Many are concerned about the direction our country is going. Some call it anti -Christian, some call it post Christian, some call it secular. Whatever it is called, it is time to turn back the tide and bring Judeo Christian values back as the foundation of our culture and society.
From the video by Peter and Helen Evans

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What is the Orthodox Church's stand on IVF and cloning? What should be done with so-called "leftover" embryos which are not implanted? What does a 2,000 year-old faith have to say to modern technology on the sanctity of human life?

Helen: Sometimes we hear people justifying destroying the "leftover" embryos with the rationale that they only have enough love for one child, they couldn't imagine having enough love for four or five.

Ralph: When we're talking about Christians, we're dealing with human beings living life in a fallen, sinful world. We, in ourselves, do not have enough love to even give one other person the kind of love God would give to them. As humans, we are much more limited than God, and on top of that, we are fallen. Our love is inadequate for even one other person. If we are married a husband's love is inadequate for his wife and a wife's love is inadequate for her husband. So when you get to children, then just assume that your love will be inadequate for your first child, let alone the second or third or fourth.

Because we are fallen, we don't have enough wisdom to accurately evaluate ourselves. We can't wrap our minds and hearts around ourselves, much less another person. A mother is inadequate for her children but, as Christians, we have to rely on God's grace. I'm not saying that couples shouldn't make a choice as to how many children to have. As far as I'm aware even the Roman Catholic Church believes that couple have the right to choose how many children to have. They differ on the matter of contraception or, more to the point, how the couple implements the choice they make.

Even so, as husbands and wives, we are well aware that we can take all the measures we want, but ultimately life is in the hands of God. In my mind, we don't have a leg to stand on to justify destroying multiple embryos.

Helen: What if someone said, "But the science is here. God wouldn't have let us have the science if He didn't want us to use it."

Ralph: God does want us to use the science. The question is whether we are using science to help and benefit human life. I believe life begins at conception, so I would view the embryo as a human life. Let's say you're a Christian but don't take that perspective. Let's say you believe there is a gradual growth of "ensoulment" or whatever the phrase might be. Even then, you're still faced with the fact that you have an embryo that will become a human being. Where do you feel comfortable saying that you can destroy it at a certain stage? The issue is that the embryo will become a human being. It's not just "a mass of cells." It's a potential human being.

Helen: An objection, to the idea that we can use science any way we want, compares science to a hammer. The hammer is used incorrectly if we bash someone on the head with it. It all depends on how we use it.

Ralph: Here's a quote from the Church of England's statement, "The embryo is an amazing entity that is able to direct its own growth and development; albeit not 100% successfully." After reading this statement, I would ask people who are struggling with this issue - and it's part of being human to seek God's will for your life - "When would you feel comfortable destroying an embryo?"

Helen: Is there any correlation between transplanting organs and using embryonic cells for medical science?

Ralph: No, they are two totally different situations. If you are an organ donor, you are consciously choosing to donate your organs either in life, or you have given notification for the donation after your death.

Peter: Are you making the distinction between voluntary and involuntary donation?

Ralph: Yes, and we consider sacrifice as an essential part of being fully human. If you are donating an organ, some might argue that you are giving of yourself to save others, making a sacrifice for the sake of others. You can't say the same about the destruction of embryos.

Helen: Your talk about sacrifice flies in the face of a lot of what we might call "media Christianity" that implies that God just wants us to be happy.

Ralph: Yes, it does. My belief on that is that God is little concerned about our happiness, but He is very concerned about our joy. Happiness is different than joy. In some ways, happiness is a very superficial emotion. A valid emotion, but superficial. I could be happy if I'm having a good day at work, but that happiness could instantly disappear if I happen to cross my neighbor. Happiness can be very transitory, but joy is a matter of the deepest recesses of our being, and we really have to get into the heart. God is concerned with us being joyful whether our circumstances are good or bad. One of the questions asked by the writer on marriage is, "Have you made the choice to be happy?" To some degree this is under our control. You know the old saying, "If life gives you lemons, make lemonade."

Peter: We have to bring our own sugar to the lemons life gives us.

Helen: In one segment of the movie, "Bruce Almighty," Jim Carry (Bruce) gives everyone he meets "what they want to make them happy." Well, pretty soon the world is chaos. When Bruce talks to God about it, God replies, "Whatever made you think people know what makes them happy?"

