Category: Political

Book Plunge: The Bible and the Ballot Chapter 3

What themes are essential in Scripture? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Again, there is not much here that I disagree with. Longman does write about the importance of the imago dei and I doubt he would disagree with my stance on that I think John Walton is largely right on what that image means. I also agree that Adam and Eve did know right from wrong before they ate of the forbidden fruit and likely, what they were wanting was some kind of moral autonomy.

I did find it odd to read what Longman said about how we treat other people on p. 60. Not that i disagree with others, but that Longman has made some quite pointed statements about how he views people who disagree with him politically, such as Trump supporters. I will not share such quotes here, but if you are on Facebook, you can go to his page and just search for terms like MAGA and Trump and others and see what he says.

It’s also odd on how he says on p. 71 that first off, America is not a theocracy. I have done interactions for years on the internet. I have yet to meet anyone who I think contends that we live in a theocracy. I really would like to meet these people that are so abundant and I seem to be missing. He also says that Christians should not vote for the candidate that has faith, but for people that have ethical wisdom to help out their communities in practical ways.

He does not realize that many of us who voted for Trump did just that. It is ironic that he disparages people for following advice that he himself gave. Of course, if you have a candidate of faith, that is even better, but if such a candidate doesn’t exist, then first off, Christians need to do better. Second, we have to vote for which we think is the best option. Of course, Longman is free to debate with people on who has the best wisdom to guide us, but he should at least give the benefit of the doubt that we are trying to do what he recommends.

Finally, on p. 76, he says that when we engage with those that we disagree with, that our speech should always be loving. He says that our age is very partisan and we can have strong disagreements with people on important issues. We should always be loving and respectful to others.

I will give some qualified agreement to this, but keep in mind, these are Longman’s standards, and I contend that he himself does not practice them. That is the main reason I got the book at the library when I started my exchanges with him on his Facebook page and on Robert Gagnon’s page.

My disagreement? For starters, I have no problem with speaking in love, but love does not mean sentiment. Love can sometimes mean hitting someone straight between the eyes with hard truth. Is John the Baptist loving when he speaks about the Pharisees as a brood of vipers? Yes. Is Jesus loving in Matthew 23 and Luke 11 towards the Pharisees and teachers of the Law? Yes. Is Paul loving when he says he wishes the circumcision crowd would go the whole way and emasculate themselves in Galatians 5? Yes.

All of those statements stem from a love that these people had, love for the ones they cared about especially being misled by those they opposed. Love will not always come across as “kind” or “nice” to other people. I have had conversations with atheists who said they listened and paid attention because I stepped hard on their toes and put them in their place. Those are the ones who I know are taking truth seriously and we have great relationships from then on.

Next time, we’ll see what Longman has to say about nationalism, patriotism, and globalization.

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

Book Plunge: The Bible and the Ballot Chapter 2

How does Scripture help us with political decisions? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Again, there is much that I agree with Longman on in this chapter. After some reminders of the last chapter, he talks about case laws. These are laws that reflect principles found in the Ten Commandments, An interesting example he has of this is to not mix seeds when planting. This was to remind Israel that they were a separate people, though I would also add it was to remind them that God was a pure being without any mixture in His nature.

Yet having said that, Israel was also always welcome, as Longman points out, to outsiders to come in. Those who wanted to come in and be a part of the community could do so. This included people like Ruth, Uriah the Hittite, and Rahab.

One example he also gives of case law is the way that steps weren’t to be built leading up to the altar. Why? Because that way, when the priest wore his robes, his body could not be seen going up the stairs to the altar. That would avoid sexual practices being mixed in to the worship like it was in the surrounding pagan societies.

Longman also writes about the relationship between the testaments, and again, there is largely agreement here. For instance, Matthew 5:17 speaks about the Law being accomplished. There are parts of the Law that we all no longer observe due to Christ coming. (In my recent look at The Pauline Paradox, I stated that the people who hold to this likely no longer offer sacrifices as an example.)

Finally, Longman writes about the Redemptive-Ethical Trajectory. This is where I start to have some concerns and the biggest problem is that Longman doesn’t define his terms. For instance, he asks how some skeptics will ask why slavery wasn’t abolished in the Old Testament or even the New.

My problem here is that he doesn’t define slavery, which might sound simple, but really isn’t. Even if you say, “it’s owning people as property”, then we have to ask what is property? In the Old Testament system, everything in the land belonged to God. No one technically owned anything. It was simply something that was leased to them, as it were, by God.

