Holiness at a Time when Uncleanness is Made Legal

“For just as you presented your members as slaves of uncleanness, and of lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves of righteousness for holiness.” (Romans 6:19)

In the 20th century, between the end of the 60s and beginning of the 70s movements of sexual liberation began and the idea of a “sexual revolution” started to spread. During the 60s broad changes started to occur in Western societies, particularly society’s attitude toward sex, which aimed to “liberate” sex from predominant religious, social and ethical constraints, leading to new legislation about the sexual behavior of an individual in society, much of which is still in effect today.

These movements and legislation led to various issues and tendencies in different societies, among them sexual liberty regardless of whether a person is married or not, contraception and birth control pills, public nudity, the homosexual liberation movement, demands for the freedom to choose abortion, women’s rights, the women’s liberation movement or feminism, etc… The new sexual freedoms that were legislated and promoted were exploited by large financial and commercial investments seeking to exploit society for material gain and to spread ideas associated with the sexual revolution. An example of this is the fact that pornographic and obscene materials have started to appear in the open. With development in media and social media, everything connected to sex has come to be exploited for greater commerce and profit. The most important and most dangerous thing is that it has become easy to market and obtain through the use of modern technology such as smartphones, etc.

What is called “civilization” today is based on what is called “human rights”, which make licit corruption and the corruption of morals with regard to God’s commandment. In many countries of the world, this has introduced new legislation permitting homosexuality, abortion and sexual relations outside of marriage… All of this is on the basis of the belief in man’s right to do what he wills since everything is relative and that he can live as he wants on a personal level and no one has any authority over him with regard to his individual choices, since his body is his property… or so they argue.

Making such things licit is none other than man’s return to paganism and submission to animal, impulsive nature, which was unrestrained before the Law. The devil has mastery over the world through lust (for money, authority, sex) and the great catastrophe that destroys humanity in the name of humanity is permitting man’s submission to the lust that corrupts the image of God that is in him in the name of the freedom of his will, this lust that man can make into an art by amplifying it and taking pleasure in it to a degree without any limit apart from man’s utter collapse, since he is a rational being with a free will. God does not constrain man’s freedom, even if he commits error, sin or crime, because He will judge him for what he does, on the basis of the faith he embraces, by right of love and the blood of the Son of God which was shed for the life of the world, because out of love He wants us to come to Him since we have known Him. Man defines his relationship with God: either he is someone who wants to be a son, and therefore returns in repentance to his loving and tender Father or he comes to be under the Law since he lives in rejection of the Lord’s Messiah.

Beloved, do not be deceived or dazzled by the lights of ‘false truth’ that Satan promotes in the name of reason, freedom, progress, civilization and culture… These are false lights, inasmuch as they do not bear the light of truth, the light of Christ who revealed to us who God is and who man truly is. Everything that separates man from what the Lord Jesus Christ has revealed to us about the substance of humanity is from the evil one. There is no mixing of light and darkness. The light condemns the darkness and “this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil” (John 3:19).

Do not give credence to those who would lead you to believe in the name of freedom that the legalization of uncleanness is a human right. Everything that distorts and debases the image of God in man is uncleanness. Sex is unclean if it is not in the blessing and grace in love consecrated by God in marriage between a man and a woman, since only then does it become a bond of unity, a language of mutual address in the spirit between lovers and a shared gift for pleasures within the framework of an integrated path of life, through good times and bad, towards holiness.

Any relationship between members of the same sex is a sin that is destructive of man’s spiritual, psychological and physical being because it reveals man’s submission to impulse and the devil who corrupts minds and souls and destroys hearts. Thirty years ago and earlier, psychology generally considered homosexuals to be mentally ill, but today concepts have been reversed in psychology, starting with laws that permit every corruption, so that today through education in the schools the principle of deviance is introduced into the minds of students, since those whose ages aren’t any greater than the number of fingers on your hands are given the freedom to choose their sex and to live according to that without the family having any right to treat this issue under penalty of law. This is the “great farce of freedom” in what is called “the civilized world”, which by legalizing such deviance has become the dying world, requiring chastisement, indeed, divine punishment as happened to Sodom and Gomorrah, tomorrow soon to be seen… unless humankind returns to its true reality written in nature by creation and to the image of God in it, since everything is called to holiness.

