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Reason Rally: Fundy Atheist Central

Who can we expect to see at Reason Rally? Find out today on Deeper Waters.

P.Z. Meyers complains that evangelicals will be at the Reason Rally. He neglects to mention that fundamentalists will be there. No doubt, there could be some fundamentalist Christians showing up, but what I am speaking about is in fact fundamentalist atheism, a dreaded condition spreading like wildfire, largely in part due to the internet.

Let’s talk about a group of people to show what I’m talking about.

There are people who believe that every word of the Bible should be read literally. The plain sense of the text is always that which is ideal. There is no need to go beyond the text as the Bible must stand on its own and to seek information outside the text is to say the Bible is inadequate. One must simply just believe in the Bible and not ask questions about what the authorities say.

You might think I’m describing fundamentalist Christians. I’m also describing fundamentalist atheists.

“But atheists don’t believe the Bible is the Word of God!” Yes. That’s true, and in that they differ from their Christian counterparts, but in their beliefs, if it is the Word of God, everything else follows. It would be understandable on its own without anyone else and every passage of it should be interpreted literally. Since they cannot understand the Bible on its own and thinks the literal interpretation of several passages doesn’t make sense, then they are sure it is not the Word of God.

What does this mean? It means that there is no reason to do any outside research. Study the textual criticism of how the Biblical text came to be? No need. If the Bible was the Word of God, we would not need this as it would have been preserved perfectly for us.

Study the surrounding culture to seek to understand what the text would mean to its hearers? No need. The Bible if it was the Word of God would have been written for us today. This is, of course, for them further proof that it is not the Word of God, as obviously an ancient book should have contained a hidden code if not an outright message concerning information on modern scientific discoveries and a cure for cancer if it was the Word of God.

Study the original languages of the Bible? No need. If the Bible was the Word of God, it should be just as clear in English. Why should the Bible need all that interpreting after all?

Study any commentaries to see what they say on various verses that are hard to understand? No need. If the Bible was the Word of God, then the Holy Spirit would surely come to every believer and tell them what a text means. This is in fact further proof Christianity cannot be true in the mind of the fundy atheist. If Christians disagree, well obviously it’s not all coming from the Holy Spirit. That clenches it.

Study the theistic arguments? No need. One should not seek to have evidence for a position when it comes to religious matters. We are supposed to be people of faith and faith obviously just means that you believe something without evidence. Unfortunately, fundy atheists say that is the definition of faith even though there is no evidence to back that.

Study ethics? No need. After all, the Bible is supposed to answer every single moral question that we have. In fact, that’s the purpose of it. The Bible was written to teach us all how to be good people and as long as we have that, then there is no need for study.

Study learned scholars on any subject matter relating to religion? No need. After all, the Bible should be clear enough and God should be clear enough. Why do we need to go to the works of men if we are going to be seeking to understand the work of the Lord?

The end result? The Christian is ready to say everything in the Bible is true. The fundy atheist ready to say it is all false, or at least heavily suspect. Of course, the Bible is full of information attesting to the fact that Jesus existed, but we just can’t trust it because it’s religious and has miracles in it. Anyone who is making a case for it being reliable is obviously just someone who’s been indoctrinated and is incapable of thinking for themselves to see the obvious nonsense.

Both cases also have an allegiance without thinking to anything external when it is seen. If Pastor Bob says the Bible says this, well that’s the case. For the atheist, if Pastor Dawkins says X, well that’s also the case. Whatever authority one goes to, if it is one that agrees with one’s own worldview, then that authority is infallible in all matters of faith and practice. No need to question.

Also, there is never any need to read the other side. The other side in both cases is obvious nonsense. Why should I bother educating myself on what some evil evolutionists say? They’re just God-haters trying to suppress the truth. Why should I bother educating myself on what New Testament scholars say? They were just indoctrinated as children and can’t face reality without their crutch and are trying to cover up the obvious holes in the Bible.

The Reason Rally we can expect will be the equivalent of a fundamentalist Christian meeting except for the allegiance that is given. We might even want to discuss if this could possibly be the largest gathering of fundamentalists ever at one place.

Christians need to be prepared and hope that some of them will actually be willing to dialogue and consider educating themselves on some matters. Always difficult with a fundy atheist, but one can always hope.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Reason Rally Reasoning?

What great reasoning can we expect to see from Unreasonables at the Reason Rally? Let’s find out on Deeper Waters.

Recently, someone found a link of an article that could indicate what we can expect to see at the Reason Rally. This concerns the camp quest of Richard Dawkins. The link can be found here.

Indeed, stellar reasoning we do find here. That is, if you take stellar to mean “I wonder what planet this reasoning was thought up on.”

Astronomy, critical thinking, philosophy and pseudo-science are covered at Camp Quest.

The first, maybe. However, as for the last three, most of that is material we wish Unreasonables would learn for themselves. Critical thinking does not mean thinking critically of every opinion that disagrees with you and is also religious. Philosophy does not mean finding what can be demonstrated scientifically. pseudo-science does not mean “Anything that has anything in it that is not ‘natural’, whatever that means.

There are some atheists who can do philosophy and critical thinking well of course. They’re also able to actually engage with the ideas of their opponents rather than tossing out sound bites. New atheist types like Meyers, Dawkins, etc. are not included in this group. Forget having to go and study the theistic arguments that have gone on for centuries. Just toss out “Who made God?” or “Can God make a rock so big He can’t lift it?” or just claim evolution renders them all moot. After all, who has time to waste on that darn study. Just make sure those darn theists study evolution before they say anything. They surely shouldn’t comment on what they haven’t studied after all.

Moving on we see this:

One of the most popular exercises is the invisible unicorn challenge. The children are told there are two invisible unicorns who live at Camp Quest but that they cannot be seen, heard, felt or smelt, and do not leave a trace. A book about them has been handed down through the ages but it is too precious for anyone to see.

It’s almost as if some people think that theistic arguments do not have to be taken seriously ever since learning the word “fairies.” Never mind that there are differences such as God is a metaphysical necessity in the theistic worldview for the existence of anything whatsoever, or that our book can be seen and read by anyone, or that because of the nature of the entity an argument can be made that is supposed to end in certainty rather than just a possibility. Let’s just go with unicorns.

