Tag: Love

A Woman’s Worth

How should a woman view herself? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

“I don’t understand why she’s living the way she is. She seems to just get all of her joy from being with different men. What could I say to her?”

So someone asked me about someone they knew. It’s easy to say speak of such a person in negative terms, but I don’t want to go that route. The condemnation route from Christians is already known.

I thought back in reflecting on this question to a time I went to visit some friends from church when I lived in Georgia and their daughter came down to talk to me in the midst of a group conversation. She told me about a guy she was with and I asked if they were going to get married. She said not yet because he said he wanted to travel first.

Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!

If a guy is really interested in a girl, you have to wonder why he would put off wanting to be with her until after he “travels.” Besides, wouldn’t it be better to have a wife and go on those travels with someone? Wouldn’t the relationship come before one’s fun?

The parents were thrilled this was happening. I made it clear to this young lady that the guy was not really committed to her. She was good for some entertainment, but if he was committed to her, she would come first.

So we come now to the case of a young woman who is sleeping with men thinking that that is where her joy comes from. Is she seeking value? Is she seeking love? Does she think this is her purpose?

Now none of this is to say women shouldn’t enjoy sex. They absolutely should. However, like any good thing that can be enjoyed, it should be enjoyed in the proper place and context. It’s fine to enjoy a sweet every now and then, but if you make sweets your whole diet, you will suffer for it.

So what I would say to this woman is what is she worth?

If a woman wants to know if a man she is dating is really interested in her, there’s a simple way. Don’t have sex. Yes. I know that sounds revolutionary, but hear me out on this.

Men tend to be very self-sufficient. If it wasn’t for sex and also children, we would not really bother pursuing a romantic relationship. It’s not that we don’t care, but you can marry a girl and then she can divorce you and the state will back her and you could lose half of what you have and wind up paying alimony and child support for life.

What would be ideal for a man? A sexual relationship with a woman where he doesn’t have to risk everything. In other words, one where he doesn’t have to make a commitment. He can leave any time he wants and there’s nothing the woman can do about it. If he doesn’t want her to have children and protection fails, just get an abortion.

It’s a shame the way the feminist model has played right into the hands of the men they have such a problem with.

Suppose though a woman wants to be more than just a toy to him. Suppose she does want a commitment. Suppose she does want someone she can count on? Suppose she wants someone she can grow old with.

Then don’t have sex.

And yes, women are in charge of that one.

The question of when a woman has sex shows how much a man has to do to get her. A simple date? Three dates? Dinner and a movie? A month? Three months? A year? Engagement?

What if you say you have to make a lifelong commitment and it can only be me until death do us part?

If the man says “No,” then he’s not really interested in you. That’s good. You’ve eliminated a poser. However, if he says “Deal,” and then he works and works to get to that point for you, you know how much worth you have in his eyes. He is willing to go the extra mile and if a man really loves a woman, he wants to pursue her. He will climb mountains for the chance to demonstrate his commitment to her.

Not only that, but the man wins in the end to. A man gets a relationship that he has fought for. He gets to know that he has proven himself worthy of the girl he is with, although ask him later and he still will say he married a girl out of his league. The woman gets the lifelong relationship. She also in the end gets the sex too, just like the man does. In the end, both parties win. Both parties put the relationship first and then both parties get all of the benefits.

As it is, in the end, women are the big losers in the dating game today. Men don’t have to commit to them. They don’t have to step up and be actual men. They can come to the woman when they want to have some fun and then it’s off to do whatever they want to do.

Women deserve better. They deserve the best. They deserve a man, not a boy.

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

 

 

Is God Relational?

Does God really care about me? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Something people ask me when they think I don’t think hearing the voice of God is normative today is if God really cares about them. Is God relational? Does He really love me?

It’s always interesting to see that we have 66 books and the coming of Jesus and yet we still ask about that. One can read the Old Testament and see praises of God even before the coming of Christ. One of our most popular hymns, Great Is Thy Faithfulness, comes from quite likely the saddest book in the Bible, Lamentations.

It’s also strange to me to say “Well, if God isn’t interacting with me the way that I think He should, does He really love me?” God loves you the way that He loves you. Who are we to say that the way He loves us is not sufficient?

