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A FESTIVAL OF DEMONS                                                                                           Reflections on the Current Culture         

11/17/2018

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In Pasco County Florida, recently, a high school gym teacher was reprimanded and threatened with transfer to another district for not watching a young girl, self-identifying" as a "boy" for that afternoon, take her clothes off preparatory to using the boys' shower. (Story here: americanactionnews.com/articles/male-gym-teacher-punished-for-refusing-to-watch-biological-girl-undress).

Again in Florida, the Democratic leadership apparently attempted some old-fashioned after-the-deadline ballot-box stuffing in aid of their call for a recount, hopefully to overturn a Republican victory. The official, of course, doesn't consider anything she did to be wrong (Story here:  
americanactionnews.com/articles/dems-sent-altered-mail-in-ballot-forms-across-florida-state-says).

Robius Middle School, in Midlothian, Virginia, has banned Jesus from their Christmas celebration. They claim that "having to" sing the Name of Jesus was "disturbing" to "some children." If you go to their website, however, they have "Christmas" prominently featured on their list of events (Liberty Council Alert: 11/16/18). I am obviously not the only one who thinks it ironic that Robius Middle School has locked Jesus out of His own birthday party. If you would like to make a donation help Liberty Counsel out in this and other similar battles this season, here's a link: www.libertycounsel.net/keep_christ_in_christmas?RID=50191877

If our culture seems to be turning upside-down, there's a reason: it is.  Congresswoman (yes, she was re-elected) Maxine Waters publicly called for the criminal harassment of President Trump's cabinet members. This resulted in an orgy  of restaurant invasions by screaming mobs who hurled curses at Administration officials with complete impunity, The effort reached (hopefully) its Nadir lately, when Antifa terrorists almost succeeded in breaking down the door at Tucker Carlson's home as his wife huddled in the pantry and called the police. A few days before, at Carlson's country club, a man followed his daughter out of the ladies' room and hurled curses at her. He was barred from the club, his membership revoked, which appears to be the only action that will be taken in this whole sordid affair. I hope I'm wrong.

In Berkeley, California, a breeding ground for radical violence for decades, and in Portland, Oregon, one of the most Liberal cities in the United States, Antifa terrorists appear to have carte blanche. The police in both cities have been ordered to stand down when Antifa goes a-ravening, and their activities have now expanded across the country to Washington, D.C.

Does the new Congress signal an emboldened thuggocracy on our streets? Who knows?

One thing we do know: God can fix it. He, however, works through us. If we become too lazy, too disinterested, too "not involved" to spend time every day in prayer for our country, the Lord will let the darkness finally close in over us and over the world. Then the lost souls out there to whom we should be speaking about Jesus, will have run out of time. And we'll have some explaining to do.

May 27, 2014

THE FUTURE OF ORTHODOXY? THE FUTURE OF ORTHODOXY!
Reflections on the recent gathering in Crete.

 
By Fr. James
 
There has been much anger and conjecture over the various irregularities surrounding the recent symposium on Crete that involved small delegations from ten of the almost forty jurisdictions of canonical Eastern Orthodoxy.

Of these, only the fourteen principal Churches were invited, and of them only 24 bishops from each were allowed to attend. Input into pre-prepared documents was tightly controlled, and the participatory power of even the attending bishops severely limited. They were, in fact, not permitted to exercise their individual episcopal office and vote, but were constrained to vote as a bloc All of this was a complete departure from Conciliar procedure throughout the history of the Church, where every bishop of the Church was invited to attend,  discussions were conducted freely and without time limits or pre-decided documents, and all bishops were permitted to vote. In short, the atmosphere was engineered to make it as free as possible for the Holy Spirit to operate and for those in attendance to be able to respond to Him; not to constraints of time, space and a worldly concern for schedules and  “efficiency.”
 
Because of all this, four of the invited Churches declined to attend. No attempt was made to address their objections or to postpone the meeting until their concerns could be dealt with. The organizational structure of the gathering thus forfeited even such “pan-Orthodox” character as it had.
 
It needs to be understood that the gathering at Crete was intended to be a Pan-Orthodox Council: a gathering of all of Orthodoxy, that would shape the Orthodox world for the foreseeable future. It was intended to reflect the unanimous consensus of God’s great and holy Church gathered in a Council that would in fact reflect the Mind of God, issuing in a joyful outpouring of gratitude to our Lord, Who, of His own Power, unconstrained, had revealed to them His Plan.
 
This was obviously not permitted to happen. The conference management simply declared that the decisions of the meeting would be “binding on everyone.” The impolite question, “by whose authority?” has not yet been  dealt with, and it is obvious that neither the content nor the attitude of the directive will be accepted by Pan-Orthodoxy.
 
This being the case, many are, understandably, asking, “How worried should we be?” “What will happen to the Church? “Will there be a schism?” “If so, what will happen to us?"
 
I would like to humbly venture some answers.
 
First, we don’t need to be worried at all. These are the actions of men, not of God. So
what if they manage to create, within the confines of the Church, an ersatz little political
world-structure, wherein they happily jockey with each other for the trappings of power and prestige? What does it matter? The Church is the Body of Christ, the living Presence of God the Son on earth. That little political patch is a different place altogether, of real consequence only to itself.
 
We are all free, even as were Adam and Eve to eat the fruit, to make our version of the Church a place wherein to satisfy our ambitions, to receive the adulation of men and the highest seats in the synagogues. Many are successful at it, and God tells us they have received their reward. The rest of us, those who don’t particularly care about all that, simply don’t have to be concerned with it.
 
Second, what will happen to the Church is that it will still be here. Orthodoxy is not
Orthodox because we say it is, or because we are able to promulgate documents. It
is much bigger than that, bigger than  we are, bigger even than we can comprehend.`
Orthodoxy is directly bound up in God.
 
We can take a telescope and look at the sweep and splendor of a universe we can only see a piece of; marvel at the stability of planets held in balance by the closest of  cosmic tolerances, from which even a tiny variation would cause it all to tumble in on itself. What vast and precise power!
 
Then we can regard the Power that created that power, and by Whose Will it is sustained. That is what we’re in touch with, what we’re dealing with, what defends Orthodoxy. What do we think the efforts of men will—or can—do to it?
 
Third, maybe there will be a schism. It will create a lot of emotional turmoil, maybe even
anxiety. That’s never pleasant. It will be overcome by continuing to love one another, and
clergy and laity on all sides, who take the priestly charism of their baptism seriously,  will
exhort all concerned to dwell in love of each other. So, even in the midst of what might be
high agitation, there will be healing and the protection (even if only slightly perceived at
times) of God’s Peace.
 
Objectively, it won’t matter at all. The heterodox will be heterodox. The Orthodox will be
Orthodox. Because in Orthodoxy there can be no “schism,” only those who adhere
and those who don’t. If I did or didn’t, the Church would go on with or without me. It
wouldn’t be a “schism,” it would just be how it was.
 
Fourth, what will happen to us? Well, I suppose most of us will be in church  on Sunday,
just as ever. I’ll still be getting in my bishop’s hair with inquiries about things, people, will
still be calling for prayer support and, whatever we do, lay, clerical or consecrated, we’ll be
getting up in the morning to go to work. And, as He always does and always has,God will
protect us from our madness and folly and will encourage us—with that great, big Smile only
He can have--to get back up on our feet and keep walking forward in Him.


INTERIORITY AND EXTERIORITY, PART III: THE SACRAMENTAL LIFE
By Fr.  James

There is a wonderful bridge between the interior and exterior lives: the Sacraments.

The Theological definition of a Sacrament is that it is something instituted by God which
conveys Grace. Normally, we think of seven of them: Baptism, Chrismation, Confession, the Eucharist, Matrimony, Ordination and Anointing. These "walk through life" with us, from cradle to grave, and serve as points of contact with God.

Orthodoxy, however, thinks not just in terms of the Seven Sacraments, but of the sacramental life. That is, of life itself lived as a sacrament. And, isn't it? Life was instituted by God, and it conveys Grace.

God is Omnipresent: everywhere, everywhen. There is nothing He does not inhabit, because it is the Holy Spirit Who animates all things, Who gives them coherence. In
this sense, even the rocks are "alive," because if they were not they would crumble to dust; and even dust is "alive," or else it would crumble to powder; and powder would
crumble to its constituent particles, which would then carry on that life, in a way, through
their interaction
with other particles. Thus not even entropy, the bitter fruit of sin, can overcome Life; for all life persists in God.

We need to be very careful, here, for our increasingly paganized world would have us believe that "all things are God." That is, that the sum total of all activity in the universe adds up to what we call God. And that is backwards. To say "God is in all things and animates all things" is not to say "all things, working together, are God."

All things are, however, creatures of God. That means that there is no created thing which
cannot convey to us some message about God's Character. So, each in its own way,
every created thing is an icon of God.
 

So, we speak of the Sacrament of the Present moment. I am alive, right now. I was alive
a nanosecond ago, and I may be alive a nanosecond from now. But now is when I am
alive, and it is now when I am able to perceive and meditate upon that which is around me.

It is here that I engage in the Sacramental Life, in this
present moment, right here, right now, as a point of contact with God, wherein there is Grace.


"But," you may say, "sure, God is Omnipresent, but does that necessarily mean Grace
is?
" Yes, it does. Grace is an  uncreated energy of God, part of His very Character. Where
He is, it is. And He is everywhere, everywhen. He, and therefore Grace, is in the present
moment:
this nanosecond of time which we have been granted. it is here that we meet God, because God lives in the Eternal Now. By immersing ourselves in the present moment--our Now--we  touch God's Now. 