Ralph: My wife and I were watching a movie recently which I think touches upon this. At the end of the story one character says to another, "You've achieved everything you've set out to achieve, are you now happy?" The reply is, "Well, men don't always know when they are happy, but I think so."

Helen: Let's take this idea of happiness to cloning. Perhaps I don't know what will make me happy, but I think it would be a good idea to have another "me" for spare parts.

Peter: I'd like to elaborate on that. The point of the question is the contrast between two uses of cloning. One is cloning embryos and destroying them to get their stem cells, which is wholesale murder. The other - cloning embryos to grow into adults - is almost the opposite, it's a multiplication of life. We do have to allow for the possibility that God will ensoul these new beings; even though they are created in a non traditional way.

"http://www.tatepublishing.com/bookstore/book.php?w=978-1-60696-301-2" to order book.

"The great discomfort among many secular Americans is that the religion that they have dismissed for the last half a century needs to be revisited because we are now being visited by religious fanatics. The fanatics sense that our secularism is a great weakness of character that makes us vulnerable to defeat, and they are correct." --Rev. Johannes L. Jacobse

We were asked why we wrote this book. We are a counter-force to those forces that want to re-define Christianity. Those who follow the traditional, dogmatic Church are now called fundamentalist Christians, or fanatics. You've heard anyone from Rosie O'Donnell to President Carter tell you that. This same group is trying to stretch and dilute the word Christian to include ideas that are not Christian, but sound like they may be.

If you are one of the many in our country who want to be a good person but who doesn't necessarily have a firm grasp of Christian teachings, or if you believe you are spiritual but not necessarily religious. Below is an excerpt from the Chapter on War in our book. It is a discussion with Father Hans Jacobse of the American Orthodox Institute.

Peter: Father Hans, The Orthodox Church accepts war as self-defense. Is there anything in Christian teaching that would totally condemn a war in self defense?

Fr. Hans: I don't see it. When you look at the Orthodox tradition and see how the terminology of warfare is used, it seems to me that conflict is central to the Christian understanding about how human affairs really work. We talk about the Christian life as spiritual warfare for example. We say that the Word of God is a sword or that God himself is a shield, and so forth.

What happens to Christians is that we get caught up in the current culture that labels warfare as the greatest of all evils and so we reflexively renounce it. There certainly are times when war should be renounced, but a more sober understanding sees warfare as a part of life that you just can't wish away.

Helen: The current culture doesn't have a firm foundation in Christianity, hasn't studied it to really know what it's all about. They assume the Christmas card ideal of Christianity promoted by the media such as Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men is all a Christian can say about war.

Fr. Hans: That's right. Then the proclamation is interpreted through the dominant cultural paradigm, which means that pacifism becomes its fulfillment.

Helen: Isn't pacifism the highest good a person could attain when faced with evil?

Fr. Hans: No, I don't think so. Let's turn away from war and just look at crime for example. The man who confronts the evildoer with a threat of greater violence and causes that evildoer to submit to that threat has ended the cycle of violence. Here a greater force confronts a lesser force to stop the misuse of force.

Helen: Yes, that's right. So if someone breaks into a home and threatens your loved ones, should a Christian just sit back and think, "Christ said don't use violence"? By doing so, this Christian might let their family be killed. Then the evil would continue.

Fr. Hans: Yes. Someone who holds to the pacifist ideal in those circumstances leaves the innocent defenseless. Pacifism is a solitary and individual principle and not something you can impose on your neighbor. Sometimes your neighbor needs defending.

Helen: Can someone be a pacifist by not defending themselves, but ask someone else to use violence to defend them? Don't you also have to be a pacifist in your heart and mind and even if you were facing death, love your tormentor?

Fr. Hans: I have trouble with that too. Sometimes the scriptural injunction "love your enemies" is interpreted sentimentally. People mistakenly think it means that they have to muster good feelings about their enemy. It doesn't mean that at all. Loving your enemy means that you will act in truth towards them.

Helen: When you say, "act in truth," please explain that using the example of someone breaking into a home.

Fr. Hans: If someone breaks into your home, to act in truth is to stop his violence, to stop his crime, to stop his unrighteousness, and to stand up for the innocents who need your protection. Resisting the evil-doer defends yourself and others threatened by his evil. At the same time, you affirm his evil-doing is just that - evil. Defense here is a righteous act and affirms that the evil is unrighteous.