The children are supposed to disprove the existence of the unicorns for all the adults who claim to be staunch believers in them. What are the rewards?

a £10 note with a picture of Charles Darwin on it signed by Richard Dawkins, or a “godless” $100 bill, printed before 1957 when “In God We Trust” was added to paper currency in the US.

So far, the challenge has been unmet. The camp director, Samantha Stein, wishes to make one thing plain about the challenge:

Stein said that the exercise was not about trying to bash the idea of God – just to make the children think critically and rationally.

For the first part, color me skeptical. For the second part, how does this do it? Perhaps it would help if children were instead taught the laws of logic and were taught how to spot and recognize logical fallacies. Perhaps it would help if they were taught how to use a library and proper research skills. Perhaps they should be told there are other web sites out there for study besides Wikipedia.

Instead, children are taught automatically that being reasonable means being an atheist. My contention is that there are reasonable people on both sides and unreasonable people on both sides. There are some atheists who really do actually engage with the other side and learn their arguments. These are ones who are worthy of respect. Most others instead just toss out sound bites and think that this is sufficient.

They also quickly are seen to be in over their head, but then that invincible ignorance kicks in. This is what is known as the Dunning Effect. Of course, the atheist has to be right because, well, they’re the atheist and they’re the champions of reason and as educated as this Christian might appear to be, we all know really that they’re just insecure and believe blindly because they were scared into doing so or they just want to.

It could never be because they just think the evidence is compelling.

If this is the kind of reasoning we can expect to see at the Reason Rally, then I hope every atheist out there attends it. I am quite thankful for what Dawkins, Meyers, Stenger, Harris, and others have done in further increasing the ignorance of the atheist movement. Let them keep doing so!

In Christ,
Nick Peters

“Reasonable” Whining

What’s been the response to posting on the Reason Rally? Let’s talk about it tonight at Deeper Waters.

Last week, several of us in conjunction with truereason.org blogged about the upcoming Reason Rally. What an amazing response we had! What was amazing was the amount of atheist responses and how it was the same thing over and over. For all the talk I hear about free-thinkers, atheists I meet on the internet seem to think exactly alike.

To be fair, there are some who don’t and these are even my friends on Facebook. There are a number of atheists who I respect. I do not want to give their names seeing as that’s their choice, but I can tell them that as friends of my who I’ve met on my internet travels on Facebook, if they’re on the list, they have my respect.

What is so interesting about all of this is the absolute horror the other atheists have at the thought of Christians wanting to show up at the Reason Rally. If I’m sitting at home and I hear the doorbell ring and I find out that there are Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses at the door, I have sheer delight. Why shouldn’t I? I’m confident in what I know and I’m prepared to defend it.

I would think the atheists should be sitting back and thinking “Oh. The Christians want to come and play do they? Well let them come and challenge us and we’ll tear them to pieces!”

Some have asked if we would want them coming to our church services. My response to that would be “Please!” We do want you to come to our churches and be willing to challenge us. This is one reason I think every church should have at least one person who is a go-to on apologetics issues. That way, when the atheist comes knocking, someone can help. Sadly, too many churches would be prone to crumple immediately. This is not the fault of Christianity as Christ taught it, but of a lazy mentality in the world that has carried over to our Christianity. For these atheists who act with disdain at the thought of Christians coming, the same is going on with them.

As I have said, Richard Dawkins will be the main speaker at this event and too many exemplify Dawkins’s style. Dawkins, for instance, wrote a magnificent book called “The Blind Watchmaker.” This book was well-written and was able to sustain an argument. I do not think it works necessarily, but one can read that book and see Dawkins as intelligent and well-informed in it. Dawkins’s great weakness in it is that even if he can establish macroevolution, and I would have no problem if he did, macroevolution does not equal atheism.

Now compare that to “The God Delusion.” In this one, we have a childish rant that simply thinks the ultimate stumper is “Who made God?” As one who knows the Thomistic arguments that Dawkins deals with in the book, I can assure anyone that Dawkins does not know them. No Thomistic scholar would think Dawkins has answered anything. Dawkins’s own question of “Who made God?” would have been answered had he read the chapter on Simplicity, which would have been the very next chapter.

Unfortunately, since the new atheists have become popular, the debate has lessened in its quality. There is a benefit however in that if this rate continues, atheist scholarship will just decline more and more. If the atheist movement wants to strengthen itself, one of the best things it can do is keep its distance from the new atheists.

It is as if at this point the new atheists think that even having the debate is pointless. For those of us who are interested in real looks at the truth, this is not the case and books by the new atheists do not end the debate. New atheists are hardly convincing when they attempt to argue that there’s no evidence that Jesus even existed. It’s a position Bart Ehrman even says should not be taken.

What do we do now? Just sit back and enjoy watching how the so-called champions of reason just can’t seem to stand having anyone who could be intruding on their playground. Hopefully one day the ones who place so much stock in reason will learn to develop theirs.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Being Weird

Kermit may have thought that it’s not easy being green, but is it easy being weird? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Readers of the blog know that my wife and I both have Asperger’s. Recently, she wrote a note on Facebook about her experiences. She does want readers to know that this note is not complete. I hope she will finish it soon.

So, most people know I have Asperger’s Syndrome, which is a mild form of Autism. I’m just starting to feel okay about that. A lot of times I wish I was, well, “normal.” If I were normal, a lot of my problems would be gone. I probably wouldn’t have gotten bullied as much growing up. People would probably be able to understand me better, and I them. I probably would be accepted by other people more. I could probably wear stillettos like a lot of my female friends do. I maybe wouldn’t be so obsessed with anime and the “fantasy” world/genre if I were normal. Life would be, normal.
But then, the benefits of having Asperger’s. I got my loving and devoted husband. I think and see the world differently. I’m unique. I’m my own person. I may have flaws, but we all do. I even see myself differently.
I can’t say all Aspies see themselves this way, but as for me, my role model is an anime character. I know that may be really weird, but it’s true. My role model happens to be Goku from Dragonball, Dragonball Z, and Dragonball GT. He and I are also a lot alike. We both love the color orange! We both love to eat. We both want to protect people. We’re both naive. We both have a good heart. He just happens to be fit and actually saving the world.
Some times I don’t even think I’m human, or I’m something different but stuck in a human body. I often want to get out of my body and show people I’m not a pushover. I’m something tough. When kids would beat me up, I wanted to power-up and become a Super Saiyan and be able to defend myself, and others, and people be like, “Woa! We shouldn’t have messed with her!” I wanted to be a good different…a different people could accept or would feel bad for not accepting. I wanted more than anything to be accepted. But really, what matters even more, is if I can accept myself. I know God accepts me, and I do have some friends who accept me, but I’ve got to accept myself too. I hope this has helped some of you, I’m still working on it.

