Come On, Live and Let Live Already!

"Live and let live, right?  I mean, what other people do, the choices they make, don’t affect me, right, so “who am I to judge”?    WRONG!  What we do, how we behave, and the choices we make, good and bad, affect everyone else around us, those we know and those we don’t know as well.  We have absolutely no idea how our actions are joined together with the action and inactions of others to create the world we live in today, and the world that our children will live in tomorrow. 

Our sins are never just against God, they are against all of humanity.  We are all connected, and the actions of one, no matter how small does effect all the rest of us.  It is not always immediate, or obvious.  The subtlety of Satan is very dangerous and real.  These dangers lurk in the what may appear as nice and tolerant;  but nice and tolerant are not the same as goodness and holiness, and the latter is what we must always strive for.  This is demonstrated so profusely in the two biggest problems and moral dilemmas we face in today’s society. In fact, they are moral dilemmas we have faced throughout the history of the world: abortion and homosexuality.  These are not new issues, they have always existed.  Truth and evil have coexisted throughout time and space, and both breed within the hearts that gravitate toward the God of Goodness and Truth or toward the Evil of indifference and tolerance.  “All it takes for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.” Edmund Burke 

Homosexuality and abortion are both wrong and a problem because they work and fight against nature, the natural world that God created for humans so that they could flourish and be happy.  The sanctity of marriage and life as created by God is necessary for a stable and flourishing society because life is born from the union of a man and a woman, and the results of those unions are babies;  human lives with individual bodies and eternal souls that are needy and demanding of nourishment of both the physical and spiritual.  The acts of homosexuality and abortion both negate the most foundational basic instincts and habits of our nature. Humans benefit and are nurtured by both the masculine and feminine aspects of marital union, a union imitating Christ's love and care for His Church.  This union should result in well adjusted thriving children and self sacrificing adults who continue the pattern and process into future generations.  These unions populate and fill the heavens and the earth with life and persons whose end purpose is to worship, love and adore God for all of eternity. 

But……..  sin and Satan entered the picture and distorted all that is good.  Slowly and patiently morphing evil into behaviors that have become acceptable, desirable and even trendy in today’s society.  A society and world focused on individual desires and pleasures that are not self sacrificing but self centered, self seeking, and disposable.   The result of this behavior and it’s attack on the very foundation that establishes a flourishing society is now the darkness and devastation that it has wrought evidenced in struggling single-parent households, gay “marriage”, cohabitation and sex outside of marriage, unwanted pregnancies and children,  causal sex and the hook up culture, sex trafficking and slavery; which all promote and glorify the intolerance of God’s natural and sanctifying gifts that we are to each other.  Sr. Lucia, the last living seer of Fatima stated that the final confrontation between our Lord and Satan would be marriage and the family - the ancient institutions whose definitions and missions have become obscured, blurred, confused and self-defined to the horror and devastation of our world.

Most of us have the idea and notion that all these evils mentioned above are normal and acceptable in our day and age.  These are behaviors that have become common and celebrated and that aren’t hurting anyone, we must be tolerant, let individuals choose for themselves, and support them in those choices, no matter how much they defy God’s laws and commands.  God understands, God is merciful after all and won’t damn someone born with tendencies that they are unable to control.  The thing is, we are all born with tendencies that we are forced to confront and control throughout our lives, and the ways we confront those tendencies results in hearts that become sanctified or hardened.  Hearts that become sanctified will have the much more difficult time here on this Earth as they battle the evils that label them intolerant, homophobic, judgmental and self-righteous, but those individuals would rather stand with God and be judged by the world, than stand with the world and be judged by God.  Those standing with God realize there will be a judgement, those standing with the world deny that judgment and even the need and want for God.  In the end God prevails, and those who thought that “live and let live” was a viable option may be held accountable for the "cop out" that the whole notion and irresponsibility of “who am I to judge” may damn them for.