Tag: Sex

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)

 

 

 

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 – 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: 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)

 

Book Plunge: Christian Body Genesis 2-3

What does the Bible say about nudity? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

So some chaos broke out on Facebook Friday when an apologist friend of mine came out in favor of Christian Naturism. Some of you might be thinking “Love of nature. What could be wrong about that?” Nope. This is a Christian embrace of nudity. One book he mentioned as having an impact was this one. Being concerned about this decision, I decided to look into it.

So the book starts with a look at the account of what happened in the Fall of Man. The author, Aaron Frost starts off saying we all have social conditioning we are unaware of. Of this, who would disagree? He also says we must consult Bible historians and scholars to see what is going on in the text. Again, agreement.

He talks about how he served in different cultures as a missionary and they had different standards about clothing. Yes, but we care about what was ancient Israel’s standard about clothing? How did they see it?

Frost looking at it says that modesty is not in consideration in the account and shame is never mentioned. The problem is this is a Western way of reading the text. It is the idea of “The text doesn’t mention shame, therefore there is nothing shameful.”

On this, we have the firm data. For the ancient Israelites, nudity was shameful. As Pilch and Malina state about Israelite women:

Public nudity inevitably meant “shame” for them, for their chastity was compromised: their physical body was no longer exclusively the property of their husbands.

Pilch, John J.. Handbook of Biblical Social Values, Third Edition (Matrix: The Bible in Mediterranean Context 10) (p. 119). Cascade Books, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.

In Israel, clothing was a signifier of social status. Consider how Tamar tears her robe after her half-brother Amnon rapes her. Why? Because that was a robe for virgins to wear. How did the Israelites know which women in the battle against the Midianites hadn’t slept with a man? Their clothing.

This didn’t just apply to women. As Pilch and Malina again say:

The Hebrew Scriptures relentlessly censure nudity, which was hardly the case in Greece (Thucydides I.vi.4–6). Although God presumably made Adam and Eve naked, they became aware of it with the shame of being discovered as sinners (Gen 2:25). God’s first act of mercy to them was to cover them with garments of skin (Gen 3:21). Thus nudity became inextricably linked with sin and “shame”.

Pilch, John J.. Handbook of Biblical Social Values, Third Edition (Matrix: The Bible in Mediterranean Context 10) (p. 118). Cascade Books, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Nudity was unacceptable in the presence of God. Priests had to have special clothing to make sure no hint of nudity was there. This is not because the human body is ugly or horrible. It’s because of how one is positioned in the society. You approached a king wearing your best. You did the same with God.

Getting back to Frost, he asks if it was improper for Adam and Eve to see each other naked in the garden? Absolutely not. In the privacy of their own homes, it’s also not improper for husbands and wives to see each other naked. Part of the Edenic state is that there was no shame.

Frost does say that there are no thorns or predators or harsh temperatures in the Garden. Maybe not in the Garden, but what about the rest of the world? Am I to think if man had never fell that when they got to the Sahara it would be a pleasant experience, or if they went to the North Pole they could go sunbathing and skinny dipping? The text only deals with one area and if we want to talk about not taking assumptions with us, we should not assume the whole world was like the garden.

After this, Frost writes about how Eve took of the fruit and gave it to her husband to eat. He says for the first time they felt bold defiance against their creator. After that, they experience a horror they never had before. They experience feelings of guilt, shame, and fear.

Excuse me? Where is that in the text?

On p. 24 of Pilch and Malina’s book cited above, they say that our idea of feelings and emotional states of biblical characters is anachronistic. Conscience was not an inner voice saying “You’ve been a bad boy.” It was instead the voice of others condemning them. Consider David for an example. When did he know he had sinned with Bathsheba? When Nathan said those words to him of “You the man!”

Thus, all that Frost says here is anachronistic. It is being read into the text.

He then says they stitched fig leaves together to cover their reproductive organs. Well, the text doesn’t say that they covered those, but that is a fair assumption to grant and it is one that intertestamental writers shared. Consider Jubilees 3.

  1. And when she had first covered her shame with figleaves, she gave thereof to Adam and he eat, and his eyes were opened, and he saw that he was naked.
  2. And he took figleaves and sewed (them) together, and made an apron for himself, and ,covered his shame.

Now some of my fellow Protestants could say “But that’s not Scripture!” to which I say, “Irrelevant.” The point of the writing is to show how Jews saw it. The reproductive organs were to be reserved for husband and wife and not for the public. It would be treating what is sacred as it was common.