Orthodox Ping!

Save Thy people, O Lord,
and bless Thine inheritance.
Grant victory to Thy Church over her enemies,
and protect Thy people by Thy Holy Cross!

This piece is one more reason why I am profoundly THANKFUL to have become an Orthodox Christian....once again bringing to mind the first ermoi of the Paraklesis:

Crossing the waters as on dry land
In that way escaping from the evils of Egypt's land....

There was a time in His earthly ministry that Christ said some hard things and as a consequence many who had been following Him ceased to follow Him any more.

He then turned to the twelve and asked if they would leave too.

“To whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” was the reply.

Now the hard things that Christ had said are still stumbling blocks to some men; but, ours are such depraved times that now the hard things that people cannot bear to hear don’t even approach those, but are instead things like men are men and not women, never mind any suggestion that maybe people should have decent morals.

So to be holy when the culture is depraved, not just wicked like mere pagans but depraved as those who having known about the one and only Gospel and rejected God’s riches at Christ’s expense for them, requires that our answer to the Lord’s question be the same as Peter’s.

Be encouraged, He is returning ... has to be soon the way things are going ... and He hold us.

I wish that SOME of the concern over same-sex violations of this dogma ....

Sex is unclean if it is not in the blessing and grace in love consecrated by God in marriage between a man and a woman, since only then does it become a bond of unity, a language of mutual address in the spirit between lovers and a shared gift for pleasures within the framework of an integrated path of life, through good times and bad, towards holiness.

...was directed a divorce.

Encourgaed by the same sexual revolution bringing us promiscuity, spouses that selfishly destroyed their children's lives for the trophy second husband/wife have arguably wreaked more havoc on society.

In addition, we have untold heterosexual violations of this dogma and countless children born out of wedlock. That, too, has a caustic impact on souls and society.

I know, "society has accepted divorce. Move on." But God is forever pining away, waiting for us to awaken. It is never too late to repent. I recently heard of a long divorced man repenting, admitting that leaving his wife (now deceased) decades ago was wrong. It took a lot for him to do that, but his receipt of Holy Unction by a Greek Orthodox priest paved the way for a peaceful passing away. His children's knowledge of a reunited Mom and Dad in heaven has brought them unfathomable joy.

It's not a perfect story, but we surrendered Perfection in Eden. Let's not let perfect be the enemy of good. Have a glorious Sunday!

Wrongly placed empathy for people getting divorced came about because these are so often hard cases, where someone is being done wrong and there is no getting around it. We should not be surprised because in scripture divorce is intimately associated with someone having a hardened heart. And this empathy was then through unnumbered compromises, goings along to get alongs, to the practice in general.

Just as critical, though, is people who have divorced (no matter their cause or lack thereof) remarrying.

We may be saying the same thing. People used to work out their differences because divorce was a rarely-used and shame-ridden (and, one could argue, immoral) Plan B. Not anymore.

Let's pick on Tom Brady and his soon to be ex. Or even Bill Gates. With everything at these people's fingertips, you're telling me after YEARS, that you can't work it out? No signs of violence, no signs of mental cruelty. Sure, the people involved are high maintenance...but so were MANY figures in the New and Old Testament days.

I believe a byproduct of the 60s (though it's more of an Enlightenment problem) was the elevation of self-esteem over familial responsibility, of "I need to be me" over a promise "till death do us part." That leads to millions of children with absentee fathers - be they guys who just fornicate and run away or divorcées - and we are paying a price as a moral people for this abdication.

