As the day draws near for the US Supreme Court to insist on nationwide approval for gay marriage, a watershed in modern thought has been reached. For although the Supreme Court is not the arbiter of morality, its decisions generally signal a deep level of cultural acceptance. Of course, in American practice, the court represents the apex of legal/forensic imagination. Its decision will signal the bankruptcy of the forensic model for continuing Christian thought. When questions of sexual behavior are placed before the legal model, Christians are simply unable to make a persuasive case for much of anything. It is at least true, that the culture has become completely deaf to the sounds of Christian thought spoken in legal grammar.
Of course, the consequences of this will likely be long-lasting. For it is Christianity, in a certain form, that taught the culture to think with a legal imagination. Therefore, it’s not likely that the culture will listen to gainsaying Christians on the topic, regardless of how they frame the conversation. And the consequences reach far beyond sexual matters.
The same legal imagination seems increasingly mute in the face of other pressing questions: euthanasia, abortion, gender management, genetic manipulation and conception, etc. We are quickly reaching a place where the will to act becomes the right to act.
For the Church, the most immediate question is not how to regain a culture that it has now lost, but how to speak to the Church whose members have been nurtured in a failed legal/forensic imagination. For what seems obvious to the Supreme Court will likely seem obvious to teenage Christians as well (and many others). Christians are hardly counter-cultural revolutionaries (despite all of our protests to the contrary). The culture in which we live is, whether we want to admit it or not, of our own making.
Sexual morality and other related social issues have been addressed in a moral framework that is essentially forensic, grounded either within a legal reading of Scripture or in natural law. Scripture no longer holds a place of central authority within Western culture and natural law arguments have been lost in a constant battle of science and counter-science. Everything seems to have been swallowed by a popular acceptance of radical Nominalism: anything can be whatever we want it to be. The wanting is the thing.
But sexual relationships (and all relationships) lose the possibility of well-being in a world where whatever we want is, in fact, the case. For relationship is inherently about the Other, and if the Other is simply what I want, then the Other serves only as an extension of the ego.
When Christ speaks about marriage, He pointedly moves past the arrangements of the Mosaic Law and reverts to Genesis: “From the beginning it was not so…” (Matt. 19:8). He elevates the creation story to the controlling position. It is there that we most clearly see the role of the Other. They are male and female, specifically like and unlike one another. And the man without the woman is “not good.” Rather, he is “alone.”
But this also becomes the ground of union, that state of being that best describes salvation. “She is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.” The complementarity is not simply opposition, ego on ego, but a unique ontological relationship admitting of union without the loss of otherness. It is, in its complete expression, the model of personhood.
And this is the “union” that the Church blesses in the sacrament of marriage. It is not simply two people, but male and female, in a union that is possible on every level. Biology is not made inferior to psychology. The modern project has reduced sexual existence to mere identity, a vehicle for the ego. Ovum and sperm have been objectified, becoming simple biological materials to be manipulated in a lab.
According to Christian understanding, in human existence, the personal is also capable of bearing the tragic, ground that is foreign to Modernity, its eradication being the goal of every Modern project. Boundaries are tragic for the ego – they say “no” to its unfettered demands. The “tragic” is viewed as any undesirable event or result in Modernity. It is viewed as suffering and is to be avoided, controlled and minimized.
Classical Christianity understands that the Cross is the way of life and that its paradox turns the tragic inside-out. For the Cross is not an unfortunate requirement, something God is forced to do in order to rescue sinful man. The tragedy of the Cross is also the pattern of healing, wholeness, well-being and eternal life. It is the revelation of true personhood.
All of the arguments regarding new definitions of marriage, aggressive reproductive technologies, gender re-definitions, etc., are made within a model that views any and all suffering as both tragic, needless and unacceptable if at all possible of alleviation. Such a line of reasoning was inevitably on a collision course with an ethic originally rooted in the Cross. The Christian view of personhood is an invitation to voluntary suffering and self-sacrifice. Nothing could be less modern.
The Church’s sacramental life exists solely for the purpose of salvation. It does not exist to bless or facilitate the interests of the State (or of the ego). The sexual models that are finding approval within the culture (and by the State) are not in accordance with the path of personhood revealed in the Christian Tradition. There are and will be many varying models of Christianity that will agree to serve the self-defined interests of the State. But these represent “another gospel,” a radical rejection and re-imagining of the Christian Tradition.
In public conversations, the traditional account of Christianity is going to come up short: the Modern promise of no suffering will always get more votes than the tragedy of the Cross. But the Cross must first be re-preached to the Christian people – they have listened long and well to Modern promises and have, to a large extent, modified their own understanding of the gospel in its light.
The irony, of course, is that the Modern drive in the name of compassion and the alleviation of suffering, is something that was first taught by the Church. And now the Church will seem to be arguing against it. Of course, the supreme irony is the Cross itself, which has always seemed like foolishness and weakness, and will continue to be despised by the builders of our Brave New World.
Comments
252 responses to “Sex and the Moral Imagination”
St. Nikolai Velimirovic in his work, The Agony of the Church, addresses some of what we have made tedious here but goes to another level. I have just begun reading as my brother sent the free e-book to me as Lenten reading. It is available on the Gutenberg project.
Forgive me.
Michael,
he’s sublime -as always…. Manages to demonstrate the inclusivity that is right without making any mistakes. St Nikolj was the bishop who ordained Elder Sophrony.
I like the way he mentions somewhere that the Roman Emperors would never persecute most modern churches, as they would recognise their own spirit included in her.
What little I have read is truly radical in the best sense of the word but that is Christianity. We are not bound by any ideology if we are in Christ. We are free to love in humility and peace.
Too easily I forget that.. But I strive for it. I hope for it. We must reach for it….not settling for less.
