Persecution of Coptic Christians, intensified by the political success of the Muslim Brotherhood, is driving them out of Egypt.
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/belief/egyptian-christians-losing-sense-home
Sunday, March 31, 2013
Culture news: Google, Easter and desensitizing a culture
Desensitizing a culture:
"Google is one of the most powerful forces shaping culture and information in this digital age in which we live, read and think.
Google is a portal, a door and a gateway. If the editors at Google decide to shape our world, our reality, into some new form then dang it, it will be shaped into that new form. If the principalities and powers at Google decide that certain forms of information are more worthy, more valuable, more acceptable than others, then that perception will become search-engine reality. It’s kind of like that showdown between Apple’s iTunes overlords and the circle of religious conservatives that produced the Manhattan Declaration.
Anyway, the Google overlords have a tradition of doing cute little graphic frameworks for the word “Google” on major days of interest in the culture, such as “The Holidays,” St. Patrick’s Day, the Super Bowl, Earth Day, the 4th of July, Halloween, etc. They also enjoy doing occasional salutes to major historic figures, often on their birthdays.
Which, of course, brings us to today — which is the most important day of the year in the Western version of the Christian calendar.
In other words, today is Easter for most of the world’s Christians. Those of us who are Orthodox Christians, and follow the older Julian calendar, will celebrate Pascha (Easter) on May 5th.
So what did the Google folks do today? Well, on one level, they decided to mark the 86th birthday of union leader Cesar Chavez. In my opinion, they ended up profoundly insulting this famous Catholic."
"Google is one of the most powerful forces shaping culture and information in this digital age in which we live, read and think.
Google is a portal, a door and a gateway. If the editors at Google decide to shape our world, our reality, into some new form then dang it, it will be shaped into that new form. If the principalities and powers at Google decide that certain forms of information are more worthy, more valuable, more acceptable than others, then that perception will become search-engine reality. It’s kind of like that showdown between Apple’s iTunes overlords and the circle of religious conservatives that produced the Manhattan Declaration.
Anyway, the Google overlords have a tradition of doing cute little graphic frameworks for the word “Google” on major days of interest in the culture, such as “The Holidays,” St. Patrick’s Day, the Super Bowl, Earth Day, the 4th of July, Halloween, etc. They also enjoy doing occasional salutes to major historic figures, often on their birthdays.
Which, of course, brings us to today — which is the most important day of the year in the Western version of the Christian calendar.
In other words, today is Easter for most of the world’s Christians. Those of us who are Orthodox Christians, and follow the older Julian calendar, will celebrate Pascha (Easter) on May 5th.
So what did the Google folks do today? Well, on one level, they decided to mark the 86th birthday of union leader Cesar Chavez. In my opinion, they ended up profoundly insulting this famous Catholic."
Sermon for the Feast of the Resurrection of Our Lord
Easter
1
Cor 15:1-11
3/29/13
In the middle of the first century
A.D., the apostle Paul went to Athens,
Greece. Athens
was one of the great intellectual centers of the ancient world. It was the center of one of the great schools
of learning – and had been for centuries.
And like many university towns, the people there were intellectually
smug and full of themselves. Believe me,
I know what that looks like – I grew up in one.
We are told that Epicurean and Stoic
philosophers were talking with him. Some people said, “What does this babbler
wish to say?” Others said, “He seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities”—because
he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection. And they took him and brought him
to the Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are
presenting? For you bring some strange things to our ears. We wish to know therefore
what these things mean.”
Paul preached to them in a way that
engaged their own religious and intellectual heritage. But then Paul said, “The times of ignorance
God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he
has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom
he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from
the dead.”
Paul’s
reference to the resurrection marked the end of the conversation. While some indicated that they were open to
hearing more at a later time, Luke tells us that some mocked. In truth, based what we know about the
Greco-Roman world, we can assume that most mocked.
We
have gathered on Easter Sunday to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And on this day, our epistle lesson is from 1
Corinthians 15 – the great resurrection chapter in Paul’s letter to Corinth. We have celebrated Easter so many times and
heard Paul’s words so many times that it is easy to take the whole thing for
granted. Of course Jesus Christ rose
from the dead. Of course it proves that
Jesus completed his saving mission. Of
course it shows that Jesus has defeated death.
