Recently, I read some statements by an Orthodox Church leader here in America. I won’t use his name but suffice it to say, he is a prominent hierarch within the Orthodox Church. His comments took place at the March for Life in 2022. Now I know that some will say, “He was at the March, what else do you want? He’s supporting the anti-abortion agenda.” Is he?
He made the statement that, “We affirm the gift and sanctity of life – all life, born and unborn. As Christians we confess that every human being is made in the image and likeness of God. Every life is worthy of our prayer and our protection, whether in the womb, or in the world. We are all responsible for the well-being of children. We are their “keepers,” and cannot shirk from our accountability for their welfare.” Sounds good, doesn’t it? But then, he made his next statement, “At the same time, we also affirm our respect for the autonomy of women.” Umm…I’m confused. Then he went on, later, to say, “By His incarnation, our Lord, God, and Savior Jesus Christ assumed human nature, through His conception in the womb of the Virgin Mary. She freely chose to bring Him into the world, and God respected her freedom.” Now I’m even more confused. On the one hand, he says that Orthodox Christians affirm the sanctity of life but on the other hand, we affirm the “autonomy” of women and that God “respected” the freedom of the Holy Virgin to freely bring the Christ into the world. Do you see the problem here? This is double speak. This is the same sort of ambiguity and nonsense that we hear out of the Vatican. This is trying to have it both ways; this is trying to please the world. What should have been said is that abortion is murder, and the Church has always condemned murder in any form and has always condemned abortion. Full stop. The West is doomed, my friends. As a Western man, I don’t say that lightly. My family and I live in the West. But I believe this with all my heart. The West is doomed; our culture, such as it is, has and is disintegrating around us. We live in a culture of death and depravity. That should make us who call ourselves Christians ask some questions. Which culture are we part of? Are we part of the culture of Life or death? We need to examine our lives and the fruits thereof to be able to answer that question. We need to examine our hearts, our passions, our desires, what we fill our minds with. We need to fall on our faces before God and ask Him to show us where we have fallen away and repent. Another thing that has recently happened that bears on this is the recent “leak” of Supreme Court documents on this issue of Roe v. Wade. It’s interesting that this has happened during the holiest time of the year for the Church. We are in the Paschal season. This is the time when we Christians celebrate Jesus’ triumph over death and Hell. He rose from the dead in order that we may embrace His Life and follow Him in resurrection, that we may be conformed to His image (Romans 8:29). If we have been baptized into Christ, the Apostle tells us, we take part in His death and resurrection (Romans 6:3-11). This is Life, the divine Life that we, by grace may participate in! Yet, our Western culture so strongly clings to its godless ideology of “choice” and “freedom” that we celebrate a woman’s “right” to murder her unborn child. Our culture clings so closely to death that we demonize the Russian president for what is happening in Ukraine without ourselves repenting of the many times our military has murdered innocent civilians and invaded sovereign countries willy-nilly for made up reasons. We have dropped bombs on a sovereign country every day (just about) for the last almost 20 years, but we stand on our moral high horse and lecture everyone else about morality. Meanwhile, we fail to account for the millions of children that we have murdered in abortion clinics and applaud the “freedom to choose” and “reproductive rights.” Shame on our government. Shame on our culture. Shame on us who claim the name of God and embrace death. If you claim to be a Christian and support the “right to choose,” you either need to repent or stop calling yourself a Christian. Long ago, God told His people that they had to make a choice and today, He calls out to us the same, “Behold, I have set before thee this day life and death, good and evil. If thou wilt hearken to the commands of the Lord thy God, which I command thee this day, to love the Lord thy God, to walk in all his ways, and to keep his ordinances, and his judgments; then ye shall live, and shall be many in number, and the Lord thy God shall bless thee in all the land into which thou goest to inherit it. But if thy heart change, and thou wilt not hearken, and thou shalt go astray and worship other gods, and serve them, I declare to you this day, that ye shall utterly perish, and ye shall by no means live long upon the land, into which ye go over Jordan to inherit it. I call both heaven and earth to witness this day against you, I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse: choose thou life, that thou and thy seed may live; to love the Lord thy God, to hearken to his voice, and cleave to him:” (Deuteronomy 30:15-20a, LXX) The choice is before us, brothers and sisters. We cannot be silent. We cannot go along to get along. We must choose. Life or death, blessing or curse. Choose.