Within this shared Now, we find that virtually everything is a sacrament--instituted by God--conveying Grace.  In living the sacramental life, we touch Life at its most immediate  and realize that life, itself, is a sacrament. We are impacted with the fact that Life--
and, given the right occasion and attitude, anything we encounter, can be and is a point of contact with God and a conveyor of His Grace.

So, why do we need the Church? If God is everywhere, and engagement with Him is possible at every moment in every place, why do we need to go to some special place
in order to interact with Him? If everything is a sacrament, why do we need the Seven Sacraments at all?

Orthodox call the Sacraments "mysteries," because that is what they are: ultimately
hidden in God, and inexplicable. But we might open a path to understanding by reflecting that the entire universe is a gigantic icon of God. It is functional, it is something we can see and touch and interact with, but
It has more than just a mechanical function--even as icons painted by hand have more than an artistic function.

The vastness of the universe is a window upon the vastness of its Creator; its orderliness, of His own order; its dynamism, of His power; its immediacy, of His availability.
The universe is the matrix within which we have life, wherein we discover God. It is therefore a means whereby He conveys Himself to us. So, the universe itself is a sacrament.

It's the same with the Church, only at the same time both more vast and more immediate. More vast, because it is as part of the Church that we encounter God Himself. More immediate, because it is a Divine inbreaking into the world we inhabit, dealing with us on our terms, that we might become more than we are.

The Church is a bridge: a thin place, where the walls between the dimensions become porous. It is at once an icon and a product of the God-Man Who established her as both His Body and His Bride. It is God's Theanthropic (Divine-human) institution: a place between the worlds, partaking of both, dwelling in what the ancients called the borderlands.

To enter a church building is to step into this place between the worlds, a place where time and space are suspended and there is only God's Eternal Now. It is where we are, and at the same time, where He is.

And thus, the Sacraments. The Seven Sacraments reach us where we are, as we are,
and effect an interior transformation in us when we partake of them.


We call the Sacraments, "Mysteries," because they are, in the last analysis, beyond explanation.  We can say that through the Sacrament of Confession God forgives sins, or that in the Sacrament of the Altar He transforms bread and wine into His actual, physical Presence, or that in the Sacrament of Matrimony two individuals become one flesh. These statements are sufficient in themselves: that's what they are, that's what happens, end of story.  Then we start trying to explain them, and that's where we get into trouble. We get insights, we form opinions, we write papers to develop our opinions, we write books to promulgate our developed opinions, and all of it is just so much ink and paper, because the operative words in the process are "we" and "our."

The Sacraments are not matters of "we" and "our." They are things God does, not things that we do.  We engage with God (or, He engages with us) in the Sacraments. We interact with Him in the Sacraments. But there is no possible way we can satisfactorily explain how, or even why, God's Hand reaches out to touch us thus.

When we finally come up with an explanation that satisfies us, that is what we have come up with: an explanation that satisfies us. And it will be every bit as all - encompassing as my cat attempting to explain the mystery of her food coming out of the refrigerator and onto her dish. Her perceptions are pure, and sufficient: there's the food, there's where it came from, there's how it got here. She has no need to master the mechanics of refrigeration, of canning or even of shopping. She need not trouble herself over my motives. She knows that I feed her and that I bring her food from one place to put it in another. She can thus enjoy the meal without confusion or inaccuracy, and come away nourished.

God's acts are hugely more out of my league than are my acts out of my cat's league. How could I ever hope to deliver a competent explanation of God's Act?

The good news is, I don't need to.  And, not needing to frees me to live in the Present Moment with Him, and enter into His Now. It is sufficient for me to reflect that,  just as Divinity became Flesh in Christ, entering the world and touching it on its own terms, so does Spirit deal with matter in the Sacraments, that Divinity might touch me on my own terms.

This Eternal Now into which the Sacraments draw me, this "sacrament of the present moment,"  is actually all that I have. The beginning of this sentence has been written, and I may never reach the end of it (whew! made it!). The past is gone, and the future, even the most immediate future, is not guaranteed. The Present Moment is when I am alive, and when I meet God. It establishes in me the meeting-place between the interior and the exterior, and is the key to living my life as the sacrament that it is. The Sacraments
of the Church, which I receive in the Present Moment, prepare me to live, and sustain me through, the Sacramental Life.


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INTERIORITY AND EXTERIORITY: PART II

4/10/2014

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                                                                    By Fr.  James

Not long after the 2012 election, I was speaking at a pro-life event. I warned the audience I was about to ask some difficult questions.


"First," I asked, " is there anyone here who does not believe that abortion is an intrinsic evil?" This being a pro-life affair, of course no hands were raised.


“Okay, next—is there anyone here who does not believe that participating in an abortion is
an intrinsic evil?”
Again, no hands. Smiles were beginning to emerge. This wasn’t such a tough exam, after all.

“Now a little harder one—is there anyone here who does not believe that encouraging an abortion is an intrinsic evil?” Again, no hands, bigger smiles.

“Okay. a little tougher now—is here anyone here who does not believe that permitting an
intrinsic evil is to participate in it?”
  These were people who knew their Moral Theology, and of course no hands went up.

“Great so far. Now, the toughest one: How did you vote?”

  The sound of lifted eyebrows filled the room.

A small group off in one corner applauded. One
young person cheered. For the most part, though, the reaction was shock—and even some hostility.

Now, all of us—and by “us” I mean Christians who gather in places like this--are holy in the abstract. We all know what to believe. We all know what we should do. Given an exam, we will pass it with flying colors. But challenging how we actually behave, especially at a "rally the troops" event--well, that crosses the “polite preaching” line. It’s fine to preach about sin. It gets a little sketchy, however, to suggest someone in your congregation or audience might actually be sinning.

That, however, was not really the problem, here.
These were good people with well-formed consciences, most of whom had probably indeed voted Pro-Life.

The problem was, “Father’s talking politics.”


Yet, I wasn’t, was I? I was talking morality. More than that, I was talking what we Orthodox call
Praxis: the outward, practical expression of our interior life; or just plain, “doing what we believe” (see James 1: 22-25).     Morality, after all, is more than the ability to pass a Moral Theology exam. It is how I act in response to what I know in theory. That’s what makes the external life important.

“Let my action proceed from the overflow from my contemplation” is a cornerstone statement of a serious prayer life. It has, however, a corollary: Our contemplation should overflow into action. Serious Christians seek to live a life propelled by prayer. However, there must be something that prayer propels.

If I reflect on the value of life, for instance, and am filled with Divine insight about our Divine calling and destiny and God’s all-embracing concern for the least of us, and then go out and vote for a candidate who advocates, or at least refuses to vote against, the slaughter of infants in the womb, what does that make me? At the very least it makes me a Christian who is impeded, and therefore diminished, by a confused and inconsistent life.

Note, I didn't say "Christian life."
If I am a Christian, I have by definition abandoned any
"other life." My life is a Christian life. The only question is how consistently I live it.
 After all,  if the real truth—the real value—the real worthwhile and desirable behavior—lies in Mammon, what am I doing hanging around with God? If my idea of "practicality" is to give allegiance to that which defies God, how solid can my allegiance to God be?


To a Christian, a balanced life means my interior and exterior lives are consistent. My interior life must be sound and well-formed, rooted in prayer and solid doctrine. My exterior life must reflect that: not only in the way I behave in church, or the cordiality with which I deal with people on a daily basis, but in the ways in which I encounter and respond to “the things that count.”

Where do I put my money? Where do I put my time, the precious minutes God has given me in a world bound by the clock? Jesus points out that we put our treasure where our heart is (Matthew 6:21).

Who we send money to and vote for is, to a Christian, not a political, issue. If “right” and “wrong”
were flexible things, it might be, but they are not. No matter how successful I may be in getting people to agree with me that one or another sin is perfectly fine, it will not be. It will remain a sin, and therefore not fine at all. What happens in politics does  not stay in politics, any more than “what happens in Vegas” won’t turn around and bite me when I get home.

Whether I'm in a voting booth or
in the middle of the Nevada desert, I am still me. And so, every day, the admonition, “decide this day whom you will serve” is what I wake up to.

Watch for Part III, coming soon!


 


 

 

 

 

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INTERIORITY AND EXTERIORITY: EITHER-OR, OR BOTH-AND?

2/18/2014

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By Fr, James 

                                                        
PART I IN A SERIES.

I
occasionally encounter discussions that address the "interior life" and the "exterior life" as if they were somehow opposed, as if there were some sort of tension between them.
We're in  the runup to Great Lent, so it seems to be an appropriate time to reflect on this.

First off, Orthodox spirituality encompasses the whole person and the whole of life. We have no "compartments" that are marked, "natural" and "supernatural," or "exterior" and "interior." Rather, we simply live within the Creed, which tells us that God "created
all things, both visible and invisible." Both of these are part of the world we live in; both are
things of life with which we do, or should, daily engage. And each is--properly viewed-- a pathway to the other. Evidence of this is easily found in the lives of the desert hermit-monks, who fled to the Thebaid to be alone with God, only to wake up one morning to
the sight of hordes of people seeking spiritual direction.

Even those who made it far enough out into the wilderness
wound up encountering, and then working and praying with, each other.  Their interior, contemplative lives enabled them to edify each other with "good words," and this exterior ministry of mutual edification improved their interior, contemplative lives.

