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Religious Articles Archive |
| Year 2002 |
Freedom of Religion
Ask most Americans what the First Amendment says about religion, and you'll get the
standard reply that it guarantees the separation of church and state. It says no such thing, of
course. What it says is careful and precise: "Congress shall make no law respecting an
establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." |
Why Conservatives Can't Win
Religious and cultural conservatives are routinely labeled "mean-spirited",
"judgmental," "overly critical," "self-righteous," "close-minded," and worse simply for trying
to conserve something valuable they believe they've been given to pass on to the folowing generations. |
Discipline and Church
We in the Church have a responsibility to the world to demonstrate that we are
willing to accept and embrace Godly parental instruction and correction and that we are
willing to dole it out in Christian love. |
Consider Your Calling
The nature of the callings of God means that Christians are risk takers. We risk
these things because we believe in the truth and that it is more important than our
comfort, safety, and advancement. |
Demonizing religion
Anything having to do with religion, particularly the symbols and ideas of the
Christian religion, has been treated like an unhealthy contamination, and systematically exorcised
out of what has come to be called the public sector. |
Making the Christmas Story Real in Our Lives
The angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, warning him to "take the child
and his mother and escape to Egypt" (Matthew 2:13). Jesus' life was preserved. God again demonstrated
that his will was able to prevail over the political agenda of powerful men who would attempt
to silence the voice of God. |
Forgiveness: Breaking the Chain of Evil
"When you look at it from the point of view of justice, there is no reason for
forgiveness. Only if God exists and we realize that there is either a world with evil or no world
at all, only then can we understand that we are going to have to undergo the trial of evil." |
The Twelve Days of Christmas
Rather than preparing for the birth of Christ through inward reorientation
and discipline, we follow the direction of the dominant culture and skip any preparation
altogether. We party instead of fast. We get caught up in the commercial energy of
the season rather than waiting on the Spirit of God. |
Our Lord’s Holy Nativity
This is indeed a holy time for all of us as we prepare for our Lord’s Holy Nativity.
It is a time to pray, a time to fast, and a time to think about how we are to celebrate this
great and holy feast day spiritually. |
When Christmas Becomes Illegal
Across the nation, school and city officials are banning Christian themes.
These alarming actions are part of a diabolical scheme by anti-religion devotees to create
distinctive and unfair rules for religious Americans. |
A Plea For Courage
Heresy is a spiritual cancer. Unless it is recognized and addressed it will eat away
the vitality of the Church just as biological cancer eats away at the vitality of the human body. |
Leadership
Woodward's series on George W. Bush's handling of the presidency post-Sept. 11 makes
for very interesting reading because it sheds some light on the combination of qualities that make
some men good leaders. |
Living As Christians ‘In Spirit and In Truth’
Our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ, gave man inner spiritual life, taught us to
worship Him, and to serve God ‘in spirit and in truth’. By this He meant that we are to serve
Him with deeds and that only life ‘in the spirit’ is really effective life - this is
an eternal reality. |
Prayer Within The Heart
Where there is prayer, God is present, especially when that prayer comes from
within the heart. God loves to hear us pray when we pray from the heart, as He is quick to
listen to us and to respond to us with a greater love than we would ever experience
on this earth. |
Why are Christians losing America?
Christianity – the deepest, most meaningful and awe-inspiring religion ever, the
magnificent driving force behind Western Civilization, and the transcendent hope of mankind's
future – has been dumbed down into a comic-book religion. |
Freedom To Love Our God
The way to freedom is to recognize that it comes from God, and is given by Him to
the humbled heart that truly surrenders everything to His sublime will. |
Protecting Our Young People . . .
"A teen is capable of making the right decisions if he first knows right from wrong.
When adults remain silent the teen won’t know how to protect himself from the false promises of the
licentiousness culture. Silence contributes to this victimization of our children." |
To Know God Is To Love Him
If we really want to know the Lord our God, then we must first humble ourselves, then be obedient
and sober in all things. Love truth! Once we begin to love truth, the Holy Spirit will dwell within us,
making it crystal clear to our hearts and minds just how much we should love one another. |
Christian Prayer in a Time of Anxiety
I tell people that God will not listen to their prayers if they don't listen to what
they are praying. Why should God listen if you don't? |
Do Icons Really Weep?
I had long heard of weeping icons and, as I look back on it, I believed the reports to be true.
The whole matter, though, had no real significance for me on any personal level. That changed, however, when
my wife and I received a phone call from a young Orthodox priest. |
Worship in the Orthodox Tradition
The worship of the Orthodox Church is meant to be nothing less than
participation in the eternal Liturgy at the Throne of God in heaven. It is the earthly
type, symbol, and image of the heavenly reality; and through these earthly types, by the
Holy Spirit, we actually participate in the heavenly. |
Christians' Silence = Endorsement of Immorality
With all the moral and ethical issues facing society today, one Christian
advocate says the Church has been too quiet for too long. |
Bush weighs in on partial-birth abortions
In opposing partial-birth abortion, Bush is fighting for all of us. If we
allow this evil to continue, we will have lost something basic. The debate isn't just
about the humanity of the unborn child, but ours as well. |
Demonizing Christians
Democrats, in the name of tolerance, plan to demonize conservative Christians
as being like the Taliban, according to an article in Newsweek. |
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| Year 2001 |
Paradise Within Us
Christ the Lord gave us the Holy Spirit, and the man in whom the Holy Spirit lives
feels that he has paradise within him. Faced with this great spiritual truth, we ask ourselves,
"Why is it that I don't have grace like that? |
Conviction
We seem to have come to a point in the Church that anyone who speaks anything about
anyone that is deemed to be "unkind" is chastised for their "judgmentalism" or lack of Christ-like love. |
A Call To Action
God has charged us with the redemption of culture. When God finished creating our material
world, He delegated to man the responsibility of continuing the order of creation. |
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| Year 2000 & Prior Years |
Father, Glorify Thy Name!
There persists among Christians today a disposition to talk of God apart from Christ. I do
not mean that Christians, at least serious Christians, explicitly theorize that the true God can be
known without Christ. [July 2000] |
Religious Neutralism
Some Christians see the decay of the world as predestined and inevitable, so they
withdraw from society. Such a retreat, however, only contributes to the growth of evil. |
Children in the Church
Allowing children to have contact with spiritual grace is one of the first, basic
concerns of a Christian who thinks about his children, and the task of Christian society,
which is concerned about its youth. |
More than a Feeling
Believers are told their beliefs are 'true for you, but not for everybody.' But religious
experiences aren't the same as emotion. |
Mission of the Orthodox Church
Jesus Christ sends His Church into the world for the same purpose that God the
Father sent him. The Church, with Jesus its head, exists to manifest God as fully and completely
as possible until Christ returns in glory to establish God's reign in the universe. |
Strong to the Finish
As Christians we have to run the race God intended us to run, not somebody
else's race or the race of our own choosing. Yet it's easy to compare ourselves with others.
When the race seems tough, it's easy to look at someone else and say, "If I had his race to
run, no problem. If I had his paycheck, if I had a spouse, if I had his good health, I
could run with perseverance." |
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