Christian Anthropology, Part 02

Man as He was First Created, continued

Man was Created Body and Soul

And the LORD God formed man [of] the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. (Genesis 2:7)

Man is unique in all of creation in that he is compounded of matter and of soul. Man, by uniting himself the material and the immaterial, proves them not mutually exclusive. Man is superior to the animals, who lack the soul of man; and Man is superior (ontologically, if not morally) to the angels, who lack bodies. (Man is also superior to the angels on account of his unique destiny. While human beings are destined to become sons and daughters of God, angels are destined to remain the servants of God – and of God’s children.) Man is thus the apex of creation. (Christians are the true Humanists.)

To be composed of body and soul is another facet of being “in the image” of Christ, Who is both God and Man, indivisibly and without confusion. In mankind, creation is endowed with reason and comes to consciousness. In mankind, the creation has the possibility of offering itself to God. Man was created as the priest of creation, as the soul and mind and voice of the whole natural order.

We are therefore responsible for the world. We are the word, the logos, through which it bespeaks itself, and it depends solely on us whether it blasphemes or prays. Only through us can the cosmos, like the body that it prolongs, receive grace. For not only the soul, but the body of man is created in the image of God. “Together they were created in the image of God,” writes St. Gregory Palamas. ( Lossky, op. cit., p. 71.)

Fr. Alexander Schmemann emphasizes that man was created to be the priest of creation:

So the only natural (and not “supernatural”) reaction of man, to whom God gave this blessed and sanctified world, is to bless God in return, to thank Him, to see the world as God sees it and – in this act of gratitude and adoration – to know, name and possess the world. All rational, spiritual and other qualities of man, distinguish¬ing him from other creatures, have their focus and ultimate fulfillment in this capacity to bless God, to know, so to speak, the meaning of the thirst and hunger that constitutes his life. “Homo sapiens,” “home faber” … yes, but, first of all, “homo adorans.” The first, most basic definition of man is that he is the priest. He stands in the center of the world and unifies it in his act of blessing God, of both receiving the world from God and offering it to God – and by filling the world with this eucharist, he transforms his life, the one that he receives from the world, into life in God, into communion with Him. (Schmemann, Life of the World, p. 15.)

Body and soul are not opposed to one another, as though one were evil and the other good, or one were mortal and the other immortal. Neither of these is the case. The body is neither some tomb of the soul nor some evil prison of the soul. In fact, in biblical terminology, “flesh” and “soul” are sometimes even interchangeable. “All flesh” refers to the complete human being as in Genesis 6:12; or in the broader sense, to all living creatures, as in Psalm 136:25. “Every soul” or “living soul” means the same thing, as we read in Acts 2:43 or Romans 13:1. The terms are shorthand for the same, complete reality of body plus soul, both of which constitute Man, who was made for immortality, and yet failed to achieve it.

Nor is “flesh” anything bad in itself. After all, St. John writes that “The Word became flesh” (John 1:14) and Jesus bids us eat His flesh and drink His blood. (John 6:51-56) St. Luke proclaims that “All flesh shall see the salvation of God.” (Luke 3:6)

“Carnal” does not always denote something evil, either. St. Paul, requesting donations for the Jewish-Christian famine victims in Jerusalem, writes, “For if the Gentiles have been partakers of their spiritual things, their duty is also to minister to them in carnal things.” (Romans 15:27)

What is wrong is to live carnally; that is, to live according to either our bodies or our souls, for their demands are alike self-serving and therefore opposed to the Holy Spirit. Bodily pleasures are not evil in themselves, but to live for them, instead of living for Christ, is evil. Soulish pleasures (emotional security, intellectual delights and such) are also not evil in themselves, but living for them is as self-serving (as unloving and ungodlike) as to live for bodily sensations.

Note that evil here is the corruption of something good. Its existence depends upon there being something good for it to corrupt, just as a parasite depends upon there being a host from which it can suck its existence. This is why Orthodox theologians sometimes call evil “parasitic.” They mean evil is not something God created, but a corruption of His work. Evil has no being of its own, independently of good.

