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It is important to remember that our Savior did not address these issues in any detail, and was not in His salvific message.

My dear brother Kosta, you have said the most important thing in the end.

If the bulk of us spent more time loving each other, feeding the hungry, and biting our tongues when we would like to speak in anger or hostility, and especially in prayer, think what we could become.

The Orthodox church is not legalistic. She wisely refrains from human manufacture of doctrine whenever possible.

I am reminded of an inappropriate comparison from a movie we watched. A group of gangsters had kidnapped a young girl and were thought to have killed her. Her former bodyguard, an assassin by trade, who had loved the child, decides to go out and kill them all, one by one.

As the assassin is standing in an apartment window preparing to shoot and kill some guilty men driving by, the elderly man in the apartment says "God says we should forgive those who harm us".

And the assassin replies, "Forgiveness is between God and them. My job is to arrange the meeting."

The "job" of the Orthodox church is to hold the meeting.

If the bulk of us spent more time loving each other, feeding the hungry, and biting our tongues when we would like to speak in anger or hostility, and especially in prayer, think what we could become

Why, it would be Paradise on earth!

Perhpas that's why it survived for 2,000 years with only a few blemishes.

My dear brother Kosta, you have said the most important thing in the end.

If the bulk of us spent more time loving each other, feeding the hungry, and biting our tongues when we would like to speak in anger or hostility, and especially in prayer, think what we could become.

This is one of my least favorite cop-outs. Rules are important. There are reasons that we have them. Neither of our religions are just about some New Age/Protestant-style "be nice to each other."

Besides, this is all irrelevant since the discussion at hand is specifically about clarifying the teaching on contraception. So the discussion is about more than just loving each other.