Philosophy

Addiction or Sinful Habit?

February 19, 2011February 20, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

by Benjamin Wiker –
Is gambling an addiction or a sinful habit? What about pornography? Overeating? Drinking? Shopping? Checking email? Texting? Watching television? Playing video games? Working? They’ve all been called addictions. Is that really what they are?

If we follow this line of reasoning out to its logical conclusion, then it would be logical to call all bad or destructive behavior, “addictive,” so that “addicts” of whatever kind are helpless victims of forces beyond their control. A woman gambles because she cannot help it. A man drinks because he cannot help it. A woman shops because she cannot help it. A man throws himself into internet pornography because he cannot help it. Addicts, helpless victims, one and all.

The obvious problem with this view is that it entirely destroys morality by denying the possibility of good, freely-chosen action. We should call them what they really are: sinful habits. Or we could use the more exact and compact word, vices. A sign of the correctness of this word is that “vice” contains the notion of addiction – a kind of helpless slavery – even while it affirms the presence of free will and moral culpability. [Read more…]

The Polygamists Make Their Move

February 16, 2011February 18, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

by Peter Heck –
The debate over whether or not those practicing homosexuality should be eligible to obtain the legal status of “married” for their same-sex relationships is persistently mischaracterized by activists on both sides as an attempt to redefine marriage. For those opposing such a move, this is most likely an error of ignorance, while for those favoring, it likely is an intentional tactic of misdirection. To be clear, in order to “redefine” anything, there must be an alternative definition being advocated. To this point, no such proposed substitute has emerged.

In truth then, what is being pursued is not any redefinition of marriage, but rather the “undefinition” of it — an attempt to obliterate any fundamental parameters for what is to be perceived as moral and immoral sexual partnerships. To anyone paying attention over the last several decades, this effort should come as no surprise. [Read more…]

The Art of Living: Patience and Perseverance

February 8, 2011February 9, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

by Edward P. Sri –

How do you respond when “bad things” happen to you? When you experience disappointment or setbacks? When you are hurt by something someone said?

When experiencing sorrow, we might be tempted to close in on ourselves. We might allow negative emotions to gnaw at us. We might fail to be attentive to others’ needs because we are so preoccupied with our troubles. We might also become sluggish in our responsibilities, not giving the best of ourselves at work and with our family.

Some people simply are not pleasant to be around when they experience sorrow. They become gloomy and grumpy, and might even let their frustrations out on others.

Human beings cannot escape suffering in this world. However, the way we face life’s sorrows is a question of moral character. Do we allow sorrow to dominate our existence? [Read more…]

Colson: The Desire for Freedom, It’s Written on Our Hearts

February 6, 2011February 6, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

by Chuck Colson –

What’s happening in the Middle East is one of the most volatile international situations since 9/11. Will the government win? Will radical Islamists highjack what might be a nascent democratic movement? Nobody knows.

But one thing should be very clear to anybody who is paying close attention—especially to Christians: People everywhere, we see it in the streets, are yearning to be free. And they yearn to be free precisely because every man, woman, and child, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, or otherwise, is made in the image of God.

We know, as Augustine taught, that God, who has a free will, bestowed upon us the gift of free will. The desire for freedom—the freedom to choose right from wrong, the freedom to order our lives—is imprinted in our very DNA.

This is what the biblical worldview teaches us. And that is why tyrannical governments can put a lid on freedom for only so long. Inevitably that human desire for freedom will boil over—just like it is doing in the streets of Cairo today. [Read more…]

Why a Christian Anthropology Makes a Difference

January 18, 2011January 20, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

by Peter Kreeft –
It is simply impossible to agree on ethics, on how to act, on what is good and what is not, if you disagree about metaphysics or anthropology. And since ethics is unavoidable, so is anthropology.

Of the two words in the term “Christian anthropology,” I assume that I don’t need to define the word Christian because the Church has been doing that for two thousand years – they’re called creeds. But what about anthropology?

