“The majority of modern thought exalts the state at the expense of the family, treating the family as a problem that has to be redefined continually and managed by the benevolent bureaucrats of the more powerful and wiser state. But the experience of politically and economically turbulent times reveals that the family is, and must remain, the more fundamental entity. A man “cannot really refer the daily domestic problems of his life to a State that may be turned upside-down every twenty-four hours. He must, in fact, fall back on that primal and prehistoric institution; the fact that he has a mate and they have a child; and the three must get on together somehow, under whatever law or lawlessness they are supposed to be living.” — G.K. Chesterton.
Category: Culture
Blinged out Weddings…
…I’ve since learned that planning a truly simple wedding has become practically impossible, unless couples elope or really buck all traditions. Recklessly extravagant weddings have become a cultural expectation. And brides who succumb to the intense pressure to Go Bigger can easily find themselves focused more on planning a wedding than preparing for a marriage.
Read more here.
It is possible, easily possible, in the Orthodox Christian context, to have a beautiful and simple wedding. In fact one of the great blessings of Orthodox Christian Faith is that such things, guided by centuries of wisdom and practice, actually are simpler and more beautiful than having to create an “experience” from scratch.
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So How Do We…
live and share our message without becoming this…
Campaigns designed to raise awareness are as much about advertising the status of the campaigners as they are about changing the outlook of a target audience. For example, advocates of breastfeeding produce literature that affirms the virtuous nature of their own lifestyles while also inviting those who have not seen the light to become aware. The very term ‘raising awareness’ involves drawing a distinction between those who are enlightened, who are aware of something, and those who are not. It draws attention to the fundamental contrast between those who know and those who are ignorant, between the morally superior and the morally inferior. So someone who allows his children to eat junk food is not only unaware and ignorant; he’s also morally questionable.
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One of the Benefits…
of these changing times may be the joy of rediscovering our first love. After all, we need to be honest and say that the larger forces in our culture, government, academia, the arts, and media, are largely unsupportive and often hostile to the ideals of Christian life, or at least the ideals as they understand them. Many are troubled. Some are angry. Yet we can be made alive and whole in ways we can’t hardly imagine if we understand.
Is it possible that in these days we are being reminded again that we are a counter-culture and probably always will be if we truly understand who we are and how we relate to the world around us? As the cultural props we counted on fall away we find ourselves as the odd ones out, the worldly power we once thought we had is evaporating and the times are changing. Our comfort levels are being challenged. Things we thought were safe and secure are not longer as we believed. We, as observant Christians, may end up on the very fringes of society.
Yet we are not called on to be fearful, angry, or hateful to the world around us and those who live in it, even if hate is directed at us. God, the Scriptures says, so loved this world that He gave His only begotten Son…, and the world God loved was not some ideal world but the very broken and dirty one that we live in. We are pilgrims and strangers in this world, we should tread here lightly, and perhaps the fact that the larger societal structures are abandoning our understandings, if they ever really held them at all, is a good thing to remind us of where our true priorities, our true home, actually lie. Yet we are a counter-culture of love, that is we seek to change the world, and change ourselves, not for the sake of power or influence in and of themselves or for the creation of some utopian state, but rather that we would draw others to the love that is Christ.
Perhaps the rediscovery of that love is the key. Authentic Christian love is very different from the world’s definition of love with its emotional, permissive, context. Christian love flows from the character of God and is the will for the betterment of the other. For too long the observant Christians of this country have bought into the idea that the world we seek will be created by its values being part of the structures of power in our society. Such structures are always temporary, changing, and blowing in the winds of time. Love, however, endures and the change it brings in the one who loves and the object of that love are permanent. If we wish to change the world we must love it as God loves it and enter it for the same reasons He did.
On the surface of things it may seem these are troubled times. Yet perhaps God is using all of this to call us back to that first love, His love, and to rediscover that it is in that love, living in us and shared in the world, that we find our true selves, our true purpose, and our true life. Stripped of any illusion of worldly power it may be the only thing we have left and perhaps because of it God has us right where He wants us to be, where we should have been all along.
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Context…
As the larger observant Christian community deals with issues of sexuality and the popular culture it would be good to have some larger context to help our understandings. This article from USA Today was written several years ago by a conservative leaning commentator but does refer to government statistics and surveys. Did you know, for example that less than 2 percent of Americans define themselves as gay? As we live in an increasingly secular and sexualized culture knowing such things could be valuable as we live, relate, and minister within the reality of our society. Learn more here.
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Worth Considering…
More than forty years ago, that remarkable historian Christopher Dawson, in his book Religion and Culture, expressed this hard truth strongly. “The events of the last few years,” Dawson wrote, “portend either the end of human history or a turning point in it. They have warned us in letters of fire that our civilization has been tried in the balance and found wanting-that there is an absolute limit to the progress than can be achieved by the perfectionment of scientific techniques detached from spiritual aims and moral values…. The recovery of moral control and the return to spiritual order have become the indispensable conditions of human survival. But they can be achieved only by a profound change in the spirit of modern civilization. This does not mean a new religion or a new culture but a movement of spiritual reintegration which would restore that vital relation between religion and culture which has existed at every age and on every level of human development.”
Read more here.
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On Marriage…
spend the time to watch the whole video.
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On Marriage…
Both the Bible and the tradition of the church teach that same-sex sexual activity is sinful. It’s not an unforgivable sin or the worst sin, but it is a sin. Therefore, the church asks those who are tempted to such sin to refrain from it and be chaste. In a similar way the church asks those with no same-sex struggles to refrain from heterosexual sexual activity outside of marriage. Chastity is asked from both and it is believed that God can help a person remain chaste.
So in closing, the Orthodox Church is happy to minister to those struggling with homosexuality. Such ministering goes on pretty much everywhere and in most parishes –our people have the same struggles as everyone else does. We certainly have no hatred against people with this struggle and no interest in “gay bashing.”
We will not turn someone away because of a particular sin they struggle with. They are sinners like the rest of us who need God’s forgiveness and help.
But performing or approving of same-sex marriages? No, we can’t do that. That would be saying that what is a sin isn’t a sin. That would be a lie, so we can’t participate or approve.
May God have mercy on all of us sinners and bring us to repent of our sins and bring us all into his heavenly kingdom.
Read the whole article here.
The Beautiful Path 