Moral issues

If Good and Evil Exist, God Must Exist (Prager University)

February 15, 2013March 6, 2013 by Orthodox Editors

If Good and Evil Exist, God Exists by Peter Kreeft-
Is there such a thing as objective morality? If there is, does that suggest a moral law giver? Peter Kreeft, distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Boston College, takes on these critical questions and offers some challenging answers.

“Good and evil are not the difference between I like and I don’t like,” observes Professor Kreeft in this video lecture. He conducts a thorough review of the five (5) theoretical sources of morality offered by atheists, and disproves each one using logic, common sense, and historical examples: [Read more…]

New York City Schools Give 12,721 Abortion Pills to Young Girls

February 7, 2013February 19, 2013 by Orthodox Editors

Public Schools Abortion Pills to Children by By Jessica Chasmar –
New York City schools are offering young girls a full menu of birth control options, free of parental counsel, thanks to an unpublicized project by Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration.

School nurses handed out 12,721 doses of the Plan B One-Step “morning-after” pill in 2011-12, up from 10,720 in 2010-11 and 5,039 in 2009-10, the New York Post reports.

Mona Davids, president of the NYC Parents Union, was stunned by the report. [Read more…]

Should Government Coerce Charity?

January 23, 2013January 30, 2013 by Orthodox Editors

Christian Charity Voluntary, Real Charity Cannot Be Coerced by Joel J. Miller –
When it comes to the question of social justice, there is more at play than the needs of the poor. Charity requires not only a recipient but also a giver, and that increases the issue’s moral complexity.

From the earliest days of the church, care for the poor was central. It’s there in the New Testament writings, in Christ’s own words even. It’s there in the Didache, which directs Christians to spend time with the lowly (3.9) and give their firstfruits to the poor (13.4). And great pastors and preachers like Basil the Great spoke often and forcefully on the matter.

“How many precepts you ignore, since your ears are plugged with avarice!” said Basil in one sermon, adding, “if we all took only what was necessary to satisfy our own needs, giving the rest to those who lack, no one would be rich, no one would be poor, and no one would be in need” (I Will Tear Down My Barns 6, 7). [Read more…]

Not Sermons but Stories – Engaging in Culture the Right Way

January 12, 2013January 14, 2013 by Orthodox Editors

Christians Engaging Culture Through Stories by Eric Metaxas –
If you’ve read The Chronicles of Narnia, you know they are loaded with Christian themes and symbols. That’s why many assume that C. S. Lewis wrote them in order to send some kind of Christian message.

But Lewis himself insisted otherwise. The tales, he said, started as a series of pictures that came into his mind and set his imagination working. The result was not sermons, but stories—beautiful stories loved by believers and non-believers alike for decades.

There’s a lesson in here for all of us. Conservative Christians today often feel alienated from the larger society, and for good reason. The vast majority of the stories that permeate our culture are told by people whose worldview is diametrically opposed to ours. We can hardly watch a TV show or read a magazine without seeing ourselves portrayed as villains, and our cultural opponents held up as the epitome of righteousness. [Read more…]

Educating Ignorance

January 9, 2013January 14, 2013 by Orthodox Editors

University Indoctrination Center by Janice Shaw Crouse –
The best-kept secret in America today is the precipitous drop in the quality of college since the Left seized power in higher education. Every year, various magazines publish a list of rankings for American undergraduate institutions. Forbes assures parents that “Every school with a Forbes grade meets a high standard.” U.S. News and World Reportassures its readers that they consider a wide variety of factors in measuring a college’s effectiveness. While American colleges were once great institutions of learning, those who know higher education today recognize that “high standards” of quality are casualties in the war against traditionalism and American values. Where religion and love of country and family were once revered, radical Leftist ideology now prevails. Traditional values have been replaced by moral relativism, anti-establishment teachings, and the breakdown of the family.

The radicalization of colleges did not happen overnight. What we have now is a product of past indifference and disinclination to do anything to reverse the spread of Leftist trends. [Read more…]

Conscience, Not Guns

January 3, 2013January 14, 2013 by Orthodox Editors

by Dennis Prager –
From the moment Americans learned of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre last Friday, the entire left — editorialists, columnists, broadcasters, politicians — used the occasion to promote one idea: gun control.

For the left, the primary reason for just about all American gun murders is the availability of guns.