Kierkegaard thought that modern man needed not so much Jesus, but Socrates, to cut through the modern thought forms that corrupt Christianity and “sound bite” thinking (e.g. “he was born that way” or “science”, “he has his rights too” and “live and let live”). I think the “tediousness” reveals something else: that what is needed is not a change of mind, but a change of heart – a conversion. In other words, no amount of “dialogue” will do, because people are essentially religious creatures. Part of the perniciousness of Modernism and the New Man is that it claims to not be a religion, when it is – and thus Christians too easily try these strange amalgamations of the two and learn to live quite comfortably with them.
What we have here is a religious conflict, in this case between the New Man and Christianity. There really is no common ground between these two religions. People are not their philosophy, but their philosophy runs deep. This “tediousness” has the potential to run for generations (similar to any ancient heresy – how long did the Church struggle with Arianism, and was not the vast majority of of the Church essentially Arian for generations at times?).
Today, you have a situation where in the Classical Christian churches (Orthodox, RC, various faithful protestants) at least half of those standing next to you believe in the New Man (It actually might be worse than this). The rest are thoroughly modernized. Rome (if I understand it’s ecclesiology – I probably don’t) is the only one to have actually make dogmatic declarations in response to the New Man, though in the western RC world it seems to have made little difference. Perhaps men like Fr. Stephen will continue to find an “effective word”. I pray that he does. Prayer and fasting is probably the only way the New Man comes out of a person…
Dino,
Again, I do not subscribe to religious pluralism, you are tilting at windmills.
Things become tedious and complicated when the political landscape is brought into the Church’s life and discussion. The language of “rights” is not native to Orthodoxy, though they can certainly be encompassed in our thought. But as “essential” matters that are absolutely due as a matter of course, they become problematic.
Orthodoxy would always affirm the importance of freedom – it is necessary to Persons, as Persons. But the State always limits freedoms for a variety of reasons. A good State, wisely limits freedoms only as required by the common good, and this is never a matter of absolutes (which is why wisdom is required).
But we cannot read these things back into the teaching of the Church. I think, for example, that people should generally be free to hate other people – though hatred is a very wicked sin. But to eliminate hate by law yields a greater evil of oppression. Thus, I think “hate crimes” are a bit “over the top,” and perhaps too intrusive. “Did you hate him when you killed him?” Almost beside the point.
I think, for example, that the State should make provision for inheritance and property rights, visitation rights, etc., for certain persons without describing such as a “marriage.” I don’t even think such arrangements should be called “civil unions.” They are contract arrangements.
There are requirements, I think, of traditional marriage that should be upheld and protected, even encouraged (responsibility for biological offspring, etc.), and that the State should wisely remain very committed to this and be careful not to endanger it.
But I say all of that under the heading of “wisdom,” and what would be involved in “governing wisely.” But I’m not a governor, just a citizen who’s been around for a while. Radical social changes are always alarming to me – under the rubric of the “law of unintended consequences.” And so I would characterize myself as a Burkean conservative (following the gradualism of Edmund Burke). We are seeing the overturning of laws of very long-standing, in the name of a very novel ideology. We have no idea what the long-term consequences will be. That seems foolish.
But that conversation is more or less beside the point of the article, though I did comment on what will likely be a sudden change introduced by the Court this summer.
On the whole, a culture does indeed have to have a live-and-let-live attitude in many things, particularly because of modern pluralism. Though, this will only go so far.
It is fascinating to me that Europe, completely enamored of the Modernist ideology, invented an unnecessary pluralism in little more than a single generation, pretty much on the grounds that multi-culturalism was the preferred mode of living. There are many ways in which Europe has never – never (!) renounced its colonialist hubris. When they were planting colonies everywhere and taking on “the white man’s burden,” they knew better than everybody else what everybody needed. And today, they still do, although “multiculturalism” is the new Colonialism. They have colonized their own countries and are going to fix everyone there. And they will do this in the name of rejecting their Colonialist history.
Once an arrogant Colonialist…always an arrogant ….
Robert,
I’ll try to clarify a little.
The original contention, of Alan and other commenters (that I couldn’t help sympathize with), is something entirely different to the “windmills” you mention. This aforementioned contention is, in fact, still snubbed and ignored with this ‘tediousness’ of parsing ‘pluralisms’ – as if that is the real solution to their agony which I have not yet been convinced by you that it is…
The original contention was with your comments that:
Christopher, you make a great point. Secular humanism / modernism is absolutely a religion. Sadly, those who subscribe to it have been successful (of course with the help of govt and their lapdogs in the media) in telling the lie that it’s not a religion.
Dino, I love your comments on this blog. They are most helpful. At this point though, I would humbly suggest to you that it’s time to stop engaging Robert. It’s been proven to him that 2+2 = 4, but he willfully chooses to believe that 2+2 = 5.
Thanks Alan,
I hope I am not being naive in my belief that there must simply be a misunderstanding – and that Robert certainly would not willfully choose to believe that 2+2 = 5.
Others (I mean those who describe themselves as non-believers might), but not Robert.
Dino,
As your comment is in good faith, I will take the time to respond, at the risk of more of the same tediousness.
We can debate the pros and cons of sex education, but I suppose that is for another time and another place.
Be it as it may, teaching a subject does not necessitate (dis)approval. If it weren’t so, political science, psychology, and historical theology teachers would all be in a heap of trouble. This is so rudimentary that I will spare citing tedious examples.
I understand, that if one compares this to the”old countries” of a bygone era in which teachers were expected to impose (an officially state approved) moral formation, then yes indeed it appears, comparatively speaking, as secularism.
Thanks Robert,
I do see the logic and do not disagree on the examples of teaching a subject without necessitating a (dis)approval. It’s just that – more particularly – teaching sex education is trickier in this respect. It could be [with naive idealism] taught as something closer to ‘how babies are made’, or as something concerning ‘marital consummation’ by a chaste Christian (whether this is a Christian sexually experienced in marriage, a sexually experienced and previously promiscuous repentant one, or a virgin), -somewhat going against the grain. They could in theory even partake of Holy Communion and not feel like teaching this to their classroom is not inordinately inappropriate afterwards.
