Tag: nudity

A Response To Kilted Cajun On Censorship

Can the religious right speak on issues of culture? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I watch a lot of gaming videos on YouTube being the Gaming Theologian on there. (Looking for a video editor by the way, if you’re interested.) One of the channels I watch is the Kilted Cajun as I love it when the DEI nonsense is exposed. However, recently I watched a video I agreed with on some levels, but my disagreements were quite serious, so I left him a reply and told him I would be writing this.

So at the start, KC (As I will call him for short) says that he one hundred percent opposes censorship. For the most part, I agree. I say that as someone who also detests the porn industry. I want to see them defeated because people have their hearts changed. (And not Phantom Thief style per Persona, but because they come to their own conclusions about pornography)

He then talks about a game where a lady’s posterior is clearly shown. Now it was nothing that really got me riled up as I agree with KC that I could also see that across most any beach in America from a woman in a tight bikini. At the same time, I know many of my readers might object to seeing such, so I won’t show any pictures, but know that this is what has started this whole discussion.

There are some people who are complaining and objecting about this. Okay. I get it. At the same time, I also want to hear it. Why? Because that’s how we as a society work. We all come together and express our viewpoints. I want to see the Woke and DEI crowd lose tremendously, but I also want them to say what they really think and do so freely. The left has gotten people to be scared to say what they think lest they be called a name like a racist, bigot, sexist, or any term ending in -phobe.

Generally, my thinking is if my opponent is saying something really stupid, I want to get out of the way. Let him speak. Let him say it. If the woke really think conservatives have all those negative traits, let them speak so it can be apparent to all. Strangely, it doesn’t work that way.

Yet this is the way freedom really works. Freedom means you have the freedom to hold different opinions. I remember a debate on TheologyWeb years ago where someone claimed bigotry is not a right and the response was “Yes it is.” Yes. You are free to be a bigot if you want to. You are free to hold any negative opinion you want to. If you think people like myself are idiot Christians who should have no place in society, then you are absolutely 100% free to have that opinion.

I have had times where my Dad has called me before. I am a man in my 40’s, but I still keep in close contact with my parents. (They’re here this week for me getting my Master’s.) My Dad has called to talk about things like a satanic statue being built or a service from them or a church building from them.

My response is “Okay. And?”

Our Constitution in America guarantees freedom of religion in America and not just freedom of the religion I hold. If I say “Christians are free to build churches, but Muslims are not free to build mosques, then I do not really hold to freedom of religion. I only hold to it if it benefits me. If I accept freedom, I have to accept people will use it in ways that I do not like.

As we go along in the video though he asks why decency is being brought up about a woman’s butt being shown and says “are you judging people’s morals based on your own personal morals” about the person complaining about it.

The answer to that one is “yes”, but that’s because who else’s morals are you going to judge them based on? We all do this every day. We agree with behavior X because of our moral beliefs and we disagree with Y because of our moral beliefs. KC opposes censorship, which I also happen to oppose, but that is a moral belief. To say “censorship is wrong” is a moral belief. That doesn’t mean it’s false, nor does it mean it’s true. We can only know if a belief is true if it corresponds with reality, if there are really objective moral principles out there that we all are to follow. If there is no objective morality, then it’s just personal tastes. If there is, then one of us is right and one of us is wrong.

Note in saying this I am not saying KC is a moral relativist. I have no reason to think he is and all the reason to think he is not. I am saying his viewpoint relies on moral objectivity.

This would apply in other areas as well. In science, did man evolve from lesser animals or not? He either did or he didn’t. It’s not both. Having a belief on one side or the other doesn’t make it right or wrong. It is whether or not that belief matches with reality.

Did Jesus rise from the dead? I say yes. An atheist says no. Both of us can freely have our belief. What matters is reality and that is where we must look. We can’t just say “That’s our belief.”

So when it comes to moral judgments, that is what we judge behaviors on. We judge them by our own personal beliefs and those could be right or wrong. Let’s suppose I was sent an advance demo copy of the game in question. To be fair, I decided to play through it and let’s suppose I really liked it and I enjoyed a story with it. Here is something I would say and I say this as someone who I think is viewed as a Christian leader.

“Game X is a really fun game with a great story that really draws you in. (Describe some bits of the story without spoiling it.) I do want parents to know though that it does have XYZ in it. (Statements about the butt in question) Then add “Make your own decisions when it comes to you and your children.” Some people might say “I am not bothered by that, and I really want to experience the story so I will buy that.” I also know that since I think I have a position of trust with parents, I don’t want to violate that. I don’t want to have a parent come to me and say “I bought this for my 11 year-old child and I had no idea this was in it! Why didn’t you tell me?”