Neither were many of these monks isolated from "the world." Kings and nobles often sought them out for their advice, as did tradesmen of all sorts. The desert was a place of refuge for Saint Mary of Egypt, who had been a notorious prostitute, and for Saint Arsenius, who had been a prince; and for thousands of peasants who had not been much of anything
before they were seized by God and wound up in one of Saint Pachomius's
(himself a former soldier) monasteries. These people often maintained contact with, and advised, those they had known--on "practical" as well as "spiritual" matters.

To illustrate the crossover, let's take a look at those two words: "practical" and "spiritual." They're easy to oppose, but ease does not always equal accuracy.


Take, for instance, the fact that If I yield to Christ, I enter the path to Heaven, and If I reject Him I continue upon the path to hell
. Confronted with the options, which is the practical, pragmatic choice?

So, let's say I have taken the pragmatic step of choosing Christ
over hell, I have been Baptised and the Holy Spirit is now in residence within me. Now, what if I'm tempted? Someone, for instance, has a sure-fire plan for a robbery, and all he wants me to do is stand lookout for him for fifteen minuites, in return for which I will get  more than I make in a month. I, a former successful thief, see that the plan is a good one and that my personal risk will be negligible. However--and it'sa big however-- If I accept the offer, even though
I'm not the one doing the actual robbing, I will be in sin and will grieve the Holy Spirit.
If I decline, I will know genuine joy, and will have made perhaps another inch of progress
along the Path. Will, or will not, the Holy Spirit, Who now lives in me, strengthen me in this time of temptation? If I have maintained a sound and solid prayer life, what do you think the chances are that I will revert to my old self?

Interior? Exterior? Upon examination it is interdependence, rather than opposition,
that emerges.






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MAY THE JOY OF CHRIST'S BIRTH, AND THE ANTICIPATION OF HIS RETURN, FILL YOUR HEART!

12/25/2013

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Most people in the West will be spending the next twelve days celebrating Christmas.
Most Orthodox Christians, however, both in the East and the West, will celebrate the Christ-Mass thirteen days "late:" on the West's Epiphany.  That's because most Orthodox
use the Julian, or Lunar, "Old" Calendar, which runs thirteen days behind the Gregorian,
or Solar, "New" Calendar. So, for most Orthodox, it's still Advent.

At Christmas, we celebrate the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Trinity into the creation that was created through Him.
At Advent, we look forward to His Return; to the
resolution of these present things and the creation of a new Heaven and a new Earth.
Whichever calendar we follow, we are together in celebrating the Personal Presence of
our Lord, God and Savior in our midst. Let us not hesitate, therefore, to cry out unceasingly--not just now, but all through the year...

CHRIST IS BORN! GLORIFY HIM!
MARANATHA! COME, LORD JESUS! 
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PRESIDENT OBAMA'S HOSTILITY TO BIBLICAL FAITH, DOCUMENTED

11/4/2013

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I came across this resource article on the TEA PARTY PATRIOTS Website. Handy, yet excellently-documented, I think it should be a useful reference for scholars of this administration.                                                         

                                                                     By Carl Severino

When one observes President Obama's unwillingness to accommodate America's four-century long religious conscience protection through his attempts to require Catholics to go against their own doctrines and beliefs, one is tempted to say that he is anti-Catholic. But that characterization would not be correct. Although he has recently singled out Catholics, he has equally targeted traditional Protestant beliefs over the past four years. So since he has attacked Catholics and Protestants, one is tempted to say that he is anti-Christian. But that, too, would be inaccurate. He has been equally disrespectful in his appalling treatment of religious Jews in general and Israel in particular. So perhaps the most accurate description of his antipathy toward Catholics, Protestants, religious Jews, and the Jewish nation would be to characterize him as anti-Biblical. And then when his hostility toward Biblical people of faith is contrasted with his preferential treatment of Muslims and Muslim nations, it further strengthens the accuracy of the anti-Biblical descriptor. In fact, there have been numerous clearly documented times when his pro-Islam positions have been the cause of his anti-Biblical actions.
       Listed below in chronological order are (1) numerous records of his attacks on Biblical persons or organizations; (2) examples of the hostility toward Biblical faith that have become evident in the past three years in the Obama-led military; (3) a listing of his open attacks on Biblical values; and finally (4) a listing of numerous incidents of his preferential deference for Islamic activities and positions, including letting his Islamic advisors guide and influence his hostility toward people of Biblical faith.

1. Acts of hostility toward people of Biblical faith:

·         June 2013 – The Obama Department of Justice defunds a Young Marines chapter in Louisiana because their oath mentioned God, and another youth program because it permits a voluntary student-led prayer. [1]

·         February 2013 – The Obama Administration announces that the rights of religious conscience for individuals will not be protected under the Affordable Care Act. [2]

·         January 2013 – Pastor Louie Giglio is pressured to remove himself from praying at the inauguration after it is discovered he once preached a sermon supporting the Biblical definition of marriage. [3]

·         February 2012 – The Obama administration forgives student loans inn exchange for public service, but announces it will no longer forgive student loans if the public service is related to religion. [4]

·         January 2012 – The Obama administration argues that the First Amendment provides no protection for churches and synagogues in hiring their pastors and rabbis. [5]

·         December 2011 – The Obama administration denigrates other countries' religious beliefs as an obstacle to radical homosexual rights. [6]

·         November 2011 – President Obama opposes inclusion of President Franklin Roosevelt’s famous D-Day Prayer in the WWII Memorial. [7]

·         November 2011 – Unlike previous presidents, Obama studiously avoids any religious references in his Thanksgiving speech. [8]

·         August 2011 – The Obama administration releases its new health care rules that override religious conscience protections for medical workers in the areas of abortion and contraception. [9]

·         April 2011 – For the first time in American history, Obama urges passage of a non-discrimination law that does not contain hiring protections for religious groups, forcing religious organizations to hire according to federal mandates without regard to the dictates of their own faith, thus eliminating conscience protection in hiring. [10]

·         February 2011 – Although he filled posts in the State Department, for more than two years Obama did not fill the post of religious freedom ambassador, an official that works against religious persecution across the world; he filled it only after heavy pressure from the public and from Congress. [11]

·         January 2011 – After a federal law was passed to transfer a WWI Memorial in the Mojave Desert to private ownership, the U. S. Supreme Court ruled that the cross in the memorial could continue to stand, but the Obama administration refused to allow the land to be transferred as required by law, and refused to allow the cross to be re-erected as ordered by the Court. [12]

·         November 2010 – Obama misquotes the National Motto, saying it is “E pluribus unum” rather than “In God We Trust” as established by federal law. [13]

·         October 19, 2010 - Obama begins deliberately omitting the phrase about “their Creator” when quoting the Declaration of Independence – an omission he has made on no less than seven occasions. [14]

·         May 2009 – Obama declines to host services for the National Prayer Day (a day established by federal law) at the White House. [15]

·         April 2009 – When speaking at Georgetown University, Obama orders that a monogram symbolizing Jesus' name be covered when he is making his speech. [16]

·         April 2009 – In a deliberate act of disrespect, Obama nominated three pro-abortion ambassadors to the Vatican; of course, the pro-life Vatican rejected all three. [17]

·         February 2009 – Obama announces plans to revoke conscience protection for health workers who refuse to participate in medical activities that go against their beliefs, and fully implements the plan in February 2011. [18]

·         April 2008 – Obama speaks disrespectfully of Christians, saying they “cling to guns and religion” and have an “antipathy to people who aren't like them.” [19]

2. Acts of hostility from the Obama-led military toward people of Biblical faith:

·         August 2013 - A Department of Defense military training manual teaches soldiers that people who talk about "individual liberties, states' rights, and how to make the world a better place" are "extremists." It also lists the Founding Fathers -- those "colonists who sought to free themselves from British rule" -- as examples of those involved in "extremist ideologies and movements." [20]

·         August 2013 - A Senior Master Sergeant was removed from his position and reassigned because he told his openly lesbian squadron commander that she should not punish a staff sergeant who expressed his views in favor of traditional marriage. [21]

·         August 2013 - The military does not provide heterosexual couples specific paid leave to travel to a state just for the purpose of being married, but it did extend these benefits to homosexual couples who want to marry, thus giving them preferential treatment not available to heterosexuals. [22]

·         August 2013 - The Air Force, in the midst of having launched a series of attacks against those expressing traditional religious or moral views, invited a drag queen group to perform at a base. [23]

·         July 2013 - When an Air Force sergeant with years of military service questioned a same-sex marriage ceremony performed at the Air Force Academy's chapel, he received a letter of reprimand telling him that if he disagreed, he needed to get out of the military. His current six-year reenlistment was then reduced to only one-year, with the notification that he "be prepared to retire at the end of this year." [24]

·         July 2013 - An Air Force chaplain who posted a website article on the importance of faith and the origin of the phrase "There are no atheists in foxholes" was officially ordered to remove his post because some were offended by the use of that famous World War II phrase. [25]

·         June 2013 - The U. S. Air Force, in consultation with the Pentagon, removed an inspirational painting that for years has been hanging at Mountain Home Air Force Base because its title was "Blessed Are The Peacemakers" -- a phrase from Matthew 5:9 in the Bible. [26]

·         June 2013 – The Obama administration “strongly objects” to a Defense Authorization amendment to protect the constitutionally-guaranteed religious rights of soldiers and chaplains, claiming that it would have an “adverse affect on good order, discipline, morale, and mission accomplishment.” [27]

·         May 2013 - The Pentagon announces that "Air Force members are free to express their personal religious beliefs as long as it does not make others uncomfortable. "Proselytizing (inducing someone to convert to one's faith) goes over that line," [28] affirming if a sharing of faith makes someone feel uncomfortable that it could be a court-marital offense [29] -- the military equivalent of a civil felony.