Not only this, but part of the problem is we can think of slavery and automatically read Civil War slavery into the system. Civil War slavery was entirely wrong, but it was not the same as slavery in the ancient world. Many slaves in times of the Roman Empire had a degree of freedom for instance. In the Old Testament, a slave was to be provided for and really, that was the only way a poor person could earn a living, by working for a richer one.

My biggest concern was when he mentions patriarchy and again, he never defines it or even says what is bad about it and why. If we mean that it is the rule of men, if this is a lesser good that God is accommodating to, then we have to ask why does He state that He is Father and that Jesus is the Son? Why is it that men are constantly leaders in the community and even in the New Testament community, especially considering passages such as 1 Tim. 2?

Patriarchy has become a sort of catch-all term today with an idea that men lead as tyrants. Of course, no man should. I am one who believes that in marriage, it should be male headship, but I also say that if a man is the king of his castle, his wife gets treated like a queen. We all know stories about men throwing out Ephesians 5 and demanding their wives to submit. It’s my contention that if a man is being the man he should be in his house, he will never have to wave around the passage like it’s a threat.

Unfortunately, Longman does not tell us what he has in mind with patriarchy nor why it is ipso facto wrong. I also have no reason to think that if women ruled the world, all would suddenly be a utopia of peace and love. No. Whichever people lead the world, there will be problems, because all people are sinners. The problem is not the system so much as the people.

Next time we’ll look at what Longman calls essential Biblical themes.

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

Book Plunge: The Bible and the Ballot Chapter 1

How do you read the Bible properly? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

In this chapter, there really isn’t much that I disagree with Longman on. We both reject the postmodern idea that there is no inherent meaning in the text. We both embrace insofar as it is possible trying to find out who the author of a text is. We both accept that we should know what the text is in that a poem will be read quite different from a historical narrative, although a narrative can have poetry and poetry can describe a historical event.

Also, the text of the Bible was written for us but not to us. Paul in 1 Corinthians 10 tells his audience that what happened in the past to Israel was written for our benefit. It was written for us, but it was written to them. There are a number of things not readily apparent due to time, distance, culture, language, etc.

There are some issues I have some minor quibbles with. For instance, Longman uses the Aposles’ Creed as an example of a summary of the central teachings of the Bible. I have no problem with that. Why would I? I even wrote an ebook on the topic.

My concern comes when we are told that all of these are clearly presented in Scripture and unite Christians worldwide. Not so fast there. What about the line that Jesus descended into Hell? There could be some Christians who think that Jesus literally did go to Hell for a time. I thoroughly disagree with them, yet that seems to be what the creed says.

Note that in this that I am not saying that the creed is in error in what it says. I am saying that there is a far cry from saying that this is something that is clearly taught in Scripture seeing as it can be debated amongst Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox what this term means. If anything, we can say Jesus told the thief on the cross, “Today, you will be with me in Paradise.” I seriously doubt by that He was saying “We’re going to Hell together.”

There could be also Protestants out there that will balk at the idea of believing in the holy catholic church. Of course, properly understood, this is catholic with a  little and not Catholic with the big one. This is just saying that one believes in the church universal.

Not only that, but a large number of people will have things that they think should be in there. A number of Protestants would likely see justification by faith as a clear teaching of Scripture. (And I would agree with them) A number of Catholics and Orthodox might want to see something on the Eucharist in there.

However, these are minor issues. I think Longman moves past matters too quickly, but fortunately, there are footnotes that point to other references that can be used. I am sure Longman and I would both agree that a reader should consult a much fuller book on how to interpret Scripture. This is not to discredit Longman on this point, but just to say one chapter can’t have the whole nuance a book does.

Next time, we’ll get into something more substantial.

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

Book Plunge: The Bible and the Ballot Introduction

Are we a Christian nation? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I was watching the Facebook battle between Robert Gagnon and Tremper Longman over politics. I sided with Gagnon. In the comments, Longman challenged me to read his book The Bible and the Ballot. Seeing as I didn’t want to buy the book, I decided to go to the seminary library and fortunately, I found it.

So let’s start with the introduction.

I don’t disagree with everything Longman says. He says the the state is not the church, but I can’t really think of any Christians I know who think that. I am aware of Christians who hold to a theonomy position, of course, but not any who think right now the state is the church. This left me wondering who he had in mind when writing this.