I personally really liked this note, especially with my wife starting to accept being an Aspie. I used to have a hard time with it, but now it’s reached the point where I instead consider that this is my gift. Some could say I might have a more mild case and if I had a stronger case I might not say the same thing. That’s a hypothetical and I can say nothing about it then.

I can say that I am overall very happy with my life. Of course, there are some things that I’ve changed. I have written in the past I’m sure that I have a weird phobia around foods and wish I had a better diet. Many Aspies react to sense experience differently. For me, it’s messy stuff I don’t like. If I’m at a fast food restaurant, I will pick the cleanest table to sit at and one crumb on it can disqualify it. If I walk into a kitchen and see a dirty dish, I am repelled by it. We have an apple cutter now and that makes it easy for me to enjoy apples which I hadn’t done in awhile since I didn’t want a messy core left behind.

Keep in mind I know that none of this is rational. Of course, I also realize that we all have irrational tendencies in some way. (And if you wish to argue that my Christianity is irrational, bring it.) I also realize that in knowing we all have this, that everyone else around me is also weird. I could just be unusually eccentric.

Some of you may think I’m a bookworm spending all my time in the books or internet debate. Not at all. My wife and I enjoy good gaming together and I happen to have an abundant interest in series like Final Fantasy or Legend of Zelda. My love of games can cause me to regularly hum a gaming tune. I have an encyclopedic knowledge of Smallville and I am one of those people you have heard so much about that identify themselves as “Bronies.” My personality is such that if I get interested in anything, I can easily obsess over it.

Interactions can be difficult still. I can stand up and speak to 100 people and not have a problem at all. There was a time even at my church where I needed to do Sunday School and I found out about this two minutes before it started as we realized there was no one else who could do it. Within those two minutes I decided to speak on the five ways of Thomas Aquinas and gave an hour long talk on the topic. This was without notes at all.

Doing something like that, is far easier than talking to just one person I don’t know. Give me the crowd of strangers any day instead of just one. When my best man and I went to a Kingdom Hall together where Jehovah’s Witnesses come together for “worship” I still remember shaking a hand in a crowd of strangers and someone said their name to me as I shook their hand and I was frozen until I heard my best man say “Say your name.” Mentally, my mind knew what to do, but it was just doing it. Now had I had to get up and give a talk on the Trinity, no problem. The one on one was killer.

Still, I have accepted much of this about myself. It does not mean that nothing needs to change. We all have areas we need to change. I can still accept that there is much good and I often think of the scenario of the third X-Men movie with this. Some people didn’t like being different as a mutant. Some accepted it. If there was a cure to my Aspieness, would I take it? I really don’t think I would. I think this introduces me to new avenues of thinking. Sure. I miss some obvious things others do see, but I think I see a lot of stuff that isn’t obvious that others miss.

And along with my wife, being an Aspie is something that brought us into each other’s orbit and that’s something I don’t take lightly.

I conclude then that it’s okay to be weird. I’m quite happy with my life and look forward to living more of it. I don’t want this to just be something revealing about myself however. I hope this will be a gift for others on the spectrum.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Thoughts on Abraham and Isaac

Is Abraham just another case like Andrea Yates? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Most of us know about the story of Andrea Yates. She’s the one who killed her five children by drowning them in a bathtub because of demonic influence. The same has been said of Abraham however. If Abraham was around today, we are told he would have been arrested on charges of harming his children. (Never mind the whole Canaanite culture Abraham lived in would have been also since they regularly practiced child sacrifice.)

Is this an accurate parallel? One aspect when studying a parallel is to see how the accounts are similar.

Both accounts have a person being told by a being that is immaterial supposedly to kill their child.

Both are willing to do it.

As far as I can see, the similarities end there.

Next is to find how they are different and when bringing out the differences, I hope to shed some light on this in a way I’ve been thinking about that I have not seen apologists argue for. This is not to discount the excellent arguments put forward, and while we can often argue looking ahead to Jesus through all of this, perhaps instead we should start with looking back to Adam.

We will start with the first prophecy we have in the Bible of Jesus which is as follows:

And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel.

The word for offspring there is zera’ in the Hebrew and means seed. Note also that this information I have comes from a look through a concordance to find the information. I am not claiming to be a Hebrew scholar arguing the finer points of the word, but simply wanting to see if this word is used elsewhere.

Before doing that however, it’s important to notice that there has just been a punishment pronounced, but then a promise of deliverance from that punishment. This will come through the seed, and it’s quite likely that with each of Eve’s children, she hoped one of them would be the seed and this would be a tradition that would be passed down, and if it was, Noah would have known about it being a righteous man.

Let’s suppose then that it was passed all the way down to Abraham. Do we find him having any references to a seed?

Abundantly so!

To begin with, we have chapter 12 where this great promise is made to Abraham.

“I will make you into a great nation,
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.
3 I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you.”

This is a great promise. It’s not that Abraham will set up a great nation. He will not just found a city where people will live. Instead, the descendants will come from his own body. Not only that, in this land, God will work, or start to work, in Abraham in such a way that all peoples on Earth will be blessed through this. Is there any specific reference to zera?

Check verse 7:

The LORD appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built an altar there to the LORD, who had appeared to him.

So Abraham is given a promise of blessing to all the peoples of the Earth and it will be through his offspring, his seed. Could this be echoes of the seed in Genesis 3?

Let’s go to the next chapter and we have this starting in verse 14:

14 The LORD said to Abram after Lot had parted from him, “Look around from where you are, to the north and south, to the east and west. 15 All the land that you see I will give to you and your offspring forever. 16 I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth, so that if anyone could count the dust, then your offspring could be counted. 17 Go, walk through the length and breadth of the land, for I am giving it to you.”

Once again, that seed is mentioned. There are still the great promises of the land being given and Abraham is counting on this not yet seen seed. Now we move on to chapter 15.