I really don’t think KC would have a problem with that. That would be me just saying let the buyer beware in a sense. If you don’t like this in your games, don’t buy it. If you live with children and you don’t want them to see this or see you playing it, then don’t buy it. All of this is assuming the game is good. If it’s awful, I will tell you that it’s awful outright, but if you want to subject yourself to it, be warned also about XYZ.

I might make statements on more extreme cases. If I saw something in a game that I considered blasphemous towards Jesus, I could say “I really encourage you to not buy this game.” I know that I can’t make that decision for you. You decide for yourself.

KC then goes on to say that the reviewer, Dread Roberts, is pushing his views on others. We don’t want the left doing that and we don’t want the right doing it either. The problem is that first off, Dread Roberts is not doing that. He is stating his belief.

The second problem though is that KC in saying this is doing what he condemns. He is saying “It is my moral belief that you shouldn’t push your moral beliefs on other people.” He can hold that, but as soon as he says that DR is wrong for pushing his views on others, then KC is implicitly pushing a view that you shouldn’t push views.

I propose a better way to look at it. I think KC would be better saying “Thank you for your opinion on what should be allowed and not allowed. I 100% disagree and here is why.” The thing with freedom of speech is it applies to everyone and that includes hearing moral opinions I do not like. At the same time, when they are shared, I want them expressed in the best way possible. I don’t want to tell my opponent not to share them. I want false beliefs shared so I can publicly show them to be wrong.

KC then points out that DR says that this is not where the future of gaming should be heading. KC says that it’s not up for DR to decide but for the market to decide. The problem is both of those statements could be true. Hypothetically, let’s suppose DR is right. He has full freedom to express that opinion, but at the same time, he’s not saying to hijack the market, which is impossible anyway, and make it be that no one can buy the game. I don’t think DR is being asked to be a gaming csar to get to decide what is and isn’t released. He is simply saying what he wants to see. He doesn’t want to see games with this material in it and thinks it would be bad for gaming. Fine. That’s his view. He is not calling for it to be a federal crime or something of that sort. I do agree. It’s up to the market to decide. It’s like an election. I never liked it when Obama won, but it was up to the electorate to decide. I didn’t want anyone to vote for him, but I would completely defend their freedom to vote for him.

DR then says that he thinks people who say they want to save gaming really don’t. With this, I disagree with DR. I want to give the benefit of the doubt. I agree 100% with KC that wokeness and DEI is bad for games. At the same time, I want producers of games to have the freedom to put as much wokeness and DEI in a game as possible. Let it fail at the marketplace. While saying that, it doesn’t mean everything is beneficial for gaming. Companies can be free to put into their games things that I thoroughly disagree with that I too think can be bad for gaming, but again, that is what freedom means.

KC goes on to say that players should have the choice to buy what they want and play what they want and see what they want. I agree. If anything, I think something like DR’s post could lead to the Barbara Streisand Effect. I would have recommended had he wanted to post on this to say “Yeah. This is just something in the game and I want you to make a fully-informed decision, especially if you’re a parent, and let’s move on.” After all, it was when people started talking about “Hot Coffee” in a Grand Theft Auto game that sales started to soar and the scene wasn’t even easy to find in regular gameplay and I think you needed a special code for it. KC even says that you have to go out of your way to make this option available for this female character and if that’s true, and I have no reason to think otherwise, then yes, DR is promoting the Barbara Streisand effect and will likely see more sales of the game.

Now let’s briefly say something about female characters in video games. They are usually made to be beautiful and at times, this can mean what seem to be exaggerated proportions, especially in the butts and the breasts of these characters. Think of the original Lara Croft and the original Tifa Lockhart. I never played the Tomb Raider games, but I did play Final Fantasy VII that had Tifa in it. When I heard the remake was coming out, I was thankful that Tifa was not flattened in it. Because I am a perv? No. Because that is the way the original character looked and I did not want to see game producers bend a knee to this ideology that says women cannot be beautiful lest the male gaze come along. Women are made to be beautiful.

That being said, it is up to the man watching Tifa what he does with her. If you are someone who struggles with that kind of thing and says “I just don’t want to play that because my mind will go places I don’t want it to go”, then you do you. I don’t have a problem with that. That is you properly using self-control. We do no service to women if we make them purposely unattractive to men. Women are meant to be beautiful and that is part of their glory.