What we fail to realize is that for
almost the entire world that the first Christians addressed – the Greco-Roman
world that was the setting of every Christian congregation apart from Jewish
Palestine – none of this made any sense.
In fact, it was absurd.
It was absurd because for them the
resurrection of the body was not a good thing.
It was not something to be desired.
It was in fact the last thing anyone would want. It was a punishment,
not salvation.
From the beginnings of Greek
philosophy there was a basic assumption that continued on for century after
century up to Jesus’ day in the first century A.D. This assumption was that the spirit was good
and that the body – the physical – bad.
The body was a prison in which the spirit had been trapped. And the good
thing about death was that it finally set the spirit free.
This was the worldview of the people
to whom Paul was writing in Corinth.
It was the worldview of everyone the Church
sought to evangelize that wasn’t Jewish.
If you decided to make up a religion in the first century A.D. for which
you were going to try to win over the Mediterranean world, placing the
resurrection of the body at the center of it was the worst decision that you
could possibly make.
And yet … that’s exactly what the
apostles did. They said that truth of
the Christian faith was based on the fact that Jesus Christ had bodily risen
from the dead. And then they doubled
down by saying that the resurrection wasn’t only about Jesus. It was about the future, the salvation that
was in store for everyone who believed in him.
That’s what the apostle Paul says in
our text today. He begins by saying, “Now
I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you
received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold
fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.” Paul says that when he talks about
resurrection, he is talking about the Gospel by which the Corinthians are
saved. If there is no resurrection, then
there is no Gospel and there is no salvation.
Paul lays it out as he says: “For I
delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died
for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was
raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared
to Cephas, then to the twelve.”
He says that Christ died for our
sins in accordance with the Scriptures.
The Gospel and the resurrection are needed because there is a
problem. The problem is sin. The problem is that ever since Adam disobeyed
God, everyone conceived and born in the normal course of nature is sinful. We are people who find disobeying God to come
naturally. We are people who find that
that hurting those around us by what we say and do comes naturally. It’s easy.
We don’t have to work at it. In
fact, we are really, really good at it.
The problem is that all of this sin
flies in the face of the holy God and the way he has ordered things. And you
know what: forget what our culture says about there not being any absolute truth – that there is only what is
true for you and what is true for me.
The holy and almighty God gets the final word. And his word is
clear: the wages of sin is death. Sin
brings death. That’s what apart from the
return of Christ, every single one of you is going to do.
And
God will speak the final word. On the
Last Day he will pronounce judgment and sinners will be cast out of his
presence in eternal damnation – what Jesus Christ describes as the weeping and
gnashing of teeth. As Paul told the Romans, “But because of your
hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of
wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed.”
Sin is the reason God acted to give us forgiveness and
salvation. God had revealed in the Old
Testament that he would do this. As we
heard in our Old Testament lesson on Good Friday, God said about his Servant,
the Christ - “But he was
pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was
the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his wounds we are
healed.” Through Jesus’ death on the cross, God has given you forgiveness.
Yet that is not all he has done. He has also given you life. God didn’t just punish sin in Christ on the
cross. He also acted in his Son to bring
life – full blown bodily resurrection life.
You see, God says that things work very differently than the way the
Greco-Roman world viewed things.
When God had finished making his creation, we learn from
Genesis chapter one, “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it
was very good.” When he created Adam, he formed his body out of the dust of the
ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and Adam became a
living being. God created human beings
as the unity of body and soul.
In the first Adam, sin had entered into the world and
brought death. In the second Adam, Jesus
Christ, God worked to restore the life that we were meant to have. He restored the life of fellowship with God
by taking away our sins and giving us forgiveness. And he began the restoration of human bodily
life as God created it to be.
Yet it’s not just the Greco-Roman world that had no use
for the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ.
