"All Things Are Lawful For Me"
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
This painting by Sir Alma Tadema in 1892, in the blog article "Why Sexual Morality May be Far More Important than You Ever Thought" by Kirk Durston, illustrates the culture of courtship just over a century ago. Today, courtship has degenerated into having sex on the first or second date. I strongly encourage you -- no, I urge you -- to read Durston's article! He quotes from research done on 80 cultures over many centuries.
The article describes how the "sexual revolution" of the 1960s, about 60 years ago, began the process of displacing traditional Judeo-Christian morality with the "New Morality" that's nothing other than the old immorality. It explains that historically, cultures which change from strict chastity to complete sexual looseness also abandon belief in God and rational thinking within three generations, which in turn leads to the collapse of that culture. But the process in the USA actually began quite a bit earlier, in the 1930s, when certain aspects of Freudian psychology were mainstreamed into American society and culture by psychologist Wilhelm Reich: see the news headline "WE ARE BRINGING THEM THE PLAGUE" - THE ROLE OF FREUDISM IN THE TRANSFORMATION OF TRADITIONAL VALUES in today's Hosken-News.
Because this process actually began 90 years ago in the 1930s with the intellectuals and was popularized into "pop culture" with the Woodstock Festival, considering that one human generation is about 30 years, we are actually now already in the third generation. This would mean that we are presently on the cusp of the collapse of our culture: there's even talk of a coming "Second Civil War." One only needs to look at the political situation in which prostitution, adultery, and bribery are all being bandied about as if they were perfectly normal and acceptable. Various politicians and their families are [in]famous for saying or implying - "There's nothing wrong with it!" and "I did nothing wrong!" - showing that they don't understand the difference between morality and legality.
This is what the Apostle Paul meant when he wrote - "'All things are lawful for me,' but not all things are helpful. 'All things are lawful for me,' but I will not be dominated by anything. 'Foods for the belly, and the belly for foods,' but God will destroy both it and them. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body" (1 Corinthians 6:12-13). What is legal or lawful is not necessarily moral: laws against adultery and fornication were canceled because, as they said, "You can't put a policeman in every bedroom" (to enforce such laws). But such anti-social and instant-gratification behaviors are what parents should have been teaching their children to avoid. It's clear from this Bible text that St. Paul is not writing merely about food for the belly, but also about sexual morality and the lack thereof. It may be legal nowadays, but it's still wrong and immoral!
So we have one political clan being punished for bribery, because they tried to have another political clan's bribery investigated, while both sides openly commit adultery and fornication, saying - "There's nothing wrong with it!" We have some investigators into the crime of Planned Parenthood selling human baby organs for profit being sued by Planned Parenthood for millions of dollars because they exposed this heinous crime: see Jury finds Center for Medical Progress liable to Planned Parenthood for exposing baby body part trafficking. We have pro-abortion folks insisting on the "human right" to kill their unborn babies, depriving those babies of the most basic human right, the right to life: see Saving Human Rights from the Human Rights Movement.
We have become so morally confused that politicians and ordinary people like you and me have to debate whether a baby who is born alive during a botched abortion should be kept alive, or whether it's OK to put the newborn baby in a closet and simply let it die: see March for Life to Highlight Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act. How can anyone even think that killing our children is just fine if we simply don't want them anymore? The next on the chopping block will be the elderly and the disabled: it's not convenient to pay so much to keep them alive, so ~~~ Wait! No, that's not the next thing! It's already been happening for twenty years now! See: 'Passive Euthanasia' in Hospitals Is the Norm, Doctors Say.
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Clarence Thomas, Associate Justice on the United States Supreme Court, gave the speech "Faith and reason are mutually reinforcing" on October 3, 2019 for the dedication of a new chapel at Hillsdale College. In his speech he said:
"By constructing this Chapel, the College upholds the continued importance of its Christian roots, even as it respects the rights of each person to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience. Our country was founded on the view that a correct understanding of the nature of God and the human person is critical to preserving the liberty that we so enjoy. John Adams wrote, 'Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.' He recognized that the preservation of liberty is not guaranteed. Without the guardrails supplied by religious conviction, popular sovereignty can devolve into mob rule, unmoored from any conception of objective truth."
These are good and true words. Faith and reason are indeed mutually supporting. It is unreasonable and illogical to say - "There is no God" because it's an absolute statement to say there are no absolutes: thus it's a logical contradiction: there must be a God, however difficult it is for us finite beings to describe Him. But "to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience" requires a conscience that is properly formed and developed by one's parents and church. Parents cannot and must not leave their children's moral formation up to the schools or even up to the church, driving them to church, dropping them off, then driving back home to catch another hour of sleep or watch TV! Children learn by parents' example, not only by their words.
These days many people say - "That religion stuff is just a myth!" But St. Peter wrote - "For we did not follow cleverly devised fables, when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His [Christ's] majesty. For He received from God the Father honor and glory, when the voice came to Him from the Majestic Glory, 'This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.' This voice we heard come out of heaven when we were with Him in the holy mountain" (2 Peter 1:16-18).
Peter was referring to the Transfiguration, described in Luke 9:18-36. In the first part of this passage, Jesus told His disciples they must take up their cross and follow Him, then asked them who people say that He is, and "Who do YOU say that I am?" Peter made his famous confession: "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God!" But right after that, when Jesus said He must go up to Jerusalem, be arrested and crucified, Peter tried to stop Him from going there: "Not so, Lord!" Christ's reply was - "Get behind Me, Satan!" The mystery of the Incarnation is wrapped up in self-denial, and Jesus is the personification of self-control, not seeking instant gratification. Only this can lead to transfiguration, being transformed into His image and likeness:
"Now the Lord is the Spirit and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord, the Spirit" (2 Corinthians 3:17-18). This is true liberation!
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Christ is among us! He is and ever shall be!
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