I also agree with KC 100% when he says that mostly, all we want is fun games. Yes. Of course, in my fun games, I like a lot more as well which I think is well in line with what KC is saying. I am thoroughly enjoying Persona 5 Royal because of the story and the mix of the real world with the metaverse. As someone on the spectrum also, I am watching what I say to other characters and getting to see when I gave what the game says is an appropriate answer, showing empathy. It has me looking at my relationships outside of the game and thinking “What bonds am I building with my fellow man?” I am actually going through a second time because I got a bad ending the first time because I did not build bonds properly thinking that the best route to go was power up my character as much as possible. I really learned something from that.

KC says he has no problem with what DR believes, but with him pushing it on other people who don’t want to hear it. The problem is, if sharing a belief is the same as pushing it, then KC is pushing his belief that you shouldn’t push a belief. Maybe some people don’t want to hear what KC says. Okay. He has a right to say it. It’s the same with scrolling through Facebook or X. I see people saying stupid things on there. Okay. They say them. I disagree, but I want them to be free to say them. That’s why it’s called the marketplace of ideas. We all share our ideas and debate which ideas are right and which are wrong.

He then refers to Melanie Mac who shows up in the comments. I really like Melanie and why wouldn’t I? A Christian girl who loves to play video games? Awesome. Anyway, she says she wouldn’t want to play such a game with nudity thrust in her face. KC says then don’t buy it. That’s fine. Vote with your wallet like everyone else does. I agree with KC here. MM has her opinion and she’s free to share it and she’s free to vote with her wallet. The marketplace of ideas and freedom allows for everything.

MM goes on to say that she would feel like a loser playing a character like that. KC goes on to say that that’s a sort of passive-aggressive slap to everyone who wants to play a character like that, but is it? MM is saying “She would feel like a loser.” Okay. That’s her opinion. We couldn’t say she was wrong. That would be like me saying “I feel sad” and you say “You don’t feel sad! You feel great!” You could think I shouldn’t feel sad and think of a thousand reasons why I should feel great, but you could not deny that I feel sad.

KC then asks how MM could do such a thing and she should keep her religious views out of it. The problem is this is actually censorship of a kind. I don’t care if someone expresses an opinion if their views come from religion or not. Suppose someone says “I think murder is wrong because the Ten Commandments forbid it.” That’s a religious view, but it is also one I think is right. I could give you plenty of reasons outside of the Bible that I think marriage should be between one man and one woman, but what matters is if that belief is true. The fact that it is also a view backed by religion doesn’t matter. If that was the case, then we should eliminate laws against murder because religions also view murder as wrong. KC is implicitly saying “Religious views should be kept to yourself, but secular views can be shared everywhere.” That’s not what freedom is. Let all views be expressed and let the best case win.

KC then refers to Bible Thumpers. It is not clear what this means. Would I be a Bible thumper even though I am entirely open to evolution, don’t believe in Young-Earth creationism, am not a dispensationalism at all, etc.? I fully hold to many of the orthodox creeds and can easily sign an orthodox statement of faith.

He goes on to say that the right were the ones that raised the outcry about games like Dungeons and Dragons and the satanic panic. Yep. The satanic panic went way too far and many criticisms of D&D and video games and anime and many other things do not really understand them. I have done a lot of reading on the satanic panic and I consider it ridiculous. While I do think real Satanism exists, I also am quite hesitant to call something satanic. Make it too all encompassing and you then include things like Tolkien and Lewis.

I also do think that you can enjoy a series even if you disagree with the moral viewpoints. Star Trek is highly secularist. Star Wars was made with New Age and Buddhist thinking in mind. I have several friends who are devout Christians who enjoy both. I personally don’t, but not for those reasons. I just never got into them. I can freely enjoy a James Bond movie even though I think Bond is doing something wrong in the way he casually sleeps with other women. You take the good and you spit out the bad.

So in the end, I fully agree with KC that I do not want to see censorship. That being said, I think his way of approaching MM and DR is itself leaning into censorship. Let us come together and say “I think this is good for gaming and here’s why” or “I think this is bad for gaming and here’s why.” Let the cases present themselves and let the marketplace of ideas decide when they go to the marketplace of gaming.

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

 

 

Final Statement on Christian Body

What do I say about this book at the end? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Ultimately, as I finished this book, I found it extremely lacking. I found Frost didn’t deliver on his claims. We were told that we need to heed the words of Biblical scholars, but I didn’t see a single one cited. If there was one, that was the rare exception sadly.

I also find Frost makes statements that he doesn’t back. Sure, I could go and look up myself if I wanted to, but the rule is that if you make a claim, you are the one to back it. If we are making a claim about the culture of the Bible, we should point to scholars of that culture to have it backed.