But how would they “neither approve nor disapprove” while introducing the genital expression of homosexuality, (including the graphic images might I add – I’ll spare you the details) without this seeming inordinately inappropriate afterwards…?
It’s such ‘particulars’ the obvious and inherent incompatibility of Christianity and “this world” (1 John 2:15) becomes markedly exacerbated. What will become far more of a potential difficulty is when the state will want to enforce this further, even within the very Church. This has happened before and it will happen again.
Now my reason for bringing all this attention to it is that it’s easier to be alerted to a Stalinist-style persecution and far more difficult to a deviously refined and subtle secularisation that sips in gradually… there’s already talk that some are starting to be approving of on “the need for the Church to accept and perform SS wedings, to eradicate Her supposedly anti-semitic hymnography, to ordain women etc etc
Robert you don’t think teachers in public schools are teaching a state approved moral formation? Really? That has been one if the driving purposes behind public education since Horace Mann.
If I may give an another perspective . . . I taught English and Latin in public high schools in a midwestern city. I also taught teachers. Only once twice was I asked to attend professional development meetings in which an experimental “values education“program was discussed–both times the programs were eventually initiated on a volunteer basis (teachers and students-with-parent-support), but dropped after a two-year trial period. Lack of interest all around was the reason. These incidents occurred in different districts. My children attended public schools (not the districts I was employed by and now my granddaughter
(Sorry. Finger slipped) . . . And now my granddaughter does. No evidence of moral instruction in any of these settings, other than standard issues like politeness, respect, following rules, etc.
I also worked as a principal in parochial elementary schools, and members of my extended family sent their children to similar ones. I see very little difference in behavior and attitudes between state school educated children and graduates of parochial schools. Even in the area of future church attendance there seems to be little difference, except that many who went through the religious schools no longer attend church.
I worry about what children today are learning about morality and religion, but they aren’t learning it in schools, as far ad i can tell.
Robert,
Almost all the teenagers I know have already been convinced of the entire modern gay sexual agenda. They have not learned this from their parents, or their priest or Church. Where have they learned this? How have they been so effectively propagandized? This agenda has been the most effectively disseminated idea that I have seen in my lifetime. At this point in time it’s a bit late to be saying that there is no moral agenda being furthered somewhere.
Moral instruction is traditionally given by the older to the younger. What is happening at present is quite the reverse. That is the hallmark of revolutions, not moral instruction. Something is afoot.
What is afoot, I believe – and has been for at least as long as I’ve been alive – is iconoclasm, although in our modern world the icon being smashed is male and female, the image of Christ and His Church. Destroy this icon, and the Gospel is rendered both irrelevant and incomprehensible to the modern mind.
Although arguments must of necessity be made, they will only be heard by those who retain some grasp of the iconography of humans as being in the image of God. In other words, the target audience for apologetics is those in the Church and most especially our own children. Few others have ears to hear, having been thoroughly poisoned by iconoclasm. And as Fr. Stephen has written, it is not only the ‘what,’ but also the ‘why’ that must be spoken of. “You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up.” This sort of teaching has less to do with laying down ‘God’s rules’ or even a Christian understanding of anthropology than it does with imparting an appreciation for the beauty of His life.
When all the theological, anthropological, or scientific arguments have been made, it is only the beauty of the iconography of human beings living truly in the image and likeness of God that anyone will find convincing.
I, for one, had better get to work on repentance, lest I be found unprepared for the iconoclastic revolution that is even now coming upon us.
Father,
Here’s what’s afoot. Don’t be put off by the website title. The brothers Paul and Phillip Collins have written an incisive article.
http://www.conspiracyarchive.com/2014/10/06/the-androgynous-world-order-feminism/
I’ve been following the tedium for a while now and I’d like to throw in a rather specific example of what Robert denies exists.
Before that, though, let’s just get one assumption out there that I am relying on: for any given X and Y, if I were to make a moral statement that X was just as good as Y and no worse, that itself is a moral judgment about the relative values of X and Y – and, therefore, a moral judgment. If I am wrong in this, and a positive statement of equivalence is not a moral judgment, then what I describe here does not in fact rebut anything Robert says; but as a matter of how words are ordinarily used, I don’t think I’m wrong.
The B.C. Teachers’ Federation website includes an entire Web page full of resources about how to teach sex ed. It is under the heading “Social Justice – Issues” and includes documents titled (and I am deliberately cherrypicking the relevant ones):
“Responding to resistance to teaching sexual health education” seems out of place, but if you read it it is pretty much exactly what Dino, Michael, et al. are talking about. (The irony of the final response is flagrant enough that I believe it to be intentional.)
Here’s a quote from another document:
It absolutely, definitely is all about the state enforcing a moral judgment that same-sex sexual activity is no less valid than opposite-sex sexual activity.
Now there is a good case to be made that this is also the Christian position, inasmuch as we’re discussing sex outside of marriage. However, from what little I’ve read so far you would think that marriage as an institution had been entirely abolished and forgotten about. The stated intent that I’ve been given in the past (late 1990s when I was in school and this sort of thing was getting started, but before the need to validate same-sex sexual relations became a particularly serious focus) is that abstinence until marriage is a completely unrealistic expectation for most people and if there will be widespread fornication anyway at least let’s keep the unwanted pregnancies and STIs to a minimum to reduce healthcare costs on society. However, back then there was still at least an express recognition that abstinence was the best, safest policy, but this information was still relevant because not everyone would follow it and even within a marriage there may be problems (needles, tainted blood, adultery, one spouse’s sexual partners from before the marriage, etc.). But what I’m seeing from these new documents is that even that admonishment has been systematically erased.
This in turn is entirely in line with the way even our family law has developed, which was completely overhauled about 2 years ago to completely remove the distinction between marriage and simply living together, while literally making everything negotiable (subject, fortunately, to an explicit overriding concern for the best interests of any children involved).