Frost tells us that modern readers think they know very well why they hid. It is an assumption that is brought, but it is not stated in the text. Unfortunately, Frost doesn’t tell us forthrightly what this assumption is. It’s like he assumes the assumption. Weird, isn’t it?

At the start, I don’t think it was from one another. For one thing, hiding doesn’t make sense. What would happen? “Eve! You turn around and count to ten and I’ll hide and then I’ll count to ten while you hide.”

That being said, something married men and men who even cohabitate with a woman know well often is many women even in marriage cover their bodies. Many men don’t understand why their wife can come out of the shower and have a towel wrapped tight around them. Many of those men have no such insecurities around their wives.

So who were they hiding from?

Ask any parent who has small children. If the parent comes into the house and the vase is broken and a baseball is next to it, the children are hiding. God comes walking through. The children hide. Foolish to think you can hide from God? Yes, but all of us are foolish before God many times thinking we can’t trust Him, worrying about matters, etc.

Frost’s contention for why they did this? Satan told them to! Satan told them their nakedness was shameful! Where is that in the text? NOWHERE! Satan tempts Eve to eat the fruit and after that he is completely silent. The idea that Satan did this helps Frost with his interpretation, but it’s not rooted in the text.

Besides, if Satan did this, then one would think one of the first things God would do is correct their misconception. He never does. If anything, He enables their decision by putting together clothing for them.

Something we have to consider is the text only has two human beings in the garden. We don’t know what would have happened had children been born in the garden. Would Adam and Eve wear clothing then so that their children wouldn’t see what was meant for husband and wife alone? The text doesn’t say. Do we think Adam and Eve would be having sex together while a young Cain and Abel watched on? Hard to picture even in an Edenic society.

Frost says God gives them garments but says nothing about modesty to them. As if that needs to be explicitly stated in the text! He also never states how they are to grow food and tend gardens in a world of thorns and thistles. He never tells Eve how to raise children when she will give birth with increased pain. (I am leaving aside questions of the age of the Earth and other such matters like pain before the Fall.) A Western society thinks this needs to be spelled out. An Eastern one understands it’s a waste of time and writing to point out what everyone already knew.

Frost says the couple would need more protection than they did in the garden because the sun was hot, the nights were cold, and thorns were there and animals could have venom.

So was the sun not hot before?

Were nights not cold before?

Were there zero thorns in the world before?

Were there zero poisonous animals before?

These are all assumptions Frost brings to the text.

Frost goes on to say in approaching our issues today that:

The plain, unaltered body has been reduced to smut and outlawed from ever being honored appropriately. The human body, as it stands naturally, is now strictly reserved only for pornography and kept that way by Christian influence in government as if that must be how God wanted things to be.

Frost, Aaron. Christian Body: Modesty and the Bible (p. 38). UNKNOWN. Kindle Edition.

Well, no.

For one thing, no one is saying nudity in itself is sinful. The Lord even in ancient Israel knew in some cases, it was a necessity, such as, oh, I don’t know, having children? People would also still have to bathe and wash their clothes. Both could involve nudity. Nudity itself isn’t the problem.

The problem is the context nudity is in.

If you go to the doctor and he says take off your clothes and you’re nude, we understand that is fine. If you go down to main street and take off your clothes and sit on a park bench, that isn’t fine. The context is what matters. If you are in the privacy of your own home and want to go nude, go ahead. In public, no.

And what is pornography? It is pictures of evil sexual sin which is made just to arouse people. Pornography demeans the human body by treating what is sacred and making it common. It also blurs the line between the public and the private spheres. That which is meant for privacy becomes public. (Never mind also that many caught in the industry are victims of sex trafficking.)

He then asks shouldn’t we speak against this perversion that the body is something shameful? Shouldn’t we speak out that the body shouldn’t be covered up? Shouldn’t we speak out against the natural body being inappropriate.

Again, all of this confuses the public and the private sphere. For an Israelite, to be naked in public was shameful. This is the case going on when God regularly says that He will expose the nakedness of His enemies or when David’s men go to speak to a foreign king and get their pants split and their beards shaved and are told to stay where they are until their beards grow back.

None of this says the body in itself is shameful, but it does say the nudity of the body is meant for the private sphere of life and not the public sphere, much like sexuality is. Sex in the Bible is a good and beautiful thing. A man having sex with his wife in the privacy of their home is good. A man having sex with his wife in the middle of a shopping mall is not.