However, the biggest problem with this book is that Frost is really just too antagonisitic. When you make statements about a society and say clothing is the problem, despite the society doing just fine for well over a thousand years until the sexual revolution came along, there is something else going on.

Frost often looks to have both guns blazing at his opponents painting them as lesser Christians who don’t really believe the Bible. Consider how after he makes his case at one point the idea is that if you do not agree, you are living in

rebellion against God. Even if he had made a case, a statement like that is more likely to harden someone against his position.

I still think the position is incredibly weak, but I think those who want to see a better presentation of the case are encouraged to look at Philip Oak’s book, Surprised Into Freedom, instead. Oak writes with more of a pastoral heart towards his audience and he does cite scholars and others quite often. Do I agree with his conclusions? Not at all. Do I think he makes a better case and is more evenhanded to his audience? 100%.

So am I going to review the book? Probably not. I have looked at a series of replies to me and sometimes when I have a spare minute, I do a little bit of writing on that, but if I share it, it could be months down the road. The reason is right now I am preparing for PhD work. I need to read multiple books in order to do a written test and then an oral examination on the topics to show that I am capable. I have no intention of taking this lightly.

On top of that, I have two final classes I am taking and I am reading for those. I also have a class on research and writing where my professor has encouraged me on video games and violence. I had suggested this topic, but he did think while it was interesting, it is too niche. There are just not enough people talking about it. My topic of video games and violence is something that more people are talking about and is relevant to my PhD studies and would be contributing to my Defend talk next January. I am thinking in light of recent events to especially look at mass shootings and the data on them. (If anyone wants to get me Kindle books on the topic, I welcome the generosity.)

By the way, all of this is on top of the personal reading that I do every day, having a part-time job here, and just then at the end of the day after all of this having some time for myself.

So as I come to this leg of the journey, I ask for your prayers and if you are willing, I have a Patreon here on this blog and I definitely encourage you to become a member. It would mean so much to me if you did that and even a small amount means a lot. If you can just donate even $5 a month, I would be thrilled to have you as it’s not just money that I get, but every time it comes with a message of “I believe in you and I support you in this.”

I do intend to keep blogging and I plan to blog on other areas, such as that I have downloaded the manifesto of the trans shooter and plan to go through that and give my thoughts on it, especially on some comments on autism in there.

Until next time.

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

Book Plunge: Christian Body – Is Grace Sufficient?

Is grace enough to overcome? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

One of the big problems with Frost’s book is that he is so antagonistic in it. He comes in with both barrels blasting too often and when he wants to comment on what the other side thinks, he paints them as denying most everything he can about Christianity. So it is that the same happens when we come to the topic of grace.

Frost says that for many Christians, grace can help them overcome the evils of pornography and dehumanization, but it doesn’t help them joyfully appreciate the human body. Perhaps this is so for some, but not for all. I cannot say that I have ever struggled with porn by the grace of God, but I can say as a man who was married I had a deep appreciation for my wife’s body and often said that if the only evidence I had for the existing of God was her body, that would be enough to settle the case for me. I knew of no other way to explain something that beautiful.

There is a problem with how we talk about grace. Consider Sam Allberry. He is a great speaker on issues of the church and sexuality, and yet he himself wrestles with same-sex attraction. There are some people who have become Christians and lost that attraction, but not all. There are plenty of people who have become Christians while in the clutches of alcoholism and escaped that, but that doesn’t mean that they have to go out and fully appreciate the fruit of the vine by going to a bar and drinking alcohol. That could even be foolish for them.

Sometimes God delivers us fully from wrong desires. Sometimes, He doesn’t. It doesn’t make any Christian a lesser Christian or a greater Christian. All Christians regardless will have struggles in this world until the day they die or until the day Christ returns.

Some people could be delivered from porn and yet never marry and get to enjoy the real presence of a beautiful member of the opposite sex in all their glory. Some might not. Some could have no desire for porn again. Some could have a daily struggle. There is no “One size fits all.”

One reason I would not be out in the public nude is that I don’t want to risk doing anything that would cause my fellow man to stumble in any way. I have to show consideration for them. If I had no problem with alcohol, I would not drink alcohol in front of someone who struggles with it. (For those wondering, I made a lifelong vow early on that I would not drink alcohol so I would not risk doing anything to damage my reputation. I have no problem if someone can control their alcohol.)

Frankly, Frost’s book would be a lot better if he didn’t spend as much time demeaning the other side. Frost comes off as if he thinks he is the super Christian and everyone else is less than he is. His case would be better if he wrote more conversationally instead.