Looking at it a little deeper, loving your enemy means that your response to him will not be infected by his evil. The scripture is clear here as well when it says "do not return evil for evil." Where the pacifist gets it wrong is that he assumes confronting the evil-doer with force is an evil in itself. It isn't.

Peter: Yes, just because you love your enemy doesn't mean you will confuse him with your friend.

Fr. Hans. Absolutely. It's great if you can make an enemy your friend, but the commandment doesn't presume this will happen and, frankly, usually it doesn't. So it must mean something more.

Get Serious, Whoever said Christianity was Nice? or the Church's Stand on Contemporary Culture, can be ordered from "http://www.tatepublishing.com/bookstore/book.php?w=978-1-60696-301-2" or Amazon.com

Helen: Does the Church consider birth control to be abortion?

Fr. Tom: No.

Helen: Does it allow birth control?

Fr. Tom: I wouldn't go so far as to say that the Church 'allows' birth control. I think it's one of those lesser evils. In any case, I do not believe you can 'control' conception by killing the fetus. Any abortifacient or any birth control that kills the fetus is absolutely unacceptable. However, for whatever reason the people want to express their love sexually without actually creating a conception in the first place, it may be blessed as a lesser evil, under certain circumstances. For example, you have a man and a woman in prison and they are both going to be killed or they are both going to suffer; and they are married and they want to express their love for each other, they might do something that prevents conception. You can't say that's a heinous sin. I knew a young couple who came to the theological seminary where I was a professor. They came with three little kids, the youngest about four years old. They sold their house in order to come. They spent all their money in order to come. They were dis-owned by their parents for deciding to come. Do you think we would tell them, morally, that they can't make love with each other in the seminary except that they want to make another child? That doesn't seem to be sensible at all from even the deepest Christian perspective. However, should the wife find out she's pregnant, then she cannot abort the child

Helen: Can that sort of argument be used for unmarried couples?

Fr. Tom: No, unmarried couples cannot engage in sexual activity, period.

Helen: Is it the Orthodox Christian teaching that sex is only for procreation?

Fr. Tom: No, the teaching is that the sexual expression of love is between a man and a woman who have committed themselves to each other totally, forever, no matter what. They offer their relationship to be blessed by God and they want their relationship to be a witness to the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Helen: When you say forever, isn't there a "til death do you part" in there?

Fr. Tom: No. The expression "til death do you part" doesn't even exist in the Orthodox service. In fact, the opposite is true. The prayer is that you will receive your crowns into the Kingdom. Then they will enter into the Kingdom faithful to each other through death itself. Saint John Chrysostom wrote a letter to a young widow and he said to her, "If you were faithful to your husband when he was alive on earth and did not share your bed with any other man, why would you share your bed with another man now that your husband is at the right hand of the Father in the Risen Lord?" So we believe we're supposed to be faithful to our spouses right through death and we will be reunited with them in the age to come.

Peter: So there is no diminishment in the bonds of fidelity. Perhaps it's even augmented.

Fr. Tom: Yes, according to the Christian view, that's accurate. The Christian marriage is supposed to mirror the fidelity of God to His creation, Yahweh to Israel and Christ to His Church. That commitment is complete and total and unbending and exists right through death.

Helen: Are there any ideas about abortion that you've encountered in your many travels that you'd like to address?

Fr. Tom: Having been a professor at Seminary - I didn't teach ethics, I taught dogmatics and spiritual life and prayer - and having been a priest for 44 years and being a church teacher and traveling around, I would say that my position would simply be that of the Church and the Scriptures and of the saints. Abortion is a sin. It's condemned in the Mosaic law and by the early Christian saints.

Peter: In the Sixth Mosaic law that says, "Thou shall not murder"?

Fr. Tom: Killing in the womb is also forbidden in Leviticus. And we have canons that say that any attempt, by any means, to kill the child in its mother's womb is equal to the crime of murder.

Our culture is infected by false, diluted values from Socialism to New Age Spiritualism and seems to have turned its moral code upside-down. Peter and Helen Evans are culture warriors inspiring their audiences that they can make a difference. They believe that our politics are a reflection of our cultural values, and those cultural values grow from our belief or disbelief in God. In our democratic system, we get the leaders and government we allow. As culture warriors they inspire audiences political, secular and Christian. They are the authors of the book, "Get Serious: The Church's Stand on Contemporary Culture." They are available to talk on many subjects: How the New Age Spirituality has invaded our politics and culture and of course their book. Contact for topics. www.peterandhelenevans.com or we2rone@cox.net