There is an agenda going on – not any paranoid “gay agenda” strawman, but a very modern, nominalist laissez-faire-capitalist movement to abolish all barriers to sex beyond those of consent and human will. I say this as someone who has spent most of his adult life in explicit and fervent support of that agenda – albeit also someone who converted to Orthodoxy after trying to live that agenda out and seeing how it utterly broke my ability to have normal human relationships with women and even men.
On that note, I also grew up around all sorts of casual endorsements of gay-bashing, use of gay men as the go-to example when we needed a worthless human being that was obviously worthy of death (“if you had a bazooka with one rocket, Hitler on one end of a football field and a bunch of gay people on the other, where would you shoot?”), hyperbolic statements about gay sex being the worst thing beyond murder, rape and wilful allegiance to the Devil, and “faggot” being automatic fighting words regardless of the circumstances – much of it by men and boys who considered themselves at least Christian in name. For the first year of my catechumenate I was distinctly uncomfortable about being any part of the “bride” of a skinny nonviolent guy and had to work over a few reservations about the whole hugging and kissing other dudes thing at “Let us greet one another with the Lord’s peace” and even receiving a blessing from the priest. Homophobia is no less real than the nominalist sexual agenda, and breaking the cycle of dehumanization and violence that come from it must be recognized an urgent and important need if any Christian commentator expects to be taken remotely seriously by the culture – as well as a need that, however mistakenly, most of those who further the nominalist agenda seriously, earnestly, sincerely believe can only be addressed by breaking down all the old sexual categories that allow same-sex sexual activity to be stigmatized in the first place.
The problem is to convince them that the baby in the bathwater is alive and worth saving.
Please forgive the barely-relevant ramblings of this incontinent and unchaste sinner.
I typed the above before I saw Fr. Stephen’s comment at 9:33 PM.
To clarify, the words “gay agenda” have for many of us connotations of the speaker believing that there is a global organized conspiracy of people trying to turn everyone gay, bringing up images of the Illuminati or anti-Semitic caricatures of the Elders of Zion or rainbow Nazi stormtroopers in short shorts or something even more cartoonish of that sort. Use of that term in what is now the mainstream discourse is almost a guaranteed way to either (a) get a laugh out of everyone and praise for your wit in making fun of those dirty fundamentalists, or (b) ostracized for being one of said dirty fundamentalists, depending on how ironic you’re being.
(As for why this change has managed to be so thorough and fast… see my above comment about homophobia. A lot of us grew up on this and we must have understood on some level how dark and violent it was – all it really took, I think, was the belief that sexual orientation was as inborn, immutable and essential to a person’s value and as important in connecting them to the rest of humanity as their race and ethnicity.)
And since I’m commenting already… Michael, can you explain a bit more about your “bad money flushing out good money” problem wrt legal recognition of gay marriage? Frankly, I just don’t see it.
I’m an elder member of the younger generation, probably the youngest person commenting here, and I see in myself, and my peers and those younger than I precisely what Fr. Stephen has mentioned. Namely, that we fully accept the “gay sexual agenda”, which frankly sounds a bit dated and stodgy in its phrasing to me (no offense, Fr. Stephen, just betraying my youth).
In some respects, we’re lost, and I worry constantly about what world my children will grow up in. It seems as though the entire Western world has gone off the rails in the pursuit of happiness, and certainly sexual rights have been a strong trend setter in this. I heard a woman at my office, a few years younger than I, say, “Life ends when you have children, that’s how I see it.” How do I convince my children that there’s something greater than being a slave to sexual identity, and that the truth is that life begins when we stop living for ourselves?
I simply have no ideas, no tools, no conversation starters about how to help them become fully human, or tell them what that even means. My greatest fear, and what I’m sure will end up happening, is that they will grow up to view me as a relic of a bygone conservatism the great Progress has triumphed over.
But oddly, I felt somewhat reassured by the article mentioned earlier, “I’m gay and I want my kid to be gay.” At the end of the piece, Sally said that her daughter plays family with teddy bears, and the two mothers have to gently remind their daughter that she doesn’t have to have a mom and a dad (that there can be two dads!).
I read that paragraph, and was reminded that, indeed, there is a truth to the Church’s anthropology that is immediately apparent to even a small child raised in this bizarre modernist experiment.
I wrote my comment before seeing Matt’s. Just going on names, I’ll bet we were born within three years of each other, although the fact that he seems to be Canadian might skew that.
Matt, your comment conveys much of the same sentiments that I feel, down to the “incontinent and unchaste sinner”. I find it funny that we both picked up on the “gay agenda” statement of Fr. Stephen’s, and I wish that I had seen your second comment before posting mine, so that I could have removed that line.
In my haste to respond to the “state-imposed moral values” argument, I completely forgot that Fr. Stephen’s topic is sex and the moral imagination. I was reminded by recent comments how far I drifted from that. Yes, there is both a direct challenge to Orthodox teaching in this area and a widespread “no big deal attitude” attitude among students. Other than the few who were hired to teach specific subjects (classes with titles such as “Health” and “Sex Education”), pubic school teachers with Orthodox Christian beliefs and many others are helpless in counteracting the state’s approach. I should have been more careful in my comment. Forgive me.
Matth,
Ha Ha! I think I probably am out-dated and stodgy! I know that I’ve been in this conversation since the mid-70’s. I think thought that you’ve put your finger on the matter of “what’s afoot.” When I think of my conversations with the young, this issue is not wrapped so much in questions of anthropology as it is in civil rights. That narrative is very persuasive and has been quite successful. The venom and ugliness that often surrounded the topic (imprisonment, even chemical castration) cried out for some kind of justice. And whether we like it or not, the legal system also tends to reflect or be deeply enmeshed in the public perception of morality. Thus – if you stop the persecutions and grant some legal rights – some sort of moral benediction will automatically follow (in our culture).
And so the Church has the difficult task of teaching in the face of a public contradiction. There are, as noted, extremists who are arguing for “gender is a social construction” and similar Marxist-based notions. I blame the academy for this. But the young people I know are far removed from such radicalization.