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

Book Plunge: Christian Body – The Master Deceiver

Is Satan behind it all? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

There’s an argument that strikes me as strange coming from the naturist position whereby the devil is said to have been the ones to tell us to cover ourselves up. You would think then that if that was a wicked suggestion, God would not have gone along with it. Immediately after the pronouncement of exile is declared on Adam and Eve, God makes clothing for them Himself.

It would seem as if by this argument, that God and the devil both agree about how they view the human body, which is strange.

So Frost says at the start that many people cannot get past purdah because they cannot accept the incredible beauty of the human body.

That must explain why the pornography industry is so strong. People just can’t accept the beauty of the human body. That must be why guys dating women often wonder about what they look like under all those clothes. That must have been why when I was a married man it was always a joy to see my wife’s body naked.

He then says the devil jumps in and tells you it’s a sin to be enthralled by the beauty. No. Absolutely not. That’s the design of the system. Men and women were supposed to be enthralled with one another. The problem is what you do with that beauty. Are you looking at men and women that you have no right to look at? Are you treating them as just objects to satisfy your desire?

Frost then says:

An important step in overcoming the pornographic lusts of prudish modesty standards is agreeing with God that His creation is gloriously beautiful and worthy of admiration. Satan hates the creation of God and would rather feed our cultural revulsion for nakedness.

Frost, Aaron. Christian Body: Modesty and the Bible (p. 264). UNKNOWN. Kindle Edition.

He is absolutely right on the first part. The body is worthy of admiration, but pornography is not admiration. It is exploitation. It is treating the person on the other end of the screen as just a body. That dehumanizes them.

Naturism from what I see goes the other way. This is not saying anything about cultures where naturism is the main way of living. This is about our culture. They go and say “The body is not inherently sexual.” Both sides are living in denial. The body is sexual and in the proper context is meant to be sexually arousing. This is in our DNA.

This does not mean that different things can be arousing to different people and there are some things you shouldn’t be aroused by. If you are aroused by children, for instance, you need help. If I were to use a personal example, I am a huge fan of the series Smallville and my crush on the series was always the character of Chloe. Most guys went crazy over Lana and later Lois. Nah. Chloe all the way for me.

What drew me to her at the start? It wasn’t that she was a supermodel, but her character on the show was really smart, and I like girls with a good head on her shoulders. It was through that that the rest of her got more beautiful to me over time. The same happened when I was married. My wife became the standard of female beauty for me over time.

Yet with the second part of the above quote, does he think we have a cultural revulsion for nakedness? The porn industry is betting that we don’t, and so far they’re winning that bet. From when I was married, behind closed doors, I would have no objections to nudity in a private setting. Frost seems to have a fundamentalist mindset in mind that would be an extreme minority position.

I regularly wonder who Frost is responding to in this book and he seems to only think in extremes. It’s quite problematic going through. Unfortunately, nothing I saw in the book ever got better.

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

 

 

Book Plunge: Christian Body – The Source of Desire

Where does desire come from? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Frost begins this section again with the statement that we find XYZ desirable because we were conditioned to. Once again, I have to ask is this really the case? Could it be the female body was designed to be desirable by men by God and vice-versa? We might like different things at different times, but desire is always there.

Even in the West, while the sexual organs have been noticed quite often, there are other aspects of a woman found attractive, such as her legs, her smile, her hair, her eyes, etc. We can’t even explain often why it is that feature X on a woman is attractive. We men just know that it is. Not only that, Scripture when it speaks about the female body in places like Proverbs 5:18-19, Song of Songs 4, and Song of Songs 7 seems to say the same thing.

Let’s also be clear on something. Believe it or not, not every man struggles with lust. There are few of us to be sure, but not everyone of us is going to our computers at night and saying “God help me avoid any pornography sites today.” I remember when I worked at a retail store after my divorce, my female co-workers were stunned when they found out I didn’t watch porn. It’s a shame that that’s the case.

Frost does say rules will not bring about freedom. It only comes about from the grace of God. There is some truth here, but every society has rules for behavior and even the church has rules for behavior. Paul also spoke often about how we were to observe rules not just in our individual lives, but also in the day-to-day with other people.

If we lived in these cultures that Frost spoke about that don’t have as much clothing, it wouldn’t be an issue, but those cultures are not ours and those cultures are also vastly different from ours. In our culture, the Christian influence is dying out, though I do suspect a resurgence could be just around the corner, and we are much more individualistic. Not only that, but we are highly ignorant of sexual matters.

That might sound odd to think about in a culture that is all about sex constantly, but as Peter Kreeft has said, it’s when everyone’s pipes are leaking that people buy books on plumbing. When we live in a world where people don’t know what a woman is, how many sexes there are, why it is that same-sex erotic relationships are not good for society, and why it is that we think we can redefine marriage, then we see where this has gone.