Man was not created perfect.

Strange as it may sound, the affirmation that man was not created perfect does not mean he was created imperfect! It means he was created a spiritual infant. As an infant, Adam was perfect, and innocent, too; but he had yet to acquire the perfections of mature adulthood. (If he had been perfect from the beginning, he could not have fallen into sin, for perfection is not corruptible.) Rather, our first parents were intended to develop and grow, to increase in wisdom and in favor with God and their fellow man, just as Christ did, in Whose Image they had been made. Adam and Eve walked and conversed with God as with a familiar Friend; but they did not behold His Essence, as some suppose. They had every earthly happiness, but spiritual joys – which come from participating in God’s own Life – lay mostly ahead of them. Life as spiritual beings had only begun, had yet to be learned.

God transferred him from the earth, out of which he had been made, into Paradise, giving him the means for advancement in order that, maturing and becoming perfect, and even being declared a god, he might thus ascend into heaven in possession of immortality. For man had been made a middle nature, neither wholly mortal nor altogether immortal but capable of either… St. Theophilus of Antioch, To Autolycus 2, 24. (Romanides 125))

Had man been created perfect from the beginning, then his goodness (or wickedness) would be a function of his nature and not of his will. It would be involuntary, that is, and thus morally meaningless. Romanides writes, “He was made needing to acquire perfection, not because he was made flawed in nature and morally deficient but because moral perfection is achieved only in total freedom.” (Romanides, op. cit., p. 126.)

Man was not created naturally immortal.

Again, this assertion, paradoxically, does not mean man was created mortal, either. Our Fathers tell us man was created for immortality, but without having it as a part of his nature. Immortality is not natural, but supernatural, a divine attribute. Not having the divine nature, Adam had no divine attributes such as immortality. Having been created out of nothing, he had no immortality in his own nature, either. God indeed breathed life into Adam, and that life was immortal, but it was also contingent. Being contingent meant the life Adam had was a communion in God’s Life, not yet his own. To secure it for himself, he would have had to grow into a mature spiritual man in a communion with God such as could never more be disrupted. Meanwhile, his life, although immortal, was borrowed, was derived from such nascent and on his part irresolute communion as he already had with God. There was no fountain of life within him; he had continuously to tap into God’s Well of Life.

St. Irenaeus says it is diabolical that man should ever suppose

that the incorruptibility which belongs to him is his own naturally, and by thus not holding the truth, should boast with empty superciliousness, as if he were naturally like to God. For he (satan) thus rendered him (man) more ungrateful towards his Creator, obscured the love which God had towards man, and blinded his mind not to perceive what is worthy of God, comparing himself with, and judging himself equal to, God. (St. Irenaeus, op. cit., 3, XX, 1.)

That man was not created immortal becomes an even more important doctrine in view of modern heterodoxies. If man had been created immortal, then nothing could have killed him – except, presumably, God alone. Such a view inescapably paints God as the as Original Murderer. Of course the heterodox immediately add that in killing man, God was entirely justified; indeed, they say (compounding the slander), His Justice required it. Christ, of course, teaches us the murderer of mankind is and always was satan, not God. (john 8:44)  St. Theophilus likewise teaches:

“If God had made him immortal from the beginning, He would have made him God. On the other hand, if He had made him mortal, God would seem to be the cause of his death. Rather, He made him neither immortal nor mortal…but capable of being either one in order that, should he incline toward things of immortality and keep the commandment of God, he would be rewarded by him with immortality and become god. If, however, he should turn to things of death by disobeying God, he would be the cause of death to himself For God made man free and sovereign. (St. Theophilus of Antioch, op. cit., 2, 27.)

to be continued...

Christian Anthropology, Part 01

Man as he was First Created

He (Christ) is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. And He is the head of the body, the church, Who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence. (Colossians 1:15-18  Thrones, dominions and principalities are ranks of angels.)