1 After this, the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision:
“Do not be afraid, Abram.
I am your shield,
your very great reward.”

2 But Abram said, “Sovereign LORD, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus?” 3 And Abram said, “You have given me no children; so a servant in my household will be my heir.”

Abraham could be justified in his doubt at this point as he was old and nothing had happened and God had said yes for so long without showing any evidence that he was going to do something. Abraham did fear that his servant would be the heir and if that happened, God’s promises would be moot since God had promised it to Abraham’s seed. The word for children in verse 3 is our word zera again.

4 Then the word of the LORD came to him: “This man will not be your heir, but a son who is your own flesh and blood will be your heir.” 5 He took him outside and said, “Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”

6 Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness.

What happens? Abraham is given another promise about how many descendants we will have and we are explicitly told at this point that Abraham believed the Lord. Keep that in mind. Abraham really does believe this promise.

12 As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him. 13 Then the LORD said to him, “Know for certain that for four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own and that they will be enslaved and mistreated there. 14 But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. 15 You, however, will go to your ancestors in peace and be buried at a good old age. 16 In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.”

17 When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. 18 On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram and said, “To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates— 19 the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, 20 Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, 21 Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites.”

Once again, Abraham is told about descendants and this time with an oath. Earlier in the chapter, Abraham had cut apart a cow, a goat, and a ram and cut them in half. The idea was in those days that the people making the covenant would pass between them to say “If I break the covenant, may it be done to me what has been done to this or these animals.”

Abraham does not pass between them. In the dream, it is only God who does this, and God bases the covenant on His own existence to show the impossibility of it breaking. It is entirely on God.

I’m not going to quote the whole of Genesis 17 here, but let us make some observations on it.

First off, he is told he will be a father of many nations and in fact has his name changed to relate this. This name change would have been noted in society as he was regarded by the people of his time as a prophet. This is in Genesis 20:7 and is the only place in Genesis where the word “prophet” shows up. Abraham would have been uniquely marked out in society with the favor of YHWH.

Abraham is also told that kings will come from him, which is part of how he will bless all the people on Earth. He is told here that he has an everlasting covenant that is to be made with him. He is told Sarai’s name will be Sarah and God will give Abraham a son by her.

Note in chapter 16, Abraham thought God was moving too slowly and needed some help. Sarah agreed and gave him her slave women to have a child by her, and indeed he did. This was Ishmael. Looking at this from Genesis 17, Abraham laughs at what God says and states that if only Ishmael would get the blessing.

Side note friends. Keep in mind the father of the faithful as we call him laughed at the promise of God.

We are also told specifically that this one to be the heir of the promise will be a boy named Isaac. In Genesis 18, we are even given a time frame of when this boy will be born. There could then be no doubt that the boy born was in fact the boy God had in mind.

Come Genesis 21, Sarah is sick of how Ishmael is treating Isaac and tells Abraham to tell Hagar and Ishmael to clear out. God gives the okay saying to not be afraid It is though Isaac that Abraham’s offspring would be reckoned. Why say this unless Abraham was still having his doubts? For those concerned, Hagar and Ishmael when away did receive divine providence and Ishmael did have what was said of him come true.

With all of this in mind now, we come to Genesis 22 where Abraham is to sacrifice Isaac.

Already, we do not have a parallel with Yates, unless Yates was established in the community as a prophet, had had angelic visitation, had had conversations with God that were seen to be valid through external signs such as the birth of a son through a woman who was 90, and Abraham was a noted figure in the society to all around him.

This changes everything.

What is meant then when we are told that Abraham was to sacrifice Isaac?

If we go back though to Genesis 3, we could say Abraham knew of this promise and had had a lot of promises come to him as well. If God was giving new revelation, it was to him. He had no doubt that this was the boy that God had spoken of due to this boy being named Isaac, coming from Sarah, and being born within the time of the prophecy. Over and over in the face of Abraham’s doubts, God had stressed that Isaac would be the one the covenant would come through.

Now he was to offer Isaac as a sacrifice.

Okay. Instead of noting that Abraham did act, what would it mean prior if Abraham does not act?

On a personal level, Abraham would be seen as giving the final doubt to God that in the face of all that had happened, God would not be trustworthy. Despite that with a miracle birth, God had shown himself to be the Lord of nature, He still would not be seen as one who would keep His promise. Abraham would have called God’s honor into question by refusing.

On a social level, Abraham was risking his standing in the community as a prophet of God and thus God’s standing in the society. What if Abraham does not offer Isaac? Then Abraham is seen as one who does not even believe the prophecies that come to him so why should anyone else for that matter? Abraham faces shame this way. What if Abraham does offer? If he is wrong, then his reputation is shot as well because then he would have been seen as murdering not just a child, but by this point in time, a teenage child, practically an adult for all intents and purposes in those days. Child sacrifice might have been acceptable, but hypocrisy wouldn’t, and if you’re going to live a life separate from this and thus condemning it, you’d better not do the same.

On an eschatological level, Abraham could have seen that the fate of humanity in a sense rested on him. If he does not believe God, then the seed will not come. If that is the case, then the world would never be free from the curse and the story would end with God having been wrong, something that could not be.

Once again, this changes everything. Abraham’s choice is to go through and trust that somehow God would be faithful to His promise. He might not like following the command of God, and in this case he probably didn’t, seeing as he spoke so little about it, but he will follow. He will risk everything. No matter what happens, Abraham’s future is forever changed at this point.

Now I know there are many arguments that are given that show Abraham believed Isaac would survive somehow. There is the argument that Abraham told his servants that he and Isaac would return and there is also the idea in Jewish literature that Isaac was a willing sacrifice and Hebrews says that Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, something astounding since so far death had not been conquered. Maybe Abraham even thought that here it would be. It was not to be now. It was to be the Son of another Father instead.

But before we get to those arguments, let’s keep in mind that this is not a parallel with people we deem crazy today. The differences are just too great. This also is not just an absurd act as someone like Kierkegaard might have us to believe. This is Abraham acting on a promise made repeatedly to him, where his belief had been credited as righteous. How far was he willing to go to show that he knew God would keep the promise? Would he make the ultimate sacrifice? After all, something could happen to Abraham and Sarah and the promise could still come true. The promise stands or falls with Isaac and in this case, it falls on if Abraham will believe God. Will Abraham keep the everlasting covenant?

