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For Study, Prayer and Fellowship - 8:00 AM PDT on 08/09/2025:
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08/09/2025 – Prologue – The modernist, idolizing social action, perverts it by collectivizing, organizing, and establishing it to death. He is usually more socialist and socialists miss not only the greatness of the individual, but also the greatness of society, a natural and happy association of free and generous individuals is more of a society than a mass of organized, bureaucratic and socialized charities. Peter Kreeft, PhD, Back to Virtue, (San Francisco, Ignatius, 1992), 33
Based on last week’s lesson and Satan’s favorite serpentine letter we are going to explore the true impact of the sexual revolution. For all time, sins of the flesh were extraordinarily tempting. The difference between then and now is that in the old days we called them what they were: sodomy, fornication, pornography, adultery, contraception and prostitution. These are not nice names. However, when folks sinned, they knew they were sinning. The sexual revolution changed what was politically and culturally fashionable. The sins that were most easily tempting were now being masked by a new philosophy.
We were duped, many thought that the revolution was merely in the realm of practice, but what was more radical was the new philosophy. However, Americans habitually pay little attention to philosophy. This is truly Machiavellian, who taught that since you cannot raise your practice (sin) to the same level of your principles (virtue); lower your principles to match your practice (realistic). Now the tempted, and the participants, can no longer be called hypocrites. The unthought of problem here is: that avoiding hypocrisy is the greatest sin. Societally and culturally, we fell for many fallacies. We must see that not practicing what you preach is not hypocrisy, but the hypocrisy is not believing what you preach. And the reality is if we cannot raise our practices to meet our principles, but only lower our principles to match our practices all that remains is a description of the practices. We have forgotten the shoulds. Eventually, this became the mantra, “Everyone else is doing it.”
All virtues are connected and if we are intellectually dulled by sex that laxness will metastasize. Satan uses sex as the gateway virtue killer and we do not like to think of ourselves as cruel or rigid but merely somewhat self-indulgent. In the past 60 years Christians have become very similar to the non-Christians in the realm of sodomy, fornication, contraception, adultery, and abortion. Recent surveys reveal 7 out of 10 Christian women have had an abortion; and what is more revealing is that 76% of women say the church has no influence on their decision. We are compelled to ask how we are so susceptible to an animal weakness? This is obviously a cultural shift and we must identify some reasons to support a shift of such magnitude. 1) The shift is justified by the new philosophy; 2) God said, “be fruitful and multiply.” 3) We have made sexual relations a recreation effort rather than one of creation. 4) No other sin is so wildly out of control; 5) By changing our sex-understanding we change our self-understanding.
The sexual revolution is the main engine of the philosophical revolution, birthing moral relativism and subjectivism. Commencing with a sexual beginning we ask, ”What is truth?” and “How do we create our own reality?” The impact on the family is unfathomable as it separates parents from their children and that specific glue of tradition is shattered. Many claim we have only made an evolutionary leap and the justification for advancing this argument is we have to justify our animalistic behavior. Via the acceptance of relativism and subjectivism we move away from the objective truth of God’s message. Members of the same church having different truths, cannot worship the same God. The result is polytheism.
What can we learn from this and how does it impact the cultural war? The truth is, we must win the sex war to win the cultural war. The reason is that sex is the effective religion of our culture and religion is the strongest force in the world – the strongest motivation. The reality is that sex is more powerful than money, power, or fame. Sex is more widely distributed and more impor-tantly, it is a way that God miraculously enters our world. He creates new images of Himself. Sex and intimacy within a marriage were created by God to affirm and solidify marital bonds and to create new images of God. This is why sex is by nature so ecstatic. It is intensely joyful and self-forgetful. Ecstasy means standing outside of one’s self. Sex is objectively holy in itself and subjectively it gives us a foretaste of heaven; it is self-forgetful, self-transcending, and self-giving. That is what our hearts are designed for and our hearts will not be satisfied until we achieve that result. We are made in God’s own image and self-giving is the inner life of the Trinity. It is for this reason that our culture’s most grave moral defeat is abortion.
Nothing less than a false religion could so easily overcome the natural moral law and nature’s deep instinct of motherhood. Abortion is a religious issue not because traditional religions oppose it, but because abortion is about sex. In order to persuade people in our society that abortion is not an option, that babies are holy and not an unwanted inconvenience to be whimsically discarded at will, we have a much more difficult task: we must persuade folks that sex is holy and not a mere recreational activity. Sex is the context of abortion and abortion is different from all other issues because sex is different from all other issues.
The surrounding context is always the most powerful determining factor. If you surround an enemy in war or surround a king on the chess board you win. If you surround a choice with light and truth, then the choice will be the right one. If you surround it with darkness, it will be the wrong one. If you surround an individual with a good family and a good society, then the individual will find it easy to make the right choices. If you surround him with a broken family, a broken society, wrong choices will seem natural. If you surround the hard choices such as abortion, cohabitation, pornography with the truth about the holy mystery of sex, as society once did, then most people will make the right decision.
We are faced with the modernists' two false, destructive philosophies: dehumanizing materialism and idolatrous spiritualization of the sexual revolution. The Christian church must return to the basics to create and preach a doctrine and a truth to counteract these philosophies. Fortunately, when the world creates great sinners, the church produces great saints. Candidly, it has been the evangelical Protestants and the orthodox Catholics who have been the tip of the spear in the battle against the sexual revolution. They have been steadfast in their reliance on the Bible and taken their direction from God. Liberal Christians (Protestant and Catholic) seem enshrouded in a fog of biblical denial as they become enmeshed in spiritual warfare. The battle lines are clear and they define the identity of the Church. AMEN
Love, hank
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