The part that really surprised me was when he said that America today is not a Christian nation. He says this both about its founding and its present status. (2) He says that our founders did include some people of faith, but many who were influenced more by enlightenment thought. In the footnote, he points to John Locke.

I found this utterly astounding. For one thing, John Locke is the same one who wrote The Reasonableness of Christianity. He was heavily influenced in his writings by the Apostle Paul. Longman gives no indication of knowing about this. Would any of his readers realize this or would they walk away thinking Locke was a purely secular individual?

Second, there is the statement about the Founding Fathers, but no sources whatsoever listed on them. There is no interaction with an author like John Eidsmoe, for instance. The reader will be left confused and if anything, thinking the majority or at least a sizable number of the Fathers were atheists or secularists of some kind.

Third, when he says that America is not a Christian nation, what does this mean? Does it mean that there is no nationally established church? Sure, but that does not mean that the nation is not Christian. Does he mean that the government is not built on a Christian system of some sort? Even granting that, the government is not the nation.

Not only this, one of our founding documents, the Treaty of Paris, was done in the name of the most holy and undivided Trinity. Unlike the Treaty of Tripoli, there is no dispute on its wording. There is even a Supreme Court ruling from 1852 saying America is a Christian nation.

I understand that Longman is an Old Testament and Ancient Near East scholar and not one on American history, but that makes it all the more important to back claims that are made. Unfortunately, this simple section has left me puzzled by what is meant and wondering just how much of the Founding Fathers that Longman has interacted with.

Fortunately, that is the most problematic part of the introduction. Next time we look at this book, we’ll look at a guide on how one should read Scripture. I hope you’ll join me.

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

 

Book Plunge: The Case Against The Sexual Revolution

Was it all a bad idea? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

A long-time friend of mine said he wanted to see me write book reviews of books I enjoyed. (And not just enjoyed laughing at how bad they are.) Fair enough. You all need to know about good books as well. Thus, I am pausing the current book review to do one entry on a book I highly encourage you all to read, The Case Against The Sexual Revolution.

As of my writing this blog, the book is fairly new being published in 2022. I had checked to see if transgenderism was a big thing when she wrote the book. Apparently, it was and still is.

So much in my copy of this book is highlighted and I am going to let some fellow students borrow it, both of them with an interest in this area. Let’s start this by listing her chapter titles.

Sex must be taken seriously.
Men and women are different.
Some desires are bad.
Loveless sex is not empowering.
Consent is not enough.
Violence is not love.
People are not products.
Marriage is good.
Conclusion: Listen to your mother.

I found it interesting that for someone like myself, all of those seem like common sense statements.

I have seen leftists argue against each of these in one way or another.

Let’s start with that first one. How many times have we heard something like “It’s no big deal. It’s just sex.” Anytime someone says, “It’s just sex”, they are not taking it seriously. She starts this off with comparing Marilyn Monroe who underneath it all did not like being treated like an object, with Hugh Hefner who lived his life treating women like objects. In speaking of the idea of sexual freedom, Perry says “Why do so many women desire a kind of sexual freedom that obviously serves male interests?” (p. 8) She later says that women have switched one form of female submission for another, but called the latter liberation. (20)

Having a chapter about men and women being different can be seen as heresy by many on the left today. That being said, the transgender movement has taken on a sort of quasi-religious touch to it. If the body is all there is, then it makes no sense to say you are in the wrong body. There has to be some aspect of the person that is not material in the viewpoint in order to make that aspect align with the body by the mutilation of the body.

In this chapter, Perry has several statistics on how men and women are physically and psychologically different. She says that for many this is common sense, but alas, common sense is not that common today. Men and women approach sex and behave sexually in very different ways and it’s a mistake to think that those ways should be the same for both sexes.

Some desires are bad points to some cases of people such as pedophiles. In many ways, what they desire is spoken of openly and no one seems to blink at all about it. We have an idea that if we strongly desire something, that something is good. Nope. Not at all. We think it is good, no doubt, but that does not mean that it is.

The chapter on loveless sex looks at the hook-up culture today. “Hook-up culture is a terrible deal for women and yet has been presented by liberal feminism as a form of liberation. A truly feminist project would demand that, in the straight dating world, it should be men, not women, who adjust their sexual appetites.” (p. 79)

Once again, I marvel at how it is women think they are embracing this and sticking it to the patriarchy. If you are giving men free sex without requiring any commitment from them or responsibility, you are not hurting them, at least not in a way they think they are being hurt. You are teaching them to use you.