In the Image of God

Christian anthropology, like all things Christian, begins and ends with Christ, the Perfect Man. The first man, although he appeared before Christ chronologically, was made in the image of Christ (not the other way around), and the God-Man, in turn, is the image of God. Man was patterned after Christ and for Christ, because already from the beginning, Christ in His fathomless love intended to come among us as one of us and would need a mother to give Him flesh. Thus, the first and most important statement in Christian anthropology is that mankind is created in the Image and Likeness of God.

Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.' So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. (Gen 1: 26-27)

Man in the end is as unknowable as God is. A human person is not reducible to any concept or set of concepts. “…what lies at his core, by reason of his very structure, is a theological being which falls outside the scope of science.” (Nellas, Panayiotis, Deification in Christ, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, Crestwood, New York, 1987, p. 30. ) For this reason, the Fathers of the Church, although emphasizing the teaching that man is created in the Image of God, never systematized the doctrine. It meant different, though not conflicting, things to different Fathers and Orthodox writers, and still does.

An image is not truly an image if it does not possess all the characteristics of its pattern…It is characteristic of divinity to be incomprehensible; this must also be true of the image. If the image could be essentially understood while the original remained incomprehensible, the image would not be an image at all. But our spiritual dimension, which is precisely that wherein we are the image of our Creator, is beyond our ability to explain…by this mystery within us we bear the imprint of the incomprehensible godhead.  St. Gregory of Nyssa, On the Creation of Man, II, P.G. 44,155.)

Some Orthodox writers say it is not permissible for us to compare any human characteristics with divine attributes, period – much less to say these human traits are the Image of God. Granted, man has much that distinguishes him from animals, but none of these distinctions, such as freedom, creativity, and conscience, is yet the Image of God. The Image of God in us, they say, is nothing less than the Holy Spirit, together with the immortality He brings. For these writers, man by sinning lost the Holy Spirit Who was both man’s immortality and the Image of God in him. St. Irenaeus exemplifies this position.

For other Orthodox writers, the Image of God in us consists of “all that distinguishes man from the animals and makes him in the full sense a person – a moral agent capable of right and wrong, a spiritual subject endowed with inward freedom.” (Ware, Kallistos, The Orthodox Way, St. Vladimir’s Seminary press, Crestwood, New York 1990, p. 65.)

In any case, whether they constitute the Image of God or not, man was endowed with certain unique characteristics such as conscience, reason, and reflexive consciousness.

Reflexive consciousness is not only knowing, but knowing that we know; not only being, but knowing that we are.

Man was also made to have dominion over the Earth, to be both the king and the priest of creation, exercising wise stewardship over it and offering it, with thanksgiving, back to God as a holy gift. This is man’s vocation. The implication is that we are not to ravage and plunder the earth. To the contrary, Man is also meant to be a co-creator with God, that is, to shape this world creatively, constructively, together with God.

The first, the basic definition of man is that he is the priest. He stands in the center of the world and unifies it in his act of blessing God, of both receiving the world from God and offering it to God—and by filling the world with this eucharist [thanksgiving], he transforms his life, the one he receives from the world, into life in God, into communion with Him. (Schmemann, Fr. Alexander, For the Life of the World, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, Crestwood, New York, 1995, p. 15.)

Man was created with Freedom. By freedom, we man both “yes/no” or "either/or" freedom and creative freedom, self-determination. God miraculously “made room” in His creation for other free agents than Himself. By His very will, He allows for the existence of other wills genuinely outside of Himself and able both to will and to do even things opposed to God. Both “either/or” and creative freedom are essential for the attainment of Man’s vocation. Without freedom, we cannot give true love. Without freedom, we are not human, but only smart animals. Without freedom, there is no true morality – or immorality. Without freedom, we cannot be co-creators with God. Furthermore, if men (and angels) have no free will, then they are not responsible for the evil in this world: God is.

Why, one may ask, did God create man free and responsible? Precisely because He wanted to call him to a supreme vocation: deification; that is to say, to become by grace, in a movement boundless as God, what which God is by His nature. And this call demands a free response; God wishes that this movement be a movement of love. Union without love would be automatic, and love implies freedom, the possibility of choice and refusal. (Lossky, Vladimir, Orthodox Theology:  An Introduction (Crestwood, New York, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001, pp. 71-72.)