Frost tells us that the Bible tells us temptation is caused by lust and that is the choice of the living dissatisfied with God’s way.

Again, no. As the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament says:

This group denotes desire, especially for food or sex. This desire is morally neutral at first, but philosophy, holding aloof from the sensory world, regards it as reprehensible, and in Stoicism epithymía is one of the four chief passions. Epicurus distinguishes between natural and illicit desires, subdividing the former into the purely natural and those that are necessary to happiness.

Gerhard Kittel, Gerhard Friedrich, and Geoffrey William Bromiley, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Abridged in One Volume (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 1985), 339–340.

The word means desire. It can be right or wrong. 1 Tim. 3:1 speaks positively of it saying if a man desires to be an overseer, he desires a good thing. James is talking about sinful desires we do have inside of us. It is not just lust in the sense of looking at a member of the opposite sex.

Frost says the Scriptures never say clothing prevents lust or that nakedness offends God. For one thing, I don’t know anyone making this claim. If clothing prevented lust in every way, then teenage boys would not be struggling with lust when they see a cute girl at school. She’s wearing clothes after all.

Second, once again, it is a Western mindset to think this has to be spelled out.

Third, to some degree, they do. The less a woman wears, the more a guy is prone to go crazy over her.

Frost is taking a Western mindset to the text and demanding it spell out everything. We might as well say “The text never tells us to diet and exercise regularly, so we shouldn’t do that.” “The text never tells us to wash our hands before meals, so we shouldn’t do that.” Picture how that last one would go.

“God created dirt and dirt is good and God said a man working hard and laboring is good. Man is meant to work. Why should a man remove that good dirt that God created on this Earth before he eats a meal?”

Frost tells us the solution to porn is not to cover the body but to show an example of good and godly people who are not overpowered by the sight of God’s creation and appreciate one another with dignity, honor, and respect.

First off, good luck with that.

Second, if you become so desensitized to God’s creation that you are no longer aroused by the nakedness of a member of the opposite sex, then I think you have a bigger problem. We were designed to want the bodies of the opposite sex and when we do, our bodies are also functioning properly.

Third, the real solution is to change the way we view sex and sexuality and realize that what is meant for privacy should not be public. We need to have a higher view of sex.

He finally ends saying that the fig leaves were the first decision Adam made with a corrupted mind. Unfortunately for Frost, God nowhere condemns this description and even furthers it by making clothes Himself for the couple. Also, it is worth pointing out that Frost said we should consult scholars and historians of the Bible, but I count nowhere in this section where he has done so. He has argued entirely from his perspective alone.

Next time we look at this book, we will discuss Genesis 9.

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

 

 

 

Is Love Love?

What is love? (Baby, don’t hurt me. Don’t hurt me, no more.) Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

“Love is love!” is often what people in support of the LGBTQ+ groups say. It sounds simple. How could you respond to something like that? Love is not love? I saw someone actually say at an event in the comments recently “Love isn’t love!” Well, that’s wrong, but does that mean the other side is right?

A lot of Christians hear a saying like this and think that they can’t really argue against that. Who is opposed to love after all? Isn’t love good? Isn’t God love.

Let’s replace it with another saying.

Cats are cats.

Now would anyone want to dare say that cats aren’t cats? What else could they be? However, what if I said cats are cats, therefore, this:

Is the same as this:

Are there similarities? Yes. Are there relations? Yes. Despite that, when I go to bed at night, there’s only one I want jumping up on the bed with me. Meanwhile, if you go to the zoo expecting to see the bottom one and you see the top instead, you’ll be thinking the zoo isn’t bringing in all these interesting species.

Both of these are cats, yes, but both are not the same kind of cat. We have to break down what that means. My Shiro, for instance, is a Turkish Angora largely. My parents have a cat that is a Himalayan. As someone who loves cats, every day I ask my Echo device what the cat breed of the day is. Somedays, I do get something like a lion. Most days I get a breed of housecat.

You could fill in the gap with several items. Dogs are dogs. Books are books. TV shows are TV shows. Movies are movies. Sports are sports.

The Greeks had four different words for love.  Many of these we celebrate in our society. I don’t know anyone who is opposed to friendship. We can say there are some people you shouldn’t be friends with, but we are not opposed to friendship in general.

Agape love is usually seen as God love and while there are people who don’t believe in God, many would not oppose the idea of something like loving your neighbor as yourself. They could say that if a Christian thinks God loves them, they’re wrong, but good for them. Family love is more familial love. This is the kind of courtesy you have for a complete stranger just because they’re a fellow human being.

