obvious that all should have this position today. It rarely is. Books like Wilken’s remind us that there were a lot of hard questions to ask along the way.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

The Nashville Manifesto

What are my thoughts on the shooter’s manifesto? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

When I found out the manifesto was available for reading, I decided to get it in wanting to be informed on the matter. Personally, I think the whole thing should have come out a lot earlier. Now this isn’t anything that’s formally typed out or anything like that so some parts were hard to read just for that reason.

Going through, I wanted to see what this person said about their mental state and really, that was also hard to read. So much was sad about this. This is a person who needed severe help and wasn’t getting it. Also, while I favor quoting material, due to the sensitive nature and not everyone wanting to see it themselves, I am not going to do that this time.

The first day I got it and started going through it, I remember reading it and seeing something said along the lines of “Love is not real if my Autism is.”

At that point, I had to close it up for a bit and get back to it later.

In some ways, I can understand. I watch society and I don’t know what people think. I don’t know what’s really going on with them. One of my favorite shows is The Big Bang Theory and even if you don’t like it, this is one of the best clips I have seen on that. I have read material behind the show and Sheldon is on the spectrum. They just didn’t want to say that officially. Look at what he says here and I give this to people as an example of what this is like.

For me, I don’t understand social cues. If my boss corrects me, is she mad at me and I am a disappointment? Is that girl flirting with me or just being nice? If I say something to her different, will she want to go out with me or will she think I’m a creeper? Do people really care about how I am doing or are they just saying that to be nice? Why do we greet each other in public but when we go home there’s no interaction?

Feelings are hard to understand, but I do know I do have people who love me and people who care about me. It can be hard to tell who they are sometimes, but it is real. I do know after a failed marriage, I am on guard around people more and just want people to be real. It’s painful when I think someone hasn’t trusted me.

Going through further, the shooter repeatedly said that everything hurts. They wanted to die. They also wanted God to forgive them. This wasn’t an angry atheist from what I see. This was someone very delusional wanting to take it out on the world.

The shooter also said that their father loved the cats more than the shooter was loved. I don’t know about their father, but fathers are extremely important. Kids need father love. I do remember they spoke some about their parents conservative values and that was extremely difficult for them.

Granted, I am only getting one side of the story, but parents need to make sure they love their children even if they think their thinking is delusional, and thinking you are the wrong sex is delusional. At the same time, too many parents panic. It’s understandable, but they do.

Years ago my wife was feeling suicidal and I took her to see a great therapist who taught counseling at the seminary. I was hoping he would see the emergency here, but I was stunned as he talked to her as calmly as if they were talking about the weather as if this was no big deal and added at the end, “I hope you stay.” Turns out, he was right. Not much of a shock. I learned from him that if you act panicked, the people you are trying to help will also panic.

This is also why when your children show up doubting their faith, don’t panic. Josh McDowell and Francis Schaeffer both were calm with their children and encouraged questioning and it worked both times. That being said, I do understand it’s more difficult now as most therapists will automatically affirm the delusional thinking and parents will be reported for not going along with it.

This was an incredibly sick individual. Sometimes, sex was described in ways that seemed tantamount to rape. They had some delusional fantasies, but overall, I think they just wanted to be loved.

Something we all want.

Here is something else sad about this.

The whole thing could have been prevented.

They wrote at one point they were surprised they were not arrested in 2021. None of those deaths had to happen. (FBI must have been too busy arresting grandmothers who went into the Capitol on J6 or going after pro-life protesters.) Friends. New laws won’t change this. Criminals do not care about the law and if you are sick enough to do something like what this person did, you definitely do not care about it.

We need a whole worldview change.

We need the gospel.

I urge you to be prepared if you want to read this manifesto. It is sad. It is difficult. Pray for everyone involved. Pray for the families of the victims. Pray for the family of the shooter. Pray for the survivors.