It’s our world too. If you read
around in what so many so called “Christian” scholars and theologians have to
say; if you hear their pathetic dribble at places like the History Channel, you
will find that it is just as common to deny the resurrection of Jesus
Christ. If they don’t use the tired
rationalist explanations that have been around since the Enlightenment of the
seventeenth century, the you will be told that Christ has a “spiritual
resurrection.” Define this in whatever
way you want, it always ends up meaning that on Easter morning, the actual body
of Jesus Christ was still in the tomb.
And there is nothing that could be more stupid. For anyone who lived in the Jewish setting
knew what resurrection was – it was what happened on the Last Day when God gave
the physical bodies of his people triumph over death and raised them to live as
God had intended life to be. And Paul
new exactly what the stakes were. Just
after our text he said: “And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching
is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting
God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not
raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not
raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised,
your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have
fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life
only, we are of all people most to be pitied.”
If Christ did not rise from the dead, then you are still
in your sins. If Christ did not rise
from the dead, then no one who has died will ever live again. If Christ did not rise from the dead, then
everything Christianity is a lie – and worse than that, it is a false witness
about God. And if Christ did not rise from the dead – if the only hope of the
Christian belongs to this life – then we are most to be pitied because the
suffering, sacrifice and service of the Christian is meaningless.
But
on Easter Sunday when the women went to the tomb, it was empty. The
announcement by the angel was, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek
Jesus who was crucified. He is not here, for he has risen, as he said. Come,
see the place where he lay.” Jesus
Christ did rise to the dead. In his
resurrection he did begin the resurrection of the Last Day. He is the first fruits, the beginning of the
resurrection that we too will share in when he returns in glory.
And
the resurrection of our Lord was something that was not only experienced in a
brief and confused manner on the morning of Easter Sunday. It was not something that was experienced just
the day of Easter Sunday. It was
experienced during the course of forty days. It was experienced in
Jerusalem. It was experienced on a
mountain in northern Israel in Galilee and at the Sea of Galilee. And it was not experienced by some small and
confused group of people. As Paul
declares to us this morning, the risen Lord was seen and heard by Peter and the
other apostless, by James, by more than five hundred Christians as one time;
and finally by Paul himself.
This
is the witness of the Gospel. Jesus
Christ died for your sins, according to the Scriptures. He rose from the dead, according to the
Scriptures. He appeared to many different people in many different place over
the course of more than a month. And
because this happened your sins are forgiven. Because this happened you will
rise from the dead to share in Jesus’ own resurrection on the Last Day. Jesus Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
Saturday, March 30, 2013
Mark's thoughts: Easter - The Beginning of the Future
In the Gospel lesson for Easter Sunday we hear the angel
say to the women: “Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was
crucified. He is not here, for he has
risen as he said.” On that first Easter,
the angels announced the good news that the women and the apostles would soon
experience first hand: Jesus Christ had risen from the dead.
The resurrection of
Jesus Christ on Easter is a past event.
However for us, it is also the beginning of the future. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 15 that the
resurrection of the Last Day has already
begun in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Paul writes in 15:20, “But now Christ has been raised, the first fruits
of those who are asleep.” Jesus is the first portion of the resurrection that
guarantees we will also be raised. The
message of Easter is that the resurrection we will share on the Last Day when
Christ returns has already begun. It is
now simply a matter of timing. As Paul
goes on to say in 15:23, “But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits,
after that those who are Christ's at his coming.”
Jesus’ resurrection
shows us what our own resurrection will be like. In 1 Corinthians 15 Paul affirms we will
experience a resurrection of the body
and asserts that in the resurrection we will receive a “spiritual body”
(15:44). This is not the denial of a
physical or material body, but rather as scholarship has demonstrated, it is a
body transformed for the future life directed by the Holy Spirit. Paul indicates that this change will occur
for all believers, both the living and the dead when he says “we will not all
sleep, but we will all be changed” (15:51).
The physical and
material nature of the resurrection is confirmed by Paul’s statement in Philippians
3:21. There Paul affirms that we are
eagerly awaiting Jesus Christ, “who will transform the body of our humble state
into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power that
He has even to subject all things to Himself.”