As I have said, I believe the arguments given by others are valid, but as I thought about this and if it has been discussed this much by others, I have not seen it at this point. These are just my thoughts on a new way of looking at it that I hope leave us in awe of the magnitude of this moment and the importance of keeping the covenant and asking how we will live today in light of those who went before us.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Reason Rally: Atheist Group Therapy

The atheists have the reason rally coming up? What’s my take on it?

I heard about the Reason Rally through Ratio Christi, an organization, which I work with, dedicated to bringing sound apologetics to the Christian campus. The Reason Rally is to be held on March 24th at Washington D.C. and plans to unite atheists and agnostics together to celebrate reason.

You know these groups. These are the atheists who say they don’t have any sort of unified front or anything of that sort. They just all happen to share a non-belief. The only thing they have in common is that they lack a belief in God. We’ve heard it, but this seems to go against it.

Before too long, let us start preparing for the non-unicorn rally or the non-leprechaun rally. We then can ready the non-fairy rally. Why? Well we’re not making any statements about reality with these rallies. All we’re saying is that we lack belief in those. Obviously, that does not mean that we think they don’t exist. It just means we lack belief that they do. Makes perfect sense. Right?

I didn’t think so.

Richard Dawkins will be one of the main speakers, which tells us about all we need to know. Richard Dawkins of course is the leading horseman of the new atheism with his book “The God Delusion.” This book has practically become a Bible for most online atheists today with a new fundamentalism that says “Richard says it! I believe it! That settles it!” Dawkins has spoken. The case is closed.

Never mind that Dawkins has ran with his tail between his legs from William Lane Craig and most recently has done so from a clergyman who interviewed him. In reality, most of us who are in the field of Christian apologetics would love a chance to debate the horseman.

Dawkins has made numerous unbacked statements that in essence become simply dogmatic “statements of faith.” Dawkins treats “Who made God?” as the ultimate stumper for Christians and repeatedly says that faith is believing something without evidence, a definition that he gives no evidence for.

Yet in all of this, Dawkins proclaims himself as a champion of science and reason, as if not believing in God automatically means you are a person of reason. Obviously anyone who is a Christian or a believer in any sort of deity has sold themselves out to delusion and abandoned reason. This assertion is not defended. It is just asserted.

Let us keep in mind the saying of Chesterton. “There are two kinds of people in the world, the conscious dogmatists and the unconscious dogmatists. I have always found myself that the unconscious dogmatists were by far the most dogmatic.” Chesterton would see the Reason Rally as an example. While the new atheist crowd wishes to speak against dogma, they simply take one dogma and replace it with another.

Dogma is one of those terms not really understood. In reality, we all have some dogmas. We all hold some beliefs in high honor that we wish others to hold. The difference between myself and the new atheists is that I know I am dogmatic. The new atheists do not know it and in turn end up pushing their dogma the most.

This is the belief that they have the market on reason. They have it so well, they need to merely assert their beliefs without argument and the world will consent. Think of how one Christmas they had the posters that said “You know it’s a myth. This season, celebrate reason.”

But what would be a myth? Is it a myth that Jesus was born? Are the events surrounding his birth a myth? Is everything in the gospels a myth? We do not know. We are not told. All we supposedly know is that deep down, all of us know that this is a myth and we need to abandon it for reason.

No argument is given. All that is given is an assertion. You can just say to someone “You believe in a being that is not scientifically detectable!” or “You believe in someone who is invisible!” or any sort of line like that. Yes. I do believe in a being like that. Can you demonstrate why that is ipso facto false?

In reasoning with many new atheist types online, I have found this mindset to be common. Why do so many “free-thinkers” think exactly alike? It gets to the point of saying “Okay. I know your argument. I can practically show you what book it’s in and what page it’s on. Can we get to a real argument sometime?”

It doesn’t matter how bad the argument is. If it’s from the new atheists, it is used. “It is reasonable to believe Jesus never even existed.” Never mind that professors of ancient history would have a hard time controlling laughter at such a statement. The giver of this statement has 99% of the time never read anything on historiography. They probably don’t know that the favorite biblical authority of the new atheists, Bart Ehrman, thinks this position should be abandoned. All we need to know is that a new atheist made the statement.

As sad as all of this, what is even sadder is that Christians aren’t generally capable of engaging. You don’t need to spend all you time in an ivory scholar to be able to answer these people. High schoolers could be easily trained to be able to answer them. It’s also certainly not that Christians are outnumbered. We certainly have the majority. It’s that most of us just don’t have the right equipment to do the job.

When our troops were storming Normandy, many of them would land in the water and unfortunately had this baggage of equipment they did not need then that would weigh them down and they would sink to their deaths or be so slow that they would be easy prey. We can get a lot of “equipment” through many of our feel-good books, and there is a place for non-apologetic material, but we need a church that is equipped with such material. Ideally, every church should have at least one point man to go to to answer questions.

Why not try to make a presence at Reason Rally, as I hope to do. That is exactly what True Reason (Link below) is doing. Consider this information of theirs:

Together, we represent Christians from the United States and around the world who believe that Christianity is a reasonable worldview. Our goal is to demonstrate a humble, loving and thoughtful response to the Reason Rally. We’ll be equipped there with:
Gifts of kindness to give away–free bottled water, for example
Mini-book (32-page) summarized versions of Reason Really, an exciting soon-to-be-published ebook written especially for this purpose.
Flyers advertising that ebook.
A limited number of copies of a currently published book on Christianity and atheism.

I will be doing what I can to be there and I’d love to see you there. Let’s be there to argue not against reasoning, which we should all love, but to argue against bad reasoning. Let us replace the reason of Dawkins with what Ratio Christi is named for, the Reason of Christ.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

A link to True Reason can be found here

Hills Worth Dying On

Where will you lay down your life? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Recently, I wrote on how evolution is not a problem for me. If I wake up tomorrow and hear “Evolution proven true!” and it cannot be denied, I’ll say “Okay. That’s interesting,” and go about my day. If I hear instead “Scientists agree evolution cannot be true,” my response will be the same. For me, it is a non-issue and I believe much ink has been wasted on making this an issue and turning it into science vs. Christianity.