Pray we can stop the next one because one school shooting is one too many.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

Saint Or Antichrist?

Are either of these accurate? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

In light of the recent assassination attempt, something humorous is both sides are using the Bible to try to back a point. The left is using this as proof that Trump is the antichrist. The right is using this as proof that Trump has an anointing of God on him. I’m not going to say either of those positions is false, but I am going to say the arguments I see being made are just horrible.

So let’s start with the easier one.

You all know I’m an orthodox Preterist so I wouldn’t be reading this in any futurist sense at all, but for the sake of argument, I’m going to take a more dispensational approach. To begin with, the Bible doesn’t say that about the Antichrist. It says that about the Beast. Now aren’t those the same person? They could be, but Revelation never says that they are. That is an assumption that is brought to the text.

For the second point, I am not saying that what happened to the president is a mere matter, but put it in proper context. The overwhelming majority of us that had a bullet graze our ear would survive. That is not surprising. What makes the Beast surprising in the text is that his wound is fatal and yet he survives it. (It’s also one of his heads as the beast has multiple heads, but again, I’m assuming a more dispensational approach here.)

About the only way you would die from a bullet to the ear is if you had hemophilia and your blood couldn’t clot properly. The fact that Trump survived this is not incredible. Had it hit him full on as it would have if he had not turned his neck and yet he survived would indeed be incredible. (And even still, it would not show he was the Antichrist.)

That one’s fairly simple, but the right side coming from evangelicals is more complex.

In the Bible the concept of blood on the right ear (Leviticus 8:22-24 and 14:28) serves as a visible mark of consecration, signifying that the person is dedicated to God’s service and has been set apart for a specific purpose. This act represents a physical and spiritual transformation, preparing the individual for their sacred role. Here’s a breakdown of the significance:

*Right ear: The right ear represents hearing and obedience. In ancient times, the right ear was considered the most important ear, as it was the ear that heard the words of God.

*Blood: Blood represents life, sacrifice, and atonement. In this context, the blood is a symbol of purification and consecration. *Consecration: Consecration means to set something or someone apart for a specific purpose, making it holy and dedicated to God. In this case, the blood on the right ear signifies that the person is being set apart for a sacred task or role.

*Priestly consecration: In Leviticus 8, the blood is applied to the right ear of Aaron and his sons, consecrating them as priests. This act sets them apart as mediators between God and the people.

*Purification: In Leviticus 14, the blood is applied to the right ear of the person being cleansed, symbolizing their purification and restoration to the community.

It’s really embarrassing to see evangelicals sharing stuff like this.

For one, yes, the right ear was anointed, but so was the thumb of the right hand and the big toe of his right foot. This was also an intentional act. No Jew today would accept being shot at to get the blood of someone. It was also done to consecrate someone as a priest, which is not the office that Trump is running for.

For Leviticus 14, it is for atonement, but it is the blood of an animal. Also, there is to be anointing oil placed on the body parts as well, and it’s the same parts of the body. In both cases, we only have one body part so this does not apply.

There are some who are saying that it was divine intervention that caused Trump to move when he did to avoid the bullet. Maybe. We don’t know. I am one who thinks it is foolish to speak when we do not know.

For those who are playing pin the tail on the Antichrist, please stop. It’s embarrassing. Yes. There have been some predictions made about Biden like that and if Kamala Harris starts running, they will be made about her. They have been made about most every political figure and every tyrant and they have all been wrong. (Aside from Nero as the beast which I hold was entirely correct.)

I am a conservative who votes that way, but I try to knock down bad arguments wherever I see them. The antichrist argument is a bad argument. The right ear anointed argument is a bad argument. If anything, the evangelicals making arguments like the above are the most embarrassing since they should know better.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Is Love Love?

What is love? (Baby, don’t hurt me. Don’t hurt me, no more.) Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

“Love is love!” is often what people in support of the LGBTQ+ groups say. It sounds simple. How could you respond to something like that? Love is not love? I saw someone actually say at an event in the comments recently “Love isn’t love!” Well, that’s wrong, but does that mean the other side is right?