Now in the long run, I do think this hurts men seeing as they do avoid responsibility and fatherhood, but that is not the goal of the feminists. The feminists want to avoid responsibility and motherhood often as well. In an irony, feminists wanting to say they are superior are treating the common masculine approach as if it was the ideal.

Perry also says being desired is not the same as being held in high esteem. A man might want to sleep with a woman because he thinks she’s hot, but he will not want to have children with her. He’s just using her for his own sexual gratification.

The chapter on consent is not enough is a huge stab at the porn industry. Perry outright says on p. 113 that there is no good reason to use porn. Pornography has damaged the viewpoint of sex by men and women both. There are plenty of men who struggle with even being able to perform sexually due to porn use and younger and younger men are needing medications for ED.

In some of my apps, I am sure I see an ad about an app for dating where women tell you what they want, and the first lady talking looks like she’s being choked at the same time. Naturally, this brings to mind the subject of the chapter on violence, Fifty Shades of Grey. Perry is quite troubled with how many women loved this book and has said that if a man can remain aroused while beating you, stay away from him.

People are not products deals with the idea of “sex work.” Treating sex this way makes it just a commodity for trade and ultimately, it makes it be people for trade. Again, this benefits men. Men go to the women not for the idea that they love them, but for what they can get out of them.

Finally, marriage is good. This presents the problems the pill presented for society with the incredible line that “When motherhood became a biological choice for women, fatherhood became a social choice for men.” (p. 167) Men are enabled to shirk their responsibility in raising children and then ultimately, the state becomes the surrogate husband. Perry writes about what her grandmother said about the thesis of the whole book as well. “Women have been conned.” (p. 181)

She also writes about the problems of easy divorce. Making divorce easier was done, no doubt, with a lot of good intentions, but it has made everything worse. I fully agree with this speaking as a divorced man who struggles with fears of rejection and problems of trust still today.

Perry longs for there to be some technology that can enable men and women that encourages men to avoid short-term thinking, for women to be stable and protected, and for children to be raised. She then says such a technology exists. It is clunky sometimes and does fail at times, but it’s here. It’s called monogamous marriage. (p. 181)

This book is phenomenal. It is one that I think every thinker in this field should interact with. Perry is a refreshing voice in this world.

Oh. Did I mention she’s neither conservative nor a Christian? Must have slipped my mind.

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

Book Plunge: Irreligion — Atheists, Agnostics, and Brights

Have the brights got dim? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Unintentionally, Paulos starts off this chapter with a howler.

Given the starkly feeble arguments for God’s existence, one might suspect—that is, if one lived on a different planet—that atheism would be well accepted, perhaps even approved of.

Paulos, John Allen. Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (p. 142). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

Of course, we have seen in this review that Paulos has not even begun to understand the arguments he is critiquing. Given the shoddy nature of his argumentation, one might suspect, if one lived on a different planet, that atheism would not be a position held by people claiming to be intellectuals today. And yet, here we are….

There is an irony in this chapter in that Paulos is writing about why Americans don’t seem to trust atheists. Then he has an issue with the idea that atheists are calling themselves Brights. Could the two possibly be connected in any way whatsoever?

Many atheists have set themselves up as champions of reason and evidence when they are anything but. Paulos has been an excellent example in this book. He does not really look at the evidence probably because in his mind, it is somehow beneath him. This is all silly nonsense believed by people who just can’t handle life and so they make up something to help them cope.

I am a member on Facebook of a group for debating with Jehovah’s Witnesses and we have some atheists in there. Some of them are ex-JWs and they do have a chip on their shoulder. What’s amazing is that atheists in the group have just as much a cult mindset as the theists they condemn.

It is becoming clearer to me that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for an atheist to agree to read a book that disagrees with him. I have normally recommended this book to them. It’s an academic book and it is free on Kindle. How many atheists have I had agree to read it? None.

If you come to me and tell me about a book that challenges my position, I will likely be hunting it down on Amazon as soon as I can. If it costs too much, I will be checking the seminary library and the local library system. If I still can’t find it, I will likely be checking Interlibrary Loan.

Many atheists also engage in groupthink and send out the same old tired arguments, such as Jesus never existing or the canon being decided at the Council of Nicea or most anything else. They will not wrestle with serious arguments against their position. Then they go around and act like they’re better thinkers than everyone else.