That being said, let’s look at the question. For one thing, it would have to be explained what is meant by relational. If you mean God brings about a change in me and I bring about a change in God, then no, God is not relational. You cannot change God. You will not make God better if you live a perfect life. You will not make Him worse if you live a life of sin and rebellion. You cannot bring Him more joy than He has in the Trinity. Your sin cannot destroy the joy He has in the Trinity.

It is true that many times, the Scriptures describe God as emotional, but they also describe Him as physical too. Many Christians rightly see that the description of God as physical is not to be read literalistically, but suddenly switch when it comes to the descriptions of God’s emotions. I read them both as anthropomorphic language. I’m consistent.

Some will also point to Christ as being emotional, and He was and is, but He is also fully man. The Father and the Spirit are not human at all. However, Jesus’s emotional responses can still show us the kinds of things God loves and the things He hates.

However, God loves you. In fact, God cannot love you more than He does right now. That would be impossible. You will never increase His love for you and you will never decrease it either. Not only that, but God is outside of the timeline and is eternal and unchanging, so His love for you has always been and it will never cease. It is the most active love of all.

That being said, love does not mean everything will work out the way you want. We dare not set up standards to test the love of God to say “Well, if God really loved me, then He would do XYZ or He would not do XYZ.” It would be easy to say “If God really loved me, He would not let me go through divorce.” It would be easy to say, but it would also be wrong.

Could it perhaps be that our modern thinking has led us to have a sort of entitlement mentality with God Himself? “Well, I see the way God spoke to all these great saints in the Old Testament and surely God cares about me just as much to speak to me.” Evil has always been a question for Christians, but could it be worse in a time when people think they are entitled to live a good life? If God loves them, surely He would not let them suffer in such a horrible way!

You have no claims on God. The only things God owes you are things He has promised you in covenant. God does not owe you a moment of existing. God does not owe you a good life. He could have sent us all to Hell and He would have been just and right to do so. That means all He gives you is grace ultimately.

In any case, however you imagine God loves you and however I tell you that God loves you, it is still inadequate to describe it. No words can ever fully describe such because God cannot be contained even by words. The question we should ask is not if He really loves us, but if we really love Him.

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)

 

The Failure of Self-Esteem

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

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

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

The self-esteem movement is a colossal failure.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

Hollywood and Autism Part 4

Can love be hard to find? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Atypical is a series I never got to finish as divorce started becoming a reality in my life around that time. It involves a young man named Sam on the spectrum in the middle of his teenage years who decides it’s time to get a girlfriend. His family is unfortunately dysfunctional and his main friend helping him is a perv and he develops a crush on his therapist. I plan to start the series again as I never got past the first season.

Sam has a problem in that he seems to let everything out immediately. He goes to a girl that he is interested in and has been arranged to date in some way, and starts listing off a long list of character flaws of his and includes he’s never had sex. The girl says “You’ve never had sex?” She invites him back to her place and he is sitting on the edge of a bed nervous and she comes over and starts putting the moves on him to which he pushes her off. At that, she is angry and tells him to get out.

Yeah. That doesn’t go well.

So let’s talk about what it’s like on the spectrum.

My ex-wife and I met through a mutual friend and our first conversations were through this ancient service called AOL Instant Messenger. I’m really thankful that we started that way and were introduced by a friend because speaking in person to someone like that is quite difficult. My therapist and I have decided that while many people use small talk to engage with others, I use humor. I have a reputation and I have been told I am one of the funniest if not the funniest guys on campus.

That is doable, but just a regular conversation is extremely difficult. When I go out and do evangelism which I have to do weekly for my scholarship, I have to have someone else join me (We go in pairs anyway) to start the conversation. Once it’s started, I can try to find a way in.

If I go to the grocery store and want one of the sticks used to separate orders, I find it nigh impossible to go to someone in front of me and ask for the stick. I usually wind up gesturing wildly. Strangest thing, but they never seem to notice that.

Thus, when people come to me and say “Just go up to someone and ask her out”, I wish it was that simple. For a guy, it is saying “Go up to someone and throw yourself on the line and admit those difficult emotions and risk total rejection once more.” Any of those are hard to do for a neurotypical guy. It’s much harder to do for an neurodivergent guy.

What would make it easier? If I had some sign that there would be a positive response possible back. Unfortunately, men struggle with understanding when a woman is flirting and when she is not. It is again, much harder if you do not understand social cues to begin with. “Hey! That lady smiled. Is she flirting with me? Is she being polite? Is she possibly interested?”