A lot of Christians hear a saying like this and think that they can’t really argue against that. Who is opposed to love after all? Isn’t love good? Isn’t God love.

Let’s replace it with another saying.

Cats are cats.

Now would anyone want to dare say that cats aren’t cats? What else could they be? However, what if I said cats are cats, therefore, this:

Is the same as this:

Are there similarities? Yes. Are there relations? Yes. Despite that, when I go to bed at night, there’s only one I want jumping up on the bed with me. Meanwhile, if you go to the zoo expecting to see the bottom one and you see the top instead, you’ll be thinking the zoo isn’t bringing in all these interesting species.

Both of these are cats, yes, but both are not the same kind of cat. We have to break down what that means. My Shiro, for instance, is a Turkish Angora largely. My parents have a cat that is a Himalayan. As someone who loves cats, every day I ask my Echo device what the cat breed of the day is. Somedays, I do get something like a lion. Most days I get a breed of housecat.

You could fill in the gap with several items. Dogs are dogs. Books are books. TV shows are TV shows. Movies are movies. Sports are sports.

The Greeks had four different words for love.  Many of these we celebrate in our society. I don’t know anyone who is opposed to friendship. We can say there are some people you shouldn’t be friends with, but we are not opposed to friendship in general.

Agape love is usually seen as God love and while there are people who don’t believe in God, many would not oppose the idea of something like loving your neighbor as yourself. They could say that if a Christian thinks God loves them, they’re wrong, but good for them. Family love is more familial love. This is the kind of courtesy you have for a complete stranger just because they’re a fellow human being.

Now we get to the last one, erotic love. Very few people are probably anti-sex altogether. That includes we who are Christians. It’s one of the reasons we get married as well after all. Christians have books and resources too on how to have a good married sex life.

At the same time, that doesn’t mean everyone celebrates every kind of sexual activity. Let’s start with an obvious one. Children. The overwhelming majority of people says children should not be involved in sexual relationships. Pederasty is still largely condemned, though if society keeps going the way it is going, that won’t last much longer.

How about another one? Rape. You can love women and you can love sex, but if you force yourself on a woman against her will, then that is wrong. Yes. I know rape is about power, but it is also an act of sex as well and one we condemn.

Most sex is celebrated today. I am not saying I celebrate it, but let’s face it. On a sitcom or drama, the question often thought is “Will they or won’t they?” It used to be “Will they get married?” but nowadays it’s “Will they have sex?” It’s usually celebrated when they do. I am not agreeing with it. I am just saying the reality is real.

Yet despite that, do we really think we should live in a culture where we celebrate and encourage ALL sexual activity even if it is consensual? Do we want to celebrate couples forming one-night stands and not forming long-term relationships? Do we want to oppose men and women forming lifelong covenants called marriage?

After all, something that sets sex apart from every other activity out there is it alone can produce new life. That means with it comes responsibilities and risks as well. Seeing as life is a good (Although sadly, many think life in the womb is not a good but a problem to be dealt with), we encourage relationships that are capable of bringing that new life into the world and raising it. Thus, we encourage marriage as a form of stability for raising new life.

This is the love as a society that we should be promoting the most. No other relationship can do this. Some might say some incestual relationships could, but those blur the family lines and also are prone to more genetic harm to the child. That is why societies promote married love. It is not because the people feel good about themselves. It is not because they have their identities affirmed. It is because that alone produces children and society depends on its members having children.

Note in all of this I have not said same-sex sexual relationships are immoral. (though I think they are) I have said simply that they are not the same as married opposite-sex relationships. This is also why the idea of redefining marriage is so problematic. It has been compared to the bans against interracial marriage in the past, but the problem here is that race has no affect on the sexual behavior. Men of all races are still men and women of all races are still women. The races are interchangeable in the relationship. It is not the same with the person’s sex.

