Recently, I’ve renewed my interest in what’s known in the Orthodox Church as “The Jesus Prayer.” It’s interesting to see how, in some ways, the Jesus Prayer resembles what some Western mystics call Centering Prayer, which uses a word, phrase, or image to guide and focus the mind of the person praying.[1] I have written about Centering Prayer in the past because, many years ago, I was introduced to this kind of prayer and, for a long time, was a practitioner through a group that met monthly at a local Episcopal Church near the one I served. I found that Centering Prayer was a way of opening my mind to listen receptively for and to God and to receive a kind of calm openness to God, especially in trying circumstances and when making difficult decisions.

The Jesus Prayer

The Jesus Prayer is much older than the Centering Prayer Movement. References to the prayer appear in the writings of the Church Fathers, and it has been practiced throughout the ages. In Orthodoxy, the Jesus Prayer is usually a variation of “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner” (Luke 18:38). Some people use a shorter version that simply goes, “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.” Others, including me, use a slightly longer version that goes, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” I find that adding the phrase “living God” helps me focus on the fact that God is personally alive and present in my life. The precise wording is up to the practitioner and his or her spiritual guide.

Most people who begin practicing the Jesus Prayer do so with very little or limited instruction. In my case, I read a little book called The Way of the Pilgrim, and from that book I began to practice on my own.[2] Later, I read part of what is known as the Philokalia, a selection of the wisdom of the great fathers of Orthodox mystical prayer.[3] (I’m not sure this is the best way for most people. The Philokalia can be complicated, and some translations are archaic. I think a modern introduction, like Frederica Mathewes Green’s The Jesus Prayer: The Ancient Desert Prayer that Tunes the Heart to God, is both more readable and more understandable.)[4] Only after some time was I able to talk to an Orthodox priest who himself practiced the prayer.

Some practitioners suggest gently synchronizing the prayer with your breathing. When practicing the Jesus Prayer, you might find it helpful to associate the first part (“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God”) with your inhale and the second part (“have mercy on me, a sinner”) with your exhale. As you breathe in and out, the prayer can gradually feel more natural and even seamless, until the words fade and your breath itself becomes the prayer. This is why the prayer is often called the “Prayer of the Heart.” The idea is to learn to “pray without ceasing,” as Paul says in his letter to the Thessalonians: “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thessalonians 5:16-17).

A second aid in praying the prayer is the use of a prayer rope. A prayer rope is a loop made of woven knots, often in the shape of a cross, with thirty-three (the years of Christ’s earthly life), fifty, or even up to 100 knots. It is used to keep track of repetitions of the Jesus Prayer and often helps keep one’s mind from drifting (at least this is true for me).

Building a Relationship with Christ

The Jesus Prayer connects with the entire point of Orthodoxy discipleship,  which is developing a deep transforming relationship with Christ. The Orthodox have a doctrine they call “theosis.” It is similar to what Protestants call “Sanctification,” but there is a difference. The idea of theosis is that the believer will not merely become like Christ or be somewhat conformed to Christ’s character in our actions, but will, in fact, become deified to the extent a human being can by inviting God in Christ into their life.

In other words, the prayer “Lord Jesus, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner,” is designed to transform us from sinners into the image of God revealed in Christ. This is part of a process in which our darkened human nature is restored to God’s original intent in creating the human race. Theosis involves a progression in the Christian life.

1. The Carnal State. We begin in a situation where we simply act according to our instincts and are driven by the passions of the flesh. In this situation, we are incapable of truly good judgment because we’re under the control of what Paul refers to as the powers and principalities of our fallen world. We are captured by the darkness.
2. The Beginner’s State. In a second phase of our spiritual life, we have accepted Christ and developed a relationship with God, but we are only capable of halting, beginner’s progress toward moral and spiritual maturity.
3. The Intermediate State. In the third stage, which I think is where most people strive to be, we have good sense and good judgment and are able to judge rightly the moral and spiritual consequences of most situations. However, in this stage, we are still, in some sense, pragmatically interested in the faith that works for us. We are still, in some ways, captured by our own human nature.
4. The Transcendental State. In the final stage, which the orthodox believe few attain, we obtain a kind of transcendental enlightenment in which a person acts according to the perfect judgment that only those who have escaped the control of their passions can attain.

In the first state, we have not even begun to seek Christ and the spiritual life. We act carnally and unnaturally and have very poor judgment. In the second stage, we are able, to some degree, to overcome our passions and desires, but we are still beginners in the spiritual life. In the third stage, we have good sense and judgment and, as far as we are capable, can act in our own best interests and the best interests of others. In the final stage, we have stable spiritual judgment about the things of this world and of God—but we are capable of seeing things from what might be called “a God’s-eye point of view.”