Let’s also not forget that America is still a very theistic country and atheists are often seen as wanting to knock that down routinely. I realize many atheists likely have a live and let live attitude and some could even agree that we need to honor the morality that this country was founded on. Too many though think they are brilliant just by virtue of being an atheist.

I consider Paulos such an individual and as I have shown earlier, I have moral concerns with some of the behaviors he has practiced. Simple conclusion. If a large population of people thinks you are the problem, it’s worth considering they might be right.

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

A Visit To Bourbon Street

How does a community respond to evil? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Last Sunday, I went out with some students to meet people who worked on Bourbon Street here in New Orleans. Two things New Orleans is definitely famous for are Bourbon Street and Mardi Gras. Sadly, neither of those are usually for good reasons as far as Christianity is concerned. Of course, we are famous for other things, like Jazz, but Bourbon Street and Mardi Gras are hardly associated with holiness.

For me, when New Year’s Eve rolled around, I stayed up and watched a ball come down on YouTube in Dallas-Fort Worth while playing Animal Crossing to get the New Year’s Eve achievement. Around midnight, being a good Baptist at a Baptist seminary, I popped open a bottle of Welch’s Sparkling White Grape Juice. Within an hour, I was in bed.

I could have no way of knowing that while I slept that night, people would be celebrating in my city and have their celebrations destroyed by an evil man driving a car into them.

Let’s start with that. Many times when a great evil happens, we often jump immediately to the idea that the person was mentally ill. We need to stop that. It’s this sort of idea that anyone who had their rational mind in order would not do that. Unfortunately, they do. People have within them the capacity for great evil.

At one of our first stops, I remember one of the students I was with talking to the owner of a store about how we were coming by to visit people after the accident took place. After we left, I told him to not say accident. Losing your car keys is an accident. Punching your wife in the face is a direct evil.

One lady we talked to spoke about how she remembered the event and said that she thought it was tragic for everyone. She wasn’t directly involved in losing someone, but it sure must be hard for everyone else.

Until someone she knew was the last person to be identified among the victims. Her name was Tasha. At that point, I talked about being divorced and gave the talk that someone else gave me about it. Today is horrible. Tomorrow will also be horrible, but it will be a little bit less so.

She told us to be sure to go down to the vigil, which we did.

It’s amazing how many people make crosses when death occurs. Here on a street known for wickedness, the cross still stands out. The emblem of shame in the past is now that of victory and triumph. People think of the cross when death occurs. The Romans used it to shame. We now use it to honor. Jesus has changed that which was shame into that honor.

If you zoomed in on that bottom right picture (At least that’s how it looks to me as I type here), you will see that it is a picture of Tasha. Remembering that, I took a close-up.

 

This is what happens when you put a face also on evil. To many of us, these are people we have never met and in most cases, likely never would have met. For some people, these are people who played an important part in their lives and now there is a great emptiness there. Tasha probably had a good long life ahead of her. She probably went to the celebration of the New Year looking forward to a year of promise and hope, not realizing that she would be taken from the world in the first few hours of that year.

I thought about the city with that as we walked back to our stop. I did get amused when we passed the Larry Flynt Hustler shop with magazines decorating the doorway. These weren’t full pornographic, but they were certainly risque. I saw a little boy saying to some adults he was with “Look!” and pointing at the business only to be told by one older lady there, “Don’t look! Cover your eyes!”

Had I thought of it at the time, I would have likely said something to him that a woman is the most beautiful sight of creation, but she is not to be treated as mere eye candy. Her beauty is to be held in awe and is only to be beheld by those who are worthy of it. Such a person is the man who marries her. Strive to be that man.

One of the people with me ending up talking to some guy on the way back who was talking about the history of jazz. We went to the Armstrong Park then where we were going anyway and saw a little bit of a jazz event going on. People gathered around on Sundays and just played jazz music.

I remember one of the guys with me talking about how inclusive the event seemed to be, and it was. Sometimes conservatives like myself get told we are opposed to inclusivity and diversity. We are not. We are opposed to forced diversity and inclusivity. When it happens organically with people coming together on their own, it is a beautiful thing. When it is forced on people, it is actually reverse racism.

As we drove back, and I was doing the driving, I was asked about my PhD work. I was told I was doing mine on video games and Christianity and the need for a story. Something I love about telling people that is it seems most everyone has something to say about it. Very few people are, “Ah. Okay.” They always want to say more.