Now we get to the last one, erotic love. Very few people are probably anti-sex altogether. That includes we who are Christians. It’s one of the reasons we get married as well after all. Christians have books and resources too on how to have a good married sex life.

At the same time, that doesn’t mean everyone celebrates every kind of sexual activity. Let’s start with an obvious one. Children. The overwhelming majority of people says children should not be involved in sexual relationships. Pederasty is still largely condemned, though if society keeps going the way it is going, that won’t last much longer.

How about another one? Rape. You can love women and you can love sex, but if you force yourself on a woman against her will, then that is wrong. Yes. I know rape is about power, but it is also an act of sex as well and one we condemn.

Most sex is celebrated today. I am not saying I celebrate it, but let’s face it. On a sitcom or drama, the question often thought is “Will they or won’t they?” It used to be “Will they get married?” but nowadays it’s “Will they have sex?” It’s usually celebrated when they do. I am not agreeing with it. I am just saying the reality is real.

Yet despite that, do we really think we should live in a culture where we celebrate and encourage ALL sexual activity even if it is consensual? Do we want to celebrate couples forming one-night stands and not forming long-term relationships? Do we want to oppose men and women forming lifelong covenants called marriage?

After all, something that sets sex apart from every other activity out there is it alone can produce new life. That means with it comes responsibilities and risks as well. Seeing as life is a good (Although sadly, many think life in the womb is not a good but a problem to be dealt with), we encourage relationships that are capable of bringing that new life into the world and raising it. Thus, we encourage marriage as a form of stability for raising new life.

This is the love as a society that we should be promoting the most. No other relationship can do this. Some might say some incestual relationships could, but those blur the family lines and also are prone to more genetic harm to the child. That is why societies promote married love. It is not because the people feel good about themselves. It is not because they have their identities affirmed. It is because that alone produces children and society depends on its members having children.

Note in all of this I have not said same-sex sexual relationships are immoral. (though I think they are) I have said simply that they are not the same as married opposite-sex relationships. This is also why the idea of redefining marriage is so problematic. It has been compared to the bans against interracial marriage in the past, but the problem here is that race has no affect on the sexual behavior. Men of all races are still men and women of all races are still women. The races are interchangeable in the relationship. It is not the same with the person’s sex.

By the way, along those lines, if one can say they are the wrong sex and identify as another, what could stop someone from identifying as a different race? I am fully white, but what if I said I was born into the wrong race and I feel like a black man? If anything, race is much more on a spectrum than sex is.

So is love, love? Yes, but it needs to be broken down and not treated as a cliche. Cliches tend to stop thinking and our society needs more of it.

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

 

Book Plunge: The Toxic War On Masculinity Part 3

Do men bear responsibility? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

What happens when you divorce the public and the private, the sacred and the secular? What happens when femininity and masculinity are no longer seen as complementing one another but are seen as competition? What happens when the individual becomes more important than the household?

There’s not much to say on this one tonight except when two groups start to form a divide, generally, they make it get deeper and deeper. Men who were seen in a negative light, well, they became a self-fulfilling prophecy. They started living that way and before too long, you had saloons. You had men spending extra money on alcohol. You saw that since the women were taking charge of the household, the men were starting to abdicate responsibility.

It’s a sad reality that we all will usually choose the path of least resistance and the path that requires the least work. Today, a woman will have sex with a man thinking that he will then marry her. In reality, he’ll usually see that and say “Okay. I guess I don’t need to go any further.” Why should he? He’s got what he wants and he doesn’t have to enter any further risk, such as getting married and losing half of his money and having to pay alimony for the rest of his life.

And the women in all of this? Well, they developed a sort of take-charge attitude in this. Many reform movements were beginning because women were of the mindset that things would be better if they were in charge. This is the beginning of feminism today and sadly, it is the beginning. As I said at the start, if you keep pushing people down a divide, that divide will grow worse and worse.

So then, you have the idea that we need to have reform. Where does that lead? Today, you can have a hashtag that says to Kill All Men.

Sometimes you need to go back to where you lost your way and find out what happened. One step Pearcey takes is to look at how Jesus treated women. Jesus would be with women in public and speaking to them. Jesus would include women in His teaching and have them listen to His teaching. Jesus even traveled with women and had women who were supporting Him.

Jesus had a tender heart towards women.