In a beautiful passage, two authors of the Philokalia give the following description of the four stages:

The first is like a traveler in the deepest night and impenetrable darkness. Wandering in unrelieved blackness that envelops him on all sides, he neither sees himself nor judges himself; he does not even understand where he is going or where he puts his foot. As the Savior says: “He that walketh in darkness does not know where he is going” (John 12:35).

The second is like a man walking on a clear night lit by the stars. In their feeble glimmer, he walks slowly, often stumbling over the stones of injudiciousness and constantly falling down. This man sees himself and judges himself a little, but as in deep shadow, as is written: ‘Awake you that sleep, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light’ (Ephesians 5:14).

The third is like a man walking on a calm night when the moon is full. Guided by the moon’s light, he walks more surely and moves forward. He sees himself as in a mirror and judges himself as well as his fellow-travelers, as it is said: ‘Ye do well that ye take heed’ (to the word of prophecy), ‘as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts’ (2 Peter 1: 19).

The fourth is like a man who walks at clear noontide, in bright sunshine. Such a man sees himself clearly, as in the light of the sun, and judges with full truth both himself and many others.[5]

This is a good place to introduce another term associated with the Jesus Prayer, Hesychia. The term refers to stillness, rest, or quiet. The goal of the Jesus Prayer and, indeed, of Orthodox spiritual disciplines is a state of quiet before God. Through the constant repetition of the Jesus Prayer, the practitioner can be brought to a state of deep inner quiet in which union with God is achieved. The Jesus Prayer is as old as the Desert Fathers, who practiced it in their desert retreats. The technique was used and refined on Mount Athos by the monks who lived and worshiped there. In the fourteenth century, a monk named St. Gregory Palamas defended it when its practice became controversial. His views were ultimately adopted by the church.

The Biblical Basis

Evangelical believers and others sometimes ask whether the practice of the Jesus Prayer is “biblical.” If one reads the Philokalia, one finds numerous references to the Old and New Testaments on nearly every page and certainly by every author. In the New Testament, we often see Jesus going off alone to pray in the wilderness. In Matthew, a woman comes to Jesus and cries out for healing, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, son of David” (Matthew 15:22). In Luke, we see the prayer offered by someone asking Jesus for healing, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ (Luke 18:13). In the letters of Paul, he urges us to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17). In the Way of the Pilgrim, it is this verse about “praying without ceasing” that begins the anonymous writer’s account of the pilgrim’s journey into the prayer, and it is often cited as the foundational basis for the practice.

The Jesus Prayer and Faith

Protestants and others often ask whether the practice of the Jesus Prayer and other spiritual disciplines is a substitute for faith? The answer is a clear “No.” Throughout the ages, practicing any spiritual discipline, including the Jesus Prayer, is not a substitute for faith. It is a response to faith. This is why the authors of the Philokalia make the distinction between the common person who has no interest in spiritual things and the stages of a disciple’s development who takes the call to become like Christ seriously. St. Maximus puts it this way:

The cause of the bestowal of one or another Divine gift lies in the measure of every man’s faith. For as much as we believe, so we have the power of zeal to act according to our belief. Therefore, a man acting according to faith reveals by his actions the measure of his faith and receives grace in proportion to his faith. And a man who does not act according to faith reveals the measure of his unbelief in proportion to his idleness and, owing to his lack of faith, is deprived of grace.[6]

Each person receives a spiritual gift, including the gift of praying without ceasing, because through faith that individual is given the spiritual ability to receive it from God, along with the gift and the mercy it brings. Those without faith do not receive spiritual gifts, and no amount of practice can replace God’s own action. Therefore, faith is necessary. Practitioners of the Jesus prayer respond in acts of faith to the faith they have in Christ. The prayer is a kind of work of faith.

There are dangers in practicing the Jesus Prayer, as with any spiritual gift or practice. There is always the danger of misuse, pride, and using the prayer in ways contrary to God’s love and wisdom. For this reason, almost every book on the Jesus Prayer recommends having a spiritual director or priest to whom one is accountable in the practice of the prayer and to whom one reports one’s experiences. Accountability is always the best way to avoid misuse of any gift.

Copyright 2026, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved 

 ¹ The work of Thomas Keating and his associates to reintroduce contemplative prayer into the West is well known. For a good introduction to Centering Prayer, see Cynthia Bourgeault, Centering Prayer and Inner Wakening (Cambridge, MA: Crowley Publications, 2004).