Paul tells us that the resurrection of Jesus Christ provides the model
for our own resurrection. When we
consider Jesus’ resurrection, we find that our Lord says in Luke 24:39, “See my
hands and my feet, that it is I myself; touch me and see, for a spirit does not
have flesh and bones as you see that I have.”
In the same way, in John 20 he invites Thomas to touch him (John
20:26-27). Since this is the model for
our own resurrection we learn that while there will be transformation and
change, it will be a physical and material existence.
There is great comfort
in this knowledge. Many of us now live
with bodies that are breaking down. We
live with health issues that make life difficult. In Jesus’ resurrection on Easter, we see that
God has something far better in store for us.
In fact, we see that this answer has already
begun in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
We have resurrection
hope for our future and at the same time our Lord continues to sustain our
confidence in the present through His Means of Grace. In our baptism we have the assurance that we
too will share in the restoration of the resurrection, for as Paul writes in
Romans 6:5; “For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His
death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection.” In the Lord’s Supper our bodies receive the
very body and blood of the risen Lord,
and so we know that we too will be raised up when our Lord returns. Through these means our risen Lord assures us
that He is the first fruits of the resurrection that has already begun, and
that we will share in His resurrection on the Last Day when He returns in
glory.
Culture news: Middle school dating correlates with negative outcomes in lives of students
I never cease to be amazed at how relationships between boys and girls in middle school have changed. Dating of couples has become common place. It comes as no surprise that recent research indicates this is not a healthy thing:
Students who date in middle school have significantly worse study skills, are four times more likely to drop out of school and report twice as much alcohol, tobacco and marijuana use than their single classmates, according to new research from the University of Georgia.
Students who date in middle school have significantly worse study skills, are four times more likely to drop out of school and report twice as much alcohol, tobacco and marijuana use than their single classmates, according to new research from the University of Georgia.
Friday, March 29, 2013
Sermon for Good Friday
Good Friday
2
Co 5:14-21
3/29/13
Around 60 A.D, the Roman Empire had
been in Great Britain for 17 years. The Emperor Claudius had invaded in 43 AD
and had set in motion the process by which Rome tried to make Britain into a
functioning province of the empire. As they always did, they sought to use
local rulers in positions of power who were willing to cooperate with them.
However, not everyone was willing to
go along with this plan. And as so often
happened, after the initial shock of Roman military success in the invasion
began to wear off, there was a revolt. This
revolt, however, was unusual because it was led by a woman. The queen of the
Iceni, Boudica led an uprising which began by attacking the Roman center of
Colchester. They sacked this Roman
colony where there was temple to the emperor Claudius. When the Roman ninth legion tried to relieve
Colchester, Boudica and her forces routed them in battle.
Boudica had launched the revolt
while the Roman governor Suetonius was conducting a military campaign on the
island of Anglesey off the coast of Wales. Suetonius rushed back to what is today
London. He realized that he didn’t have
sufficient forces to hold the town, so he abandoned it and withdrew. Boudica’s army then took London and destroyed
it.
The Romans’ position was precarious.
Suetonius scraped together all the forces he could, but he was vastly
outnumbered. However in a great tactical
decision, he engaged Boudica in battle at a place where there was only a narrow
clearing in the woods. At the Battle of
Watling Street Boudica was prevented by the landscape from bringing all of her
forces to bear at once against the Romans. And as a result, the superior
discipline of the Roman legions was able to win a great victory.
We don’t know exactly what happened
to Boudica, but apparently she was not captured and instead poisoned
herself. Thousands of her followers were
not so fortunate. The Romans did to them
what they did to all rebels. They
crucified them. And in this case the Romans did it along a road for mile and
after mile. Tormented individuals, one
after another, were left hanging on crosses as they endured a slow and painful
death. When they had died their bodies were left on the crosses for birds to
come and eat. One can imagine the flocks
of birds that descended upon the thousands of dead in order to feed upon
them. The macabre scene was left there
as a reminder about what would happen to anyone else who chose to revolt
against Rome.
