Love is life-giving. Lust is self-centered.

Right decisions can only be made when right and wrong are clear. This is one reason why the early Fathers were crystal clear about the evil of abortion and other moral questions.

Human affairs however, can be messy and fraught with difficulty where the truth sometimes is hard to discern — which is not the same thing as saying that truth is not discernable. When leaders are not clear about foundational questions however, the truth is much harder to find, and the difficulty leads some to conclude that truth is subjectively applied since no enduring standards really exist. It leads to deep moral confusion, which is what our culture presently faces.

You tell your friend that policy is never made from the hard cases. There could conceivably be cases where an abortion is necessary, but if we are clear that a human life is ending because of it, we avoid the subjective morass that lead to crimes like the attempted abortion of Gianna above.

As both Bartholomew and his predecessor, Athenagoras, have stated: if a man and a woman truly love one another, I have no business in their bedroom!

Indeed, if a man and a woman truly love one another they would not sin. What do you want for the person you love? Eternal salvation! Sin leads to death – eternal death, a state of hopelessness, restlessness and constant torment. When our lives are filled with darkness because of sin we are experiencing, tasting eternal death.

God’s standards of right and wrong do not change from age to age. If a person does not speak with unmistakable clarity about right and wrong, he spreads satanic lies. Satanic lies spread faster than the truth, because the sinful heart is more receptive to them. The worse scenario is to have a misleading hierarchy. I am contemplating this kind of questions: are they concerned with the welfare or the salvation of the people?

Our Lord always did good, He healed the sick and delivered people from their oppression but still the Pharisees hated Him. They hated Him because they were there to make money and for name and fame. “No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other.”

Fr. Hans, it gets muddy down-steam however as nuance and pastoral concerns are brought into play even from priests who are quite forthright and direct on the evil of abortion.

Such is even more the case amongst the laity. We largely seem to agree to mostly ignore the issues at the parish level so as to be at ‘peace’ with one another.

It is one thing to be courageous in opposing one’s enemies, even one’s hierarchs, but what of the genuine friend who might hold such views?

We came to Orthodoxy because Orthodoxy stands for straight/right truth/teaching. I pray, that every Orthodox Christian reminds first, themsleves, through repentance, and secondly any priest or bishop who does not uphold high biblical, moral and ethical teachings regarding sexuality, chastity, abortion, and marriage. Our heritage is John Chrysostom and others like him, who spoke clear radiant truth to a dying and deceptive culture of death in which they lived. We must teach the wholeness, and fullness of the faith, the truth regarding sexuality to ourselves and our children. Of what use is an ‘orthodox’ faith that cowers and panhandles to the social, political and cultural pundits and rock stars of our age. We are called to theosis not popularity.

We are to be salt and light in the world. Salt stings and light exposes darkness. May our Patriachs, Bishops, priests, and parents clearly teach the Sacred Tradition, and the Orthodox faith – and never compromise.

See, I have set before you this day life and good, death and evil. Deut. 30.15

I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live… Deut. 30.19

And to this people you shall say: `Thus says the LORD: Behold, I set before you the way of life and the way of death. Jer. 21.8

To name a few.

Our hierarchs are too silent, even the vociferous ones, about this abomination (and that is what it is) occurring in the United States, let alone Greece, Russia, etc.

Bishops of the Living God, stop calling good evil and evil good, before the judgment of God consumes us all. Speak rightly, and having nothing to do with those who coddle murderers of infants. Reject the false ways of the pagans who sacrifice their own children to idols.

God puts before us

the way of Life and the way of Death, and there is a very great difference between the two. Didache 1.1

We really must require our hierarchs to know, teach and exemplify the Orthodox Christian moral tradition, or send them packing as heretics.

or moral cowards.

There, I said it.