Now once I have a relationship, I usually do quite well. Believe it or not, being on the spectrum does not mean you’re an emotional rock. I am actually quite the romantic. I like to do everything I can to put a smile on a lady’s face.

Yet like the initial conversation, that initial contact is difficult, and force of will often does not seem like enough to do it. It is also one of the reasons I am in therapy right now. I am working on building up those skills and learning how to communicate better.

When I did watch Atypical, I did relate to Sam and his struggles. I am curious what else will happen as he continues his journey. I also pray my journey is successful.

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

Book Plunge: Anarchy Evolution Chapter 7

Is there a place for faith? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Once again, it’s a relief to read Graffin in comparison to other atheists. Graffin does not speak down on faith entirely. There is a problem that he never defines it, but at least he’s not on a tirade like someone like Richard Dawkins is. He says there is a place for it.

So let’s start with this quote I found directly relevant to me:

Not everyone feels empathy to the same degree. On the one hand, some autistic people appear to be born with a neurological condition that severely limits their ability to appreciate the emotional state of other humans, despite having similar experiences. On the other hand, sociopaths either feel no empathy or have become so adept at suppressing it that they never bother to assume another’s perspective. And all of us can become so tired, frustrated, angry, or bored that we ignore our empathic impulses, even when doing so makes others and ourselves miserable.

Graffin, Greg; Olson, Steve. Anarchy Evolution: Faith, Science, and Bad Religion in a World Without God (p. 184). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

Speaking as one such person on the spectrum, it’s not that I do not care about other peoples’ emotional states. It’s that I cannot tell what those states are. If someone is silent around me when I think they should say something, I wonder if the problem is me or not. This is especially so when it comes to the opposite sex. I know other neurotypical men struggle with this, but I suspect much more with me. Is the girl flirting or is she just talking? If she speaks with me is that interest or not?

That being said, empathy is not a good basis for our relationships since people have different degrees of understanding and just because I can feel X with someone, it doesn’t mean that I am obligated to do anything. Not only this, this is a highly western way of thinking. This is not a Woke thing with saying Western Civilization is bad. Western Civilization is incredible. It’s saying that in Eastern honor-shame cultures, empathy wouldn’t have the same appeal. People would think not based on how the individual feels, but on the attitudes of the group at large.

Graffin goes on to say that Western religions base moral codes on analogizing human nature and then looking at superhuman figures, such as Jesus or for a lot of Catholics and Orthodox people, saints. (Not to say Protestants don’t have saintly role models as well.) I do not know what he means by analogizing human nature, but I contend he would be benefitted by reading a book on Christian ethics to see how we make our decisions.

In a surprising twist, he says that science is based on empathy. He says that it relies on a shared experience of the world. He then turns and says it is also the best basis for human ethics, which again does not work since many cultures actually have quite different experiences of how the world should work. How do we adjudicate between them? We have to point to something beyond them.

Many religious believers mischaracterize naturalists as people without faith, but that is absurd. Everyone must believe in something—it’s part of human nature. I have no problem acknowledging that I have beliefs, though they differ from more traditional kinds of faith. Naturalists must believe, first of all, that the world is understandable and that knowledge of the world can be obtained through observation, experimentation, and verification. Most scientists don’t think much about this point. They simply assume that it is true and get to work. But this assumption has relevance to people other than philosophers. When intelligent design creationists, for example, speak of replacing methodological naturalism in science classes with theistic naturalism, they are threatening to remove this assumption from the shared presuppositions of public discourse.

Graffin, Greg; Olson, Steve. Anarchy Evolution: Faith, Science, and Bad Religion in a World Without God (p. 204). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

This is a surprising statement again, but yet a refreshing one. He is right in that science assumes that the material world exists and we can have knowledge of it. This is something they should consider. I am again unsure what he means by theistic naturalism.

He also says natural selection is not the main driving force of evolution. He says luck is actually a big part of it. He also says we cannot base our lives on the idea of saying “I am more fit than you, so I get to reproduce and you don’t.” The problem is, “Why not?” Graffin may say he doesn’t like that, but the person who thinks they are more fit could just say “Why should I care about what you like? I need to produce progeny!”