I tell the story of Boudica and her
revolt not because it was unusual. Instead it was typical in the way it took
place. It was typical in that the Romans
defeated the revolt – there was only one group that ever successfully threw off
Roman rule and those were the German tribes on the east side of the Rhine River.
And it was typical in that the result for those not killed in battle was
crucifixion.
By outward appearances, Jesus Christ
hanging on the cross on Good Friday was no different than those miles of
crucified British rebels. After all,
that is how the Jewish leaders presented him to Pontius Pilate – as a
rebel. In Luke’s Gospel they bring him
to Pilate and say, “We found this man misleading our nation and forbidding us
to give tribute to Caesar, and saying that he himself is Christ, a king.” They were trying to say all the right
things. For if there were two things you
did not do under Roman rule they were, one, interfere with their reception
of taxes and two, claim some kind of independent political power.
In all of the Gospel accounts of our
Lord’s passion it becomes clear that Pilate knows this is not the real story.
But Pilate too is man caught up in the workings of Roman imperial rule. He’s a second class ruler in a second class
province. He serves at the whim of the emperor and he can’t afford any serious
public disorder – especially not at the time of the Passover. The Jewish religious leaders know this and
they push his buttons. They cry out in
our Gospel lesson, “If you release this man, you are not Caesar's friend.
Everyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar.” And so Pilate acquiesces and sends Jesus to
be crucified.
From outward appearances – if, as
Paul says in our text, we regard Jesus according to the flesh – he is just one
more rebel crushed under the might of the Roman empire. He is just one more tortured, pathetic figure
dying on a Roman cross.
But the apostle tells us in our
epistle lesson that we no longer look at him this way. We no longer look at him this way because we
have heard the Gospel – we have heard the word of reconciliation that comes
from God.
Paul tells us in our text tonight that
Jesus Christ was not hanging on the cross because he was a rebel. Instead, he hung there because you are. You have followed in the footsteps of your
father Adam instead of your heavenly Father.
You have trespassed his command to have no other gods before him. You have not given him thanks. You have taken
his Means of Grace for granted – if you weren’t here last night, what were you
doing? You have despised the authorities
placed over you or you have failed to carry out the responsibility God has given
to you. You have hated. You have
lusted. You have coveted. You are the one who has rebelled
against God.
And in spite of this, in his love
God wanted to reconcile you to himself.
He wanted to reconcile you the rebel who had trespassed and sinned against
him. He wanted to reconcile you, and yet
he remains the holy and just God who punishes and destroys rebels who sin. So God the Father sent the Son into the world
in the incarnation as the Word became flesh.
He became flesh so that God could be in Christ reconciling the world to
himself.
Our Lord Jesus was not a rebel. Instead he was the perfectly obedient Son who
had walked the way from his baptism to the cross. He was without sin – he was the righteous
One. And yet Paul tells us that in order
to punish our sin and reconcile us: “For our sake he made him to be sin who
knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
Stop and ponder that statement for a
moment: God made Christ to be sin.
That’s what happened on the cross.
The sinless One became sin because he took the place of sinners. God the Father poured out his just wrath and
punishment against sin – and he did it against his own Son in our place. Jesus Christ called out, “My God, my God why
have you forsaken me?” as he experienced God’s damnation in our stead.
God did this to reconcile the world to himself, not counting our
trespasses against us. As Paul says at
the beginning of our text, “For the love of Christ controls us, because we have
concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died.” Jesus Christ became sin for you. He died on the cross for you. He died for you. You haven be joined to him through baptism
and therefore you have died. The
punishment against your sin has been accomplished in Christ. And because he did this on Good Friday you
now have peace with God; you have been reconciled to God.
Because God has joined you to Christ through the work of the
Spirit, everything has changed. Paul says in our text, “For the love of Christ controls
us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all
have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for
themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.” Paul tells us that Jesus died for you, so
that now you can live for him.
Because of Jesus’ death and resurrection everything has changed. The
apostle tells us, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The
old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”
Through baptism God has made you a new creation in Christ. The saving benefits of the cross have become
yours. The Spirit made you one for whom
Christ died so that you may live. And now you no longer are to live for
yourself, but instead you live for Christ who loved you and gave himself up for
you. No longer are you to regard things
according to the flesh – from outward appearances.
