Tag: power

Why White House Pride Flags Should Concern You.

It this just a harmless celebration? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Bud Light is losing. Target is losing. Call of Duty is losing. Even recently, Starbucks has said that they’re not going to have Pride material on display in their stores. (To which, if you can, stop by and get a drink then.) The line in the sand was drawn at children. Going after the children was way too much.

However, that memo hasn’t reached the White House where pride flags have draped the building. What does this mean? The problem with this is that it gives more power to the state.

Now all of this is going to be done from a viewpoint that will not use the Bible so no one can say that I’m just going by the Bible. I do contend the Bible does agree with my position, but I can make it without it.

So what about marriage? Sometimes people ask me if I believe in same-sex marriage. I always ask what marriage is. If you realize that marriage is a man-woman unit, then you realize you might as well ask if I believe in triangular squares. But why is it a man-woman unit?

Marriage is this because it is the building block of a society because within it is found the one act that is capable of producing children. We have made a mistake in thinking that we can have wanton sex without children and not have consequences. This does not mean that infertile couples or couples too old to reproduce can’t marry or even shouldn’t marry, but it does mean the public end of marriage is children. It is not the couple’s happiness, as good as that might be. It is not feelings of love towards one another, though that should be pursued. In the end, it is children.

The state does not come before marriage. Marriage comes before the state. No families? There can be no state. Marriage is a reality that we discover. Some people who want to bring the Bible into this will point to polygamy, but polygamy is if anything multiplying the man-woman unit beyond necessity.

This is also why interracial marriage was never invalid. Interracial marriage still has the man-woman unit in it. Removing that was actually a recovery of marriage and not a changing of it. However, changing the persons in the roles on an essential difference, their gender, DOES matter.

Now some can say that same-sex behavior exists in nature, as it does, but that doesn’t mean it is something we normalize for our species. After all, eating one’s own young also exists in nature. Are we going to pass a law saying that is allowable?

So the State creates something, an artificial reality, and they want to call it marriage also. The problem now is if the State produces it, the State will have to defend it. It’s their baby after all. In essence, this becomes a new religion of sorts. You do not question the dogma and if you do, the State comes against you.

And yet, in the new “marriage”, what benefit does society get? Why should the State care about the feelings of the people involved? When my ex-wife and I applied for our marriage license, we were never asked about our feelings or personal happiness. We were just to show that we were of age and of the opposite sex and not close relatives. That was it.

Redefining marriage gives the State more power and in the long run will have it be that if you question the dogma, you are guilty of treason. In the past, we destroyed the bodies of children in the womb. Now we are also destroying them outside the womb through “gender-affirming” care and puberty blockers.

The Bud Light pushback though has changed things. What this should show us is that when people work together and stand up, especially for their children, they can have an effect. Even if you are of the LGBT community, this should concern you. A state that can rule in your favor can make you the enemy the very next day.

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

Book Plunge: Armageddon Part 6

Is it all about who gets the money? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

How much power do some people want if they have it? More. How much more money does someone want who has it? Rockefeller is alleged to have said “Just one dollar more.” While that it said that could have been nonsense, we know some people who are like that.

How about Revelation? Is this a hunger of the church for power and wealth? Is the church wanting judgment so they can take money from all of their foes? Does the church look forward to judgment so they can stand over their enemies with a whip?

One passage Ehrman uses to try to show that the historical Jesus didn’t care about the material was the question of taxes. As he says

A passage that confirms this understanding that future heavenly wealth for the faithful is purely spiritual comes in the famous account of the Jewish leaders who ask Jesus whether it is right to pay taxes to the Roman Empire (Mark 12:13–17). This may sound like a relatively innocent question, but in fact Jesus’s opponents are laying a trap for him. If Jesus says, “No, don’t pay taxes to those filthy Romans who have taken over our Promised Land,” then his enemies can turn him over to the authorities for opposing the state. But if he says, “Yes, do what the ruling authorities ask and faithfully pay what they demand,” they can accuse him of being a collaborator and an enemy of the Jewish people. As happens elsewhere, though, Jesus’s opponents do not know whom they are up against. Jesus never, ever gets caught in these traps. On this occasion he asks for a Roman denarius and when it is produced he asks whose image is on it. He already knows the answer, of course: imperial coins were issued with a likeness of the emperor to emphasize his control over all things, even daily purchases. Jesus’s opponents tell him the coin bears the image and inscription of Caesar, and that allows him to demolish their trap: “Then give to Caesar the things that belong to Caesar and give to God the things that belong to God” (Mark 10:17). For Jesus, the things of this world belong to the mighty and powerful who rule it. God has nothing to do with such trivialities. He does not care about material goods. He wants your soul.

How does this follow? I have looked over this passage multiple times and I do not see it. Ehrman argues as if the body means nothing to Christians and being in the image of God has nothing to do with a body. This is the same God who says He owns the cattle on a thousand hills and that all creation belongs to Him. Why would He make a material world if the matter didn’t matter? Why would He make humans with bodies if bodies didn’t matter?