This quickly became a very debated blog with the first poster being OEC and then a couple others came in, one clearly YEC, and I jumped in to offer my defense of what I had written. Unfortunately, what I saw on the YEC side gave me the impression that if YEC is not true, then the Bible is not true and if the Bible is not true, then Christianity is not true.

This leads me to the question of what hills we are going to die on. For instance, I have seen several exchanges between Calvinists and Arminians. However, how many of us would be willing to lay own our lives for Calvinism or Arminianism? Now if you have studied this field more than others, you would be more prone to state certainty of your view, but will you make your Christianity dependent on it? Picture being in any of those camps and being shown strong evidence that your interpretation of the text was false and the text in reality is incompatible with your view. Could you accept that and still accept that Jesus rose from the dead? Or would it be that if your view was wrong, you would think the text had to be wrong and call into question the resurrection?

The same follows for eschatology. A Preterist interpretation places much on Jesus’s claim that this generation would not pass away. Suppose that that interpretation could not stand, but you still had undeniable evidence that Jesus rose from the dead. What would it mean? If you were a dispensationalist and you were shown that there was no distinction between Israel and the Church, would you think you had to abandon Christianity?

What if you’re charismatic and believe strongly that tongues are a prayer language and that you have that gift, but you are shown it is all something in your head and tongues does not refer to a prayer language and your understanding of the text is wrong. Will this mean you abandon Christianity?

We’ve written much here lately on Inerrancy. Let us suppose that you are shown undeniably that the Bible does have an error in it. Do you take that to mean then that Christianity is false entirely and we have no reason to believe that Jesus rose from the dead?

Each of these cases present hills people are willing to die on. I have no problem with arguing vociferously for an interpretation. I have a problem where that belief system is made an essential for the gospel to be true.

What happens then is that we make our beliefs to be essential when Christ never made them so. We can even make them tests of orthodoxy. This should never happen. My wife and I for instance both disagree on the age of the Earth and on the topic of eschatology. She has no problem however when someone asks me a question if I share my view. There was even a Sunday School class we were in once on eschatology that had her view being taught and she was wanting me to state my view and how it was different and why I held it.

Does that mean we can never disagree then? Of course not! We should disagree and disagree strongly. That’s the only way we can determine which side has the truth. (Note to some out there. The way to determine this is by actually arguing and not engaging in open letter campaigns and calling for repentance)

Let us also make sure we know what the other side believes. A notorious fault I have with the works of the new atheists is that they do not get Christian arguments right. A problem I have with several intra-Christian debates are the constant straw men I see. Make sure you know what the opposition believes.

Finally, don’t mistake your view for the gospel. There was a Christian coffee shop I once went to, but stopped attending and part of it was that there was too much emphasis on non-essentials. One person wanted to consistently argue with me on the age of the Earth when I said I wasn’t interested. Another consisted of a very hyper-Calvinistic approach to evangelism I just didn’t want to work with.

Too often, we can be firing at our own brothers and sisters as enemies of the gospel. Let us remember Christians do have a common enemy. No doubt we have to rebuke our own at times, but they are not our enemy. Let’s be careful which hills we’ll die on and let ours be the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Is Evolution a Problem?

If macroevolution was true, would that destroy Christianity? Let’s discuss it today on Deeper Waters.

On the Facebook page supporting Mike Licona, there has been discussion about the work of Peter Enns. I do not know enough about that at this moment to comment on that. However, in discussing all of that, the question has been raised about the role of science in interpreting Scripture and what it would mean if macroevolution was true.

Please note in all of this that I am not stating whether macroevolution is in fact true or false. Frankly, I am not a scientist and do not know enough about the scientific study to make a proper assessment of the data. What I simply wish to ask is if it would be a defeater for Christian theism if it was found to be true. Note what it would take is to prove that Jesus did not rise from the dead.

I think much of the problem is that we moderns read Genesis in a way the ancients would not have. We are so scientific that we read it as if it was a scientific account. This is a mistake old-earth and young-earth creationists both make. The question we should be asking is why did God include it and why would the ancients care?

To begin with, is God telling us something just to satisfy our intellectual curiosity? No. The Bible is a book meant to tell us about Jesus and not to tell us superfluous truths. In all of this, the creation account is meant only secondarily to tell us something about creation but primarily to tell us about God.

For the people, knowing the time it took to create would not help them in their debates with pagans. Then what? Could it be that the accounts were written more to show the purpose of creation? If so, then God is using something like storytelling in a unique way to us, but something ancients would have understood.

But what if I am wrong and in fact the Bible is wrong? Well my being wrong would not be the first time, but a lot of Christians would have a problem with the Bible being wrong. I do not think that it is, but as a believer in Inerrancy, I would have to certainly rethink some matters, but I would not throw out the baby with the bathwater. More on this in a bit.

What if someone presumes evolution and comes to the Genesis text and interprets it in that light? The reality is we all do something similar. We come to the text that speaks about the four corners of the Earth in Revelation, but due to knowing the world is not flat, and knowing that the ancients knew that, we know it means something else. We know of texts that seem to teach that the Earth cannot be moved, but due to our knowledge of heliocentrism, we know that that understanding would be false.

If we want to know if evolution is true, then the place to go is a science lab. Let us suppose you say “We have Scripture and Scripture teaches it is not.” Fair enough. Then you should want to open the doors to the science lab and be able to say “Do your best research and in the end you will find that it does not hold up.” If you take a stance of not wanting to examine the evidence, then I would question how much faith you really have that the Scripture is true.

If on the other hand, you are evangelical and believe macroevolution is true, you should also be willing to say “Bring forth your toughest objections!” After all, if your belief is true, it will stand up to scrutiny. If you do not want to open yourself up, then the same question applies though to your science instead.

Now we return to this. Let us suppose for the sake of argument that macroevolution is true. Furthermore, let us suppose for the sake of argument that Scripture is incompatible with this, thus demonstrating that Scripture has an error. Again, I do not think this. I am merely taking the worst-case scenario.

Even here, Christianity is safe.

Why? One mistake does not prove it all false. For instance, Scripture teaches that Jesus existed. Are we going to deny what all scholars of the NT and ancient history would affirm just because the Bible would not be inerrant? Well then you ask, “How do we know what’s true in it?”