Whether or not being “in the Image” means any of these things, for every Orthodox theologian, it is certain that being created in the Image of God means specifically being created in the Image of the Holy Trinity. As the Three Persons of the Trinity all possess one and the same divine nature, so we humans all possess one and the same human nature, although each of us is a unique example of it. (Human beings, however, divide human nature among them, each being so to speak a tiny piece of it, whereas each Person of the Holy Trinity is the whole Divine Nature, not a piece of it.  In other words, there are not three gods.)

...to be continued

Cars that Spy on You?

h/t John, at Ad Orientem

Your i-Pads and cell Phones and computers already do.  Your library does, if requested, and so does your doctor.  (Read that "Privacy Statement"!)  Traffic cams already do.  Some televisions already do.  Some cars already do.  But all cars, after 2015?  Read about it here.

A well-Loved Hymn

I know it's very much the wrong season, but I've finally found The Hymn of Kassiani in the version I know and therefore love the best and have been eager for so long to share with you. Written by Nun Kassiani twelve centuries ago, it has been an Orthodox favorite ever since. This setting is by Mantzaros; he was from Corfu, which has a rich and hauntingly beautiful musical tradition. You can read more about this hymn here. (I have to say our choir sings it even better, but this rendition is quite good.)

O Lord, a woman of many sins, perceiving your divinity, assumes the rank of a Myrrh-bearer and in deep mourning brings before you fragrant oil in anticipation of your burial; crying: "Woe to me! What night falls on me, what dark and moonless madness of wild-desire, this lust for sin. Take my fountain of tears You who gather the clouds from the ocean’s water. Bend down to me, to the sighing of my heart, You who bend down the heavens in your unutterable condescension. I will wash your immaculate feet with kisses and wipe them dry with the locks of my hair; those very feet whose sound Eve heard at the dusk in Paradise and hid herself in terror. Who shall count the multitude of my sins or the depth of your judgment, Saviour of my soul? Do not ignore your handmaiden, You whose mercy is endless".

A Short Sermon so Beautiful it Boggles the Mind

I can't even excerpt it, because the best of it comes after the first few paragraphs.  But do yourself a big favor; give your soul a real treat and read it here.

The rest of the blog is fine reading, too.

Homosexuality, Part 2 of 2: The Christian Stance

As we saw by dozens of studies cited in Part 1, the homosexual lifestyle is not healthy; in fact, it is very dangerous to your health.

It is not happy for the majority of people in it, either, as evidenced by the disproportionately high rates of depression, anxiety, substance abuse, suicide.  In one UK study, only 30% of gays rated themselves as fairly or very happy. (To be fair, only 40% of straights rated themselves as fairly or very happy. This world seems a generally unhappy place.)

The homosexual lifestyle is not natural, if "natural" has anything to do with genes. It is not genetically caused, even though genes do have some influence. Furthermore, the process of natural selection is obviously working overtime de-selecting homosexuality.

And homosexual activity is not normal, as a mere glimpse at human anatomy argues more eloquently than any words.

What should be the Christian response?

Christians are to be concerned above all with persons. The Church exists specifically to bring persons into a deifying relationship with Christ that will culminate in glorious, everlasting life and light and love. Whatever is not healthy, not conducive to happiness, not natural, or not normal is incompatible with this goal.

It ought to be obvious that homosexuals are far from the only ones who suffer from these things; all of us have things about us that are unhealthy, unhappy, unnatural, abnormal, and yes, pathological; and all of us are called to struggle against them, to grow out of them, to do everything we can to co-operate with God as He liberates us from them. As a matter of fact, if we consider just sexual sin alone, it’s perhaps not so easy to find anyone who has never fallen into any form of it.

We’re all in this together; as Orthowiki points out, persons with homosexuality are not considered as somehow “having lower value in the eyes of God”.  They are as precious as everyone else, as beloved as everyone else, bear the Image of God the same as everyone else. The Church does not believe God has given a person same-sex attraction, whether as a gift or as a punishment. God didn’t do it! Homosexuality is neither a curse nor a form of insanity. It isn’t even anybody’s identity, for people are much more than their mere sexual orientation; a Christian’s identity is Christ. No, orientation to the same sex is just a maladaptive adjustment to a deep inner wound.

