If we are going to embrace a Sanctity of Life view, can we:

• Affirm that life begins at conception, which means saying no to abortion?
• Embrace and support policies that call for the proper care of families and their children who are here illegally until their status is addressed?
• Advocate for appropriate measures in our schools to keep children safe, that don’t involve arming teachers with guns?
• Support reasonable gun control laws that take guns out of the hands of people that shouldn’t have them?
• Encourage state governments that are pro-life to provide necessary support programs for young mothers who decide to have their babies instead of aborting them?
• Call for an end to capital punishment?
• Support measures to provide homes for refugees who wish to enter into our country after reasonable vetting?
• Call for an end to euthanasia and the inappropriate ending of a life of an elderly person?
• Embrace the idea that the suffering of an elderly person can be transformed into a joyful lifting up of a cross that needs to be carried for one’s salvation?
• Support the idea of dying a good death as one’s life comes to an end (i.e. “completing the remaining time of our life in peace and repentance”).

If so, why do we then go on to:

• Say that some of the above statements are rooted in ideology and politics and have nothing to do with the Church?
• Address differing sides on this issue with hate and intolerance?
• Complain about the hypocrisy of others while we ignore the hypocrisy in ourselves?
• Say that the Church’s teachings are more consistent with being a conservative or a liberal, neither of which is true?
• Not realize that all of the statements under “If we are going…?” are pro-life statements? It is not just about abortion.

What does this all have to do with family life? I wrote these things because as parents you have to help your children as they grow older to navigate these difficult issues our society is facing today. I want to encourage you to be as wholistic as you can in helping your children understand and live by a true Sanctity of Life ethic, which the Orthodox Church teaches; to help your children understand that the Church may tolerate certain practices because they are the result of living in a fallen world. But the Church being the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, the Church Militant, always points us to a higher calling, a calling that is not of this world.

The blessing of the Lord be upon you,

The unworthy +Paul