That said, there has certainly been a global organized effort for change – and lots of unorganized efforts. It’s success, though, as you note, probably has to do with a sense of fairness and the civil rights narrative.
Gregory,
thanks for that well written article you cited, I was reminded of the self-contradictory words of someone here (someone whose life is unfortunately currently focused on aggressive gay rights promotion): “homosexuality is one’s very nature, male-female gender bifurcation is no more than your nurture” is one (of many) radical, marxist, “inverted” statements I have heard.
Not that he is averse to the (reverse), “choice rhetoric” if that furthers the same agenda – go figure…
Albert,
The thing is that the “no big deal attitude” from one Christian to another who’s in the thick of it can sometimes come across as what is called an ‘armchair-critic’ or a ‘backseat-driver’. There is however a proper manner to do this too – i.e.: to remind us that Christ has overcome the world… I hope that’s where the misunderstanding with Robert was.
Matth: you asked. Hope this makes sense and is not just more tedium.
Counterfeit money is a big problem because:
1. It makes people loose all confidence in money in general as either a store of value or a medium of exchange (the classical definition of money).**comment below
2. However, since it is cheaper than real money both in terms of effort to obtain it, cost of use, etc. It tends to become predominant because of both greed and sloth.
3. Sooner of later, unless the counterfeit money is identified and stopped, both governments and societies can fall. Don’t forget that the Germans had a department dedicated to the production and distribution of counterfeit Allied money as part of WWII. The German counterfeits recovered after the war were really good fakes(almost too good). They just lacked the distribution opportunities. The Allies had their own projects against Axis money too.
Hyper inflation is a government sponsored form of counterfeiting. All one has to do is look at the Weimar Republic to see the effect of bad money. A similar thing is going on with the 58 or so ‘genders’ that Facebook allows folks to choose. The more ‘genders’ there are the less they mean.
In the case of so-called homosexual marriage–it is a counterfeit, but not the first. The original counterfeit had this progression: Serial polygamy (divorce/remarriage); living in sin; shacking up; cohabitation; living together with my gf or bf, my “life partner” is…; hooking up. You note this in your comment. The Church has largely winked at these counterfeits at each step along the way.
That counterfeit fundamentally drove marriage from the marketplace of ideas and values and prepared the way for homosexual “marriage”.
IMO, the lack of resistance from the religious communities was founded upon the counterfeit ecclesiology and soteriology of much of Protestantism and certainly of the Deism that was our social faith. All of it iconoclastic. Orthodox did not have position to be heard even when we wanted to be. We are still crying in the wilderness.
The resurgence of the idea that marriage is simply a contract and nothing else was also a part of it. That allowed marriage to become solely a creature of the state combined with our own will and pleasure.
It has been going on a long time: the fruit of our passions and the machinations of the evil one. The foundational reality of marriage is shown in the amount of time it took to erode it and the fact that it is still quite alive and even sought after (although mostly as a blind man in a dark room without a guide dog or an cane.)
The people of the Church have done an abysmal job of understanding marriage in both how to live it and how to articulate its glorious mystery. As a result there are those who seek to drive it from the Church herself. (Perhaps the abomination of desolation standing in the Holy place.)
Now, I realize that my analysis is very linear (at least in its presentation), but is not that way in reality. It is all interlinked with our rebellion against God and our wanton quest of death in the guise of being like God–the ultimate counterfeit.
That is why fighting “culture wars” is pointless and a sure way to defeat as such wars are simply another counterfeit, i.e, counterfeit spiritual warfare. Just as the aggressive hatred of homosexuals is a counterfeit of waging war against sin. Such “wars” keep us entertained and distracted but in a constant state of fear.
But you are correct. We have to prophetically state the truth while understanding that our victory is not of this world.
The antidotes are simple and mostly ignored(at least by me): prayer, fasting, almsgiving, repentance/forgiveness, worship. All concrete acts of humility and love for our Creator and our fellow creatures. But those things seem so small, so insignificant, so ineffective and so immaterial, so utterly personal without consequence to anyone else.
They are however the source of authority for any prophetic statements we are called to make and the source of both the empathy, compassion and healing that is necessary to bear one another’s burdens in a healing way.
**Comment. The classical definition of money as a store of value and a medium of exchange is/has been replaced in our time. At best, money is looked upon as a medium of exchange and there is no more widely recognized store of value. Every thing is digital and traded in virtual reality. That leaves us open to constant manipulation. Everything you have in terms of “money” can either vanish in an instant or be made totally valueless by the whim of the neo-fascist world economy. I use the word fascist in its economic sense only as an alliance between favored corporations and an authoritarian state. (call it state capitalism if it makes you feel better). The other thing such an political economy needs is scapegoats; bread and circuses.
May God strengthen you in your new life in the Church. I am grateful for you.
Dino – I hope you are not referring to me when you mention someone who is involved in “aggressive gay rights promotion”.
Albert – to which misunderstanding are you referring?
Robert, Dino used that term, I didn’t. There is no misunderstning on my part.
Dino, I don’t see a connection between “back-seat driver’ and “no big deal attitude.” I used that phrase merely to described what I have observed.
An excellent article concerning what we face is by Anthony Esolen is here: http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=28-01-022-f
Robert,
I am certainly not referring to you but to someone in my workplace.
Albert,
I made the connection between the: it’s “not as big a deal as you imagine it to be” feel (which might produce a rather negative -as it did- : “what world do you live in?” comment from those who’s day to day experience would see that “no big deal attitude” as a ‘backseat driver’ comment) of Robert’s earlier comments and my suspected actual intent of Robert’s thinking perhaps (rather positively) being Christ’s admonition to us not to worry – He has already overcome the world…
Michael,
very well said.
In Kevin Allen´s special on Orthodoxy and Asceticism, he mentioned that once he worked as an EMT and to fight against having passions, as many men have, for other women, here was his cure. He image them as “dead bodies lying in a coffin”. It worked! This was a side comment he made on this podcast…it is excellent to hear.
http://www.ancientfaith.com/specials/acquiring_the_mind_of_the_church/orthodoxy_and_asceticism#transcript
This is one of the best podcasts I have heard. Blessings.