By the way, along those lines, if one can say they are the wrong sex and identify as another, what could stop someone from identifying as a different race? I am fully white, but what if I said I was born into the wrong race and I feel like a black man? If anything, race is much more on a spectrum than sex is.

So is love, love? Yes, but it needs to be broken down and not treated as a cliche. Cliches tend to stop thinking and our society needs more of it.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

Is DEI about to DIE?

Is it in its last days? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

With the assassination attempt of Donald Trump, he has passed being in the bullseye, but DEI has not. Suppose you have been living under a rock somewhere. In that case, DEI stands for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, which means focusing on every single minority group out there to exclude the majority in virtue signaling. It also means ignoring minor details for jobs like, oh, ability, experience, and other little stuff like that. Do you help fulfill the quota for sex, sexual orientation, and race? Welcome aboard!

A lot of it was going on with the Secret Service at the attempt being publicly seen to have huge problems and a lot of it was with what people saw the women doing who were part of the Secret Service. This isn’t just men who have been saying this. Women have been saying it too. One woman couldn’t reholster her pistol and the women were asking what they were doing and where they were going. (See here.)

This is not to say that women can’t do this job. I’m sure some could. There are some women out there who are great shots with guns. However, Donald Trump is a big man and if you are going to shield him, you need to be as big as he is. If you also don’t know what to do in a situation like this, you are more of a liability than you are an asset at that point.

The director of the Secret Service has come under fire for wanting a quota of 30% women by 2030 and for also remarks about the dangers of a sloped roof. We also know the assassin was in sight for thirty minutes before anything happened. Why wasn’t anything done?

It might not be any coincidence that shortly after this, Microsoft decides to axe an entire DEI team. At this, I rejoice. Loyal readers know I am deeply interested in the gaming community and nowadays, many of us are dreading new games coming out. Why? Because of DEI. We’re not getting games. We’re getting a political lecture.

Consider also the case of Assassin’s Creed: Shadows. The Assassin’s Creed games have been known for historical accuracy in the past. Some people thought it could be used to rebuild Notre Dame after the fire. Now this new game is the first one set in Japan and who is upset about it the most?

The Japanese.

They even have a petition out demanding Ubisoft desist in making the game immediately. A lot of it centers around the character Yasuke. Now he is a real historical figure, but he is being made out to be much more than he was. He was an attendant to Nobunaga, but he was not officially a samurai.

There were plenty of Japanese figures that could be chosen, but Ubisoft decided to ignore all of those. Why? DEI. Oh. This black man who the Jesuits brought over is also supposed to be capable of being LGBTQ+. Yep. That makes sense.

Besides, in the game, the assassin is supposed to be able to blend into the crowd. Kill the target, then hide immediately before people realize what has happened. How will this go in Japan? “So the guy who stabbed the victim? Anything distinguishing about him that sets him apart from everyone else?”

Japan says this is a misunderstanding of Japanese culture and the role of the samurai. They also say it will lead to Asian racism. Besides, how do you make a whole game out of a character that we only have a  few scant documents about?

Gamers have been so sick of this that now we have a website set up to deal with this. DEIdetected.com. If your game has the influence of companies like Sweet Baby Inc. involved, we don’t want them. More and more gamers are going to retro games because they can play games without being lectured on politics that way.

The LGBTQ movement is also getting tiresome for gamers. There are plenty of LGBTQ people who just want to live their lives in peace. When you start putting it in everything, everyone gets tired of it. Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League has been a massive failure and yet they are introducing a new character, Victoria Frias. Who is she? Mrs. Freeze and surprise, surprise, she’s a lesbian.

I watch the videos people make complaining about this. I don’t see anything that indicates to me that these are staunch evangelical Christians. They’re just people who want to play games without politics.