It could just as easily be said, “Yes, Caesar does have some dominion over these for now, but God ultimately has dominion over everything.” Everything Caesar once ruled has passed into other hands now. Everything God rules still belongs to God even if people get to personally lease it to some degree.

He also uses the verse of “If someone wants your coat, give your tunic as well.” This would result though in someone being totally destitute and even nude which would have two results. First, it would be giving a surety of their promise to fulfill an oath to repay in a court. Second, it would shame their opponent for making them look like someone who would make someone go nude. Neither of these is saying material wealth doesn’t matter.

When Ehrman talks about dominion, he doesn’t do any better.

John’s enthusiasm for widespread destruction, in the end, got the better of him. Already in chapter 6 of Revelation, the entire cosmos falls apart. But in chapter 7, the world and the people in it live on. The obvious explanation is that John is not literally describing the end of the sun, moon, stars, and sky. But that creates a problem. If John constantly engages in rhetorical excess, how can we imagine what he actually envisages?

But on page 121, Ehrman argues most people at the time would be able to understand including the Roman authorities, hence he says this was not written in some code. He also has repeatedly said this was not written for our time to us, but we have to understand the first-century setting. However, when he wants to argue against John and Revelation, he puts on his fundamentalist hat again and claims the text is too hard to understand and should be written for us.

For me, I would argue that this book is written in a cyclical form and tells the same story repeatedly. It also naturally uses Jewish hyperbole. This is also describing the destruction of Jerusalem. It’s not about global destruction.

Ehrman has the same reading problem at the end of the book.

So that is that. Except it’s not. As we have seen, after John describes the glorious new city of gold, we learn that “the nations will walk by its light” (21:24). But why are there nations? We also learn that “the kings of the earth will bring their glory into” the new Jerusalem (21:24). What kings? No one “who practices abomination or falsehood” will enter the city (21:27). Who is practicing abomination (idolatry) or falsehood (sin) if there is no one left? The answer seems obvious: for the saints to dominate, there need to be others left.

Let’s be clear on something. However we interpret this, John is not an idiot. He is not going to contradict himself in the span of a few verses. Our inability to understand does not equal a contradiction.

But to get to the questions, these are good questions and worth discussing, but questions are not arguments. I do not have a definitive answer on this point as this is still something I consider, but I do have a view that Heaven and Hell are the same place but differ in that people who love God glory in His presence and people who hate God suffer intensely in it.

However, none of this leads to “John writes this way so that the people of God can have someone to dominate over.” This is the same Ehrman who said people who read the Bible see what they want to see. Ehrman wants to see God the way he wants to and that is what he does.

Ehrman will go on to argue that those in the city do not share their wealth with those outside, but this is not only unsaid, it is even contradicted. The leaves of the tree of life are for the healing of the nations. Those nations would have to come into the city and can apparently enjoy the blessings of it and can be healed.

So tomorrow, we shall wrap things up, but I contend again that Ehrman is still a fundamentalist in his reading. He has an all-or-nothing mindset. He has not changed it. His loyalty is just different.

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

Book Plunge: Live Not By Lies

What do I think of Rod Dreher’s book published by Sentinel? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Dreher’s book is asking the question of what Christians in the West are meant to do in an age of increasing totalitarianism. Now this does not mean anything like what happens today in China or what happened in the Gulag, but it could be likely to happen in the form of a soft totalitarianism where control comes through social means more than government means. As I write this though, it is about a week after the raid of Trump’s place in Florida and a lot of questions are being raised.

The theme of the book comes from Alexander Solzhenitsyn who said that one thing we have to do is even if we don’t go out with a megahorn shouting the truth everywhere, we can choose to not believe the lies. For us today, these lies are being placed on us regularly by a culture calling into question truths we never would have dreamed being called into question a few years ago and too many people go along for the ride easily. I was stunned enough when I realized I had to defend that marriage is a union of a man and a woman. Today, I have to defend the idea of what a man and a woman is. We have a woman sitting on the Supreme Court who couldn’t answer the question of what a woman is.

More and more, if you disagree with this ideology, you can be shut down. How many people do we know who have been removed from Twitter because of this? How often have we seen cancel culture dig up something someone said ten years ago and shut them down because of it? Keep in mind that before these people were culturally on top, they also insisted on tolerance. That didn’t last long.

Dreher’s book looks at people who went through the rise of Communism and survived in countries where it was. Their examples are often powerful and convicting. These aren’t superhuman people. These are simple ordinary people who did something unique. They lived out their faith in a world where it was condemned.

The repeated advice in the book is to see, judge, and act. Christianity when lived out can overcome any evil that is brought to bear against it. As our country comes closer and closer to more and more government control and government going in a war against reality, this is something we should all keep in mind.

Governments can push control in many ways, but we are in control of our minds and our attitudes. We can make it a point to say that we will live not by lies. We will choose to live the path that Jesus lived.

If I had any criticism of the book, it would be that the book is long on examples, but not long on suggestions. This is how people lived in hard totalitarianism, but I would have liked more that could be done by those of us in a soft totalitarianism or at least a growing one. I recommend Christians read this one and read it along side either Strange New World or The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self by Carl Trueman.