That’s why naturism could be a noble dream perhaps some time off in the future when we’ve recovered from the sexual revolution and our culture has been thoroughly Christianized and reformed, but now, no. We would be causing too much stumbling for our fellow man. “But what about the privacy of our own homes?” For those, do what you want (Though you might want to make sure the windows are closed) and enjoy it. I have spoken about the private/public distinction here and it still applies.

Note my position then. It is not that nudity is sinful. It isn’t, or else we wouldn’t be here. It’s that in our culture, it should be reserved for private situations due to the overly sexualizing of our culture and the ignorance of too many.

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

Book Plunge: Christian Body – Dealing With Lust

How do you deal with lust? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Frost in this section is talking about the problem of lust and lack of sexual control. Frost tells us that usually the antidote given to lust is more rules meant to contain it. I agree that this in itself is not the answer. However, it can be part of the answer. An alcoholic could need to take an alternate route home from work instead of one that goes by the neighborhood bar. An obese person might need to have someone else do the grocery shopping.

What we can all agree on is that this is a heart issue and the problem lies in the heart. This is a worldview problem. You can take steps to deal with the problem externally, but you also need to deal with the problem internally. This is why some people talking about weight loss will actually say diets don’t work. Diets are temporary. You need a whole change in view.

It could also be some struggles you will always have. Sam Allberry comes regularly and speaks at our Defend conferences here in New Orleans and as far as I know, he still struggles with same-sex attraction, but chooses a celibate lifestyle. I went to Celebrate Recovery in the past and there were several alcoholics there. They still made it a point to avoid alcohol. One glass of it after years of sobriety can ruin someone.

Now I know a couple of people who have said naturism helped them overcome their porn addiction and while I will not question the experience, I wonder how that really healed the heart. It often seems that there is a disjunction going on, and something I plan to talk with the counseling department about here at my seminary in doing research on this. I am not a psychologist after all so I cannot understand as well what is going on in the mind.

The problem with porn is that it sees the opposite sex as only sexual beings. They are there merely for your sexual pleasure. The opposite end is to deny that they are sexual beings at all. It is to deny that the body is sexual. It is. That is the reason it can perform sexually all things being equal. There are aspects of both sexes meant to be sexually appealing to the other. For us in the West, it is normally the sexual organs, at least when talking about what is seen as attractive in women.

Frost goes on to say that because our culture has put up a bunch of rules such as clothing instead of going with grace, we have become more perverted.

Sorry, but this is just an unbelievably false statement to make.

Christian cultures have had clothing for thousands of years. Did we see this going on rampantly in the Middle Ages like we do today? Did we see this going on in the early church? Did we see this going on in Puritan culture? Could it be that what really changed our culture was the sexual revolution, the rise of feminism, and a false view of sex?

This is the problem in that we don’t have a worldview that explains how sex fits in. This is why so many people look at same-sex relationships and say “I don’t see the problem here.” Many Christians don’t have a reason for being opposed other than “Well, the Bible says so.” This leads the world to think they’re crazy. It’s as if God is being arbitrary here. Sexuality has been reduced to just a form of pleasure and marriage means little.

Frost concludes this saying many cultures that were prudish (though not explaining in what way) exploded with promiscuity after Christians came bearing clothes. We are not told who these cultures are. The data is absent. I am not surprised at this.

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

Book Plunge: Christian Body – Hypersexuality

What do we do in a sex-crazed society? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

So at the start, Frost immediately begins with this:

For the many Christians who struggle with sexual control, we have hastily presumed that the first line of defense against such carnality is the strict application of increasingly restrictive coverage that treats the creation of God as if it were to blame. Disabused of our cultural narrow-mindedness, we can clearly see that the placebo of clothing only masks the symptoms but drastically intensifies the real root problems. As a result, our culture is well-known for extremes of sex-scandals, rape, molestation, and promiscuity that is far worse than the many unclothed cultures which often maintain marital fidelity and have little concept of immoral lust or pornography as we know it in our supposedly “Christian” culture.

Frost, Aaron. Christian Body: Modesty and the Bible (p. 253). UNKNOWN. Kindle Edition.

Okay. The problem is if you’re going to say the problem is clothing, then you need to show the hard data. We can go back a few centuries and find that our country wasn’t like this. If anything changed our world, it was the sexual revolution. The idea of having sex without consequences and the destruction of the family unit caused the most damage.