By anthropology I mean simply a logos about anthropos, a theory or philosophy about mankind or human nature. I don’t mean the empirical science of anthropology. Everyone, absolutely everyone, needs a philosophical anthropology, especially everyone in the medical profession. But not everyone needs to be a scientific anthropologist, or to have an anthropologist, as everyone does need to have a physician. Everyone needs a physician, but not everyone needs a physicist. [Read more…]

See No Evil

January 16, 2011November 2, 2015 by Orthodox Editors

by Robin of Berkeley –
One of the first books that made me thirst for God was, ironically, about His polar opposite. The book is Andrew Delbanco’s The Death of Satan: How Americans Have Lost the Sense of Evil.

The author describes the disastrous results of Americans rejecting the concept of evil. When Satan was alive and well, citizens practiced the Ten Commandments, atoned for their sins, and worried about eternal damnation. But today, inhabitants eschew the devil as an anachronism of days gone by.

And what has been the result of the death of Satan? More bloodshed than ever before in the history of humankind. In the 20^th century alone, hundreds of millions of people were murdered by genocidal regimes.

And yet, why would banishing Satan result in a less civilized society? Because without an understanding about how good and evil work, people are stripped of Divine intelligence. [Read more…]

Why Do the Poor Stay Poor?

December 10, 2010 by Orthodox Editors

12/9/2010 – John Stossel –
Prosperity is impossible without property rights.

Of the 6 billion people on Earth, 2 billion try to survive on a few dollars a day. They don’t build businesses, or if they do, they don’t expand them. Unlike people in the United States, Europe, and Asian countries like Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, etc., they don’t lift themselves out of poverty. Why not? What’s the difference between them and us? Hernando de Soto taught me that the biggest difference may be property rights.

I first met de Soto maybe 15 years ago. It was at one of those lunches where people sit around wondering how to end poverty. I go to these things because it bugs me that much of the world hasn’t yet figured out what gave us Americans the power to prosper. [Read more…]

Knowing God, Crucial to Living as a Christian

November 30, 2010November 2, 2015 by Orthodox Editors

Eminent Christian theologian J.I. Packer’s best known book is Knowing God. In the book he emphasizes that a lifelong pursuit of knowing God should embody the Christian’s existence. According to Packer, however, Christians have become enchanted by modern skepticism and have joined the gigantic conspiracy of misdirection by failing to put first things first.

11/30/2010 – Chuck Colson –

According to Packer, studying the nature and character of God isn’t, as many Christians suppose, abstract and theoretical, but, instead, the most practical project we can undertake. This knowledge is crucial to living as a Christian.

In fact, attempting to live the Christian life without this knowledge isn’t only foolish, it’s a kind of self-cruelty—denying ourselves the riches of our own faith. [Read more…]

Curing the Human Condition

November 23, 2010 by Orthodox Editors

11/22/2010 – Regis Nicoll –

Albert Einstein, a man who was often ambiguous about his religious views, once admitted that he rejected the God of his Jewish heritage for that of Spinoza, the 17th-century philosopher.

For Spinoza, “God” was not a supernatural Being but an omnipresent principle of cosmic order and harmony. His universe was one of matter and motion in which every outcome was pre-determined according to that primal physical essence. It was a thoroughly naturalistic worldview, leaving no room for free will.

Enamored of the ideas of Spinoza, Einstein rejected the notion of free will in favor of the belief that everything obeys the deterministic laws of nature. For folks who similarly take naturalism seriously, a human being is not an autonomous agent acting upon nature, but a biochemical machine ruled by Nature. [Read more…]

Death Dignified by Christ

November 19, 2010 by Orthodox Editors

11/19/2010 – David Mills –
He was a dignified man suffering all the embarrassing ways cheerful young women the age of his granddaughter deal with the body’s failure as cancer begins shutting down the organs. Dying in a hospice, you lose all rights to modesty as you lose control of your body.

Few men could have found the indignities of those last few weeks more excruciating than did my father. But this was what dying of cancer is like, and my father, being the man he was, took it like a man. It was the hand he’d been dealt, and he was going to play it, as bad as it was. [Read more…]