And live not by lies.

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

And The Power

Why do we say God has the power? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Something I found interesting when I went through the first part of Aquinas’s Summa Theologica was that questions were being answered that are really just now becoming major issues. Before the new atheism had hit, most of the arguments were already answered by Aquinas and other medieval theologians. Augustine has a wonderful paragraph on Christians and scientific issues that could have looked like it was written today.

One such question asked is if there is power in God. Then, it was asked if He was omnipotent or not. Aquinas answered the questions and answered all the objections to them. Note that I said objections. The medievals were thinking about these things long before we were.

So what about power? That shows up in the Lord’s prayer. God’s is the Kingdom and the power. Why do we say that?

Because if you’re going to rule a Kingdom, you have to have the power to bring about that Kingdom if it isn’t already there, and you have to have the power to rule it. Only God, and specifically God in Christ, can be the true king because only He is omnipotent and only He is without beginning and without end. He has the power to make what He wants happen and the power to sustain it when it does.

Which should really make us all think seriously about things. If you know the king has the power over everything in your life, how are you going to respond? Are you going to treat Him in a nonchalant way? Are you going to act regularly against His authority and power? If so, then you are a fool.

And by that, we are all fools.

The Lord’s prayer is meant at this point to remind us not to do that. Everything is about God. We ask God to supply our needs because we realize we are dependent on Him. We ask God to forgive us our debts, because we know that He alone can forgive us and we know that He is the one we have wronged. It’s His Kingdom and we are all traitors to the King.

Serious stuff. Do we really think about this when we pray this prayer? Do we consider that He has the power?

If you do something wrong at your job and know that the boss knows about it, you can be in fear since he holds your livelihood. If you have an affair and cheat on your spouse, you can live in fear because if they find out, they can leave. If you are guilty of a crime, you can live in fear of the police lest you be arrested.

Should we not live with an appropriate fear of God? Should we not want to do the same with Him? Should we not want to make it our goal to avoid wronging Him?

It is always tempting to take God lightly and to take prayer lightly. We should do neither. We should realize that we are entering into the presence of the King. Dare we make requests when we have not considered His power and holiness (The prayer reminded us that hallowed be God’s Name)? Yet we do.

Let’s not take the Lord’s Prayer lightly either. God has the power. We need to respect that.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: 3D Gospel

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

3D Gospel

If you have an interest in missions, buy this book.

If you have an interest in understanding other cultures, buy this book.

If you have an interest in understanding the Bible and how it would be read in its own context, buy this book.

If you have an interest in seeing the Bible beyond your own cultural perspective, buy this book.

So yes, I want you to buy this book.

The 3D Gospel refers to the three different types of cultures we see in the world. Here in the West, we live in a guilt-innocence culture. Unfortunately, we often think so does the rest of the world, including the world of the Bible, and read our modern culture, perspectives, and individualism into the Biblical text, which can often produce disastrous results. There are two other kinds of cultures.

There are also honor-shame cultures. These are cultures where honor and shame are the main forces at work as people live seeking to cover up shame and claim honor. In these cultures, what happens in the group is of utmost importance as you want to maintain not just your honor, but the honor of your group, and you do not want to be shamed by the people of your group. What you do reflects on everyone who identifies with you. This viewpoint is in the Middle and Far East.

Then there are fear-power cultures. In these cultures, unseen powers play a big role. This is not just God, but also demons, angels, spirits, dead ancestors, etc. In these cultures, you seek the means to gain power over the unseen world and the defenses to protect yourself from what happens in this world, such as following what steps it takes to avoid curses, perhaps visiting someone like a shaman. This is in some southern nations and tribal nations.

It is important that we learn how to interact. As Georges says on location 161, “For cross-cultural workers, a truncated gospel hinders spirituality, theology, relationships, and ministry We unintentionally put God in a box, only allowing him to save in one area.”

And this is the main theme throughout. Georges writes this so that we can understand the Gospel better and realize that it has something to say to all three cultures and we dare not just go by ours alone. If you go to a culture that is honor-shame and start talking about the Gospel in individualistic terms, you will not get much of an audience. You will need to appeal to the need of honor for people, You will need to relate to them passages about honor and shame in the Bible and about seeking the honor of God rather than the honor of men.

If you go to a fear-power culture, you do not want to talk about gentle Jesus meek and mild. You need to talk about the warrior Jesus. You need to talk about the warrior Jesus who in Colossians 2 disarms the powers that are against us and triumphs over them by the cross. You might also need to be prepared for some real work with prayerful preparation as you could really encounter darker powers in places where this viewpoint is prevalent. What we call power evangelism really plays a role here.

This book is also not long. You can read it in a day easily. That will be a day well spent as you will get some excellent insight into how these other cultures work. Note of course that this is just a start. From there, you need to move on to the best works of scholarship in the field, but if you want to get your feet wet, this is an excellent start in order to do that.

In Christ,
Nick Peters