·         May 2013 - An Air Force officer was actually made to remove a personal Bible from his own desk because it "might" appear that he was condoning the particular religion to which he belonged. [30]

·         April 2013 – Officials briefing U.S. Army soldiers placed ""Evangelical Christianity" and "Catholicism" in a list that also included Al-Qaeda, Muslim Brotherhood, and Hamas as examples of "religious extremism." [31]

·         April 2013 – The U.S. Army directs troops to scratch off and paint over tiny Scripture verse references that for decades had been forged into weapon scopes. [32]

·         April 2013 - The Air Force creates a "religious tolerance" policy but consults only a militant atheist group to do so -- a group whose leader has described military personnel who are religious as 'spiritual rapists' and 'human monsters' [33] and who also says that soldiers who proselytize are guilty of treason and sedition and should be punished to hold back a "tidal wave of fundamentalists." [34]

·         January 2013 – President Obama announced his opposition to a provision in the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act protecting the rights of conscience for military chaplains. [35]

·         June 2012 – Bibles for the American military have been printed in every conflict since the American Revolution, but the Obama Administration revokes the long-standing U. S. policy of allowing military service emblems to be placed on those military Bibles. [36]

·         May 2012 – The Obama administration opposed legislation to protect the rights of conscience for military chaplains who do not wish to perform same-sex marriages in violation of their strongly-held religious beliefs. [37]

·         April 2012 – A checklist for Air Force Inns will no longer include ensuring that a Bible is available in rooms for those who want to use them. [38]

·         February 2012  - “ The U. S. Military Academy at West Point disinvites three star Army general and decorated war hero Lieutenant General William G. Boykin (retired) from speaking at an event because he is an outspoken Christian. [39]

·         February 2012 – The Air Force removes “God” from the patch of Rapid Capabilities Office (the word on the patch was in Latin: Dei). [40]

·         February 2012 – The Army ordered Catholic chaplains not to read a letter to parishioners that their archbishop asked them to read. [41]

·         November 2011 – The Air Force Academy rescinds support for Operation Christmas Child, a program to send holiday gifts to impoverished children across the world, because the program is run by a Christian charity. [42]

·         November 2011 -  Even while restricting and disapprobating Christian religious expressions, the Air Force Academy pays $80,000 to add a Stonehenge-like worship center for pagans, druids, witches and Wiccans at the Air Force Academy. [43]

·         September 2011 – Air Force Chief of Staff prohibits commanders from notifying airmen of programs and services available to them from chaplains. [44]

·         September 2011 – The Army issues guidelines for Walter Reed Medical Center stipulating that “No religious items (i.e. Bibles, reading materials and/or tracts) are allowed to be given away or used during a visit.” [45]

·         August 2011 – The Air Force stops teaching the Just War theory to officers in California because the course is taught by chaplains and is based on a philosophy introduced by St. Augustine in the third century AD – a theory long taught by civilized nations across the world (except now, America). [46]

·         June 2011 – The Department of Veterans Affairs forbids references to God and Jesus during burial ceremonies at Houston National Cemetery. [47]

·         January 2010 –“ Because of "concerns" raised by the Department of Defense, tiny Bible verse references that had appeared for decades on scopes and gunsights were removed. [48]

  3. Acts of hostility toward Biblical values:

·         August 2013 - Non-profit charitable hospitals, especially faith-based ones, will face large fines or lose their tax-exempt status if they don't comply with new strangling paperwork requirements related to giving free treatment to poor clients who do not have Obamacare insurance coverage. [49] Ironically, the first hospital in America was founded as a charitable institution in 1751 by Benjamin Franklin, and its logo was the Good Samaritan, with Luke 10:35 inscribed below him: "Take care of him, and I will repay thee," being designed specifically to offer free medical care to the poor. [50] Benjamin Franklin's hospital would likely be fined unless he placed more resources and funds into paperwork rather than helping the poor under the new faith-hostile policy of the Obama administration.

·         August 2013 - USAID, a federal government agency, shut down a conference in South Korea the night before it was scheduled to take place because some of the presentations were not pro-abortion but instead presented information on abortion complications, including the problems of "preterm births, mental health issues, and maternal mortality" among women giving birth who had previous abortions. [51]

·         June 2013 – The Obama Administration finalizes requirements that under the Obamacare insurance program, employers must make available abortion-causing drugs, regardless of the religious conscience objections of many employers and even despite the directive of several federal courts to protect the religious conscience of employers. [52]

·         April 2013 – The United States Agency for Internal Development (USAID), an official foreign policy agency of the U.S. government, begins a program to train homosexual activists in various countries around the world to overturn traditional marriage and anti-sodomy laws, targeting first those countries with strong Catholic influences, including Ecuador, Honduras, and Guatemala. [53]

·         December 2012 – Despite having campaigned to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, President Obama once again suspends the provisions of the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 which requires the United States to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and to move the American Embassy there. [54]

·         July 2012 - The Pentagon, for the first time, allows service members to wear their uniforms while marching in a parade - specifically, a gay pride parade in San Diego. [55]

·         October 2011 – The Obama administration eliminates federal grants to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops for their extensive programs that aid victims of human trafficking because the Catholic Church is anti-abortion. [56]

·         September 2011 – The Pentagon directs that military chaplains may perform same-sex marriages at military facilities in violation of the federal Defense of Marriage Act. [57]

·         July 2011 – Obama allows homosexuals to serve openly in the military, reversing a policy originally instituted by George Washington in March 1778. [58]

·         March 2011 – The Obama administration refuses to investigate videos showing Planned Parenthood helping alleged sex traffickers get abortions for victimized underage girls. [59]

·         February 2011 – Obama directs the Justice Department to stop defending the federal Defense of Marriage Act. [60]

·         September 2010 – The Obama administration tells researchers to ignore a judge’s decision striking down federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. [61]

·         August 2010 – The Obama administration Cuts funding for 176 abstinence education programs. [62]

·         July 2010 – The Obama administration uses federal funds in violation of federal law to get Kenya to change its constitution to include abortion. [63]

·         September 16, 2009 – The Obama administration appoints as EEOC Commissioner Chai Feldblum, who asserts that society should not tolerate any private beliefs, including religious beliefs, if they may negatively affect homosexual equality. [64]

·         July 2009 – The Obama administration illegally extends federal benefits to same-sex partners of Foreign Service and Executive Branch employees, in direct violation of the federal Defense of Marriage Act. [65]

·         May 2009 – The White House budget eliminates all funding for abstinence-only education and replaces it with “comprehensive”{ sexual education, repeatedly proven to increase teen pregnancies and abortions. [66] He continues the deletion in subsequent budgets. [67]

·         May 2009 – Obama officials assemble a terrorism dictionary calling pro-life advocates violent and charging that they use racism in their “:criminal” activities. [68]

·         March 2009 – The Obama administration shuts out pro-life groups from attending a White House-sponsored health care summit. [69]

·         March 2009 – Obama orders taxpayer funding of embryonic stem cell research. [70]

·         March 2009 – Obama gave $50 million for the UNFPA, the UN population agency that promotes abortion and works closely with Chinese population control officials who use forced abortions and involuntary sterilizations. [71]

·         January 2009 – Obama lifts restrictions on U.S. government funding for groups that provide abortion services or counseling abroad, forcing taxpayers to fund pro-abortion groups that either promote or perform abortions in other nations. [72]

·         January 2009 – President Obama’s nominee for deputy secretary of state asserts that American taxpayers are required to pay for abortions and that limits on abortion funding are unconstitutional. [73]

  4. Acts of preferentialism for Islam:

·         February 2012 – The Obama administration makes effulgent apologies for Korans being burned by the U. S. military, [74] but when Bibles were burned by the military, numerous reasons were offered why it was the right thing to do. [75]

·         October 2011 – Obama’s Muslim advisers block Middle Eastern Christians’ access to the White House. [76]

·         August 2010 – Obama speaks with great praise of Islam and condescendingly of Christianity. [77]

·         August 2010 –“ Obama went to great lengths to speak out on multiple occasions on behalf of building an Islamic mosque at Ground Zero, while at the same time he was silent about a Christian church being denied permission to rebuild at that location. [78]

·         April 2010 - Christian leader Franklin Graham is disinvited from the Pentagon’s National Day of Prayer Event because of complaints from the Muslim community. [79]

·         April 2010 –“ The Obama administration requires rewriting of government documents and a change in administration vocabulary to remove terms that are deemed offensive to Muslims, including jihad, jihadists, terrorists, radical Islamic, etc. [80]

·         May 2009 – While Obama does not host any National Day of Prayer event at the White House, he does host White House Iftar dinners in honor of Ramadan. [81]

·         2010 – While every White House traditionally issues hundreds of official proclamations and statements on numerous occasions, this White House avoids traditional Biblical holidays and events but regularly recognizes major Muslim holidays, as evidenced by its 2010 statements on Ramadan, Eid-ul-Fitr, Hajj, and Eid-ul-Adha. [82]

Many of these actions are literally unprecedented – this is the first time they have happened in four centuries of American history. The hostility of President Obama toward Biblical faith and values is without equal from any previous American president.