Dino/Albert,
My aversion to the shrill and attenuated fear mongering of the culture wars with the over-simplified constructions is in part based on Christ’s admonition that He has over come the world. That is true. I wouldn’t frame it as “hey, no big deal, carry on” or something along those lines. But I don’t buy into the purported “gay agenda”, the ridiculousness of which Matt attested.
Matt – I don’t seeing anything particularly alarming per se with the headlines of that BC document, but I haven’t read the content. Also, depending on the context it seems to me that a positive statement of equivalence does not necessarily constitute a moral judgment. For instance, it may be an acknowledgment of an occurrence or that equivalence is subject to degree or condition, without moral (dis)approval. So one could affirm that SS activity is equally a form of human sexual expression as is HS activity (leaving the moral, religious, social etc. question out of the discussion).
Could I take this moment to ask all to pray for the group of Christian women/children taken hostage by ISIS? Almighty God, hear their prayer, hear our prayer.
It has been six days since I posed my question. Now that the weeping is ended and the horrified outrage has ebbed, the following is as close to a reasoned response as I am capable.
Father Stephen (and other supporters of your position):
I am still reeling from your previous statement. To be honest, when I read it I felt like I had learned that my grandfather was the guy who put the gas into the chambers at Dachau. I was completely bewildered, horrified and physically nauseous.
Politics Masked as Science
Your statement that this is “politics masked as science” is exactly the same argument that white supremacists still make against interracial marriage. I know because I have heard it many times. It is the argument made by those either too stupid to acknowledge facts or too invested in a position to look at a matter objectively. In this case, the latter.
It is this same hateful doctrine that was responsible for laws that punished 49,000 human beings in the UK either with prison time or with chemical castration for the crime of being gay between 1885-1967. Explain to me how 49,000 people would make a “choice” to be gay at the expense of having to live in hiding and constant fear of imprisonment or chemical castration.
Forget the actual genetic data! This in and of itself should cause any reasonable person to sit up and take notice and consider that perhaps being gay is an innate condition.
And it is one that harms no one! Certainly no straight people are harmed by someone being gay.
There is no question that people are born gay. The puzzle is not whether “gay genes” exist in humans, but why they are so common (estimates from 5-15%). We know that gay men have fewer children on average, so one would think that these gene variants would disappear. Yet they do not.
Is Being Gay Natural?
To answer this question you must open your eyes and look at nature.
Is homosexuality found within the animal kingdom? Yes.
Is it found within primates? Yes.
Is it found within the other members of the classification of Five Great Apes”? YES.
Have there been gay humans since the beginning of recorded human history? YES.
If, therefore, homosexuality occurs in nature and has always been part of human society, the claim that it is “unnatural” is just too stupid for words.
The only way to do so is to redefine “natural” to mean “like me.” Such arrogance is simply breathtaking.
Dino said:
Your simile has no merit. You are making it about a choice. The proper simile is “If someone was born with no legs and they were able to “walk” using their hands and arms…” in which case I would say you are a fool to condemn such a person for not having legs just as much as you are a fool for condemning someone for naturally being attracted to people of the same gender.
In Spiritual Peril?
Explain to me how a man who genuinely loves another man (or a woman who loves another woman), has the same kind of loving relationship that straight couples have with each other, and who respects the people around him (or her) is in any way of being “spiritually inferior.”
You may as well say that anyone who engages in sexual encounters other than in the “missionary position” is spiritually inferior. The notion is idiotic in the extreme.
My personal proclivities are such that the idea of kissing a white girl would be like kissing my sister. To me, it’s weird and gross. Does that make me a degenerate? Is my soul in peril because I am attracted to women who have lots of melanin?
If your position was that I am in spiritual peril for this cause, my response would be “The finger for thee!” It’s none of your business who I love or how. The same is true for gays and lesbians. It’s none of your business.
You want to talk about spiritual peril? I would argue that anyone who builds and/or defends a doctrine that at its core hates other human beings simply because they are different is the one in true peril.
The Cause of Misery
Have you ever known someone who committed suicide because he was gay and could not change or take the shame?
Do you know how many tens of thousands of human beings in the US alone are bullied every day because they are gay?
Who is responsible for this bullying? Who is responsible for these deaths?
You are. Not “people like you.” You.
You do not see gay or lesbian people as normal human beings. They are different. They are somehow inferior. They need to be “fixed.”
You have taken human beings who were created in the image of god, who were created by god as they are and you have made yourself superior to them because they are different.
If there was a god who interacted with humans and who had even a modicum of decency, I am positive that that god would say, “How dare you?”
By judging these people, you are judging their creator.
Good luck with that.
I Repent
I have spent years trying to help ex-Christians and some atheists to see that the Orthodox are better than their Protestant counterparts. I am utterly ashamed that I have done so and I repent of this egregious error.
Until you posted this, I thought that the Orthodox were good people. I cannot tell you how utterly dismayed I am at the horrific way in which you and your religion view fellow human beings.
Couch it in whatever terms you want. Lie to yourselves and say that you are being loving or just. The truth is that you are promoting bigotry of the worst kind. It is utterly despicable.
You have no right to pontificate on “morality” so long as you hold this view. It is as immoral a view as anyone can adopt. You should not, for shame, dare to pray that these people will avoid hell when it is hell that you are bringing to them here and now.
I am ashamed of you all. I am sorry that I ever came to this forum.
TLO,
either you are not listening or you haven’t perhaps read Father’s subsequent (and those of some with long gay experience) commentors…
That “proper” simile you mention as “If someone was born with no legs and they were able to “walk” using their hands and arms…” describes something other than what you would like to make it describe: a person who is born able to reproduce etc. through lesbian or gay sexual practice. You are not making the sense you would like to make with that one.