In Orthodox Christian spirituality, a big deal is made of the “passions,” and a passion is simply an emotion or drive when it is disordered. Anger, for example, has proper uses and wrong uses. A few days ago, my daughter-in-law, a schoolteacher whom I greatly admire, wrote on FB about the death of a student, “Makes me angry that I even just had to write the sentence, "began his battle with cancer before he started 7th grade".” This is a beautiful illustration of anger as it ought to be. It’s when we turn anger upon one another that it becomes warped, becomes a "passion". Fear is another example; it can be good and useful if, for example, it keeps us from harm; but it is a passion when it gnaws at us day and night.  Homosexual orientation is among the passions.

A major consideration about our passions is that every time we capitulate to them, the wound in us that they express is carved deeper. The passion is reinforced. The hurt to our sense of self-worth, to our character, to our soul, even to our bodies, is deep. We therefore do not seek to embrace these encumbrances, but to set them aside; we do not seek to hallow these infirmities, but to heal them.

And yes, healing there is! Real help is available both from reputable professionals and from the wisdom of the Holy Spirit in the Orthodox Christian Church. As for secular therapists, you have to be careful not to fall into the wrong hands. You probably don’t want “aversive therapy”, for example, in which you are given homosexual porn and then a little electric shock when your body responds to it. But for those who want it, enlightened psychotherapy is out there and it consists of steps from which anyone and everyone might benefit.

As for spiritual therapy, Fr. Thomas Hopko puts it well:
 

Like all temptations, passions and sins, including those deeply, and oftentimes seemingly indelibly embedded in our nature by our sorrowful inheritance, homosexual orientation can be cured and homosexual actions can cease. With God all things are possible. When homosexual Christians are willing to struggle, and when they receive patient, compassionate and authentically loving assistance from their families and friends - each of whom is struggling with his or her own temptations and sins; for no one is without this struggle in one form or another, and no one is without sin but God - the Lord guarantees victory in ways known to Himself. The victory, however, belongs only to the courageous souls who acknowledge their condition, face their resentments, express their angers, confess their sins, forgive their offenders (who always include their parents and members of their households), and reach out for help with the genuine desire to be healed. Jesus himself promises that the saintly heroes who "persevere to the end" along this "hard way which leads to life" will surely "be saved." (Matt. 7:13; 24:13)

There is no reason a person with homosexuality cannot become not only an Orthodox Christian but even a saint.

The catch, though, the part that may seem so difficult, is repentance. All of us need to approach Christ with repentance. But wait, wait!  Repentance is not what you probably think it is, if you grew up in the West. It has nothing to do with wallowing in guilt and remorse, or punishing ourselves, or with any other morbid thing. Repentance has to do with turning toward newness and hope and infinite, fathomless Love. And repentance turns out to be not nearly as difficult as continuing without it!  Repentance is laying down our burdens and taking up the Cross, a far, far lighter burden, and one that guides us home. Repentance is the way, and the only way, to meet God face-to-face, as it were. We know God is; everyone knows this in his deepest heart. We’ve heard of God. But the only way actually to encounter Him, firsthand, is repentance. We cannot experience His measureless tenderness toward us without acknowledging how much we need it. We are already brought into the forecourts of heaven when we are repenting, meaning we are already tasting its incomprehensible sweetness and joy; this is why we are taught that every Christian needs repentance, every moment of every day. Listen to what my friend Catherine has written about repentance:

I don’t measure up – this is undeniable – but why should I let this bring hopeless despair or utter coldness of heart? Why do I think I should earn Christ’s love? Don’t I realize that this is impossible? In this moment of realizing how very far away I am from Christ – right before the despair (in myself) and cool feelings of helplessness – lies the possibility for repentance, but only if I take it.

