Christianity

What Are We For?

April 23, 2009April 24, 2009 by editor-main

BreakPoint | Rev. Robert Lynn | Mar 27, 2009

Our life together in Christ isn’t simply about deciding what we’re against, what we won’t do and what we won’t allow. It’s also about deciding what we’re for.

Please don’t misunderstand. The Bible is against many things. Why? Because God created men and women in his image to live with Him and one another in a way that gives rise to human flourishing. God isn’t against things simply to prove He’s big enough to make rules and powerful enough to enforce them. He’s against the things that undermine or destroy the well-being of those who bear His image. As someone once said, if you live against the grain of the universe, you’re sure to get splinters. The Ten Commandments, for example, teach us how to live with the grain of the universe so that we might experience the fullness of what it means to be truly human. God is against certain things because He is for other things. [Read more…]

The Scandal: Jesus Hangs on the Cross to Forgive Us of Sin

April 15, 2009April 15, 2009 by Orthodox Editors

OrthodoxyToday.org | Fr. George Morelli | Mar 28, 2009

Is there any doubt that the Cross of Jesus Christ is a scandal, a shame and embarrassment to anyone who chooses not to respond to God’s grace? Look at Jesus from a Jewish perspective in the time of Christ. They were awaiting a messiah, the anointed one of God — a deliverer who would reign in glory with the power and adornment of a king.

But who was Jesus? He was the son of a carpenter who came from a place of no stature or notice — “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” (Jn. 1:46). He was an itinerant, poor preacher and would be condemned as a criminal, scourged, buffeted, spat upon and be crucified in total ignominy. [Read more…]

Pope: We Have Drifted into a Desert of Godlessness

April 11, 2009April 11, 2009 by Orthodox Editors

Obama Bows Down to Saudi King

Daily Mail | Apr. 11, 2009

Pope Benedict XVI last night attacked the rise of aggressive secularism in Western societies, warning them that they risked drifting into a ‘desert of godlessness’.

He used his Good Friday meditations to compare deliberate attempts to remove religion from public life to the mockery of Jesus Christ by the mob as he was led out to be crucified. [Read more…]

America’s Faltering Faith

April 7, 2009April 7, 2009 by Orthodox Editors

Center for a Just Society | Ken Connor | Mar. 20, 2009

Americans appear to be losing faith in God and in our cultural institutions. Is the loss of confidence in one related to a loss of confidence in the other? The answer is unequivocally yes.

How we view God inevitably determines how we view our fellow man. And how we view our fellow man, in turn, determines how we treat him. Created in God’s image or creature of chance? The answer makes a difference because what we believe determines how we behave. [Read more…]

New Broadway Play About Hero Who Is Religious!

April 6, 2009 by Orthodox Editors

Townhall | Dennis Prager | Mar. 31, 2009

It is rare to see a play on Broadway that is preoccupied with goodness. It is even more rare to see Broadway play extol the goodness of a religious person. When was the last Broadway show about a Christian hero? In this upside-down age that is hypersensitive to any criticism, no matter how fair, of any aspect of Islam but which regularly depicts many American Christians as buffoons and quasi-fascists, one can only hope that this play has a long run. Likewise, in an age when art increasingly celebrates the ugly and the bad, one can only hope that a million young people see a play that celebrates the goodness that God-based morality can produce. [Read more…]

Prayer is a Conversation of Man with God

March 31, 2009November 15, 2018 by Orthodox Editors

Prayer is a conversation of man with God. He who prays with a broken and humbled spirit is filled with divine gifts and blessings — that is, with joy, peace, comfort, illumination and consolation — and he, too, becomes blessed. Prayer is the double-edged sword that slays despair, saves from danger, assuages grief, and so on. Prayer is a preventive medicine for all diseases of soul and body. — Elder Ephraim of Mt. Athos

One Word of Truth Outweighs the Whole World

March 30, 2009January 17, 2013 by Orthodox Editors

Alexander Solzhenitsyn Word of Truth OrthodoxyToday.org | Fr. Johannes L. Jacobse | Mar. 28, 2009

When Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn gave his Nobel Lecture in 1970, he quoted this Russian proverb: “One word of truth outweighs the whole world.”

We know Solzhenitsyn’s story. In WWII Solzhenitsyn was a Soviet Army officer who was arrested and sentenced to eight years in the Gulags under Stalin. In prison Christ captures him. The encounter changes him, so much so that he clandestinely wrote the three volume “Gulag Archipelago” that laid bare the moral bankruptcy of Marxism. His work caused the collapse of the Marxist establishment in Western Europe and tilled the intellectual ground that led to the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union. [Read more…]

Taking on Goliath

March 30, 2009March 30, 2009 by Orthodox Editors

InsideCatholic.com | Deal W. Hudson | March 25, 2009

If you think the pro-life movement has run out of energy and new ideas, you should meet Lila Rose. You may not know her name, but you very likely have seen the media coverage of her various sting operations at Planned Parenthood clinics around the country.

Rose is 20 years old, but she is already entering her fourth year of covert operation, as it were, exposing the underhanded — and, in some cases, potentially illegal — practices at abortion clinics run by Planned Parenthood. [Read more…]

Helping Us Pull Our Ox Cart

March 30, 2009March 30, 2009 by Orthodox Editors

BreakPoint | Stephen Reed | March 19, 2009

The idea that someone else can vicariously take responsibility for your sin and, additionally, impute their righteousness to you, runs counter to their form of reason. After all, isn’t human responsibility for our actions what makes us higher than the animals? If you have someone taking care of your sins for you, well, where’s the penalty? Moreover, where’s the credit for doing good? [Read more…]

Condoms don’t protect souls

March 23, 2009 by Orthodox Editors

AmericanThinker | Ben-Peter Terpstra | March 22, 2009

Is abstinence, in particular, more realistic than promiscuity or less so? Is Christianity more realistic than Oprah or less so? Is the Pope wiser than Madonna’s “Sticky and Sweet” tour dancers?

In the Christian tradition, real believers have the audacity to believe that condoms don’t protect souls. The adulterer doesn’t need rubber, he needs a heart check. [Read more…]