On Good Friday we focus upon the sacrifice of Christ as he gave
himself into death for us. And this should lead us to recognize that living for
Christ will involve sacrifice for others.
It will mean regarding sacrifice for others as a good thing
because it is a Christ-like thing.
This makes no sense apart from Christ and what he did for us. It will never make sense to the world. For all the world saw on Good Friday was a
rebel crushed by the Roman empire. All it saw was pathetic weakness, suffering
and death.
But as Paul tells us in our text tonight, “Even though we once
regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer.” We have heard the Gospel, and so we know that
the One on the cross has changed everything.
We know that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not
counting their trespasses against them. We know that for our sake God made
Christ to be sin so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. We
know that Christ has died for all, therefore all have died; and that he died
for us so that we who live might no longer live for ourselves but for him who
for our sake died and was raised.
Culture news: When lust perverts language
In a beautifully written piece that looks at the sad results produced by the "sexual revolution," Anthony Esolen says:
It’s rather like desiring to live in a place never known to man, a half-a-jungle, or a jungle on even-numbered days and a Victorian drawing room on odd-numbered days. It cannot be. And make no mistake, a jungle it is, because lust by its very nature is cruel. The promoters of the sexual revolution thought that good will between the sexes was immutable; we could alter the conditions of their dealings with one another, and they would adjust accordingly, and they might even treat one another more honestly and humanely, once the starched-collar “rules” were dispensed with.
We should have known better. It’s never easy for men and women to admire and love, not just one exceptional member of the other sex, but the other sex generally. The triumph of undirected eros—old brute lust—has made that situation worse, and wrought a new sadness in the world. Men and women now have almost nothing kind to say about the other sex. It’s not that they don’t love one another. They don’t even like one another. The girls, I’m told, see the boys as threats—the creatures who will hurt them, drug them, and have their way with them, cajole them into bed and then dispense with them; and the boys see the girls as manipulative, hot-and-cold, quick to accuse and blame, and, frankly, emotional roller-coasters after the high winds have struck and left the soul a looped and tangled mess.
He concludes:
For lust longs for the innocent mindlessness of the beast; and, to grasp that mindlessness, will pervert language itself, calling sex “safe” or “protected,” and cohabitation “honest,” and relationships “mutual,” which are nothing but forays into a jungle, where the strongest and most cunning survive. There is no way to make such a place habitable. The only choice is to leave it, and return to a land of love, humility, gratitude for the excellence of the other sex, and marriage.
It’s rather like desiring to live in a place never known to man, a half-a-jungle, or a jungle on even-numbered days and a Victorian drawing room on odd-numbered days. It cannot be. And make no mistake, a jungle it is, because lust by its very nature is cruel. The promoters of the sexual revolution thought that good will between the sexes was immutable; we could alter the conditions of their dealings with one another, and they would adjust accordingly, and they might even treat one another more honestly and humanely, once the starched-collar “rules” were dispensed with.
We should have known better. It’s never easy for men and women to admire and love, not just one exceptional member of the other sex, but the other sex generally. The triumph of undirected eros—old brute lust—has made that situation worse, and wrought a new sadness in the world. Men and women now have almost nothing kind to say about the other sex. It’s not that they don’t love one another. They don’t even like one another. The girls, I’m told, see the boys as threats—the creatures who will hurt them, drug them, and have their way with them, cajole them into bed and then dispense with them; and the boys see the girls as manipulative, hot-and-cold, quick to accuse and blame, and, frankly, emotional roller-coasters after the high winds have struck and left the soul a looped and tangled mess.
He concludes:
For lust longs for the innocent mindlessness of the beast; and, to grasp that mindlessness, will pervert language itself, calling sex “safe” or “protected,” and cohabitation “honest,” and relationships “mutual,” which are nothing but forays into a jungle, where the strongest and most cunning survive. There is no way to make such a place habitable. The only choice is to leave it, and return to a land of love, humility, gratitude for the excellence of the other sex, and marriage.