I have no interest in debating gun control here. I only wish to ask the left one question: We have a massive system of drug control laws. Yet, the left is the first to argue that the war on drugs has been a failure. And whether or not one deems it a failure, the war on drugs surely hasn’t prevented tens of millions of Americans, including teenagers, from obtaining drugs illegally. Why, then, does the left believe that a war on guns would be any more effective than the war on drugs? [Read more…]

Christians Must Not Retreat from the Culture, We Must Work for its Conversion

December 31, 2012January 4, 2013 by Orthodox Editors

Christians Must Convert the Culture by Deacon Keith Fournier –
Two years before becoming Pope, Karol Cardinal Wotyla spoke to the U.S. Bishops. His observation was republished in the Wall Street Journal on November 9, 1978:

“We are now standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has gone through. I do not think that wide circles of the American society or wide circles of the Christian community realize this fully. We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-Church, of the Gospel and the anti-Gospel. This confrontation lies within the plans of divine providence. It is a trial which the whole Church must take up.”

And take it up we have. However, there is much, much more to do. The ground has shifted and the struggle is intensifying. Our cultural mission lies at the heart of what it means for us as Christians to be leaven, light, salt and the soul of the world. This is no time to retreat from culture, we must work for its conversion. What is needed are men and women of Christian courage. [Read more…]

Sacrifice and Self-Interest

November 30, 2012December 7, 2012 by Orthodox Editors

Sacrifice and Self-Interest by Jordan Ballor –
One of the complaints often rendered against the market economy is that it encourages selfish behavior. This picture of the marketplace is that of a kind of war of all against all, with each participant out only to maximize his or her own individual benefit. As American social gospel advocate Walter Rauschenbusch contended in his Christianizing the Social Order, “The trader has always been the outstanding case of the man who plays his own hand and sacrifices social solidarity for private gain.” This characteristic, claimed Rauschenbusch, has been exaggerated in the modern era, such that “the trading class has become the ruling class, and consequently the selfishness of trade has been exalted to the dignity of an ethical principle. Every man is taught to seek his own advantage, and then we wonder that there is so little public spirit.” [Read more…]

Godly Character Is Formed in the Little Moments

November 28, 2012December 1, 2012 by Orthodox Editors

Godly Character Small Moments Prayer by Paul Tripp –
“But for me it is good to be near God; I have made the Lord my refuge that I may tell of all your works” (Psalm 73:28).
It is a grace to get it right, because so often I get it wrong. No, I don’t mean that I fall into gross and willing sin, and I don’t mean that I am seduced by the old arguments of new atheism. No, I don’t mean that I occasionally question the tenets of my faith or question whether ministry is really worth it. No, getting it wrong is much more subtle. Getting it wrong is not about the big, dramatic, consequential moments of life. No, getting it wrong is much more about the little mundane moments of everyday life.

It’s easy to let up your guard and be all too relaxed in these moments precisely because they are little. It’s also tempting to minimize the wrong choices that you make in these little moments. But the opposite is true. The little moments of life are profoundly important because they are little. Little moments are the ones we live in every day. The character and course of a person’s life isn’t set in three or four grand, significant moments. No, the character of a person’s life is shaped in 10,000 little moments. You carry the character formed in the mundane into those rare consequential moments of life. [Read more…]

Election 2012: A Church Gone Astray

November 24, 2012December 1, 2012 by Orthodox Editors

A Church Gone Astray by Louie Verrecchio –
In the days following last week’s U.S. presidential election, a staggering amount of analysis has been focused on Republican messaging, demographics and core constituencies, but it misses the most fundamental point entirely.

If the Second Coming of Obama is evidence of anything it is the godlessness of a nation, the majority of whose citizens worship an idol who not only grants free license to practically every immoral impulse that one can imagine, but who also evidently demands human sacrifice to the tune of more than a million innocent souls each year.

This culture of depravity is the result of an underlying spiritual malady that has been allowed to fester and spread over the last five decades virtually unopposed by the only force capable of overtaking it.

The United States — a land wherein class-envy passes for compassion, same-sex “marriage” is accepted as fairness, and contraception is considered a matter of healthcare — is about to reap the just rewards, not so much of a nation that has abandoned the principles of its Founding Fathers, but of a Church that has abandoned its Founder and the mission He has given her. [Read more…]