He also says we cannot judge people with respect to an arbitrary idea of what should be considered optimal, but from a naturalistic perspective, why not? It can be granted he would not like that. It is not granted that from his perspective, that is automatically wrong. Graffin has to give the reason why the person in power should care.

He then tells us that simply by existing in the human race, we all have a worth and a dignity that is inherent. Okay. Why? If all we are is matter in motion from a cosmic accident that will die in a universe that will cease to be, why should I think any life has inherent value? I agree that all human life has inherent value, but I do not think it can be supported in naturalism.

I don’t believe, for instance, that evolutionary biology or any scientific endeavor has much to say about the value of love. I’m sure a lot can be learned about the importance of hormones and their effects on our feelings. But do the bleak implications of evolution have any impact on the love I feel for my family? Do they make me more likely to break the law or flaunt society’s expectations of me? No. It simply does not follow that human relationships are meaningless just because we live in a godless universe subject to the natural laws of biology. Humans impart meaning and purpose to almost all aspects of life. This sense of meaning and purpose gives us a road map for how to live a good life.

Graffin, Greg; Olson, Steve. Anarchy Evolution: Faith, Science, and Bad Religion in a World Without God (p. 206). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

Why doesn’t it follow though? If Graffin’s worldview cannot explain love, it is a quite weak worldview. Humans can import meaning to loving relationships, but they could also just as easily import it to destructive ones. Who is to say someone would be wrong in doing so in naturalism? What is this good life Graffin speaks of? Again, there is no real in-depth look at the questions.

He lastly speaks of love in relationship to Allison, his now wife. Love requires a trust in that there is no 100% knowledge, though there can be good evidence. He describes love as a unique feeling. I contend love produces feelings, but it is not a feeling. It is an action that one does. Still, Graffin does speak of that trust as a form of faith, which again is refreshing.

Next time, we’ll talk about what it means to believe.

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

 

Your Husband Thinks You’re Beautiful. Accept It.

Can you accept a compliment? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

My pastor gave a sermon Sunday on marriage and he talked about how men have a great need for respect and women for love. No problem there. He also said that men need to regularly tell their wives that they think that they are beautiful.

I agree with all of this. I had no beef with the sermon, but I do have a concern that many men do this and many women resist it and this is a problem. Keep in mind that I am speaking about an all things being equal marriage and I am not at all talking about one where a spouse is abusive.

I still subscribe to marriage blogs and recently, the XY Code had a blog about the truth on your husband thinking you are beautiful. When he says it, you can usually expect that he means it. Of course, men don’t help their case if they regularly talk about how beautiful the actress on TV is or have a problem with pornography, but neither one of those means he doesn’t think his own wife is beautiful.

Unfortunately, we live in an age of Instagram where everyone puts their best pictures on social media. How many women will post a picture of themselves when they first get up in the morning and have bed hair, for example? What you see of people on social media is usually their very best.

I remember this being a struggle in my marriage. I regularly told my ex-wife she was beautiful, no matter what changes she went through, and I meant it every time I said it. There was only one woman who turned my head and I did not speak about others. I had promised to one and wanted to turn all my desires to that one. The problem was she had a hard time believing it.

Ladies. If your husband tells you you are beautiful and you say no, many problems are going on in that situation.

First, you are telling him that he is either a liar or deluded. Now you could say hypothetically that maybe you are not beautiful and he is deluded, but while he could be mistaken, he cannot be mistaken in that that is what he thinks. Why not just accept it? Why not be thankful you married a man who thinks you are beautiful? He chose you out of all the women in the world after all! If you call him a liar, you are building up distrust between you and him.

Second, you are damaging yourself. You are permitting yourself to insult yourself. Why? What are you gaining by that? Note that this is not saying you should not do things to take care of yourself. There is no problem with saying “I am beautiful, but I also need to go to the gym and watch what I eat and take better care of myself.”

Third, you are also teaching your husband to not compliment you. What husband will want to compliment his wife if it leads to an argument every time he does so? Why would he want to say you are beautiful if he ends up being put on trial for doing that? Men are fast learners in this area. If we do something and we just get chastisement for it, we learn to not do that. (Ask a man to wash the dishes and if your first words to him when he is done are criticism, he will realize he should not do that anymore.)

So in the end, you are calling your husband a liar. You are insulting yourself. You are shutting down future compliments and then wondering why your husband does not pay attention to you or call you beautiful.