So far in all of this post today, we have discussed what happened between men and women. I have stated that men and women drove further apart. Instead of being allies and working together, they were becoming enemies and working against one another. However, marriages don’t normally have just a husband and a wife. They also have children. Some of those children are also the future men.

What happens to the young boys when the Dad is not only away from the son because of work, but away from the son because he is out drinking with his buddies?

That will wait until tomorrow.

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

 

Christianity and Modern Gods

What are the gods we deal with today? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I am reading through the church fathers, among other things, and something I am noticing with Tertullian who I am on now is that he has a vast array of knowledge about the gods of the Roman society he lives in. I grew up reading Greek mythology which was claimed by the Romans, but there is still a lot I don’t know about it. Tertullian is familiar with the ins and the outs of the great stories in addition to being familiar with the biblical topics he knows about and the history of Christianity and the Roman Empire.

Nowadays, most people do not believe in those gods. Many people would consider themselves secularists and even many Christians are largely secular in their thinking. That does not mean we are not without gods. Not by a long shot. We have several gods today and these are gods Christians need to know about as well to interact with worshippers of these gods, as there are plenty of such worshippers.

So what are they?

Let’s start with sex. Yes. We all know about sex. A goes into B and sometimes a baby can result. We all know how it works, but what about what it is. We have plenty of debates on this topic. What is the ultimate purpose of sex? Is it something reserved for marriage? Is it to be between a man and a woman?

Then this gets into our personal identity. What is orientation? Is there such a thing? Is there a difference between sex and gender? Is this something that is assigned at birth or is it something immutable that cannot be changed? On one level, we can say the question “What is a woman?” is simple, but on the other, it is something quite deep that we need to get more to an answer on.

Christians definitely need to have a message here. After all, if we aren’t sharing our views on this with our children, the world is and the world will speak loudly. If we do believe sex is reserved for a man and a woman in marriage, how can we tell children this is a great gift while at the same time saying it needs to be reserved for that state? (Something even difficult for we adults who are single again.)

Another god is money. For this, Christians need to study economics. Many of the debates we have in this country are because people are ignorant of economics. We think with our hearts alone and think “If our intentions are good, the results will follow.” Not at all. I am not saying to avoid compassion, but I am saying that to see if a policy works, you don’t ask “How compassionate is it?” but rather “How effective is it?”

Capitalism is often seen as encouraging greed. Is it? Marxism is seen as caring for the poor. Is it? Why did we go to war with Marxism so much in our history? Is Marxism necessarily linked with atheism? Were the early Christians socialist?

As for caring for the poor, what is the best way to help people who are poor? What method has the best results? How should individual Christians care for the poor? Is it wrong for you to buy something really nice for yourself when there are poor people in the world?

Power is another one and this gets into politics. This is definitely here when an election year is going on. Christians need to learn how their government works. Can we tell the three branches of the American government? What is the Constitution? The Bill of Rights? The Declaration of Independence?

How much power should the government have? Should the citizenry be able to have guns and if so, are there any limitations to that? What should we prohibit? What should we permit? What should we promote? What role do passages like Romans 13 play?

What about science? This seems to be the reigning authority today. What is science? Is science necessarily materialistic? Can it answer the God question? Can it answer questions of good and evil? Is it the only way to know anything?

What should we accept in science and what should we not? Is evolution true? If it is, what does this say about our beliefs on Scripture, inerrancy, the existing of God, and the resurrection of Jesus? Can you be a faithful Christian and accept evolution? Can you be a good scientist and reject evolution?

What about modern issues as well like climate change? Is the earth’s climate changing? If so, is that something that would happen anyway or is man responsible? Is there anything that can be done about it either way? What about our response to Covid? What did we get right? What did we get wrong? Can we trust the science or are we even more skeptical?

Christians interacting in our culture need some knowledge on all of this. In addition definitely understand other gods if you are interacting with other systems. We need Christians who understand cults, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, atheism and any other belief system out there.

In all of this, yes, we need to know our Bibles and our history and what we believe and why, but we are interacting with people who speak of other gods. Like good missionaries, we need to know what those other gods are and how to address them. Christians throughout history have had something to say about more than just Christianity. We need to do the same to be effective witnesses in our culture.

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

Book Plunge: Atheist Universe Part 12

Is internet porn a danger? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Up until now, I have considered Mills highly ignorant.

Yet when I got to this chapter, that changed.

Mills has an attitude that is disgraceful to have and highly misogynistic towards women. I do not make such statements lightly. I do intend to back it.