Just like how Dylan, at Live Aid, stated how nice it'd be if some of that concern was refocused on farmers, if just a smidg of same-sex concern could be refocused on opposite sex problems, I'd be happy. True, many people in the pews would be uncomfortable. But just like in my repentant husband story, the benefits are eternal.

I think the one word out of the term “self-esteem” that causes the most problems is “self”.

As for your comment about Live Aid, I’ve heard the same thing expressed for a number of different charities, such as when people send tons of clothes and shoes to Africa the local industries that might have been making those are often decimated. The alternative though, sending money to buy from local manufacturers, is often riddled with corruption if people try to send cash that, being portable and fungible, ends up disappearing at customs too often.

To be fair, the comment by Dylan (who's music does nothing for me, unless interpreted by Hendrix), inspired fellow musicians Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp and Neil Young to organise the Farm Aid benefit concert. He made a difference.

That's my hope here...if some of the people really, really worried about "the gays" could spend, I dunno, maybe 5 minutes on divorce and absentee fathers. The dogma applies to both groups - our remediation efforts could be rebalanced.

I NEVER visit the pro-LGBT, subversive website “Orthodoxy in Dialogue”!!!!

For example:

https://orthochristian.com/147534.html

The article you posted might be “bait” to get us to visit the site and swallow its subversion!!!! Lord have Mercy on me, a sinner!!!!

I was suckered in to that site when they were breaking all the slander about Metropolitan Joseph....unfortunately my browsers occasionally autofill the web address when I begin to type “orthodox”.

In this case I am glad the autofill directed me to this excellent article. Obviously the OID operator had a very negative take.

He is allegedly a defrocked former OCA Priest.

I have found that at least several clergy (both Orthodox and Lutheran) who are pro-LGBT have adult children who identify as “gay”. Since I don’t go around snooping in that area, it has taken me some time to find out about that.

In one case, when we were celebrating the funeral of a beloved Lutheran pastor, his lesbian daughter showed up with her “partner”! Surprise, surprise!!

It is very tough for a Priest to serve a parish and raise a family, and then to have a grown son or daughter to announce that they’re “gay”. It is even tougher to then avoid spouting the “gay” agenda, and instead to remain fully Orthodox. Lord have mercy!!!!

I dunno.

Both Presidents Reagan and Trump were divorced and remarried.

On the other side, “gay” Pete Buttigieg does nothing but harm as Secretary of Transportation. Then there is prospective Massachusetts Governor “gay” Maura Healey. She had noting but praise for the looting and burning BLM movement, and is pushing a radical “climate” program that will push MA citizens into poverty and homelessness!!!!

I’ll take the former over the latter every time!!!!

Buuuuuut, the immorality of divorce AND sex outside of marriage was established by God. They're not my rules.

They're eternal. And unqualified.

Let's say the Gipper was an atheist. Regardless of all the great things he achieved, he'd still be hell-bound unless he had a death bed conversion in his heart.

Atheism, Divorce and Adultery are on that same restaurant menu of Things That Will Get You In To Hell. Or, to be precise, sex with anyone other than your spouse (and Biblically, that's a man and a woman) is on that Menu.

Thus, Healey and Buttigieg and anyone having heterosexual conjugal relations outside of marriage all check that hell box. Again, it's not even open to debate. It simply IS.

I'd like to hope, that Reagan's slip into Alzheimer's allowed himself time to ponder his sin, and realized his error before he died.

If we are to wave away divorce as a mortal sin because we don't like it, we are no better than liberals saying guns can be outlawed regardless of the 2nd Amendment.

Oh, I understand and comprehend the Church's permission in this realm.

And, perhaps in limited instances, especially in the case of fraud, a marriage can be annulled/dissolved and stay in grace with God.

Further, God always stands ready to forgive us, despite our hardened hearts. Keeping people in Church is a legitimate way to be on standby for repentance. Indeed, in my story about the repentant man who remarried, that may not have happened IF the doors of the Church were slammed in his face. The Greek priest gave him Holy Unction and communion. It's a beautiful story.

But Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery is pretty clear.

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