Now could there be societies with very little clothing where fidelity and the body are honored? Absolutely. That doesn’t mean that those societies are one-to-one parallels with ours. You have to look at what is the same and what is different. Those societies could be highly community-focused and thus there are rules and understanding set in that keep people from stepping out of line.

Consider the world some of us heard our parents and grandparents grew up in if we live in America. If you went out away from your parents house and you were misbehaving, your parents knew it by the time you got home. The neighbors would call and let them know what you had done. Your doom awaited when you got home.

If we live in a culture that doesn’t honor marriage and family and is very individualistic and everyone just minds their own business, then no, nudism will not work here.

Meanwhile, there could be societies where there is no or little clothing and there is chaos of some kind over sexual matters. Perhaps there might be fidelity, but one person who has power will murder another to get a woman for his own. Perhaps these societies have some form of polygamy as well. Would these societies be changed by bringing them clothing? No. In both cases, this is a heart issue.

Frost will say that God’s creation cannot be to blame, but this is a problematic statement. After all, Eve fell in the garden because of the fruit and the serpent both, both of which were God’s creation, but also because of her own free-will. God’s creation is good, but evil uses good things to bring about evil. It has to. There are no things that are purely evil. That’s an impossibility. Temptation takes something good and seeks to use it in an evil way.

Can a woman also knowingly tempt a man with her body for something evil? Yes. Happens regularly. That is the good creation of God being used in a wrong way. Frost has this strange idea that if something is the creation of God, then it’s automatically exempt.It’s not. All we see is a creation of God and yet we live in a world of sin still.

Frost would need to list these cultures and show what makes them different from us and what makes them the same. We need hard data. I have not seen it yet.

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

Book Plunge: Christian Body – Modesty Sells

Does modesty sell? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

We all know it. Sex sells. I know I have purchased a product before from a display just because the girl selling it was really pretty. I am quite confident I am not the only man who has done that. We also know those commercials about the beautiful woman in a bikini chowing down on a big burger that we all know she turns away from immediately as soon as the shoot is done.

Frost makes what I think is a relevant point that nowadays, it takes more and more to sell us. We have to see more skin in order to notice. That’s because unfortunately, it has become too common. This is why ads for ED are so prevalent on radio stations. Now men in their 20’s are often getting this because they’ve seen so much porn that normal beauty doesn’t do anything for them.

If anything, I consider this to be quite problematic. Men were meant to be drawn to the woman and that was by her beauty. You can’t look at a picture of a girl and say “Yep. She’s a loyal one.” Character doesn’t come through easily in a photograph. What does come through is how someone looks.

For me specifically, I do find a girl in modest clothing to be more appealing overall. When I go through dating apps and see a girl showing off too much skin, such as bikini pics, I hit that X. Why? Because if she’s doing that to try to convince me, I suspect there isn’t much more there than that.

Meanwhile, when I was married, I used to tell my parents and in-laws that if they bought a dress for my ex-wife, that that counted double as a gift for me. I can still remember her trying one on at Wal-Mart and when she came out of the dressing room I dropped my jaw in astonishment. Is this my wife?

Won’t deny it. I miss that kind of experience.

That’s a bonus of working at a seminary. Girls do tend to dress conservatively and I really like that. We do have women who come in wearing dresses and I just think they look so stunning. What you women don’t realize when you’re talking about good men is that you don’t have to dress skimpily in order to get a good man to notice you. A good man will notice you in an outfit that you might even just consider to be plain.

So overall, there isn’t much to disagree with in this section. I still maintain that some mystery is good for people, something that is shared between the two people that no one else gets to see and experience. It is part of the covenant of trust that goes into a relationship where the degree to which you trust someone of the opposite sex is to be parallel to the degree of how much of them that you get to see. The way to see it all is to have a covenant.

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

 

Book Plunge: Christian Body – Why Wear Clothing?

Why does Frost think we wear clothes? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

In this section, Frost is going to say why he thinks we wear clothes. At the start, he says it is a result of our inner sin nature rebelling against God’s beautiful creation. Well, that’s a lovely start. That means everyone you know who is wearing clothing regularly is apparently living in sin.

It’s statements like these that are so extreme that it’s hard to take Frost seriously.

But at any rate, let’s look at his big three.

The first one he says is a legalistic ego trip. This might be for some people, but it’s not that they wear clothes and others don’t. It’s more like they think they dress better than others do and they want to wear the latest fashion and trends just to wear them. This is not to say everyone who dresses nice is trying to do this, but no doubt, some are. We know that there can be a pecking order in some social areas that if you don’t wear the right clothes, you are out.