One of the guys told me that gaming was how he bonded with his friends. He was involved in a lot of Super Smash Brothers tournaments and came to see a community of people who had a common love, but also needed Jesus. He said there was too little being done to help them. I agreed and hopefully, we’ll be doing some work together soon in that area.

Also, something we can learn from this is evil is certainly evil, but somehow, nothing pulls a community together often like suffering does. This is also a great time to be doing ministry. Bourbon Street needs the Gospel just like anywhere else does. Mardi Gras should be a holy celebration and not a sinful one.

We have work to do. Let’s do it.

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

Is Masculinity Bad?

Is it bad to be a man?

Recently, I was still going through The Bully Society and I was reading about the bully economy. While the book has a lot to say about the problem of bullying, it fails a lot in the area of solutions, and in this case tying the problem in with capitalism. Am I to think that if we went to socialism, all the kids in the world would join hands and sing Kum-Bu-Yah together?

Anyway, the author notes that some of the attributes given to masculinity are also similar to capitalism. Those are aggressive, competitive, and powerful. That is the way the market is seen sometimes. I could defend capitalism here, but I have done that in other posts.

For now, I notice that it seems that being aggressive, powerful, and competitive are bad things inherently. There is no doubt these can be used for evil purposes, but that does not mean that they are evil. I can use my car in my apartment parking lot to drive to work and church. I can also use it to drive over little old ladies crossing the street. The car is not the issue. The person is the issue.

You can think it wrong for a man to be powerful, but if a man is going to make a positive change, he needs some power. You can think it is wrong for him to be aggressive, but if he is going to go forward in pursuit of a goal and stand up to evil, he needs to be powerful. You can think it is wrong for him to be competitive, but if he is going to want to excel, he needs to want to be better than those who don’t.

I can say on my end that while I do not see myself as aggressive or powerful, competitive does ring true, but that is what has caused me to study academically far more. It is wanting to be the best at what I do that has got me here. Had I not had this kind of spirit in me, I would have heard the doom and gloom about a diagnosis of autism and said “Oh well. Guess I’ll never amount to anything.”

What would be better is to ask the question of what a man is instead of saying that those ideas of masculinity are bad, or at least implying that they are. This is part of the problem. We do not know what men are, but usually it is assumed that whatever they are, they are bad.

If society does not know what men and women are, it should not be a shock that we have issues like failing to understand marriage and relationships or that we have debates over transgenderism. I acknowledge that in some ways, the question of what a man or a woman is is a simple question. In another way, it is a complex question. It gets to a question of essences, which I consider a problem for a purely materialistic position.

So if a man does not have any indicator that he is a man, then what will he do? He will try to seek it elsewhere. He could do so by being powerful in a gang. He could do so by being competitive in sports or even video games. He could do so by being aggressive in business or with women. Some of these are fine, but some aren’t. It is fine to be competitive on the athletic field, provided you are not wronging the others out there. It is not fine to be powerful in a gang and seek to do wrong to other men and women. It is fine to be confident with women. It is not fine to be so aggressive that you force your way onto them.

If a man doesn’t know if he is a man, he could still try harmful ways. He could think he has to sleep with as many women as possible, highly persuasive since sex often leaves a man feeling like a man. He could be willing to cheat to get ahead in sports, say by taking steroids. He could seek power by trying to beat up other men or even kill them. He could try to get material possessions as a status symbol to everyone else.

By the way, women will also try counterparts, but seeing as I am a man, I am talking about them.

What he likely will not try is to try to build up character and be a man of virtue. We have lost sight of virtue as what builds up a person and ultimately a society. A society cannot last if goodness is not one of the goals of society. If all a society cares about is going for all that you can get and the vapid pursuit of pleasure, it will fail.

Unfortunately, not much is said about that. Everything else is blamed. It’s the video games. It’s the guns. It’s the schools. It’s capitalism.

No. The problem is us.

We need to change.

We need a return to virtue and men being virtuous men and women being virtuous women. Unfortunately, with moral relativism, we don’t really know what virtue is either. The more we blame everything else, the less we will care about virtue.

Masculinity is not bad, but anything we do without virtue will taint everything else. We must return to that and I contend only Christianity can truly give us the virtue we need.

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

 

Should Elon Be Wealthy?

Is it wrong to have wealth? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I got into a Facebook debate recently with someone talking about Elon Musk and all the wealth he has. Obviously, Elon needs to do more with the money that he has. He has so much money while so many people are suffering from hunger.