  
[1] Todd Starnes,  DOJ Defunds At-Risk Youth Programs over “God” Reference, Townhall, June 25, 2013. [2] Steven Ertelt,  Obama Admin’s HHS Mandate Revision Likely Excludes Hobby Lobby, LifeNews.com, February 1, 2013; Dan Merica, Obama proposal would let religious groups opt-out of contraception ..., CNN, February 1, 2013. [3] Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Minister Backs Out of Speech at Inaugural, New York Times, January 10, 2013; Eric Marrapodi, Giglio bows out of inauguration over sermon on gays, CNN, January 10, 2013. [4] Audrey Hudson,  Obama administration religious service for student loan forgiveness, Human Events, February 15, 2012. [5] Ted Olson, Church Wins Firing Case at Supreme Court, Christianity Today, January 11, 2012. [6] Hillary Rodham Clinton, Remarks in Recognition of International Human Rights Day, U.S. Department of State, December 6, 2011. [7] Todd Starns, Obama Administration Opposes FDR Prayer at WWII Memorial, Fox News, November 4, 2011. [8] Joel Siegel, Obama Omits God From Thanksgiving Speech, Riles Critics, ABC News, November 25, 2011. [9] Chuck Donovan,  HHS’s New Health Guidelines Trample on Conscience, Heritage Foundation, August 2, 2011. [10] Chris Johnson, ENDA passage effort renewed with Senate introduction, Washington Blade, April 15, 2011. [11] Marianne Medlin, Amid criticism, President Obama moves to fill vacant religious amba... Catholic News Agency, February 9, 2011; Thomas F. Farr, Undefender of the Faith, Foreign Policy, April 5, 2012. [12] LadyImpactOhio, " Feds sued by Veterans to allow stolen Mojave Desert Cross to be reb...," Red State, January 14, 2011. [13] " Remarks by the President at the University of Indonesia in Jakarta,...," The White House, November 10, 2010. [14] Meredith Jessup, Obama Continues to Omit “Creator” From Declaration of Independence, The Blaze, October 19, 2010. [15] Johanna Neuman,  Obama end Bush-era National Prayer Day Service at White House," Los Angeles Times, May 7, 2009. [16] Jim Lovino, " Jesus Missing From Obama’s Georgetown Speech," NBC Washington, April 17, 2009. [17] Chris McGreal, Vatican vetoes Barack Obama’s nominees for U.S. Ambassador, The Guardian.


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November 04th, 2013

11/4/2013

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Why is Christianity Losing in America?

10/19/2013

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                                 By Dom Anthony (Bondi) a monk of Christminster Abbey

This is the question with which all serious Christians must wrestle. To think that Christianity is thriving in America simply ignores the obvious and overwhelming facts of our times. Much like the century preceding the Protestant Reformation and subsequently the Catholic Counter-Reformation, the church (in the West) was in a dark and desperate period. In its general understanding and representation, Christianity had drifted from its mission and biblical foundations—and the results were devastating.

Similarly, the church in America today has also drifted from its biblical mission and the result has been a church largely divorced from its kingdom purposes and therefore increasingly irrelevant to people living in the real world. At the heart of our present dilemma is our diminished understanding of the gospel, namely the gospel of the kingdom. In attempting to reform the church, the Reformers taught that Jesus—being the Son of God—was born, crucified, and rose again, and because of these facts, your sins can be forgiven. This was and no doubt remains “good news.” However, this summation could be drawn from Paul’s letters without ever reading the four books commonly known as the Gospels.

The Pauline epistles, particularly Romans and Galatians, consist of precise statements of what Jesus achieved in his saving death and how that achievement could be appropriated by the individual. We often refer to this as the “plan of salvation” and it is, of course, true and essential to Christian understanding. Unfortunately, if this is all we believe, we only have part of the gospel leaving us with very little in terms of truly knowing Jesus’ mission and, subsequently, that of his Church. This reductionist understanding was never the intent of those working to reform the church, but the Reformation would set the stage for the bifurcation of the gospel. Eventually we came to think of personal salvation as the “good news” apart from its crucial modifying phrase: “of the kingdom,” leaving us with a nebulous religious term (i.e., the kingdom) that fewer and fewer Christians would even understand.    

However, when we marry the teachings of Paul with the story told by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, we clearly see a broader description of the gospel. The synoptic gospels describe and give meaning to the teaching and activities of Jesus in between his birth and crucifixion. This is where we encounter the gospel or good news of the kingdom—the fulfillment of the messianic promises given to Israel, which the gospel writers clearly sought to establish. To Israel, the gospel writers announce boldly, “The time is fulfilled, Israel’s king has come!” Coupled with the fulfillment of Abrahamic covenant, this announcement is extended to the whole world, including both Jew and gentile. God has become king of the world and he, through Christ’s death and the establishment of his kingdom, is gathering a people for himself through whom he is bringing redemption to every aspect and corner of his creation. Jesus invites us to repent (be born again) and enter the kingdom so we may join him in setting life and the world right!

It is in Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom—the in-breaking reign of God—that the mission of Christ gains its full meaning. The crucifixion achieved victory over sin and death, making Jesus King; the resurrection is the result of his victory and the first fruit of the age to come, and the ascension declares, “He reigns!”

Jesus’ life and teachings confirm the real and active presence of his kingdom rule and the way in which we who have been given new life are to live and bear witness to this new reality. Simply put, the character and call of God’s kingdom does not fit comfortably alongside the kingdoms of this world but instead offers a radical challenge to our lives and everything about this world. One may wish it were so, but we do not “accept Christ” and easily join with his kingdom purposes. Jesus says, “the kingdom is within your grasp” (Luke 17:21), meaning we are confronted with a decision, a decision to believe, trust, and follow Jesus in his work and purpose within His Body: The Church. There is no easy belief as some would prefer—saving faith compels us to act, and the direction in which we are to act is clarified in Jesus’ command to “seek first the kingdom” (Matt. 6:33 ESV).

 


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SEXUALITY - FESTIVAL OF THE SPIRIT

10/9/2013

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                                                                                     JAMES M. DESCHENE
                                                                              Abbot of Christminster Abbey

Among the several indictments Rainer Maria Rilke levels against Christians in his essay, “The Young Workman’s Letter,” is this: “Why have they made our sex homeless, instead of making it the place for the festival of our competency?”1

Rilke’s own answer to this, made clear by the rest of his essay, is that the failure of Christians to affirm, in a positive, creative and even festive way, not only their own sexuality but the whole created world of nature, is due in a radical sense to Christ himself. Rilke appears to find in Christ a world-denying tendency. For Rilke, Christ’s words, “I have overcome the world,” signify not a triumphant lordship over a beloved creation, nor a victory over the dark powers of sin and death (scripturally signified by the word “world”), but a powerful denial and rejection of creation itself, a denunciation and denigration of the material world of flesh, of flora, fauna and minerals. Rilke no doubt would agree with Swinburne’s accusation of Christ:

Thou hast conquered. O pale Galilean!
The world has grown gray with thy breath.

Certainly Rilke is wrong in imputing to Christ any tendency to disdain the world of nature and of the flesh. No such conclusion can be drawn if one recognizes and affirms the truth of Christ’s own incarnation into flesh, into the natural world.

The early Church, to be sure, had to struggle to preserve the integrity of Christ’s real enfleshment against the attacks of the Gnostics and Docetists who, being unable to accept that God himself could affirm his own creation in so tangible a way, devised multiple theories to explain it away as a fantasy or impossibility: for example, Christ’s body was no true human body but a mirage, a mere appearance of flesh; after all, what God would stoop to such contamination as to assume real flesh? To explain the lowliness of nature and its power to contaminate, the Gnostics devised theories to absolve God himself of the responsibility of creating so undignified and unseemly a world: some lesser divine principle must have created it; and a pantheon of such divinities or “emanations” was devised to preserve a proper distance between the true God and this world of evil flesh and evil matter.

Against all of this world-hatred, the Church stood fast by insisting, without compromise, that Christ was indeed true God and true man. God and flesh had truly come together in Christ. Uncreated spirit and created matter had joined in the Incarnation, neither destroying nor diminishing the other. Against those who found this divine dalliance with creation a scandal and a stumbling-block, all the Church might do is admit that her God, despite the scandal he might cause, seemed to be incorrigibly in love with his creation. The Church might point to the biblical account of creation in Genesis where “God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.” (Genesis 1:31)

Officially, at least, the Gnostics and Docetists and their kind were defeated by the Church’s insistence in her creed that in Christ God is truly incarnate—in the flesh—and that this is supremely good. Officially, at least, Rilke and similar critics have no grounds whatsoever for imputing to Christianity a spirit of world-denial, of hatred of the flesh or of material creation. Officially, no Christian can deny the goodness of flesh and its inherent sexuality and still properly be called a Christian. Officially, the Christian recognizes that his sexuality, rooted in his being a creature of flesh, is also one of the links that binds him in a radical way to God himself.

We read in the first account of creation in Genesis:

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness….” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it.” (Genesis 1:26-28)

Our sexuality in its dimension of maleness and femaleness is here related to the image of God in us. To be a sexual being is, in some mysterious way, to be like God himself.

In the second account of Creation in Genesis, the material creation itself—the dust of the ground (‘adhamah)—is infused with the very breath and life of God himself and becomes man—’adham, Adam: “Then the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.” (Genesis 2:7) This is a powerful affirmation of matter, and in it—in this divinized dust which is man (‘adham)—one can see a foreshadowing of the incarnation of Christ, the second Adam.