Through their recorded lives, we see that all these saints known especially for their repentance had these moments – and usually in extreme degrees. Feeling the utter weight of the truth (that they were very far from God) they acknowledged this fact and fell down beneath the weight of it. But at the very same moment, God permeates them (and us if we want it) with Himself, and overcomes this impossible divide. The harlot, so far away just moments before, accepts this reality and because of it leaps towards Christ: “A harlot knowing you, the Son of the Virgin, to be God, imploring you with weeping, for she had done things worthy of tears, said, ‘Loose my debt, as I unloose my hair; love one who loves, though justly hated, and along with tax-collectors I shall proclaim you, O Benefactor, who loves mankind’” (Holy Wednesday). To feel the weight of our nothingness before God, but then to cry out to Him – with hope and belief – because that’s what He’s told us to do! That’s what we see his Holy Ones do! And from this the distance is overcome, and we are raised high, “But when you are invited, go and sit in the lowest place, so that when your host comes he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher’” (Luke 14, 10).

It seems to me that the true weight of this word ‘repentance’ comes not from anything crushing, or overwhelming. St. Mary of Egypt tells us: “Having got as far as the doors which I could not reach before — as if the same force which had hindered me cleared the way for me — I now entered without difficulty and found myself within the holy place. And so it was I saw the life-giving Cross. I saw too the Mysteries of God and how the Lord accepts repentance." Thus, repentance for her (and for us) was a key – an entrance into something otherwise closed. The true weight of this word ‘repentance’ lies in its incomprehensible power – and from this the demons tremble. By it, we are able to call down the divine; we empty ourselves but only to be filled. And in this – we are told – lies incredible sweetness. Have we surmounted our sins, fixed our problems, before this moment? Absolutely not! It seems to me, there’s no more powerful, dynamic, way of approaching God than this. It is not about being “good” or “bad” – of course we must strive to acquire the virtues – but it’s about the state of the heart. Let us become good! But let us first have repentance! And let us keep this repentance! “I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance” (Luke 15, 7)

 Christ offers, to all of us, straight or gay, not ease but inner peace surpassing understanding; not false comfort but challenge worthy of heroes; not flattery, but true love; not pleasure, but deep and abiding joy; not misery but endless mercy; not fun, but wholeness and heaven. May God grant us all also the courage to lay hold of these marvelous gifts!

Homosexuality, Part 1 of 2: Just the Facts

Sexually Transmitted Diseases  You knew about HIV/AIDS, of course, but homosexuals and lesbians are also more at risk than hererosexuals for all sorts of STDs, not only the usual (Gonorrhea, Chlamydia, Syphilis, etc.), but also for some for which there is no cure: Hepatitus A, B, or C, and for men, anal Human Papilloma Virus. In the case of Hepatitus C, there not only is no cure, but also no vaccine. For lesbians, “Bacterial vaginosis, cerebral vascular disease, polycystic ovaries, and androgehypernism were higher in lesbians than heterosexual women.” (From several web sites, including here.)

Substance Abuse  Substance abuse is much higher among homosexuals and lesbians than in the general population. In one study, fifty percent of gays admit to illicit drug use. 

One report tells us, “Recent studies seem to support the notion that gay men use tobacco at much higher rates than straight men, reaching nearly 50 percent in several studies. Tobacco-related health problems include lung disease and lung cancer, heart disease, high blood pressure, and a whole host of other serious problems.” The CDC says, “Current evidence suggests that gay and bisexual men are more likely to smoke (33.2%) than men in the general population (21.3%), and lesbians are more likely to smoke (25%) than heterosexual women (15%). 

Both homosexual men and lesbians also tend to drink more than straight men and women. Drinking too much is also a risk factor, in all women, for osteoporosis.

Cancers  Homosexual men appear to have higher rates of prostate, testicular, and colon cancer. 

Lesbians have “the richest concentration of risk factors for breast cancer than any subset of women in the world.”  Two of these factors are thought to be not having babies and not nursing babies. 

Lesbians also have higher rates of gynecologic cancers than straight women. 

