Morality

St Basil on Social Justice: Assisting the Poor During a Famine in a Roman Province
Cappodocian Church Fathers

St Basil on Social Justice: Assisting the Poor During a Famine in a Roman Province

10/04/2024 Bruce Strom 0

St Basil teaches us: “If you also give from your lack, you will have the vessel of oil ever flowing by the gift of mercy and the inexhaustible jar of flour. For the faithful, the grace of God zealously imitates these vessels, ever poured out yet never exhausted, returning double for what is given. Lend, you who lack, to the rich God. Have faith in the one who always personally undertakes the cause of the oppressed and makes recompense from his own resources.” […]

Was St Basil WOKE? St Basil the Great On Social Justice, Parable of the Rich Fool
Cappodocian Church Fathers

Was St Basil WOKE? St Basil the Great On Social Justice, Parable of the Rich Fool

10/03/2024 Bruce Strom 0

St Basil teaches us that whether we receive sufferings or blessings, both these should increase our two-fold Love of God and love of neighbor. St Basil teaches us:
“Temptations come in two forms. Sometimes affliction proves the heart like gold in a furnace, testing its purity by means of suffering. But for many, it is prosperity of life that is the greatest trial. For it is equally difficult to preserve one’s soul from despair in hard times, and to prevent it from becoming arrogant in prosperous circumstances.”
Who benefits more, those who contribute, or those who receive? St Basil teaches us, Through the fruits of your good works, “you produce for yourself, since the grace of good works redounds to those who perform them. You gave to the poor, and in so doing not only did you make what you gave truly your own, but you received back even more. For just as grain, when it falls upon the ground, brings forth an increase for the one who scatters it, thus also bread cast to the hungry yields considerable profit at a later time.” […]

St Basil On Social Justice To the Rich SMALL
Cappodocian Church Fathers

St Basil the Great, On Social Justice, His Homily to the Rich

09/29/2024 Bruce Strom 2

St Basil speaks to the Rich Young Man: “It is thus evident that you are far from fulfilling the commandment, and that you bear false witness within your own soul that you have loved your neighbor as yourself. Look, the Lord’s offer shows just how distant you are from true love! For it what you say is true, that you have kept from your youth the commandment of love and have given to everyone the same as to yourself, then how did you come by this abundance of wealth?”
“The more you abound in wealth, the more you lack in love. If you had truly loved your neighbor, it would have occurred to you long ago to divest yourself of this wealth. But now your possessions are more a part of you than the members of your own body, and separation from them is as painful as the amputation of one of your limbs.”
St Basis warns the wealthy: If you have “sound judgment, you should should recognize that you have received wealth as a stewardship, and not for your own enjoyment; thus, when you are parted from it, you rejoice as those who relinquish what is not really theirs, instead of becoming downcast like those who are stripped of their own.” […]

Does the Dobbs Abortion Decision Endanger Lives? Obstetricians Facing Moral and Legal Dilemmas
Abortion

Does the Dobbs Abortion Decision Endanger Lives? Obstetricians Facing Moral and Legal Dilemmas

09/19/2024 Bruce Strom 0

Is the opposite of pro-life, pro-death? Does everyone who is pro-choice ENJOY KILLING BABIES?
Another related question is, Will those who do not support a radical pro-life, no abortion under any circumstances, BURN IN HELL? This is a meme that totally ignores compassion, that refuses to believe that those considering abortion have real life-changing problems they are facing.
What liberals often do not realize is that the phrase “pro-choice” strikes at the core of religious beliefs, the term “pro-compassion” is a better narrative, a better message. The phrase “pro-choice” implies to a devout believer that there is no absolute truth, that there is no God who represents absolute morality, but that every man can formulate what is right and wrong in their own eyes, that moral truth is relative. […]

Book of Ruth: Historical-Critical Commentaries. Was Ruth an Old Testament Illegal Alien?
Bible Stories and Parables

Book of Ruth: Historical-Critical, Patristic, and Rabbinical Commentaries. Was Ruth an Old Testament Illegal Alien?