First, why this chapter anyway? Why did he write it? He didn’t just write a chapter about supposedly odd views about sex that Christians have. No. This was about internet porn specifically. This was about men going on the internet with the intention of looking up pictures of women in various stages of undress all the way to completely nude for the purpose of feeding their own lusts and that is okay to Mills. Note I say men specifically since that is the group that Mills focuses on saying girls don’t really have this struggle. Well, they actually do, and a large part of that is because men do as well.

So let’s dive in.

Is there truly a problem of children’s accessing pornography on the internet? And if there is, shouldn’t we, as adults, strive mightily to prevent impressionable children from viewing sexually oriented material intended solely for adults? The answers to these questions are: (1) There is no problem; and (2) We should not strive to “child-proof” the internet.

Mills, David. Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism (p. 193). Ulysses Press. Kindle Edition.

Entirely wrong on both counts. It is extremely hard for women to find men today who are not viewing porn. They are the exception, not the rule, and this is changing the way men think about sex and in turn changing the way women are doing sex and thinking about sex. Men are getting more and more the idea that what they see on the screen is how sex is supposed to be an how women are supposed to look.

Those are airbrushed fantasy and put a real woman next to a fantasy and the fantasy will win. I hate saying that because real women I do think are definitely superior because they are real, but fake women can be whatever the man wants them to be. Today, a man’s first sexual encounter won’t be on his wedding night. It will be in front of a computer screen.

Yes. We need to child-proof the internet. Minors are passing around nude pictures of themselves that in any other hands would be considered child pornography and a crime. A number of them have committed suicide after said pictures have leaked. Women are suffering in the Instagram generation where they think they have to look like the women on Facebook.

But this is just the beginning for Mills.

He goes on to talk about how our young men reach sexual maturity in their teen years and then have to wait several years before they can get married. On this, I agree. This is a problem. Our society has set eighteen as if it is some magical number that suddenly makes a boy a man. It doesn’t. There are several boys who are over eighteen and there are several men who are under, though those numbers are greatly increasing on both sides.

So Mills says:

So economic reality, more than anything else, has crafted our perception that teenage males are “harmed” by sexual preoccupation. Today’s male faces a frustrating gap of approximately ten years between the onset of his sexual maturity and the median marital age. Genetically and hormonally, however, today’s teenage male is unchanged from the day when early teenage copulation was the accepted norm. During this extended gap between puberty and marriage, all teenage males masturbate frequently, and the overwhelming majority of them view pornography as well.

Mills, David. Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism (pp. 197-198). Ulysses Press. Kindle Edition.

In this, there is very little to disagree. It’s his next part that’s the big problem.

Again I pose the question: If, throughout the entirety of human history, teenage males were not “jeopardized” by full penile-vaginal intercourse with their teenage partners, how then are today’s teenage males “endangered” by mere photographs of women?

Mills, David. Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism (p. 198). Ulysses Press. Kindle Edition.

And this I declare is incredibly misogynistic. Mills says “If a man was involved in a relationship with a woman where he was spending his life with her and siring children with her and raising a family with her, then how is looking at photographs a problem? That is hardly a one-to-one parallel. The former requires that a man be a man. It requires that he take responsibility for a woman he has pledged loyalty and faithfulness to. It requires that he work to provide for her and the children that they will have.

Pornography does the exact opposite. It requires that a man not be a man. It does not require the man to take any responsibility. It does not require him to be faithful and loyal to anyone. It does not require him to make any effort to provide for a woman or provide children. The woman in pornography is solely there for the gratification of the man. He doesn’t even have to know her name or anything about her. He doesn’t have to risk himself with her at all.

Yet Mills sees these as parallels.

Unbelievable.

This really tells you how Mills sees women.

Pornography causes young men to see women as just bodies and cheapens sex. I am not at all saying women’s bodies are not beautiful. Thank God they are. I am saying you can’t beat the real thing. It is why even as a divorced man I strive to keep myself porn free so that when I remarry, my then wife will know I only have eyes for her and she doesn’t have to compete with a Rolodex of images of nude women in my head.

Another sad fact is that if Mills’s view is true, then yes, there is nothing wrong with any of this. There is nothing wrong with anything. There is also nothing right with anything. Things just are. That’s it.

Thank God the world is not like that.

Thank God women are real and good in their own right and that sex was a gift He created for us to enjoy in the context of a marital relationship.

We don’t want a cheap thing like Mills does.

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