- Jul 10, 2007
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Of course we should argue against whatever sins, and I thought we all were doing that who are actual practicing Christians. I suppose maybe with masturbation and pre-marital sex, there was never a huge movement to push for acceptance for "equal rights," etc. Does that mean I think that they are lesser sins? No. In a way, you could say, it's nearly worse because it came in and absorbed and meshed into society in a somewhat sublime way, if that's the right term. I was just reading something kinda pertaining to this in the book on the life and works of Fr. Seraphim Rose (I'm on page 619...I'm making some progress in this 1500+-page book lol).
Here's the excerpt about Fr. Seraphim teaching a course in Orthodox self-defense (survival course, it says):
"This course will concentrate on the most important movements and most important writers who helped form the mentality which we have today. If one is not aware of this, one can still be Orthodox, of course, but one is running a great danger, because the movements of thought around one, which have been formed over the last eight or nine centuries, affect one directly, and one cannot know how to answer them without knowing where they are right, where they are wrong, and how they arisen. One can be in a very precarious position, even in the position of an 'Orthodox fundamentalist' who simply sits in his corner and says, 'Oh, I believe this and everything else is evil.' This, of course, is very unrealistic because you have to have contact with the world: your children are going to school, you read newspapers, you have contact with people who believe different things and even with Orthodox people who don't know what they believe. If you are not aware of what's going on, your Orthodoxy will be infected, without your even knowing it, by all kinds of modern ideas. You will be going to church on Sunday, and the rest of the week living by some kind of different standard, which can be disastrous... In order to avoid this we must follow the advice of St. Basil [the Great] and begin to learn to take from the world around us wisdom where there is wisdom, and where there is foolishness to know why it is foolishness."
The bolded happens to me at times. This is why I think this OP and this whole discussion is important for us.
Here's the excerpt about Fr. Seraphim teaching a course in Orthodox self-defense (survival course, it says):
"This course will concentrate on the most important movements and most important writers who helped form the mentality which we have today. If one is not aware of this, one can still be Orthodox, of course, but one is running a great danger, because the movements of thought around one, which have been formed over the last eight or nine centuries, affect one directly, and one cannot know how to answer them without knowing where they are right, where they are wrong, and how they arisen. One can be in a very precarious position, even in the position of an 'Orthodox fundamentalist' who simply sits in his corner and says, 'Oh, I believe this and everything else is evil.' This, of course, is very unrealistic because you have to have contact with the world: your children are going to school, you read newspapers, you have contact with people who believe different things and even with Orthodox people who don't know what they believe. If you are not aware of what's going on, your Orthodoxy will be infected, without your even knowing it, by all kinds of modern ideas. You will be going to church on Sunday, and the rest of the week living by some kind of different standard, which can be disastrous... In order to avoid this we must follow the advice of St. Basil [the Great] and begin to learn to take from the world around us wisdom where there is wisdom, and where there is foolishness to know why it is foolishness."
The bolded happens to me at times. This is why I think this OP and this whole discussion is important for us.
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