From the beginning, God himself has never spurned flesh or matter but intimately bound it to himself, making it like himself. The God we know is no abstract gnostic essence standing aloof from a dirty world, but a God who passionately loves his creation and who is not afraid to get a little earth on his hands, or to sweat and bleed and die if need be.

In none of this can there be any valid grounds for Rilke’s indictment of Christ as a denier and despiser of the world and of flesh. Christ cannot be held responsible for the “homelessness” or the alienation of our sexuality. Nor, officially, can the Church be held responsible, for she has consistently affirmed otherwise.

Rilke, however, is not unjustified in placing the blame on Christians. If we remember that to be a Christian is to be ever in the process of becoming more of a Christian (and, consequently, less of a fallen and unredeemed being), the failure of Christians to affirm their flesh and their sexuality becomes, if not commendable, at least understandable. A Christian is in the process of making concrete the reality of his Baptism into Christ; he is seeking, by his own efforts aided by grace, to become the fully human being God has eternally destined him to be.

The Christian is a creature always in tension between the ground (‘adhamah) from which he is drawn and the humanity (‘adham) which he is called to become, impelled by the breath of God working within his earthiness, like yeast in a dough. This divinely-willed tension may be a burden, but it is a burden one may set aside only at a terrible price—the price of one’s very humanity. To flee from this tension is to flee from the vocation to be fully and truly human. The goal for man and woman is never to abandon one’s flesh (as if one could become pure spirit) or to revert to mere flesh without the divine breath (which is death). The goal is to become precisely what God has intended us to be: creatures of earth and flesh who are filled with and moved by the breath and spirit of God himself; creatures who, in their fulfillment or state of redemption, present to the world luminous images of the nature and image of God himself.

To become fully human is the goal of our life. To be fully human is what it means to be fully redeemed by Christ. And to be fully human and alive cannot possibly include a sexuality that is, in Rilke’s word, homeless. For those men and women whom Christ’s saving act has effectively brought to the fullness of life, sexuality—being the dimension in us where God and earthiness meet—must surely be, as Rilke proposes, a “place for the festival of our competency.”

So, while Rilke is wrong in imputing to Christ a denial of the world and its earthiness, he is not wrong in accusing Christians of a failure to affirm their earthiness and the sexuality which is the mysterious bond between earth and heaven, between dust and divinity. Christians generally have failed to find their sexuality a dimension in which and by which they may grow as Christians and as truly human beings. Thus they have never felt their sexuality as an occasion and opportunity for festival and celebration. Christians have accepted (somewhat begrudgingly, one often feels) that sexuality can be sacramentalized in marriage; but they have not generally been able to find sexuality itself sacramental, essentially holy, a means of encounter with God himself, or a dimension in which God shares himself with them.

Sexuality can be homeless for a Christian who has failed to integrate his sexuality into his life as a Christian. If to be redeemed by Christ is to be fully human, if to be truly holy is to be truly whole with an integrated human nature, any fragmentation of our sexuality is a sign that we need healing, that we need to be made whole and holy. And so any genuinely Christian spirituality must help us to affirm our human sexuality.

Undoubtedly, much of the confusion of Christians over their sexuality and its place in their life as Christians is due either to education in a faulty spirituality or to no education in spirituality at all. While the Church officially teaches all that is necessary to affirm our sexuality and our earthiness, not all of the Church’s teachers have always set this teaching forth in a clear and positive way. In some cases their own psychological problems with sexuality may have obscured their clear teaching. Whatever the cause—ignorance, psychological hangups, poor teacher training, reticence—many Christians have never been educated to discover that their sexuality has an integral role to play in their development as Christians. What is equally unfortunate is that many Christians have never been educated to realize that they must develop as Christians, that they must actively seek to grow, to deepen their inner lives and to allow God more and more to have his way with them, molding their earthy clay into bright living images of himself.

Such education for Christian development is exactly the role of Christian spirituality. While many Christians have never been led toward a positive education in spirituality, those who have been led, by accident or design, to explore the world of Christian spirituality have often found there a mentality that either is or appears to be world-denying and which rarely, if ever, has anything positive to say affirming human sexuality.

The dangers of gnosticism are ever-present, particularly for those who seek a deeper spiritual life. Not every school of Christian spirituality has managed to avoid these gnostic pitfalls. But even in those schools which have avoided gnostic world-hatred and have preserved a real Christian affirmation of the created world of earth and flesh, there still remains for the average Christian the problem of being properly directed so as not to be misled by the language and terminology of these schools.

For example, any Christian who comes unprepared upon the classical western terminology of the purgative way is hardly to be blamed if he interprets this as involving a rejection and denial of all that is not pure spirit. If he is a careful reader and if he reads the right books, he may come to discover that the purgative way is not a rejection of the created world of matter or flesh. If he has a wise director to guide him, he is more fortunate still. (But how many Christians, even if interested in the spiritual life, will ever find adequate direction? To whom will they go?)

One of the primary tasks of Christian spirituality, then, is to educate Christians in the role of sexuality in their development as full human beings, as Christians in whom the saving act of Christ has become fully effective. Unless the role of sexuality in full Christian development is recognized and affirmed, sexuality will continue to be, for many Christians, a homeless and alienated thing.

William F. Kraft, in his Sexual Dimensions of the Celibate Life, tells us that “healthy spirituality can never be sexless because spirituality is always in some way embodied and therefore sexual.”2 (One is reminded here of St. Irenaeus’ words: “The things you do in the flesh are spiritual.”) Unless spirituality and sexuality are clearly seen as intimate partners in the process of our Christian growth, Christians are going to remain fragmented: unhealed, unwhole—and unholy—creatures. According to Kraft:

. . . people who bifurcate sexuality and spirituality identify themselves and others simply as sexual or spiritual beings, and therefore are unwhole people.

3

This failure to integrate spirituality and sexuality is correctly diagnosed by Kraft as an identity problem. For the celibate the problem may become: “I have taken a vow of celibacy. What do I do now with my sexuality?” For the average Christian the question may be: “I want to save my soul. What do I do with my body?” In both cases there is an identity crisis based upon the assumption that being embodied is somehow a drawback to being a Christian. In both cases the false mentality is encouraged by the failure of Christian teachers to affirm, in terms clear and plain for modern ears, that there is no radical dichotomy between one’s body and one’s spirit, between earthiness and Christianity, between sexuality and spirituality. True, the relationship of these elements may sometimes be wounded, may be misaligned, may be improperly understood—but radically estranged and contradictory? No; for the scriptural account of human creation cannot permit such a reading. And, what is more, as the ancient fathers taught, whatever is not taken on by Christ in his enfleshment is not redeemed; but Christ, as true man, took upon himself our full human sexuality. To believe less than this or other than this is to deny the doctrine of the incarnation.

Thus the identity crisis arising out of a seeming dichotomy between sexuality and spirituality can have no valid basis in faith. Both the scriptures and the teaching of the Church affirm that our human sexuality in itself is a positive good. What is true is that this sexuality has been sinned against. But it is not in sexuality that sin originates; there is nothing sinful about our flesh, our earthiness. Sin and corruption come from the spirit of a man, from the heart:

Sin never comes from below, from the flesh, but from above, from the spirit. The first fall occurred in the world of angels, pure spirits.

4

If our sexuality, then, is homeless or alienated or even corrupted, the blame lies not in sexuality itself, but in its being alienated from the spirit by the spirit, in its exile from the heart (as the ancient spiritual fathers understood the term). The cause lies in our own wounded— and therefore wounding—spirit that strikes out at sexuality and subverts it.

The contemporary search for solutions to the problem of our homeless and wounded sexuality often leads to the therapist’s couch or the encounter group; and because man is a unity of body/soul/spirit, therapeutic work done at any one human level inevitably affects the whole man or woman. (Nietzsche seemed to perceive this when he wrote: “The degree and kind of a man’s sexuality reach up to the ultimate pinnacle of his spirit.”) One cannot deal with sexuality without affecting—knowingly or unknowingly—the spirit of a man or woman. Nor is this intimate bond between sex and spirit without ultimate significance, as Nicholas Berdyaev stresses:

In man’s sexuality we perceive the metaphysical roots of his being. Sex is the meeting point of two worlds in the human being. In this point of sex is hidden the secret of being.

5

Whether a therapist recognizes it or not, when he deals with sexuality (or with any aspect of human being for that matter) he is dealing with ultimate secrets and mysteries. And so, while purely psychological means to heal are not to be slighted or ignored, it becomes clear how essential a role spirituality—with its recognition of the true scope of the problem—has to play.

One of the dangers in psychology, especially in the more traditional schools based upon biological models, is that the unique character of human sexuality, particularly its relation to man’s inner spirit may not be considered; and the human person will find his or her sexuality to be considered as little different from that of a laboratory rat. Norman Pittenger makes this point well:

To speak about man’s sexual nature as if it were simply identical with that of a dog or cat or horse would be to fail in perception about the genuine difference that is made as a new level or dimension of (best of all) type of integration appears in the cosmic process.

6

This customary emphasis on the purely biological and reproductive aspect of sexuality has, to some extent, been encouraged by the Church’s own emphasis on this aspect of sexuality in her teaching. As Pittenger points out, this emphasis tends to obscure the deeper realities of human sexuality. As a corrective measure, Pittenger suggests adopting the term “conjunctive system” for specifically human sexuality and reserving the customary “reproductive system” for all other sexuality:

For with man the point of his sexuality is not the merely biological possibility of continuing the species; rather, it is the way in which two human beings can give each of them himself to the other. . . .