This kind of argumentation has a lot of emotional appeal. In our society, many of us have come to hate some people for having money. Of course, a lot of celebrities and athletes are exempt from this because, well, we get entertained by them. We also know that we can’t be them, but a CEO? That’s different.

Let’s look at the last part first. There are a lot of people dying from hunger. Yes. The problem is that this is not just a money problem. This is a problem because of wicked governments in the world. Believe it or not, some dictators out there don’t care if their people starve or not. It’s not as if people wanting to feed the hungry are allowed to go door-to-door in these countries giving out food to the poor. No. In many cases, the government will seize and goods that come in and use that as leverage to control the populace.

“Well, Elon has more money than he needs!”

Yet as I was told this, I asked back immediately if the person was using a library computer. Do they have a car? Do they have a smart phone? Do they have a place to live with a bed and with heat and air? Can they take a warm shower? Do they have food in their refrigerators and cabinets? If they answered yes, then they are actually themselves among the richest people in the world.

It’s awfully strange then that such people do not have to give away what they have. They do not have more money than they need. It is those people who are above them that are the problem. To paraphrase Thomas Sowell, it is amazing that Elon Musk is greedy for wanting to keep the money he has earned, but someone else is not greedy for wanting what they think is their share of the money Elon has earned.

Not only this, but it’s not as if Elon Musk keeps his money in Scrooge’s vault and goes swimming in it regularly. Usually, what we measure is the net worth of a CEO. He has money invested in his earnings and his business. Saying he is worth X billion does not mean he has X billion in his bank account.

We also have to ask how many people does Musk employ? There are plenty of people who have jobs today because of Musk. CEOs own the company, but who does a lot of the work also in the company? Middle-class employees.

Does Musk give to charities also? Yes. When the hurricane hit areas in the east of America, he was there to provide internet services and other goods for those in need. Someone could say Musk could give more, but when we stand before God, we won’t be asked about what Musk did with what he had. We will be asked what we did with what we had.

Let’s suppose that instead of investing in his company which would create jobs, Musk goes out and buys a yacht or a mansion. Doesn’t that hurt us? No. Hint. CEOs do not build yachts and mansions. Who builds them? Again, middle-class people. It is the rank and file that build them and thus, they have jobs. You can say they are temporary, but all construction jobs are temporary.

Let us suppose that Musk puts his money in a bank. You could say it is just sitting there, but you know who it provides opportunities for? You and I. We can take out loans from a bank because of money that has been put there by others. That money could be used to fund education or our own small businesses we want to start.

Does the Bible often seem to condemn the rich and the wealthy? Yes, but it is not because they are rich and wealthy. Plenty of heroes of the faith are also rich and wealthy. Abraham and the patriarchs were incredibly rich. David and Solomon were rich. Anyone who provided for a New Testament church and the copying of New Testament manuscripts was rich. Having wealth is not the problem. Wealth having you is the problem.

Also, in America, if you are poor, it is not because another person is rich.  If Elon’s money was equally divided among all Americans, we would all get about $777 one time. For me, that could pay my rent for one month and maybe one or two other bills and then that’s it. This is something people miss when they want to talk about going to college and getting free health care and just letting the rich pay for it. As Margaret Thatcher said, the problem with socialism is sooner or later you run out of other peoples’ money. Not only do the rich lose the money, but they have less they can do to hire other people.

Keep in mind as I say this that I am not rich myself. I have my own Patreon and I make minimum wage at my job. When it comes to voting, my policy is simple. Never vote for a new tax. Always vote for a tax cut. Does that include tax cuts for the rich? Absolutely. I trust that they can do more good with the money than the government can, a government that is $35 trillion in debt doesn’t have a lot to say about how other people should use their money. Government needs to reduce its spending, not take more from us.

Could Musk do more? I am sure he could, but that is an irrelevant question to ask. The question I should be asking is “Can I do more?” The question you should be asking is the same. When I meet someone who wants someone rich to give away all they own, but they won’t part with their smartphone, computer, automobile, etc. I just can’t take them seriously.

Do what you can with what you have. How someone else is spending their income will be between them and God.

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

The Ouroboros of Feminism

Has feminism really helped women? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I have been reading The Bully Society and the book talks about how women are often treated, including by other women! Women live in a quite contradictory world. If you wish to remain a virgin until you’re wedding night, then you’re a prude. If you do sleep around with men, you’re a slut.

