Don’t Dialogue With Sin

Dont Dialogue With Sin Fr. Ioannes Apiariusby Fr. Ioannes Apiarius –
Don’t dialogue with sin. Don’t engage sin. Don’t self-identify with sin. Don’t take pride in sin. Don’t define sin as essential to human identity. Don’t celebrate sin. Turn away from sin. Flee from sin. Repent of sin. Struggle and fight against sin. Help others turn away from sin. Help them to fight against sin. Teach others to avoid sin and reject sin.

“The demons want us to enter into dialogue with them. We must do everything we can to avoid this. The only way to do this is to totally ignore all their suggestions, to not pay them any attention,” wrote Elder Sergei of Vanves.

These are basic and universal Christian principles and moral precepts that keep us on the narrow road that leads to salvation and eternal life. They help us clear the weeds of destructive passions from the soil of our souls, and prep it for the Word of God to be implanted, take root, and bear much good fruit. They help us fight the good fight. They help us live in truth. They help us seek and worship the True God, not the idol many of us craft from our own distorted thinking and call it “god.”

Don’t self-identify with sin. Don’t take pride in sin.

As Fr. Thomas Hopko warned, according to the Bible teaching and Orthodox understanding, “humanity’s basic sin is not atheism. It is idolatry. In this perspective, all people have their god. It is either a god (or gods) that they have made or others have inflicted upon them which they command and control; or it is the God who made them, whom they are commanded to worship and obey for their own good. In this view, there are no atheists, but only idolaters.”

These imperatives enable us to strive for holiness and allow the Holy Spirit to abide in us and transform us into the new men Christ desires for us to become. “But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Corinthians 3:18).

Unfortunately, in recent years, many online sites and academic groups and publications that call themselves “Orthodox” have sprung up and claim to want to promote “dialogue.” Most of the “dialogue” these venues support questions, challenges, mocks, deconstructs, contradicts, and distorts Church teaching, practices, and theology, especially with regards to the moral teaching, the priesthood, the sacraments, and the definition of marriage. All of them have advocated a non-Orthodox understanding of homosexual sin and publish the work of pro-LGBT priests and deacons, and openly homosexual academics and writers.

They seek to distort and change the plain and direct teaching of the Gospels.

Very often what passes for “dialogue” in the work of these pseudo-Orthodox organizations mangles the truth and replaces Godly wisdom with human foolishness. Those advocating this “dialogue” don’t want to be changed by the Word of God and illumined by the wisdom of Jesus Christ written in the Scriptures. They instead seek to distort and change the plain and direct teaching of the Gospels, the New Testament, and the Holy Orthodox Church. Instead of being judged and corrected by the Word, they judge the Word and contradict the teaching of the Apostles, the Fathers, and the Saints of the Church.

The battle against sin is not optional. It’s a requirement for all men. The Holy Scriptures attest to this ongoing warfare beginning with the Old Testament and continuing with the New. God calls us to avoid sin, repent, and seek purity of heart and body. Christ himself commanded us to be perfect. “You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). Dialoguing with sin, engaging in sin, or self-identifying with sin all categorically contradict that commandment and teaching.

This is from the devil.

Therefore, if you are a Christian, especially an Orthodox Christian, you can never identify yourself as “homosexual, gay, transsexual, queer, bisexual” or self-identify with any other sin and sexual distortion included in the LGBTQIA ever-expanding list. If you are an Orthodox Christian you cannot celebrate “Gay Pride” or support “LGBT Pride” or cheer “Happy Pride.” If you are an Orthodox Christian you cannot be a “trans advocate” or “trans ally” or “LGBT advocate.”

Such acknowledgements are blasphemous. This is from the devil. This makes a mockery of the Orthodox Christian teaching on sin and holiness as it relates to human nature and God’s relationship with man. It advertises a worldly, corrupt, and false perception of the human condition.

Sin is nothing to be proud about, self-identify with, and dialogue with!

Such proclamations present sin and the passions as essential to human existence. They permanently unite sin to human nature. They define humanity by sin, in direct contradiction to the Scriptures, God’s commandments, the teaching of Christ and the Holy Fathers, and the theology and dogmas of the Holy Orthodox Church, all of which testify that sin entered creation due to man’s disobedience and rebellion against God. The Lord has said that sin is alien to human existence, a deadly threat that separates man from God. If anyone teaches differently, they are worshiping an idol and not the real God.

Sin is nothing to be proud about, self-identify with, and dialogue with!

Sin does not characterize men. Passions do not define human beings. Christians cannot self-identify with any sin or any passion. Orthodox Christians who believe that Jesus Christ is Lord, the Son and Word of the living God, True God of True God, the Redeemer and Saviour of all mankind, must reject and abandon the “gay” or “homosexual” or “queer” or any other LGBT label. “You are not your own; you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20).