Let me ask you. How do you know what’s true on the internet? How do you know what’s true on TV? How do you know what’s true in that book you’re reading? If the answer is “Well I examine the evidence and I go where it leads,” then congratulations on answering your own question. We’d study the Bible the same way we do Tacitus, Josephus, or anything else.

Thus, we can believe that the Pauline epistles do contain a strong case based on the 1 Cor. 15 creed that Jesus rose from the dead alongside the information we have in Galatians. Because Genesis would be wrong, it does not follow that Paul has to be wrong. We also need to realize that people were arguing for the resurrection before any epistles or gospels were written.

In conclusion, this leaves Christianity in a powerful position. We can take what is assumed to be a defeater for our faith and show it is not. We could even for the sake of argument grant contradictions in the Bible and still demonstrate that Jesus rose from the dead. After all, we do believe for a great miracle, God left great evidence. Indeed He did, even if it was through fallible men who made mistakes.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

God and Art

What hath Heaven to do with a Sketchbook? Let’s talk about it today on Deeper Waters.

As readers of this blog probably know, my wife is an artist. I, on the other hand, could not draw a good stick man if my life depended on it. I have at times got out of a picture of her and tried to draw it only to throw it away in shame unable to believe I had ruined things that way. How is it that one cannot take a simple picture and just copy what they see? As it stands, at this point, I cannot.

Last night, I was listening some to N.T. Wright as he talked about the creation and how it points beyond itself and how this relates to art. I do not recall exactly what it is he said, but I do remember that the idea of God and art has been bouncing around in my mind since then. The idea of aesthetics as pointing to God has long been appealing to me.

Beauty is something amazing to us all. Do we really think about the purpose of beauty? As I pondered it, one purpose I saw of beauty was that beauty is to draw us in and to make us want more of what it is that we see. We can see this often in secular programming today with a girl wearing an outfit around a man she wants to attract with the line of “I bet you’d like to see more.”

Of course, most women also know they have this power over men.

My wife and I sometimes watch shows on HGTV together as this is something she enjoys and I can tolerate it alongside her. I have noticed that on one show where a couple or single person is given a choice of three houses and we have to see which one they will choose to live in, that the Princess and I have always said we’d like to live in the same house. What I had not considered until I started pondering on this was the important role that beauty played in all of this.

Of course, a house needs to be functional for someone to live there, but we seem to have a necessity that it be beautiful. We do not really want to live in a house that will be perceived as ugly.The beauty adds value to the house and gets us to want the house more. We feel as if we are being drawn into it and being asked to experience more and more of it. We lose ourselves in its beauty.

This is also the case with good books. There are such things as bad books. They are a drag to read. You literally have to force yourself through page after page. Then, there are good books. I used to listen to Harry Potter on audio and found myself in my car saying “I’ll turn it off after this sentence.” “Okay. After this sentence.” “I can wait a little bit.” The story was drawing me in. I wanted to hear more.

In suspense, I love the works of Mary Higgins Clark. When I read a book of hers, I want to know what happens and can spend every waking moment thinking about the characters in the story and wondering what will happen next.. Who is it that I think has done the crime? How will everything work out? The story has worked its magic. The spell is cast. I am drawn in.

As a married man now, this is definitely an important aspect of marriage. When we were growing up we wanted our Mommies and Daddies. At times, we say today that we want our friends. However, when a man says he wants his wife and when a wife says she wants her husband, there can be times they mean something completely different from any of those prior wants.

Do we want our parents for their beauty? Do we want our friends for their beauty? No. But when it comes to spouses, we do want that beauty. In fact, we want more of that beauty. When we are dating, we seek to make ourselves as appealing as possible. Before I drove out of state to meet my Princess, I would have a good haircut and pick out a good outfit and make sure I had showered well and took something for breath. I wanted to look my best.

Why? The idea is simple. I wanted her to want me and the way to do that is to present beauty. To be sure, if that beauty rests solely in the physical, then that is a problem. If anything, we were first drawn by the beauty of hearts which is something special about connecting over the net at times. You see the person’s heart first.

As it stands, my wife does get more beautiful to me every day and I find it very pleasing when I know she wants to be beautiful not for her sake, but for my sake. Marriage is not meant to be an end of dating as it is so often seen, but it is to be an extension of dating with still each person wanting to draw the other in.

In Smallville, in the first season in the episode “Nicodemus”, Jonathan Kent is in a coma and Martha Kent relates to Clark about how she first met him and based on how he acted she found herself thinking the strangest thing of “God. I hope he marries me.” She then said that she still says every day. “God. I hope he marries me.”

To love in holy matrimony is not just a one-time choice, but is rather a choice that is made every day. To wake up and love is a choice that must be made. I make it a choice that when I wake up, to be sure to kiss my wife first. At the end of a work day, she’s already asleep, so I make it a point to have it be first that I go and kiss her. If I wake her up, she has done a good job of hiding it.

When we speak of this beauty in marriage, we must also speak of it in sexual union. This is the ultimate case of the drawing in and it is no surprise that it is the female who draws in the male. It’s my contention that of all that God created, the human female is the most beautiful of all and thus was saved for last, and I think the females would actually agree with me that overall women are more beautiful than men.

The idea of sexuality is that in that case, beauty seems to take on a new life, and indeed, this is the form of beauty that does create new life. Beauty reproduces after itself when it is reduced to the bare minimum. When the man and woman lose themselves in the beauty of one another, they are able to create a beauty together that neither could create alone.

In this case, the man seeks to possess the woman. He wants that which is totally different from him and wants it for it. He doesn’t want her the same way he would want a friend or a family member, which would more often be based on some function alone, but he wants his wife for her beauty first and while that does lead to a function, that leading is based on beauty.

This whole drawing in is fascinating, but what does it have to do with God? God is the master artist. If truth-seeking is thinking God’s thoughts after Him, could it be the case that good artwork is imagining God’s imagination after Him? We cannot create new things. We can only take the ideas God has created already and find new ways of reshaping them. It is the same with colors. The only colors we make are those that are combinations of prior ones. We cannot create new primary colors.

In that case, the world is meant to draw us in and we are to remember that the world in the sense of sinful humanity and desires is not good, but in the sense of humans as persons created in the image of God, it is good. People do not always behave good. We certainly know that. People insofar as they are however are good. This is not moral good, but ontological good, the goodness of simply being. The existence of people is good.