TLO,
the ‘science’ is indeed quite fabricated by a political (pro gay) agenda and I fear you discard your opposition far easier than you accept those who inflate the figures in favour of what you profess. The straw man argument is used here both against believers, putting words and even actions were they never came from, as well as providing figures as scientific without them truly being that.
For example:
LeVay – a fervent homosexual advocate and researcher (he conducted the “gay brain” study in the ’90s) in his book, City of Friends, acknowledges that the 10% figure is a complete myth.
He even acknowledges that Kinsey reporting that 10 percent of men having had homosexual experiences –not the same as being born gay– for at least three years between the ages 16 and 55 – later seized on by gay rights activitists and taken that one in ten men are gay- is a total myth. He acknowledges that Kinsey stated that only 4 percent of the male population are homosexual throughout their lives.” (LeVay & Nonas, City of Friends, p.51) And Kinsey called himself a bisexual or pansexual.
TLO
Forgive me but your accusations of Father Stephen here BTW are beyond preposterous:
Where did you see this in Father’s words to you? :
TLO,
I understand what you are saying and I think you are wrong. And I think you are wrong, viz. persecution of homosexuals. But you think what you do and that is what it is. This conversation will likely be repeated (in varying versions) for some time to come. We will be vilified and blamed by a cultural consensus. Will we now be put in the camps ourselves, or does that come later?
TLO, don’t you understand that Christ did not come to make our lives here happy, but rather to raise us from the dead? I don’t get, really just do not understand, why people get bent out of shape over the teaching on homosexuality, and yet seem to have no problem with the teaching on monogamy, even though science is just as loud in stating that it’s not the natural tendency of humans. One seems to be obvious, though viewed as old-fashioned, while the other has become an open invitation to attack.
Human sexuality, in our fallen state, is seriously messed up. It is true for everyone, including me. Repentance and chastity are our only options.
(Now that I think about it, people would probably care a lot more about the teaching on monogamy if society castrated adulterers. That would be an abomination, just as it was when we castrated homosexuals, but it also wouldn’t change the fact that men are called by Christ to be chaste in marriage or celibate out of it.)
Thank you, Michael. I have a bit to consider.
I was preparing a somewhat lengthy reply to TLO and the issues he brought up, but after some sidetracking and reading other things I should simply ask:
How is what we are talking about here distinguishable from the position taken in this article, which seems to be saying something very similar or analogous about race and ethnicity as people are saying about sex and gender here?
If it’s not distinguishable, then how do we respect that without finding ourselves spiralling into the uglier tendencies that can be found elsewhere on that site (or in the comments to that article), attracting all sorts of vitriol from the mainstream and all sorts of wrong endorsements from unsavoury “race purists” that will all but drown out the gospel?
Fr. Stephen,
In regards to your question to TLO:
The answer is yes, sooner or later. And when that happens, the resulting persecution will be far worse than anything the Bolsheviks contemplated.
As for TLO’s outburst, I have seen this kind of blatant, dishonest emotional manipulation so many times, that I have pretty much given up trying to have “dialogues” with people on this subject. The simple truth is that people like TLO are lying, and they know that. Whenever they get called on their lies they “pitch” (and I do mean, deliberately pitch) a “hysterical reactive psychotic state” in order to elicit pity and to shock, harass, and intimidate their interlocutors into silence. I have seen these kinds of crude psychological manipulations so many times, that I have steeled my heart to them, a fact I am not terribly proud of.
These are the tactics which must be followed by those whose lives are based upon lies. That is also why these people will never, ever leave us alone. They cannot. They claim that our very existence is an “existential threat” to them. You know something? I agree with them. Our existence truly is a fundamental, intolerable, existential threat to them. Nothing we do or say can possibly change that fact. I repeat, yet again – what we say or do (or do not say, or do not do) has absolutely no bearing on this. We cannot “behave” our way out of this predicament. The bare fact that we exist at all is an intolerable provocation to them.
Why is that so? It is so, because the one thing lies cannot stand is truth. Truth destroys lies on contact. It destroys lies simply by existing. That is the reason the early Christian communities were hounded by raging mobs, even though they had done nothing to outwardly provoke them. When people whose lives are based upon lies come into contact with those whose lives are based (however imperfectly) upon truth, then the former has two choices – repent or kill the latter. “Live and let live” is simply not an option.
So, yes, we can all be expected to face fundamental decisions of conscience, and even persecution, before long. I am almost 60 years old, but I do not expect to escape this. This will happen sooner, rather than later. And people like TLO will squelch their consciences and convince themselves that they are “doing God a service” by killing us, exactly as Christ foretold.
And with that, I suspect that the time may have come for you, Father, to close off this thread. As others have already commented, the discussion does seem to be going around in circles now.
Come on TLO!
As one of the former gay men commenting on this blog I have to call you out.
Justifying homosexuality by citing it’s dubious occurrence among apes and other primates is really embarrassing. Even if I were a defender of homosexuality I’d still have to ask you to please sit down.
“Do you know how many tens of thousand of human beings in the US alone are being bullied every day because they are gay?” No, and neither do you. Where did you get that number anyway? From my experience I’d say there’s at least as large a number who feel “bullied” because they can’t get an increase in their credit limit at Barney’s!
You have spent “years” trying to help non-Orthodox see the desirability of Orthodoxy yet you didn’t know the church’s moral teachings human sexuality? Thankfully, my spiritual father warned by early on about the danger of talking to others about Orthodoxy if I didn’t actually know what I was talking about.
You’ve got a lot of cheek attempting to brow-beat Fr. Stephen! In fact you’ve got a lot of cheek coming on to this blog attempting to brow-beat most of us. You’ll have better luck at the U.N. or any other venue populated by low-information types like my former haunt, the Episcopal church.
“Church is intolerant in principle because she believes;
She is tolerant in practice because she loves.
The enemies of the church are tolerant in principle because they do not believe;
They are intolerant in practice because they do not love.”
If you’re Orthodox, you’ll understand that.