– Fr. Ioannes Apiarius

Dont Dialogue With Sin Fr. Ioannes Apiarius

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8 thoughts on “Don’t Dialogue With Sin”

  1. Very well put. Now if only we had an assembly of bishops who could speak so clearly. It’s a shame they’re too busy posing for photos.

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  2. Amen, Bob. “Many shepherds have ruined My vineyard, They have trampled down My field; They have made My pleasant field A desolate wilderness.” Jeremiah 12:10

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  3. What about the men and women in the Orthodox Church who are gay and are putting their time and money into the Church like choir directors, Sunday School teachers, donating to scholarships for kids to go to camp and on mission trips. Should they just stay home on Sundays and keep their money to themselves? The dialogue centers around what to do with this class of people. Gay and in the church, giving money, time. Seriously, father, what is your answer? Don’t engage and just ignore these questions?

    Reply
    • Dear Kaleigh,
      “gays who are putting time and money.”

      Money:
      “But Peter said unto him (Simon the magician), Thy money perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money.” Acts 8:20. God is not poor and hungry for money dear Kaleigh, “The earth is the LORD’s, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein. For He hath founded it” Ps 24:1. Giving money is a way to show God how much we love Him and have chosen Him as our Master not that master (money).

      Time:
      It could have been much more profitable if they invested this time to walk in the Spirit in cleansing themselves from this sin, then they will become a temple of the Holy Spirit. By this their words will not be empty words, but words spoken by the men of God anointed and springing forth from the Holy Spirit, Who will also give power with the spoken words to help people have real change. This is the difference between When the power of God’s Spirit speak and the academic puffed up knowledge of man babbling. Peter spoke by the Spirit and 3000 people repented.

      God wants us to be holy as He is Holy. Without holiness we cannot see God, St Paul said. Holiness means the purity of heart, from the passions, as the Lord said: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

      The Lord said from their fruits you shall know them. Can they reap grapes from thistles? Can we reap holiness from murderers? If not, how can they dare to teach? and what kind of teaching? All the heretics in the church were teachers who were academic, but void of the Holy Spirit. Can we reap chastity from sexual immoral people? I leave the answer to you.

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    • I am an Orthodox man experiencing homosexual attraction. I come from a Christian yet secular family. For years I have strived to fit into the LGBT community but to no avail. Something was never right. Everything, from sex to monkeying things normal couples do, have always felt unnatural.

      Orthodoxy has liberated me from a cruel and soul-wrenching lifestyle focusing on promiscuity and the idolatry of eternal youth, a lifestyle that is much more oppressive for homosexuals than any normal societal setting. I have a very dear male friend who thinks like me and we help each other in our struggle for the salvation of our souls in a relationship of brotherly love that does not include sex or posing as a couple. Glory be to God.

      Reply
  4. Speaking of more “dialogue” here comes Fr. John “Sexual Minorities” Jillions (see his speech from 2013 https://www.oca.org/reflections/fr.-john-jillions/april-15-2013) equating Christ calling sinners to repentance and bringing them true life by preaching the Word of God, with the pro-LGBT progressive academics who continually push the homosexual, radical feminist, “gay marriage” and pro-abortion agendas on the Orthodox Church (https://www.orthodoxytoday.org/blog/2019/07/warning-to-orthodox-church-false-teachers-and-deceitful-venues-that-contradict-and-distort-church-teaching/).

    Jillions again shows himself to be a false and deceiving teacher. He cannot be trusted. The Orthodox Church must warn the faithful to avoid his distorted and deceptive teachings.

    https://publicorthodoxy.org/2022/05/05/the-masters-hospitality-jesus-and-dialogue/
    “In the Orthodox Church we need much more space for the free, respectful, and vigorous exchange of ideas, especially on the subjects that most divide and trouble us. Jesus consistently pushed the disciples to think beyond the conventional boundaries of “neighbor.” Going further, he insisted that his disciples love their enemies. St. Sophrony Sakharov (1896-1993) labeled this as the central teaching of Jesus in the New Testament and understood “enemies” to be those who are different and present a challenge to our way of thinking.”

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    — NOTE — The use of the term “sexual minorities” comes from Fr. John Jillions himself, who used it promiscuously while he was OCA Chancellor as a euphemism for the normalization of homosexual activity within the Church–as early as 2013–without explicitly saying so. The term is irresponsibly broad and supports all manner of relationships as morally legitimate. Jillions has a history of intentionally confusing the audience and hiding his pro-LGBTQ agenda by creating a category of being “sexual minority” that have never existed or been recognized by the Orthodox Church (borrowed from: https://www.monomakhos.com/do-these-people-count-as-sexual-minorities/).

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