Many of us have a problem with the environmental movement and with some aspects of it, I can certainly agree with that disagreement. I do think some go too far in that they worship nature. Nature is not the end. It is not the final reality. The pantheist and the atheist both make the same mistake there. However, while they go too far in that they practically worship nature, we go too far in that we are not even tempted to.

In our world of technology, we can get so caught up in it that we lose sight of the beauty out there. I know this is a fault of mine. I am so eager to get caught up in all of the information that even when caught out in nature somewhere, I can just be wanting to check my mail. This is a fault in me. It is not a fault in creation.

When my wife and I go out somewhere in nature, with her interest in it, I know that she sees a lot more than I do. I am too busy thinking about all those things that we have created often that I do not take the time to look and appreciate what it is that God has created.

When we look at the environmentalists, we need to realize that Christians should be on the forefront of the environmentalist movement. Our God created this world and He created it to be beautiful and we should seek to do what we can to preserve that beauty for everyone.

Good art will seek to take God’s beauty and put it in such a way to best exemplify it. It will want to draw us in and at the same time make us want to be better than before. A good story will also have good virtue in it. A good painting will grasp us in the wonder of the true artist.

There is also the beauty of God Himself, an aspect often overlooked. What have we said about seeing a beautiful object? (By seeing, please do not limit it to the sense of sight. The same happens for beautiful music, smells, touches, etc.) We have said that the beauty makes you want to want the object all the more. You want to know it. As in the case of the opposite sex, you want to possess the other.

What of God who is not only the source of beautiful things, but beauty Himself? If we say we want God, then we should find Him beautiful. If we do not find Him beautiful, we will not find that we want Him. If we otherwise find that we do not really want God, then we need to ask if we really find Him beautiful. If we do not, and to an extent we all do not, then we need to ask if we really want Him. If we do not want that which is beautiful, the fault does not lie in the object of desire, but in ourselves.

Do we find ourselves drawn into God and the things of God? Do we live our lives wanting to experience the beauty that He has created and the beauty of Himself, or do we find ourselves rejecting these? Keep in mind that the more we reject the beauty, the more we move to the place of the ugly, and the most ugly place of all is of course, Hell.

If we love God, we will find ourselves wanting to say that we want to know Him as He is better. I will freely admit that in my own mind for me, this is a shortcoming of mine as I can very easily get distracted. I often do not find myself thinking on the things of God, but at times when I do get fresh insights into what I believe, something I find excellent about listening to N.T. Wright, I do find that passion for God there and the desire to want to know better.

As in the case of any beauty, the more we go into God, the more we find. The more we study the Bible, we will not just find that we know more, but we will find that there is more that we do not know. For those who are artists, such as my wife, they are privileged. Thinkers like myself get to present God to the world in ideas. Artists get to show Him in images somehow. Not so much as in sketching a picture of God, which cannot be done, but in using their images to make the viewer want more beauty, which will ultimately mean more of the ultimate beauty, God Himself.

May we find Him more beautiful every day.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Matt Chandler and Elevation

Is Matt Chandler’s sermon in need of censorship? Let’s talk about it today on Deeper Waters.

Recently, Steven Furtick of Elevation Church, had an event known as Code Orange Revival where he had a dozen preachers from other churches come and speak to the congregation. One name that was quite different from the others in the list was Matt Chandler.

And oddly enough, when his sermon was to be rebroadcast, it wasn’t. A statement issued by Geoff Schultz, who is the motion graphic designer at Elevation said the following:

“The team decided to focus the rebroadcast on Jesus, so we reformatted the content a bit – We are trying to stay in the flow of what the Spirit is leading us to do.”

Reformatting the content a bit seems to mean “changing it altogether.”

Instead, there was a video played of prayer going on. Why? Could this sermon have been such a disaster that it deserved to not be played?

Wanting to know, I listened to it myself. Chandler’s message is certainly powerful. I am not saying that I agreed with everything that he said in the sermon, but I certainly liked the majority of it and there was a clear emphasis on exegesis.

He also regularly points out that the Bible is not about us and even says the Bible is not about Elevation. The Bible is about Jesus. He wants us to know that God is for us, but that is only because God is for His glory first and He is glorified when we come to Him in repentance.

In the video, Furtick doesn’t seem too happy about how different this message is. Could there be some intention on Matt Chandler giving a message like this? I do not know, but I am open to it. There is something different to hear about the Kingdom of God rather than the Kingdom of Man.

To be fair though, while I think we rightfully say Elevation should not have skipped a rebroadcast of the sermon at the proper time, many of us can understand why this sermon would not be popular.

After all, we are all sinners and we are all about ourselves and to hear that God’s glory is more important than ours runs counter to our sinful intuitions. There is a part of us that wants to cringe at that. We are not sure if we can trust God to look out for us.

But this is also our sinful nature that must be worked out of us. This is the gravity of it. We are told that actions speak louder than words. When I kiss my wife, there is a message being told in that action. Let us suppose we asked the question “What is the message being told when we sin against God, especially knowingly?”

The message is that we wish for God to not exist. We want to be on that throne. We want to seek our good above the good of God. Every act of sin turns out to be then an act of divine treason and in a New Testament sense, it is saying that we are Lord and Jesus is not. We do not bow to Caesar. We seek to be Caesar.

Yet this sermon that glorified Christ was said to be the sermon that did not glorify Christ. How is this possible?

This is the kind of preaching we need to hear more often. Again, I do not agree with all Matt said, but it was obvious he had done some serious study of the text and had done some serious theology as well in working through the implications of his beliefs. Not only that, he was a quite humorous individual and I do value it when a pastor not only gives a sermon, but throws in the humor that also shows that he enjoys what he’s doing.

Some might think Jesus would not have been like that, but works like Trueblood’s “The Humor of Christ” shows that Jesus had a number of jokes in his sermons. He was a popular preacher and a preacher that one does not enjoy hearing will not be a popular preacher.

There is much speculation about why Chandler’s sermon was pulled at the time, and I think some of it could be likely. Time will hopefully tell what happened, but hopefully, more people will hear this message than that of someone like T.D. Jakes.

In Christ,
Nick Peters