This is not to say men do not have areas, but this is one that I want to address. I know many men who have had the exact same struggle I have. You would be surprised if you took the time to listen to know just how much your husband really loves you and treasures you and wants you to know that. I hope I can do that again with a special lady who yes, I will say is beautiful.

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

Working On Marriage

What should you think about in marriage? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Being on a seminary campus, it’s not uncommon that students will meet, date, and marry. I’ve been here for two years and I have seen that happen regularly. I am one of the few students on campus who is actually divorced.  Saying few is not really accurate. I only know of one other.

I write about this because it is on my mind due to my church having a marriage enrichment seminar coming up called Spouse-ology. I would tell every married couple to try to take time aside for this event. I would even encourage engaged couples to do this.

Generally when I see couples about to get married, I give them  advice and then ask a question. The advice is for early on in their marriage.

First off, when you go on your honeymoon, do what I did. I contacted my parents and her parents and told them to not reach out to us unless it was an emergency. Tihs is where you start to establish your own unit and you don’t need your parents giving you advice, especially advice that could contradict one another. Focus on one another.

With that, the second piece is to avoid social media. Yes. You have a lot of great pictures of your wedding and events on the honeymoon. They will still be there when you get back. Wait. There’s no need to share them. I didn’t even check my email while I was on mine. When I got back, I saw a whole thread on TheologyWeb dedicated to the wedding. People were already sharing pictures. Let them do that. Who cares what other people think about how beautiful your wedding was? Focus on each other.

Third, do not be seeking out to do active ministry in this time. Yes. I know we’re supposed to be serving the Kingdom, but one of the great services you give is your marriage. Now if an immediate need pops up for someone and you have to do something, then do it, but do not seek it. You are not alone in the work of ministry.

The question I ask them to think about is this. I remind them that I am divorced and then ask “What do you have that makes you think the same will not happen to you?” I hope it does not, but the statistics are often problematic. Even if they are not as bad as they could be, they are still bad. I really hope all these marriages succeed. I do not want people to have to go through the pain of divorce.

If you are engaged and about to marry, work on your marriage. If you are newly married, work on your marriage. If you have been married for five, ten, twenty, fifty, or more years, work on your marriage. It is one of the most important ministries you will ever have, and even more so if you have children. If your church offers you marriage enrichment seminars, take them.

One of the best ways we can transform the culture in the long run is having good marriages and raising good children. Get started today.

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

Book Plunge: Christian Body: Leviticus 18 and 20

What does the holiness code have to say? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

So we all know this passage. What most of us probably know about it is it condemns same-sex behavior. Frost in this section says that terms used in this chapter are euphemisms for having sex. With that, there is no disagreement. Sex is often spoke of in such terms.

When I was growing up, I remember a movie being advertised called Sleeping With The Enemy. Now for me, I thought this was a bizarre title, but I was an elementary schooler. How was I to know any better. Why would you sleep with an enemy like that? For me, sleeping with someone meant going to bed next to them. Now I know far better what it really meant!

Frost does tell us that people still could bathe together in public baths and be out in the nude regularly and says the documentation will come later. That will be accepted for now and I will see what he says when I get there. That being said, Frost still makes the mistake of assuming that the culture in ancient Israel was just like our culture or at least similar enough.

We are very individualistically based and we set the rule for ourselves. You obey the law not so people will think well of you so much as you want to be a good guy and not go to jail. Even if we granted that nudity was far more common in the ancient society, there would have been other controls set in by the group to make sure ogling didn’t take place. It is questionable that such is the case in a pornified society such as our own.

Frost also contends that in our society, we think looking at a naked person, at least of the opposite sex, is sinful. No. That in itself is not sinful. If I walk down the street and a woman suddenly jumps out in front of me completely nude in an attempt to flash me, I have done nothing wrong. I cannot help that. If I chase after her to at least ogle her, or perhaps even more, then yes, I have done something wrong. The looking itself is not a sin.

Frost keeps regularly going with this idea that nudity in itself is sinful when it obviously isn’t. So far, he has not dealt with a distinction between a private and a public sphere and he has not interacted with any scholarship on the topic. If you want to understand the biblical culture, you also need to understand them as an honor-shame culture and not a guilt-innocence culture. The group did what they could to censor unwanted behavior and individualism would have been frowned upon.