0 Comments
As the Great Fast progressed this year, a couple of things were constants for me. I prayed at the beginning of the Fast that God would give me something, one thing to really focus on. Of course, there was prayer and fasting. But I honestly did not do a great job at fasting this year. Combine my own lack of discipline in that moment with my wife giving birth to our third child and fasting did not go so well for about three weeks. People were bringing us food and I was super tired and…you get the picture. But those are really excuses. I failed at fasting because I lacked the discipline. That lack of discipline came from a cooling of my desire for Christ. That is my fault, no matter my circumstances. But I digress.
Back to the constant thing for the Great Fast. God brought to a me a text of Holy Scripture for me to dwell on and mediate on for all of the Great Fast. It was 1 John 2:15-17, “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.” I’ve written about this recently but want to talk about it a bit more from the perspective of how we are to do this. I live in America (right now anyway). For anyone who pays attention at all to what is happening here, it is safe to say that we have all noticed a sharp decline in recent years of morality in this country. That’s actually putting it rather lightly. America is headed to Hell at breakneck speed. Our society is disintegrating before our very eyes. Granted, this has been going on for a while but the pace seems to have picked up a great deal over the recent past. Sadly, this apostacy is not limited to secular society. The label of Christian in this country, frankly, means almost nothing. Most of the “Christians” I know are either just as secular as the world or, at very least, just shrug their shoulders and go along to get along. In America, the Church is largely irrelevant to those who want to truly follow Christ. For those who are to speak out against the godless secular society, they are castigated, attacked and cast out, even being labeled as “old fashioned” or “intolerant” by so-called Christians. For me, it means I have hard decisions to make. Shall I have my family remain in this godless society or should we flee? Right now, I don’t know the answer to that. But, God brought this text to me and I’ve been meditating on it for awhile now. Some things have come to the forefront: I have been far too complacent with not just my own sins but in shunning things that can lead to sin. I have been far too complacent in helping lead my family away from those things that inevitably will lead us to sin. I have been far too complacent with the world. I have work to do. We have work to do, brothers and sisters. In the words of the Puritan preacher, John Owen, “Do you mortify; do you make it your daily work; be always at it whilst you live; cease not a day from this work; be killing sin or it will be killing you.” And again, he says, “The vigour, and power, and comfort of our spiritual life depends on the mortification of the deeds of the flesh.” Mortify your flesh; make it your daily work; cease not a day from this work; be killing sin or it will be killing you. I recognize the irony of me, as an Orthodox Christian, quoting a Protestant but he merely echoes what Holy Scripture exhorts us to. St. Paul tells us in Romans 8:5-8, “For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God.” Again, in Romans 8:12-13, St. Paul says, “Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh. For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.” I don’t know how much clearer this can be for us as Christians. The world is in the power of our great enemy, Satan. To love the world is to be the enemy of the Father. It is time for Christians to embrace again the call of our Saviour to come apart and be separate. So, how do we do this? St. Theophan the Recluse is helpful. In his work, “The Path to Salvation” the blessed Saint talks about (among many things) fleeing sin. He says, “First of all remove the veils from the eyes of your mind that keep your mind in a state of blindness. If a person does not deny sin and run from it, then that is because he does not know himself and the danger he is in for the sake of his sin. If his eyes were opened he would run from sin as he would run from a house engulfed in flames.” Deny sin and run from it. How? Again, St. Theophan helps us, “First of all, go after the body. Refuse it delights and pleasures, restrict indulgences in even the most natural needs; lengthen the hour of vigil, decrease the usual amount of food, add labor to labor. Mainly, in whatever way you want or are able, lighten the flesh, thin its corpulence. Through this the soul will free itself of the bonds of matter, will become more energetic, lighter, and more receptive to good impressions. The material body prevailing over the soul communicates to the soul the body's lethargy and coldness. Physical ascetic labors weaken these bonds and eliminate their effects. True, not every sinner lives unrestrainedly and indulges the body. But it would be hard to find an individual in normal life who does not have something he would do well to refuse the body once the desire for salvation touches his heart. And the goal is very significant — it completely changes one's activity. What you have done previously according to habit, or in support of your usual occupations, you now begin to do with some changes and additional austerity for the sake of salvation — and there will be tangible results.” Ask God to remove the veil from the eyes of your mind and heart and show you where you are blind. Run from and deny all things to lead to sin. Subject your body (1 Cor. 9:27) to the ascetical practices given to us by the Church. Pray without ceasing (1 Thess. 5:17). Give your time and effort and energy to God and let Him have His way with you. Forsake the world and turn to the Saviour. If we do that, we will find rest and comfort for our souls (Matt. 11:28-29). |
Archives
March 2021
Categories
All
|