Matt,
Generally, I work at avoiding the topic, or at least in majoring in the topic. Orthodox Christianity is not, nor has it ever been racist. Frankly, racism is a legacy of certain versions of Protestantism. Orthodoxy is, and always has included every race under the sun and has no history of preventing interracial marriage at any time.
Nor does Orthodoxy have a history of persecuting homosexuals.
It is easy to mistake 19th century Whig politics (the ancestors of today’s liberals) for other Christians. But they worked very hard to “fix” society with many moralistic laws that were very late on the stage of human history. It is not Traditional Christianity that did these things – but science(!) that did these things. It was science that chemically castrated men – that’s not some Christian thing.
It was the same kind of science that produced eugenics, that today produces abortion and population control theory. It produced the Nazis and many other pseudo-scientific racist nonsense stuff.
The Orthodox Church has never followed such theories, because we’ve never used somebody’s so-called latest science to direct our lives. We follow Christ, the Scriptures and the Fathers and the proven lives of the saints.
TLO would do well to get his history straight.
TLO,
I can’t take you’re hysterics seriously. Sorry.
Father, Have we all left TLO beaten and wounded by the side of the road, while we passed on the opposite side?
to: TLO, I am sorry for the lack of compassion you have experienced here. It is obvious that your pain has gone unaddressed. I am sorry, please forgive me.
Father: Thank you for the reassurance. That article I had linked was not reflective of any Orthodox dogma that I knew, nor heard in any service, though I suppose it did seem to celebrate the “ethnic church” stereotype that Orthodoxy seems to suffer – and the logic of ontology versus subjugation to will seemed very much analogous, if ultimately a false or at least imperfect analogy given the two different kinds of things discussed.
(In the meantime, it occurs to me that Genesis 1 has many divisions, but for humanity it was only male and female and the “after his kind” language reserved for the plants and animals comes to an abrupt stop when we get to creation of humanity. I take comfort in Bob Jones’ “Is Segregation Scriptural?” to show just how utterly devoid the Scripture actually is for support for racial segregation, even to someone who actively wanted to find it.)
Helen: From the various comments from TLO I’ve read over the years and the ones leading up to this one, it seems to me more that, in this particular unfortunate episode, he has of his own volition crossed the street, stripped and beaten himself into a bloody mess, laid himself out on the street and demanded that we not come near him, all in the name of ideological protest. It is difficult to know in the best of times how to deal with someone in such a situation, but rebuking the act and telling him to get up, get dressed and act in a way that we do not all know is far beneath his intellectual calibre does not strike me as abandonment, nor necessarily lack of compassion.
TLO, if you actually read the comments from Fr. Freeman, Dino and others you will find:
>>>And it is one that harms no one! Certainly no straight people are harmed by someone being gay.
No one has asserted that “straight people are harmed by someone being gay.” Nor has Fr. Freeman or anyone else stated, or implied in any way, that a gay person or persons should suffer what you’ve described as happened to 49,000 people. In fact, I believe it safe to say, that everyone here would actively oppose such a thing happening if it were to arise today.
>>>if, therefore, homosexuality occurs in nature and has always been part of human society, the claim that it is “unnatural” is just too stupid for words.
Your definition of “nature” and the Church’s definition of “nature” are two very different things. I would personally counsel to not confuse genetics throughout the Fallen creation with God’s Will for humanity as evidenced in our original state in the Garden. See Fr. Watt’s post (part of it copied here) concerning this:
“Fallen.
We cannot look at the world around us and say “This is how God intended it.” Because humanity’s free will mucked up that perfect vision, and we fell. And creation fell. Reality itself fell. We can’t even cite natural law – it is fallen as well.
We can’t say “this is how God made me” – because we are most certainly not what God intended us to be. We are fallen.”
>>>”Spiritually Inferior”
No one has called homosexuals “spiritually inferior”. Orthodoxy recognizes that all people have sinned and all people enter God’s house as sinners. No one is “spiritually inferior”.
>>>The Cause of Misery
I will only say that no one is passing judgement on you (or, by default, God) and note that Orthodoxy sees humanity as a whole as suffering from sickness and in need of healing. Again, no one here sees homosexuals as “inferior” (a term you seem fixated on, at least in your post).
I think your post is a classic example of the linguistic disconnect that Father has mentioned, and many of us recognize, in his blog over time. You are accusing many people here of things that have not been said or implied because you do not understand the terminology of the Church. Instead you are redefining everything in the political-speak used by current society. I very much hope you will go back and reread the comments made by Father and the others here with a more open mind to the language they employ and the meaning of the words they use. Grace and Blessing, my friend.
Helen, I thought Fr. Stephen’s response was pretty well subdued after the vitriol and fire that came his way. He pretty much said he disagreed with TLO, and left it at that.
I guess I’m not quite understanding where this person’s ‘hurt’ has come from. It’s not evident in his postings; nothing that Fr. S has said in this post isn’t reflected in the Church, and in his own previous writings. “I’m sorry you’re disappointed?” is all I can come up with. Every other response seems pretty focused on rebutting some very serious things leveled against Fr. S and everyone else participating on this site.
I could say more, but I think it’s been said already.
“And people like TLO will squelch their consciences and convince themselves that they are “doing God a service” by killing us, exactly as Christ foretold.”
That’s quite a leap. Please stop the hysterics, the demonizing!
Someone disagrees with your position and they are ready to kill you?
Robert,
in the defence of Michael’s “leap”, I would remind all that it has been prophesied by a few of the Holy Fathers that one of the key reasons why future persecutions of the Church will surpass and even eclipse all past ones is their artfully veiled subtlety. Spiritual corrosion over a long time is generally tougher to resist as compared to a sudden threat that alerts one’s resistance.
Helen,
The conversation with TLO has gone on for a couple of years. It has been marked with patience, forbearance, kindness, understanding. His rage at this is not deserved. Some things are simply not able to be addressed.
I think we’ve said everything, covered the bases. I’m closing the comments on this thread. May God give grace and peace to us all.