09/13/2024 Bruce Strom 0

Was Ruth an Old Testament version of an illegal alien? Marriages between Jews and Moabites were definitely illegal under Jewish law, and Ruth was seen as a sojourner, which is the Biblical term for immigrant, or alien. Ancient Jews were just as suspicious of Moabites just as many Americans are suspicious of Mexicans. Ruth emigrates to Judah because of economic hardship, just as hardship drives many Mexicans to seek to enter the United States.
Is the term illegal alien a misnomer? Are illegal aliens criminals because they are doing illegal things? We can all agree that someone who robs a bank or steals a car or shoots or beats his neighbor is a criminal, but is someone who is fleeing gangs who threaten their lives a criminal? Is someone who flees grinding poverty to take his chances swimming the Rio Grande truly a criminal? […]

Summary of Mere Christianity, WWII Ecumenical Broadcast: Morality, Not Polemics
CS Lewis

Summary of CS Lewis’ Mere Christianity, WWII Ecumenical Broadcast: Morality Not Polemics

06/14/2024 Bruce Strom 0

Many scholars speculate on whether CS Lewis was inspired by the writings of Richard Baxter, a Puritan and prolific author who first coined the phrase “Mere Christianity.” Baxter lived during the intense religious struggle in the late 1600’s, a century after Henry VIII split from the Catholic Church to form the Anglican Church. Baxter was appointed to the royal chaplaincy, but he left his post after the passage of the Act of Uniformity in 1662, which required that all pastors exclusively use the Book of Common Prayer and be ordained as Anglican ministers. Baxter was reluctant to adopt a denomination, proclaiming that “I am a Christian, a MEER CHRISTIAN, of no other religion,” and “I am against all sects and dividing parties.” He did not want to identify either with Catholics, or Anglicans, or Presbyterians. […]

CS Lewis’ Mere Christianity: Forgiveness, Pride, and Envy. Can Pride Ever Be Good?
CS Lewis

CS Lewis’ Mere Christianity: Forgiveness, Pride, and Envy. Can Pride Ever Be Good?

06/06/2024 Bruce Strom 1

CS Lewis notes that in the middle of the Lord’s Prayer we pray: “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” He observes: “There is no slightest suggestion that we are offered forgiveness on any other terms. It is made perfectly clear that if we do not forgive, we shall not be forgiven.”
Indeed, immediately after the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew, Jesus exhorts us: “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you; but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” […]

Was St Paul a Former Slave
Biblical Interpretation

Was St Paul a Former Slave? Were His Parents Enslaved by the Romans?

06/05/2024 Bruce Strom 0

Our authors in Christianity Today note that several prominent Biblical scholars in past 150 years have speculated that Paul’s parents were enslaved, perhaps in “the uprising in 4 BC, when Varus, Roman governor of Syria, burned entire cities and crucified 2,000 people. In Galilean cities like Sepphoris, Josephus wrote in Antiquities of the Jews, ‘troops made its inhabitants slaves.’” Furthermore, in St Jerome’s commentary on Philemon, written around the end of the fourth century, likely using Origen’s commentary as a source, states St Paul’s parents were Gischala in Judea, and were among the Jews exiled to Tarsus by the Romans. A few centuries later, St Photius, the scholarly bishop of Constantinople, confirms this, adding that St Paul was born to enslaved parents in Tarsus. These ancient sources are highly regarded by modern scholars. […]

CS Lewis’ Mere Christianity: Reflections on Intimacy, Romance, Marriage, and Divorce
CS Lewis

CS Lewis’ Mere Christianity: Intimacy, Romance, Marriage, and Divorce

05/31/2024 Bruce Strom 1

CS Lewis continues: “Being in love is a good thing, but it is not the best thing.” “You cannot make it the basis of a whole life. It is a noble feeling, but it is still a feeling.” But CS Lewis warns us that the initial excitement will not last, that “love in the second sense is not merely a feeling, but is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit, reinforced in Christian marriages by the grace which both partners ask, and receive, from God.” […]