I have said that the self-esteem movement was a failure. Feminism was also a failure and has become an ouroboros. If you do not know, that’s the depiction you will see sometimes of a snake that eats its tail.

The first mistake is that it has been thought that men and women are different and therefore, one is superior to the other. This doesn’t follow. There are plenty of things that are different to one another, but it does not follow that one is superior. Cats and dogs are different and people have their preferences, but it does not follow that one is superior. The same could be said with various foods, colors, books, movies, etc. Sometimes there is a superior, but not just because two things are different.

There was also the question of men sometimes getting different treatment, such as in the workplace, but this was not because men are superior. It was because men and women are different in that women can miss long periods of work at a time when they have children. Men are not the same way. It was tempting to write “Do not have the same problem” but that assumes that it is a problem.

I happen to side with what the Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft said. Men are superior at one thing, being men. Women are superior at one thing, being women.

Keep that in mind as we go along.

Unfortunately, women started seeing their being a woman as the problem. While the pill certainly helped some, it was abortion that really got the ball rolling. With that, women were able to eliminate pregnancy. Thus, they could have careers like men.

Just pause to think about that. Innocent human lives dying for the sake of a career. We read in the Bible about the Canaanites performing child sacrifice, but we’re worse. At least they saw that as a real sacrifice and did it for the good of the harvest.

Baby: Why must I die?

Canaanite: We realize what a value you are to us so we are sacrificing you as a gift to the gods so that they will bless us with a bountiful harvest so we can all survive.

Baby: Why must I die?

Women: Because your mother didn’t want to have you and just wanted to have sex without consequences and if she has you, she can’t get that promotion she wants at work and go on to have a successful career. You are an inconvenience on her path to independence.

They are both wrong, but the Canaanites make a better case.

In The Bully Society, it is claimed that many of the early feminists wanted men to start treating sex the way women did. Generally, women seem more interested in building relationships. Men generally tend to be more interested in, well, sex. Not so, instead, women started to act more like men and why wouldn’t they? They had already killed their femininity with abortion.

Fast forward past that and the LGBTQ people start making cases. “Hey! If couples get married all the time without children and we allow abortion, then really children don’t matter. Right? If marriage is not really about children, but about the happiness of the people involved, then why can’t we get married?”

And if it is true that marriage is not about building up a stable family unit for a future generation, then they have a point. Why can’t they? It is as if the whole of society had ceased to really think about marriage and what it was and decided that whatever this is, we can just apply it to another group.

With that, the sexes in a marriage became interchangeable. You don’t have to have a man and a woman. You can have two men or two women. Now we have people marrying buildings and animals and other inanimate objects and even themselves. Before long, the Mormons will surely be pushing for polygamy, and why not? After all, if male and female are artificial ideas thrust on marriage, why stop at just two people?

It was only a few years after that we went the next logical step. Note in saying logical I am not agreeing with it, but I am saying that if you accept the premises already mentioned, the conclusion does naturally follow. If men and women are interchangeable in marriage, why not everywhere else? This gets us to the transgender movement.

Remember how I referred to Kreeft earlier saying men are superior at being men and women at being women?

This is no longer the case.

Men claiming to be women are winning sports competitions. They are winning beauty pageants. They are even winning poker tournaments. Not only that, but many women are defending this. Who are the superior women now?

Looks like men are.

Oh. What else do the men get out of this?

They still get to keep their jobs. They also get to have all the sex they want with the women who will kill the children so that men don’t have to have responsibility for them. They also don’t even have to marry the women any more to get to have sex.

Women meanwhile have lost their femininity and are being beat by men in what was supposed to be the areas for women.

This is the end result of feminism.

True femininity encourages women to celebrate being women. It tells them having children is not a hindrance but is a gift. It tells them to celebrate the differences they have from men. It tells them to have men earn sex with them by making lifelong commitments to them prior. It also tells them to stay faithful to the men that they do marry and build families together.

In this deal, women get to have a future with their DNA passed down to their children, they get to be provided for by their husbands, they get to be loved and adored, and oh yes, they get to have the sex without worrying about the consequences because having a baby isn’t a problem to them. They can also tell men to get out of women’s sports and other women’s areas. They can work if they want to, but it’s not a requirement.

Maybe it’s just me, but it looks like women are better off with a more traditional approach.

If you are a woman, celebrate it. Don’t be a feminist.

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