Mental Health Issues

Among homosexual men, there is a much higher rate of anorexia and bulimia than among straight men; and among both men and women there is an even higher rate of obesity than in the general population. Obesity is implicated in a host of other ailments like diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, and breast cancer

Gays of both sexes show a much higher than usual rate of depression and anxiety. This is often blamed upon non-acceptance by “homophobes”, but the correlation between sexual orientation and mental health remains strong even in societies where homosexuality is well-accepted, such as the Netherlands. 

The rate of suicides (successful) among gay men in partnerships is eight times that of heterosexual men. Lesbian women in partnerships are 65% more likely to kill themselves than straight women.

Molestation and violence have been "found to be disproportionately higher in the homosexual subgroup.” 

The "Born that Way" Theory   Same sex attraction sometimes feels, subjectively, as though it had been present in the person from birth, but in fact, although our genes are involved in some way in every single thing about us, there is no credible evidence that they play anything but a minor role in homosexuality. Here is a list of more than dozen studies refuting the “born that way” theory.  

***

Where, one may ask, did I find all this material? On some hateful, bigoted website? No.  Some details are from a site considered controversial because it also offers psychotherapy for unwanted homosexuality.  But much of this material comes from the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association.  You can also find all of these topics dealt with by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, here.  The Food and Drug Administration also discusses some of these in its explanation of why it doesn't want men who have sex with other men to donate blood; read it here. 

These are simply facts.

In a forthcoming post, I will discuss some conclusions and what a Christian stance toward homosexuality ought to be.

Under Attack?

It is said that God allows the demons to attack us for five reasons. The first is that, through being attacked and fighting back, we should learn to distinguish virtue from sin. The second is that having acquired virtue by struggle and labor we should keep it firm and unalterable. The third, that progressing in virtue we should not think highly of ourselves but learn humility. The fourth, that having experienced in practice the wickedness of sin we should hate it with perfect hatred. Finally, the fifth and most important is that having been freed from the passions we should not forget our weakness and the strength of Him that helped us.

- From our dear friend, the divine Elias, in England

Updates on Hospitalized Friends

CHRIS was discharged from the hospital at the unlikely hour of 9 last night, and is happy to be home with her dogs and cats. Her wild animal nursery will soon be full again, unless, as I hope, she decides to cut back a little. The staff did NOT manage to get her heart back into rhythm. It is too weak. The suspicion is that it was damaged during her chemo treatments a few years ago. At that time, she went into the hospital because of feeling badly in the abdomen. They opened her up and found a massive tumor - benign! But then, while they were there, they also discovered a very, very tiny tumor that would otherwise never have been found until much later. So they removed both tumors and put her on chemo, and they think her heart has probably been at least slightly arrhythmic since about then. She is on various meds for blood pressure and blood thinning and will still need prayers.

DAVID opened his eyes Tuesday and now it feels like he is back with us. It was a day of great rejoicing. He has had a tracheostomy, a procedure that makes a hole in his throat. For hooking him up to the ventilator, althoug he is now breathing entirely on his own. He also has an opening into the stomach, so the nutrition can be put directly there. All this frees up his mouth, although he still cannot talk because of the hole in his throat; all the air goes out there instead of up to his larynx.

He can see us and he can now respond to us by shaking or nodding his head. We made an alphabet chart, thinking he could spell out things for us by pointing to the appropriate letters. Then the nurses brought us a "communications board" and it's great. The patient points to whatever part of the body he wants to discuss, and then points to adjectives like, "itches", "burns", "hurts", and so forth. There is also a list of things he may want. Well, it turns out to be more complicated than that because he can't point accurately yet. So we have to point for him and he stops us with a hand signal when we're pointing at the right thing.

What he pointed to was the left leg and the word, "numb". He has figured out that the left side of his body isn't working, and that is what was most on his mind when we last saw him. Well, of course. The nurse picked up his left leg and flexed it a few times. When she asked, "Is that better?" he nodded. !!! Implication, of course, is he can feel it, otherwise he wouldn't know if it were better or not. But we're getting mixed messages in that regard. The nurse said, "You'll be getting physical therapy for your arm and hand and leg." Perfect reply.