It’s not just games that are having this. Movies that go DEI are not being popular. The usual claim is that many men don’t want to see movies with strong women. Sorry, but I think the Alien franchise and Kill Bill and others did just fine. For the gaming world, there was no uproar when it was discovered that Samus Aran in Metroid was a woman. No one complained about Tomb Raider. (If anything, most men loved Lara Croft. I wonder why….)

Also, consider a TV series like The Acolyte. On Rotten Tomatoes, it has a viewer score of 15% (As of the time of this writing). People who are fans of the series tell me that it is completely out of sync with what George Lucas started and dumps all over the franchise. It is simply pushing a woke agenda.

Contrast this with a major motion picture success last year, The Super Mario Bros. Movie. I rarely see movies due to low income now, but I made sure to see this one. I saw in it a love letter to the fans of the game that focused on facets of the game even going all the way back. Spike from Wrecking Crew is even a semi-prominent character in parts of the movie. I even made a video responding to Grace Randolph on it. (I also have someone on campus who is going to teach me about YouTube editing and producing videos so Gaming Theologian should be back soon.)

What makes great games and movies and TV shows successful? Simple point. They are fun. We enjoy them. We don’t go to these to get told that we need to celebrate diversity or that white men are the spawn of the devil. We go to them because we want to have fun.

If you do it right, you can still get a message across in a fun story. There are several fandoms of Narnia and the Lord of the Rings today and yet both of these series are teaching a Christian way of the world. However, both writers made sure that they were making good stories. Most Christian media today is “Hi. We have to point out to you that this is a Christian movie explicitly so we have to have one scene with a cross where we spell out the gospel entirely because you might miss it otherwise. Also, every Christian will be a charming and lovely character and every non-Christian is completely evil.” It doesn’t work when the Woke do it either where every LGBTQ or minority character is completely awesome and every cis straight white male is evil. Most people at the beginning of The Acolyte said the villain will be the straight white male.

If you are to have characters that are “diverse” in a game or movie or TV show, it needs to be natural and relevant to the story and not forced or artificial. I think of Barrett from Final Fantasy VII. He was a black man who was certainly very gruff, but he also had a great love for his daughter and would do anything to help her out. Many of us liked the character.

Consider comic book characters as well. There is a push to often take established characters who have had a history of having romances with the opposite sex, and all of a sudden make them same-sex attracted. If you want to have a superhero who is same-sex attracted, knock yourself out, but make your own. Don’t throw out a character’s entire history just because you want to shoehorn an agenda into it.

However, if you want to write that story, what the fans want is not diversity for the sake of diversity. What they want is a good story. Yes. Believe it or not if you aren’t a part of these worlds, people who read comic books and play video games care about good stories. We want narratives that hold together. We want heroes we can love because they’re heroes and villains we can seek to take down because they’re villains. We don’t mind some shades of grey where it’s hard to tell who is a hero and who is a villain and we don’t mind it when we have a hard time deciding what the right moral choice to make is. That makes it more authentic for us in many ways.

What will Microsoft do about DEI in the future? I don’t know, but I have high hopes. I have high hopes the time has come for DEI to D-I-E. It has been a kiss of death to series that it has been in. Get back to making great entertainment again.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

 

How To Treat Enemies

How do we treat our enemies? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters.

If anything has been disturbing about the assassination attempt I wrote about last time, it’s been the response from many on the left about how disappointed they are that the shooter didn’t miss. There is a saying that when people show you who they are, believe them. What we have seen from multiple people is who they are and how they view their enemies.

What happens if you become their enemy?

As a Christian, I know Christ told me to love my enemies. Isn’t it interesting that He never denied we will have enemies? The Old Testament didn’t, even within the community of Israel. Exodus 23:4 told the people of Israel that if they come across the ox or donkey of their enemy wandering off, return it. This would be within Israelite territory most likely.