So again, that is another day and another post. I walk away once more convinced that Frost hasn’t really done the deep looking that needs to be done on an important topic, and I do not doubt that this is an important topic. The church needs a better understanding of the nature of the body, love, lust, sex, and marriage. So far, I am skeptical I will find it here.

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

 

No Woman Should Be A Feminist

Are men the greatest threat to women? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Before diving into another book, let’s talk some about feminism. Women often complain about how men mistreat them and are the greatest evil to them. Then you see protests going on, one a friend told me about recently, where women decided the best way to protest it was to go topless.

Yep. That’ll stick it to the men alright.

Women in this movement also tend to be very much pro-abortion, which is quite odd. If there’s something that sets women apart from men, it’s that they can give good birth. They have the ability within their bodies to bring new life into the world. These women think that this is a negative and must be stopped and what’s more important is to have a career, the thing that men have.

It’s almost like when you get down to eat, women think the ideal is to be like men. Go and have working jobs and careers and have sex without consequences. Avoid having to go through that horrible period called giving birth where you bring a new human life into the world.

Now a lot of women aren’t like this. They are actually pro-life, but they have been hurt in other ways by feminism. They have imbibed mindsets that counter-productive to what they want.

These women want good men who will take care of them and provide for them and help them to raise families. They want to be wives and mothers. Unfortunately, they have bought into the feminist idea too often that men are the enemy.

Let’s consider this mindset that was going around not too long ago with saying that women would rather meet a bear in the woods than to meet a man. What was the point of this? It was so many women saying that they thought in general men were so dangerous that they would rather meet a bear in the woods as they’d have a better experience with it.

Okay. So let’s suppose a good woman shares this thought. Now there are two kinds of men in this thought experiment out there.

The first are the bad men she’s talking about who don’t really care about women and have no problem using a woman for sex. They will see this and say “Don’t care. If I want to have you, I will do what I can to get you and then toss you aside.” Then there are the good men who do care, but they will see this and say “If that’s how she sees me, I don’t want to get close to her.”

The good woman then is not attracting the good guys to her by sharing this. She’s enabling the bad guys actually. They won’t be deterred a bit by what she shares. If anyone will be, it is the good guys. Bad guys don’t care about being bad. Good guys don’t want to damage their reputation of being good.

You also have cases of women going to the gym in skin-tight outfits barely leaving anything to imagination and then are shocked when men notice them. Not only this, they record themselves working out and then make negative comments about the guys they accuse of leering at them. One case of a woman complaining about this involved a man who told the people at the gym, truthfully, that he was blind.

By the way, these women also often have an OnlyFans account.

Nowadays, feminism is even getting worse. Now you have men winning beauty pageants for women and this is considered a victory. You have men dominating in women’s sports and this is also accepted. In trying to say there is no difference between men and women, women have created a world that said “Okay” and acted accordingly. It doesn’t help that this same world also decided to redefine marriage and treat men and women as if they were interchangeable entirely.

So in order to stop the patriarchy, now we have cases of men beating women at women’s sports and beating women at women’s beauty pageants.

That’ll stick it to the patriarchy alright!

Women also aren’t helping themselves out when it comes to pre-marital sex. If a guy doesn’t have to make the effort to get you, odds are, he won’t. If you don’t make a man work to get you, then you are setting a low worth on yourself. Make a man rise to the occasion and if he really wants to be with you, he will do just that.

When I showed up on the first date for my ex-wife, I had plenty of money in my wallet, I had flowers, I had tickets to the aquarium, and I had downloaded her favorite music to my phone to play for her. Men who care about women love to impress women and if you go on and give in to them immediately, that will stop right there. It’s one reason married couples need to always be pursuing one another and chasing one another. Dating should continue into marriage.

Feminism may have meant to hurt women, but it hasn’t. It has done the opposite. By painting men as the opposition, it has stopped the natural way the two sexes are to work together. Of course, more could be said on how men should treat women, but that would be a whole other blog post.

For now, just remember if you are a woman, you should celebrate it and embrace womanhood. If you want to stay single, that’s your choice also, but remember that involves being celibate as well. If you want to be married and have a career, that’s fine too, but I wouldn’t recommend sacrificing children so you can get a career. Children are a gift. They will give you far better memories and influence than a career most likely will.

The worst enemy of women today is not from without. As in most other cases, it is from within, the way empires fall. Feminism is the greatest enemy a woman has.

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