JOHN has now been home 9 days, having been either hospitalized or in rehab since January 12. Haven't heard from him since day two. He declined to join Nick and Sharyn and us for supper at Chick-fil-a two nights ago. We will keep trying.

Thanks again for remembering these dear people in your prayers.

One of my Favorite Settings for the Lord's Prayer...

...my other favorite rendition of the Lord's Prayer, although I don't care for the setting, is this one, which I've posted before. This little girl even knows when to pause for the little organ interlude and when to raise her arm dramatically. :-)

For You, Weekend Fisher

... a propos of one of your comments to one of your posts...

The RAsburry Patch: Conception to Birth - Visualized

Thanks to Pastor Randy Asburry for this marvelous video! As he points out, "It certainly brings out the depth and gravitas of Psalm 139:14: "I praise you, [O LORD,] for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well."




"You formed my inward parts; You knitted me together in my mother's womb."
(Psalm 139:13)

My All-Time Favorite Setting of the Cherubimic Hymn

Bortniansky, Cherubimi # 7


I think it is literally breath-takingly beautiful, sublime.

Forget the annoying and inaccurate English captions, though.  A better translation of the words is below.

Let us who mystically represent the Cherubim,

and who sing the hymn of "Holy, Holy, Holy"

to the life-creating Trinity,

now lay aside all earthly cares,

that we may receive the King of All,

Who comes invisibly upborne by the angelic hosts,

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.

A Beautiful Hymn for the Paschal Season

h/t Deb

This is an example of Russian Orthodox music.

The Angel cried to the Lady full of grace,

“Rejoice, rejoice, most pure Virgin.

Again I say, ‘Rejoice!’

Your Son is risen from His three days in the tomb.

With Himself He has raised all the dead.

Rejoice, rejoice O ye people!”

Shine, shine, shine, O new Jerusalem!

The glory of the Lord has shone on you.

Exult, exult and be glad, O Zion!

Be radiant, O pure Theotokos, in the resurrection of your Son!

The Downside of Cohabitation

By MEG JAY
Published: April 14, 2012 in the New York Times
h/t Rev. Christopher D. Hall

AT 32, one of my clients (I’ll call her Jennifer) had a lavish wine-country wedding. By then, Jennifer and her boyfriend had lived together for more than four years. The event was attended by the couple’s friends, families and two dogs.

When Jennifer started therapy with me less than a year later, she was looking for a divorce lawyer. “I spent more time planning my wedding than I spent happily married,” she sobbed. Most disheartening to Jennifer was that she’d tried to do everything right. “My parents got married young so, of course, they got divorced. We lived together! How did this happen?”  

Cohabitation in the United States has increased by more than 1,500 percent in the past half century. In 1960, about 450,000 unmarried couples lived together. Now the number is more than 7.5 million. The majority of young adults in their 20s will live with a romantic partner at least once, and more than half of all marriages will be preceded by cohabitation. This shift has been attributed to the sexual revolution and the availability of birth control, and in our current economy, sharing the bills makes cohabiting appealing. But when you talk to people in their 20s, you also hear about something else: cohabitation as prophylaxis.

In a nationwide survey conducted in 2001 by the National Marriage Project, then at Rutgers and now at the University of Virginia, nearly half of 20-somethings agreed with the statement, “You would only marry someone if he or she agreed to live together with you first, so that you could find out whether you really get along.” About two-thirds said they believed that moving in together before marriage was a good way to avoid divorce.

But that belief is contradicted by experience. Couples who cohabit before marriage (and especially before an engagement or an otherwise clear commitment) tend to be less satisfied with their marriages — and more likely to divorce — than couples who do not. These negative outcomes are called the cohabitation effect.

Researchers originally attributed the cohabitation effect to selection, or the idea that cohabitors were less conventional about marriage and thus more open to divorce. As cohabitation has become a norm, however, studies have shown that the effect is not entirely explained by individual characteristics like religion, education or politics. Research suggests that at least some of the risks may lie in cohabitation itself.

READ THE REST HERE.