I hope many of you have known on this blog that I try to treat my enemies fairly. I have not held back in saying that I am a conservative Christian. Thus, I view people like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama as enemies. I have some extremely strong viewpoints about both of these people.

However, when I have seen something false being shared about them, I have answered it. I used to get email blasts from someone who would talk about the latest horrible thing Obama had done when he was in office. I would spend a few minutes researching it, find out it was false, and then send out an email response to everyone back documenting the claim.

Yes. Conservative Christians share fake news also.

Some of these people who were getting these emails were liberals. I know that some of them came to respect me even though they disagreed with me because I cared about getting facts right. I have often chided Christians, even on this blog, for sharing information that can easily be shown to be false by a five-minute web search. If you want people to believe you on a claim about what happened 2,000 years ago, they need to be able to believe you on what happened two days ago.

Some of these responses have been public posts. Consider when Reclaim America shared a claim about Hillary Clinton. Another one was about Muslim apologist Zakir Naik. Now if I oppose these people ideologically, why would I write posts defending them?

Because truth matters. I will not take down my opponent with a lie. If they are as bad as I think they are, the truth about them is sufficient.

Let’s talk about present realities. You might be surprised, but I pray for the Biden family every night. I pray our president will have long life and health while he’s in the office. At the same time, I think he has done great damage to this country and the world and I do pray for justice, but that will come at God’s hands, not mine. I also realize we both have to answer to the same God one day.

If anything, the person I think has the roughest time in all of this in that family is Ashley Biden. Think about this. How many of you ever kept a journal or a diary where you would write down your most private and intimate thoughts. It wasn’t meant for everyone to see. Her diary was meant to be that, but now it’s public. Anyone can see it.

Would you like yours being open for everyone to see?

Now let’s get even more personal.

I have an ex-wife. I’ve spoken about my divorce. Does it hurt? Yep. Every day. Is it tempting to speak ill of her and even to think ill of her? Yes. I can easily say no other person on Earth has hurt me as much as she has.

I still pray for her well-being every night.

I challenge you even to come to campus and see if you can find anyone who has heard me speak ill of my ex-wife. If anything, I try to avoid doing that. I don’t even think you could find someone on Facebook who has seen that happen. That’s a bold claim, but I’ll make it.

Christ told me to love my enemies. That is unconditional. There are no exceptions to that rule. He didn’t say “Love your enemies, except that person who hurt you more than anyone else ever has. It’s cool to hate them.”

This is something I wrote about years ago in a post asking if your murderer will be in Heaven. I love how someone in the comments said that Stephen and Paul are together right now. That is the kind of radical love and forgiveness Christ calls us to.

Sometimes I see people on my Facebook feed say awful things about their exes. Every time, my thinking is the same. “I don’t know much about that person, but I sure know a lot more about you.” There are a lot of people I suspect in this election season who are seeing the reactions and saying “I wasn’t sure where I stand on Trump, but seeing how you all are reacting, I think I’ll stand with him.”

One tip I offer you all for your enemies is to pray for them. I mean real prayers for their well-being. It’s easy to say you will pray a Psalm of judgment on them. I have said before we often ask justice on our enemies and mercy on us. We hardly ever if ever reverse that and ask for mercy on our enemies and justice on us.

The way I see it anyway, if I live with anger and hostility towards my ex-wife, she wins. She’s still controlling me. She’s still dominant in my life. The more I let my hostility go, the more I am free.

Will I continue to pray for the Bidens every night? Yes. While I think Trump will win, if by some chance whoever the Democrat nominee is wins, I will pray for them every night too. I won’t pray for their agenda to succeed, but I will pray for them as a person.

When Obama was in office people used to ask me if I could meet with anyone in the world who would it be, and I said it would be him. Why? I would sit down and tell him the gospel. I would say the same about Trump when he was in office. I would say the same about Biden now. Something all of us have in common is all of us need the gospel.

Pray for your enemies. If not, you are more likely to become that which you condemn.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)