7

This self-giving which is at the heart of the human conjunctive system, is precisely the element in human sexuality that not only distinguishes it from animal sexuality, but also reflects the divine nature itself: God’s own eternal outpouring of himself in a ceaseless act of love. Without this element in human sexuality—or to be more precise, in any sexual encounter between human beings—sin enters, in that a betrayal of our God-given sexuality with its inherent self-giving has taken place. Karl Barth once wrote: “Coitus without coexistence is demonic.” Sexuality divorced from the divine activity of self-giving in love is indeed a homeless and alienated thing and a betrayal of our very humanity itself. To betray our own God-given nature—whether by seeking to become disembodied spirit or, in this instance, creatures of mere flesh—is always sin. And like all sin, such acts, by their very nature, isolate and alienate one from the very heart of being. Sin always condemns us to a terrible loneliness, a loneliness quite different from the human loneliness no man or woman can avoid. Dante’s image of ultimate sin expresses this: Satan himself, unlike all the other creatures in hell who have at least some social intercourse, lies frozen in icy isolation at the very bottom of hell, imprisoned there by the ice that never thaws because of the beating of his own vast wings. One of the great horrors of sin is just this: that it removes us from the conjunctive system which is at the very heart of existence. Sin exiles one from the sexuality of being, from the festival of creation itself, from the life of dialogue which is the nature of God and man.

It is the role of spirituality to lead men and women out of the exile of sin into full holiness and wholeness. A healthy and healing spirituality must guide men and women deeply and rightly into their sexuality, into their earthiness as well as into their inner life where God still breathes his life into their clay and summons men and women into the life of dialogue, of self-surrendering love, which is God’s own supremely creative activity.

It is the role of a healthy spirituality to help men and women discover that their flesh and its desires are not inherently evil, but are sharings in the passionate longings of God himself to relate to creation, sharings in God’s own lust for life. Spirituality must show forth that God who is shamelessly, even scandalously, in love with earth; the God who made himself a fool for love of his human creatures in the supreme folly of the Cross.

It must be the role of a healthy spirituality to help men and women celebrate the physical world of nature in which God has privileged them to share, and to celebrate this by living in a right relationship with their bodies and flesh, with earth and nature. This right relationship can only arise out of a heart or spirit that has been restored by grace to its rightful status as regent of the created world.

That dominion over the earth which God entrusted to human beings in Genesis is properly exercised only in love, in self-giving. It is not surprising that in our day and age this dominion has become a fallen and wounded (and wounding) domination over nature and persons, a domination that serves the forces of dissolution and death instead of the creative Lord of life. It is not surprising, for when man is alienated from his full sexuality, he will inevitably be alienated from the world of nature and from earth itself. He will have no love of earth, of flowers and meadows, of cool dark forests and wild rushing brooks. He will have lost his taste and savor for the things of earth. There can be no surer sign of his alienation from God than this loss. No longer does he share in God’s passion for creation, in God’s endless creativity that flowers forth in illimitable profusion.

Thus, where fallen man’s mechanical technology (so divorced from the organic and earthy) is able to produce a million identical—but unloved, unknown—objects, God’s passion for creation, his loving lust for life, knows only how to create beloved and familiar individuals. Where fallen man’s vision can look at a million roses and be content to let his mind rest in the abstract category “roses,” God sees and loves and sustains each singular rose, so pleased with the wonder of it that, like an enraptured child, he says, “Do it again!” And he, whose word makes things real, creates another rose, and another. To be truly like God, that is, to be truly redeemed and released from our exile of the heart, we must share through our bodies and senses in God’s own delight in created and earthy things.

So the function of a healing spirituality must be to restore the right relation between spirit and sexuality, to heal any woundedness, to lead homeless sexuality out of its exile from the heart, from the spirit—that inner dimension where God lives and breathes within us and longs to make love to us and through us to all of his creation. As in us, in and through our healed spirits and restored hearts, God touches earth, so it is in us who are the priests of creation that earth is lifted up to God. In my love of a single rose, God and rose meet in exquisite intimacy and my own spirit blooms in likeness to its creator, filled with the savor and tang of the rosiness of God, author and lover of all roses.

It may seem to some at this point that we have wandered away from the topic of sexuality, but this is not so. Our sexuality is the dimension in us where the physical earth and material creation join in the deepest intimacy with the world of spirit and with God. Any homelessness from earth; any inability to love a rose or to rejoice in the physical beauty of another man or woman; any failure to thrill at the flaming colors of autumn woods or the haunting sound of the night wind keening in winter trees; any tendency to see another human being as merely one nameless object among a million interchangeable objects—all of these bespeak a homelessness and brokenness, a lack of full health and human wholeness, a failure to see and to love as God sees and loves.

Sexuality is far more than what happens in one’s genitals. Sexuality is the dimension, the competency in us, that permits us to enter into the vast choric dance of all creatures with one another and with the Lord of the dance. To miss this universal yet concrete dimension of sexuality, to feel somehow that only the ultimate genital orgasm is what sexuality is about, is tragic and demonic.

It is tragic because in our obsession with a fragment of sexuality, we shall miss the whole splendid and dynamic scope of it; we will miss the sheer delight (of which orgasm is the vaguest foretaste) in all earthiness and creation that God would have us feel and share. It is demonic because, in this blindness, the fragmented bit (genitality divorced from full sexuality) will take on a furious potency that, like any idol, will seek to devour and consume one and make all things serve its fierce and insatiable hunger to sustain its own thwarted and perverse existence. Genitality divorced from the whole divine choreography of sexuality must become twisted, stunted and grotesque. Like anything that has cut itself off from the divine source of life, it will require ever greater satisfactions and stimulations in order to sustain its illusion of life and existence, its forgery of true being. This frenzied thirst for life will become a demonic drive toward more and more genitality to the exclusion, ultimately, of everything else. And one will have arrived at the great loneliness that is sin, apartness from God, the source of true being. It is the exclusion, and one’s attendant withdrawal from the vast social/sexual life of creation in dialogue with God, that is evil; it is not our genitality in itself. But because the spirit here has failed to rule in this and to direct genitality to its proper role in the dance of creation, genitality is sinned against.

The corrective, consequently, is not to deny genitality or to inveigh against it but to look to the ailing spirit that has failed, for whatever reason, to exercise its proper dominion over sexuality. One of the great values of the truly and happily celibate man or woman is to witness to this reign of the spirit over sexuality—a reign that only enhances and deepens one’s humanness and likeness to God, that only broadens and widens the scope of one’s love.8

It is the role of an authentic Christian spirituality to lead men and women out of homeless sexuality into a right relationship with their whole God-given natures and with their bodies and the material creation over which they are called by God to have dominion in love. The role of spirituality is to assist in restoring men and women to their true selves as God has willed them to be; to entice and encourage and direct them to enter joyfully into full possession of the humanity God has bestowed upon them; to help them to celebrate, in the freedom of the redeemed sons and daughters of God, the festival of their competency as truly human beings, in whom the image and likeness of God are restored to original harmony.

God finds his earthly creation delectable—it tastes good to him, it smells good, it looks good. And he who would withhold from us nothing of his own joy in being, calls us, creatures of clay who live and breathe with his own spirit, to share through our sexuality God’s delight in the festival of his own competency which is earth.

The end of our sexuality, in which spirit is truly wedded to earth, is that final luminous freedom to live in the sheer fullness of life and to become radiant with that all-encompassing love which Dostoyevsky’s Father Zossima describes in The Brothers Karamazov:

Brothers, have no fear of men’s sin. Love a man even in his sin, for that is the semblance of Divine Love and is the highest love on earth. Love all God’s creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love.

9

++++
NOTES

1) Rainer Maria Rilke. “The Young Workman’s Letter” in Where Silence Reigns (New York: New Directions Publishing Co., I97K), p. 76.

2) William F. Kraft, Sexual Dimensions of the Celibate Life (Kansas City: Andrews & McMeel, Inc., 1979), p. 29.

3) Ibid., p. 33.

4) Paul Evdokimov, The Struggle With God (New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1966), p. 131.

5) Nicholas Berdyaev, Christian Existentialism (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1965), p. 98.

6) Norman Pittenger, “Process Theology. A Whiteheadian Version” in Religious Experience and Process Theology, eds. Harry Cargas and Bernard Lee (New York: Paulist Press, 1976), p. 11.

7) Ibid., p. 12.

8) Kraft, p. 10: “The celibate mode of living should increase the likelihood of experiencing transcendent values that support and promote love. For instance, the celibate life usually encourages silence, and silence encourages listening. Celibates should have more opportunities for recollection, meditation, contemplation, and other experiences that promote love. Indeed, celibacy usually involves more lonely aloneness. Nevertheless, celibates can be guardians and vanguards of love.”

Chastity, rather than being a repression of sexuality, is really the healthy mastery of it. Chastity, therefore, is not finally a state one can enter by a vow or an act of law. It is a state into which one must grow by a healthy and responsible and creative use of our sexuality. Unless a person is moving steadily deeper into this dimension, his or her value as a sign is critically weakened. (J.M.D.)

9) Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, trans. Constance Garnett (New York: Vintage Books, 1955), pp. 382-383.

\\\\\\
Published in Review for Religious, p. 25 – 37.

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Gender Theory

9/20/2013

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A Benedictine monk friend of mine, Dom Anthony of Christminster Abbey, occasionally e-mails me articles by a Christian writer named Michael Craven. The man is extremely insightful, so I'm kicking off our blog with a series of articles by him. I hope you find them worthwhile.