This is not to say there are not times one should avoid dressing their best. If you are on a date or a job interview, you will naturally want to have a good appearance. I won’t claim to know someone’s heart, but too often, it looks like Frost thinks he does.

The second reason Frost gives is to avoid responsibility. Frost does rightly say that it’s easy to blame someone else for our lusts, and this is so, but there is some truth in that some people do dress in order to tempt. That doesn’t justify what someone does with the temptation, but we should be aware of how our behavior does affect other people.

For instance, Paul warns about this with eating meat offered to idols. He wants to enjoy his freedom, but if it means he could entice his brother to sin, then he won’t eat the meat. The weaker brother is ultimately responsible, but Paul doesn’t want to be a contributing factor.

So if a guy sees a beautiful girl and goes home and watches porn as a result, he can’t blame the girl for that. It was his own choice. At the same time, all of us who are Christians should watch what we do and say around others in case we meet people who are susceptible. If I know someone has a history of being an alcoholic, I would not meet them in a bar, for instance.

The final reason is insecurity about our own bodies. Now this is true that we can all have insecurities, and while I know I have some, I also know when I was married, I never struggled with that insecurity around my ex-wife. If anything, our Instagram age has been particularly unkind to women in this area.

Frost never mentions positive reasons though. I wear clothing because for one thing, I am cold-natured and I like to stay warm. I also wear clothing because I don’t want to get arrested out in public. I often wear clothing that tends to reveal something about who I am and my interests. Many people at the seminary Post Office I work at notice my T-shirts about being sarcastic and it’s a good icebreaker when I wear my Smallville T-shirt. On Saturdays, I wear an NOBTS T-shirt in the hopes of meeting a lady who might want a seminary student for a husband.

It would be easier to be kind to Frost’s case if he didn’t go to such extremes in his argumentation. Unfortunately, he does. I hope he has just as much passion for reaching the lost as he does for getting people to not wear clothing.

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

 

Book Plunge: Christian Body — What Causes Lust?

Where does lust come from? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I still remember sitting with my former father-in-law at a restaurant at an ETS meeting in Atlanta. He and I were joined by another scholar older than my father-in-law is and were chatting about various matters. Music is playing with a country song of some sort being the song and there was a music video of it and while it wasn’t pornographic, it was pretty clear what was going to happen.

And I remember the older gentleman being asked something and he said “Sorry. I wasn’t paying attention. I was looking at the video.”

Okay. Probably not the best thing, but it felt kind of good to think that even in one’s older age, that drive was still strong.

Frost in this chapter says that according to the Bible, nothing that he sees can cause lust. It only exposes what is wrong in the heart. There is some truth to that. We are not forced to ever sin by anything outside of us. All sin is chosen willingly.

So what is the relationship between us and lust? To begin with, if a woman takes off her shirt in front of me, I am not able to choose my immediate emotional and/or physical reaction. I can choose what I do with it. I know there have been times when watching a movie that I have turned away because I thought too much of a woman was about to be revealed.

On the other hand, there are times when even such thinking would be completely inappropriate. If someone decides they want to watch Schindler’s List because there are a lot of naked women in it, and there are, they have a bigger problem. The thought of women being forced to be stripped nude in preparation for the gas chamber of death should not be a turn-on at all.

That being said, there is also the point of understanding one’s weakness. I used to attend a Lutheran Church that had an event called Bar Church. Now and then, they would have a church service in a bar. Now I never have drank alcohol, but I still attended. When announcing the event, they were also quite clear. If you struggle with alcoholism, do not come.

I am a man who has never struggled with pornography, but at the same time, I don’t put myself in dangerous situations either. I have a strong plan to never have a woman over to my apartment when it is just me and her and vice-versa with going to see a woman. (Family excepted of course.) I follow the Graham Rule because I know how easy it is to have your reputation damaged. How many men in ministry have fallen into sexual sin?

One sure sign I think you are about to fall into a sin is if you think you cannot fall into that sin. While Frost thinks nudity is the way to overcome pornography, I contend the way to overcome it is to have a healthy respect for women while at the same time honoring their bodies. A woman’s body is to be viewed as a treasure saved for the man she loves.

Also, we have to watch ourselves over what can cause someone else to sin. It’s not a one-to-one parallel, but when my former roommate and I back in Charlotte had Mormons over, we didn’t order sodas or tea or anything like that. We got Gatorade instead. We also had a pizza from Little Caesar’s every time, which I think is a great thing to do when wanting to reach Mormons. If we had something like tea, which I love, it would have damaged our witness to them.

I don’t agree with liberated Christianity as it’s called, but if you want to practice that, remember don’t practice it where you could put a stumbling block in front of another.

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