                                                                                            By Michael Craven 

THIRD IN A SERIES

When Pope Benedict XVI warned about the danger of “gender theory” in December 2012, most people were unaware of the inroads made by gender theory, the dangers it presents, and the social pathologies it has generated. Part of the confusion lies in the fact that there are several different theories of gender, each of which is based on a false understanding of the truth about the human person and a detachment of language from reality. The various theories promote among other things:
  • Distinguishing gender as a socially constructed role separate from biological sex;
  • Mainstreaming the gender perspective;
  • Expanding human rights to include sexual and reproductive rights;
  • Taking gender identity disorder out of the list of psychological disorders;
  • Adding sexual orientation and gender identity and expression to anti-discrimination laws;
  • Supporting the demand for ‘sex change’ surgery;
  • The affirmation of ‘queer’ as a gender.
 
Gender theories are not logically consistent and are continually changing, making it difficult for those who try to critique them. This should not be surprising; those pushing the various gender theories reject the massive evidence for real sex differences. While reality remains stable, gender theory, alienated as it is from reality, is continually morphing into ever more bizarre forms. Its adherents are making ever more radical demands.
 
Those pushing these theories appeal to our compassion. Although we must resist their theories, we must remember that their creators are men and women who have themselves been alienated from their own natures, thereby embracing that alienation and creating theories to rationalize their behavior and desires. Reading their own comments, one can see the ways in which they have suffered trauma and rejection, and how they long for acceptance – but only on their terms. The defenders of reality cannot accept the demand that their alienated experience be treated as equal to reality. Compassion requires – in spite of their objections – the affirmation of their true manhood and womanhood and the reality of sex difference. Therapy and early interventions should be available; however, many of those confused about their sexual identity reject therapy.
 
It is also important to note that the promoters of the various gender theories claim to have science on their side and frequently reference published studies. However, careful analysis of these studies reveals that many of them do not meet the standard for well designed, statistically valid, and projectable research. Their authors often employ small, unrepresentative samples and controls, fail to ask the right questions, and sometimes ignore their own findings. Unfortunately, the media and certain professional organizations continue to promote this material while ignoring large, well-designed studies which refute the claims of gender theory. Consider two articles published in Social Science Research – one by Mark Regnerus (“How different are the adult children of parents who have same-sex relationships?”) and the other by Loren Marks (“Same-sex parenting and children’s outcomes: A closer examination of the American Psychological Association’s brief on lesbian and gay parenting”). The APA brief references poorly designed studies and made unsupportable statements. These articles refute the claim that having a parent with same-sex attraction does not negatively affect children. It is important to never to take a footnote as proof of a claim, but always read the full text of the referenced material.
 
John Money’s redefinition of gender as socially constructed roles was taken up by radical Marxist-influenced feminists. It is important to remember that this strain of feminism is very different from women who simply want to defend themselves against unjust discrimination. What these ideologically driven feminists wanted was a sex-class revolution.
 
Radical feminists promoted Money’s theory as proof that the differences between men and women were not natural, but socially constructed by an oppressive, patriarchal culture. It seemed very convincing. Mothers of boys and girls who saw for themselves were often skeptical of Money’s assertion that a genetic boy could be transformed into a girl with no negative side effects. Money’s twin case, however, appeared to offer incontrovertible evidence that socialization could override biology.
 
The radical feminist agenda combined his concept of gender identity as socially constructed with the Marxist idea that all history is the history of class struggle. According to their gender theory, the first class struggle was between men and women, and women were the first oppressed class. They furthermore claimed that all social differences between men and women were not natural, but made up by men to oppress women. According to this gender theory, the way to eliminate the oppression of women was to eliminate all social differences between men and women. This would be achieved by mainstreaming a gender perspective under which any societal recognition of the differences between men and women would be labeled a stereotype and eradicated. Quotas would be imposed so that men and women would participate in every activity in society in statistically equal numbers and receive statistically equal power and rewards. Any deviation from absolute statistical equality would be regarded as evidence of sexist discrimination.
 
The problem with this is that it failed to distinguish between stereotypes, which do limit women’s ability to participate as equals in society, and real differences between men and women which should be acknowledged. Equality of rights, equal treatment under the law, equal opportunity, and equal access to education are important goals; however, in some very important areas, men and women are different, and if allowed to freely choose which activities to participate in, they will not arrive at absolute equality. Given freedom, a percentage of women will choose to make motherhood their primary vocation, either leaving the workforce to devote themselves to their children or choosing jobs which allow them more time with their families. Thus, fewer women will participate in paid work and a percentage of those who do will work shorter hours in less demanding fields, and in the aggregate receive lower wages. The radical feminists were well aware of this, and they pressured governments to institute policies which would force women out of the home and into the workforce. Behind the gender perspective are anti-motherhood policies that are fundamentally anti-woman, anti-child, and anti-family. For example, at the Beijing UN Conference on Women, there was not one positive reference to motherhood, marriage, or husbands was nowhere to be found in the official documents of the conference, but “gender” – as in “mainstreaming the gender perspective” – appeared over 300 times.
 
At the UN Conference in Cairo in 1994, a paper was circulated outlining a strategy for forwarding the demands for sexual and reproductive rights by twisting the meaning of universally accepted human rights. If the goal is the total elimination of sex difference, then the most obvious difference between men and women is the undeniable fact that if a man and a woman engage in sexual relations, only the woman can become pregnant. To make women the same as men in this regard, women had to be able to have sexual relations and not be pregnant. Contraception and abortion became the sine qua non of the feminist revolution. To achieve this, they demanded the recognition of what they termed sexual and reproductive rights – namely, unfettered access to contraception and abortion, absolute sexual freedom for children and adults, and comprehensive sex education – which, besides pushing contraception, abortion, and absolute sexual freedom at every level, also taught students that any non-positive comments about homosexuality were evidence of homophobia and bigotry.

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Moral Insanity: California's "Transgendered Student" Bill

8/29/2013

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A Benedictine monk friend of mine, Dom Anthony of Christminster Abbey, occasionally e-mails me articles by a Christian writer named Michael Craven. The man is extremely insightful, so I'm kicking off our blog with a series of articles by him. I hope you find them worthwhile.
                                                                                             By Michael Craven                                                                  Second in a series.

According to Associated Press reports, “California has become the first state to enshrine certain rights for transgender K-12 students in state law, requiring public schools to allow those students access to whichever restroom and locker room they want.” Additionally, The new law gives students the right "to participate in sex-segregated programs, activities and facilities based on their self-perception and regardless of their birth gender” (Emphasis mine).

At first glance you might be compelled to respond in anger or even disgust but when filtered through the lens of Paul’s letter to the church in Rome, I submit that we may want to respond differently.

As Paul opens his epistle, he begins with a summary of the “good news,” adding that he is “under obligation to both Greeks and to barbarians … to the wise and to the foolish” to make this good news known (Romans 1:14 ESV). In other words, no one is excluded from the hope of a new life in Christ.

Regarding Paul’s explanation as to why this good news is so urgently needed, he proceeds to describe the general condition of the entire human race. Paul is not addressing a particularly wicked segment of the society, rather he is recounting the ungodliness and unrighteousness of all of humanity who from birth suppressed the truth about God (v. 18) and “did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened”(v. 21 ESV). I must confess that in my Christian life, I have read Paul’s letter—rather self-righteously—thinking he was talking about “those other people.” I have come to see this was incorrect. He is instead giving us a recap of human history and our collective rebellion against God.

It is within this context that Paul goes on to describe the orientation of mankind’s natural inclinations when unrestrained by God, beginning in verse 26 when he writes, “For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions.” Unprecedented in Paul’s writing up this point, he rather unexpectedly chooses homosexual behavior to illustrate the extent of human sin and corruption. Why this particular transgression and not something like any number of violations against the Ten Commandments? N. T. Wright suggests Paul “wants to trace the way in which humans have violated, not simply a ‘law’ given at some point in human history, but the very structure of the created order itself.”

This structure is most apparent in the male-plus-female complementarity that was established at creation (see Genesis 1–3). God made humanity male and female in order that they might work together, with God, to bring the fullness of God’s good creation into being and glorify him. This was and remains his design intent.

Paul’s point is not that there are some exceptionally wicked people out there (for all have sinned and fallen short—see Romans 3:23). Rather Paul is expressing the fact that such clear distortions of the creator’s male-plus-female intention occur in the world indicates that the human race as a whole is guilty of character-twisting idolatry.

The declaration by the California state legislature only serves to evidence this point. Such legislation only reminds us that we are by nature a rebellious people, futile in our thinking, with hearts darkened by sin. This is the inevitable course of our rebellion and it is only the grace and mercy of God himself that can deliver any of us from such futility.

In this case, we must pray for our society and these who remain in captivity and declare that any distortion of the creator’s intent for the male-plus-female structure is degrading to human dignity and undermines God’s intent for boys and girls.

Gender is not the result of “self-perception” but rather self-evident biology and appropriate nurturing of the respective sexes. This isn’t sexist; it’s simply natural! To declare and do otherwise is to promote enslavement to the oppressive and broken structures of this sin-ruined world. It is to this condition that the mission of the church remains fixed by declaring the good news that God is restoring his created order through Jesus the King, who is bringing forth a new kingdom in this world whereby men and women may grow into their full humanity knowing true freedom, peace, and joy!
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