[2] Anonymous. (1991). The Way of a Pilgrim; and, The Pilgrim Continues his Way (R. M. French, Trans.). Harper San Francisco. (Original work published ca. 1800s). There are many fine translations and editions available.

[3] See, Writings from the Philokalia on the Prayer of the Heart translated by E. Kadloubovsky and G. E. Palmer (London, ENG: Faber and Faber), 215-216. Once again, I recommend a modern translation. I am using this shorter, Russian abbreviation rather than the multivolume set often referred to today and by scholars.

[4] Frederica Mathewes Green, The Jesus Prayer: The Ancient Desert Prayer that Tunes the Heart to God (Brewster Mass: Paraclete Press, 2009-2010).

[5] This and the entire section is from the Monks Callistus and Ignatius, “Direction to Hesychasts” in Writings from the Philokalia on the Prayer of the Heart translated by E. Kadloubovsky and G. E. Palmer (London, ENG: Fabier and Faber), 215-216. I have reformatted and modernized the language just a bit for clarity.

[6] Id, 211.

Roe v. Wade, perhaps the most debated and in some quarters, vilified Supreme Court opinion of the 20th century, arose from appeals in Texas and Georgia challenging their state abortion laws.[1] In Roe, the Court recognized (or created) a right to abortion, building on its earlier decision in Griswold v. Connecticut.[2] The majority opinion, written by Justice Blackmun, acknowledged the abortion debate’s emotional and moral dimensions. In the end, however, the majority ruled both the Texas and Georgia statutes unconstitutional. Because the Texas and Georgia laws were similar to those in most states at the time, the decision effectively created a universal right to abortion in the United States.[3]

Before I begin, I want to say a word to those who support Roe. I intend to write two blogs on Roe and its overturning. In the second blog, I promise to give due credit to those in the minority, as I have done here. By this, I do not mean to apologize for my views on Roe, which I am well aware some readers will reject and have a right to do so.

Controversy and Impact

To say the decision was controversial is to understate its impact. Supporters of abortion rights hailed the decision.On the other side of the argument, Roe immediately led to the creation of a “pro-life movement” determined to overturn it. It has been and remains an issue in state, local, and national elections. Politically, the decision led to a realignment within the Democratic and Republican parties, as each became more uniformly aligned with one side of the debate, losing members to the other party who disagreed with their position on Roe. The result was an increase in the political polarization we see today.

The decision’s impact was felt among American religious groups as well. What are sometimes called “the Mainline Churches” largely embraced the decision, giving rise to pro-life ministries within every mainline church. Evangelical groups generally opposed the decision on moral grounds and became home to many departing mainline members. Roman Catholics and evangelicals, once suspicious of one another, united in their opposition to Roe and its results.

Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey and Beyond

Following Roe, the Court entered a period of both upholding and limiting the decision’s scope, allowing greater flexibility for states to regulate abortion. As I shall point out, the Court was forced by its own decision to engage in case-by-case decision-making as it weighed questions such as when life begins, when a fetus is viable, what rights parents and spouses might have, and other consequences of Roe. In the end, the fundamental incoherence of the Court’s initial decision caused the entire edifice to fail.

Numerous subsequent Supreme Court decisions in the area of abortion did not create a consensus as to the scope of Roe or the parameters of local state power. Finally, in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey, the Court upheld Roe, clearly grounding Roe’s justification in the 14th Amendment and attempting to find a way to resolve the conflict Roe had created.[4] Casey granted the states more leeway by also holding that states have a “substantial interest in potential life,” leading to the conclusion that not all regulations were prohibited. Casey instituted an “undue burden standard” as the appropriate means of reconciling the State’s interest with the right created by Roe.[5]  While these decisions upheld the central holding in Roe, they returned considerable power to regulate abortion to the states.

Over the years, in case after case, the scope of Roe was gradually reduced as the Court was faced with the necessity to review numerous attempts by state legislatures to restrict abortion, which disagreed with the open-ended nature of the decision. Just a few of these include:

• Planned Parenthood v. Danforth(1976), blocking a law requiring spousal consent for abortion.
• Maher v. Roe(1979) permitting states to exclude abortion services from Medicaid coverage.
• Colautti v. Franklin(1979) striking down an unconstitutionally vague Pennsylvania law requiring physicians to try to save the life of a fetus that might have been viable.
• Harris v. McRae(1980), upholding the Hyde Amendment, a federal law that proscribed federal funding for abortions except when necessary to preserve life or as a result of rape or incest.
• In  v. Matheson(1981), upholding a law requiring parental notification when the patient is a minor living with parents.
• City of Akron v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health(1983), invalidating a wide range of limitations on abortion, such as a waiting period, parental consent without judicial bypass, and a ban on abortions outside of hospitals after the first trimester.
• Thornburgh v. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists(1986) striking down a law that required informed consent to include information about fetal development and alternatives to abortion.
• In Webster v. Reproductive Health Services(1989), upholding rules requiring doctors to test for viability after twenty weeks and blocking state funding and state employee participation in abortion services.
• Rust v. Sullivan(1991) upheld a ban on certain federal funds being used for abortion referrals or counseling.
• Hill v. Colorado(2000) upholding a law limiting protest and leafletting close to an abortion clinic.
• Stenberg v. Carhart(2000) striking down Nebraska’s ban on the dilation and extraction abortion procedure.
• In Gonzales v. Carhart(2007), upholding a federal ban on the dilation and extraction procedure. [6]

In the end, however, none of the Court’s decisions created legitimacy for Roe, and states continued to register their opposition by creating various regulatory schemes that narrowed the impact of its earlier decisions. Politically, neither side in the debate was completely happy with the ruling at any stage of its modification. Recently, in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Court overturned its previous decisions in Roe. [7] I will deal with Dobbs in a subsequent post.

Substantive Due Process and Roe’s Rationale

The majority in Roe based their decision on a kind of “substantive due process” test and rationale, (though failing to clearly articulate it), finding a right to abortion implicit in the 14^th Amendment via the kind of right to privacy it had previously discerned in Griswold.[8] The classic substantive due process test is whether there is a rational relationship between the law and a valid legislative objective:

Substantive due process asks the question of whether the government’s deprivation of a person’s life, liberty or property is justified by a sufficient purpose. Procedural due process, by contrast, asks whether the government has followed the proper procedures when it takes away life, liberty or property. Substantive due process looks to whether there is a sufficient substantive justification, a good enough reason for such a deprivation. [9]

In other words, if the Constitution protects a substantive right (such as freedom of speech and religion), that right can be abridged only if there is sufficient justification for such a taking. Procedural due process asks only whether the proper procedures have been followed. In Roe, the majority, drawing on Griswold, found in the 14th Amendment and other vaguely referenced provisions of the Constitution a right to abortion. Leaving aside the much-criticized reasoning of Griswold, having “found” this right in the “penumbra of privacy,” the Court needed to identify a reasonably unassailable basis for doing so. It failed to do so.

A continuing problem with Roe concerned its reasoning. The majority decision reviewed the history of abortion, making certain claims that proved historically dubious and ultimately helped those who opposed the decision. At the time, Justice Rehnquist pointed out some of these inaccuracies, which became more numerous as time passed.[10] Eventually, in Dobbs, the majority stated:

Until the latter part of the 20th century, there was no support in American law for a constitutional right to obtain an abortion. No state constitutional provision had recognized such a right. Until a few years before Roe was handed down, no federal or state court had recognized such a right. Nor had any scholarly treatise of which we are aware. And although law review articles are not reticent about advocating new rights, the earliest article proposing a constitutional right to abortion that has come to our attention was published only a few years before Roe.

Not only was there no support for such a constitutional right until shortly before Roe, but abortion had long been a crime in every single State. At common law, abortion was criminal in at least some stages of pregnancy and was regarded as unlawful and could have very serious consequences at all stages. American law followed the common law until a wave of statutory restrictions in the 1800s expanded criminal liability for abortions. By the time of the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, three-quarters of the States had made abortion a crime at any stage of pregnancy, and the remaining States would soon follow. Roe either ignored or misstated this history, and Casey declined to reconsider Roe’s faulty historical analysis.[11]

Justice Blackmun, who wrote the decision, had prior experience with the Mayo Clinic and the Cleveland Clinic and even traveled to a clinic to conduct research while writing his decision.  One common observation about Roe is that Blackmun seemed to be as concerned to protect doctors as their patients, and showed little concern for the fetus or an understanding of family and other dynamics involved. Thus, as one sympathetic commentator puts it, “The most common explanation of how this modest man came to produce such an immodest decision draws on Blackmun’s background as resident counsel for the Mayo Clinic and his admiration of the medical profession.”[12] As one critical commentator puts it:

Justice Blackmun’s amateur dissertation on medical ethics, including the Hippocratic Oath, and on ancient philosophy has been challenged on several points and been revealed as based primarily upon biased pro-abortion sources. The more fundamental question, however, as put by one commentator, is “why Plato and Aristotle should be considered authority for such a controversial moral and political issue, or how the support of philosophers provides a persuasive legal or institutional argument for the Court’s expansion of privacy rights. ” Surely Justice Blackmun did not mean to suggest that, because infanticide also was practiced in the ancient world, a constitutional right to infanticide should follow. And yet, Justice Blackmun offered extraneous non-legal observations of questionable accuracy to justify judicial activism.[13]

Limitations and the “Trimester Approach”

Once the Court identified a right in the Constitution and how it applies under the law, it needed to clarify the situations where states could legislate in this area. This means determining when a state’s interest was strong enough to justify interfering. In Roe, the Court decided that women have a constitutional right to privacy, including the right to abortion, which could not be restricted without good reason. The decision further acknowledged that reasonable limits on this right could exist. However, over time, the approach the Court used to define these limits proved to be increasingly inadequate and often illogical.

One of the most difficult elements of Roe was its setting out a “trimester approach” to dealing with when the state might have a controlling interest in regulating an abortion. Under this approach, the pregnancy period into three trimesters. During the first trimester, the decision to terminate the pregnancy was solely at the discretion of the woman. There could be no compelling state interest. After the first trimester, the state could “regulate procedure” provided there was such an interest. During the second trimester, the state could regulate abortions in the interests of the mother’s health. After the second trimester, the fetus became viable, and the state could regulate or outlaw abortions in the interest of the potential life except when necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother.[14]

The courts’ problem with the trimester approach is simple: the viability question is not straightforward. As one expert put it, “Roe v Wade is based on the trimester/viability concept. However, both concepts seem to be biologically ill-founded and are likely to contribute to confusion regarding abortion laws.”[15] In subsequent cases, the Court faced difficult decisions in which the judges’ personal preferences inevitably seemed to influence the outcome. In some, such as Gonzales and Stenberg, the decisions seem to have been motivated not by conviction about justice but by changes in the composition of the Court. This was a clear indication that Roe was ultimately not founded on the language of the Constitution but on the preferences of the unelected members of the Supreme Court on a matter of public policy.

Summary Critique

As I complete this brief review of Roe, I want to return to something mentioned earlier. Roe was really two cases, Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton.[16] The Texas case (Roe) represented an older, more restrictive approach, while the Georgia case (Doe) represented a newer, more liberal approach. In other words, Texas and Georgia represented different approaches to the issue. Other states were similarly divided. The Texas case represented an older approach, while the Georgia case involved a newer approach based on the legislature’s analysis of the American Bar Association proposal of the time.

By “constitutionalizing abortion” in the way it did, the Court cut off the power of states to adjust their laws—and their responsibility to do so. The citizens of the United States have the power to propose and adopt amendments to the Constitution, and they have even more power to address their state legislatures. The impact of Roe was to take this right away from the citizens and to take the right to adapt to local circumstances away from state legislatures. In the process, it set off a firestorm of opposition and undermined the Court’s standing for over half a century.

This weakness is closely related to a second weakness: to reach its decision, the court had to weigh the public value of abortion as a legislature might and determine matters of the public interest and the exercise of police powers to regulate the conduct of its citizens, a task for which nine judges in Washington are not well suited. Subsequent to Roe, the court had to abandon the trimester system in favor of Casey’s “undue burden” standard, which further embroiled the court in determining, on a case-by-case basis, what constituted an undue burden. By doing so, it became a kind of federal abortion review agency without the presumption of validity of its decisions to protect it from attacks. As previously mentioned, Blackmun’s historical arguments were immediately attacked by members of the court and others. In some cases, Blackmun had either misstated or understated the historic opposition to abortion, at least since the Second Century.

Finally, and I think most damaging, was that the 14^th Amendment was not intended to address abortion. The 14th Amendment was designed to ensure former slaves’ access to the rights of every other American. In particular, it was intended to prevent states from denying former slaves the voting and economic rights enjoyed by all Americans. Without question, the 14^th Amendment was intended to enshrine the notion that all citizens, regardless of race, color, or socio-economic class, had the right to “life, liberty, and property,” rights that were inalienable.

After the Civil War, the Court mistakenly began to use the amendment to protect corporate property rights. The phrase “without due process of law” almost certainly refers to the fact that people can be executed, imprisoned, and their property taken under certain circumstances if due process of law is followed. Its extension to other matters has consistently led the Court into judicial mistakes on the left and the right of the political spectrum.

As Rehnquist pointed out in his Roe dissent:

To reach its result, the Court necessarily has had to find within the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment a right that was apparently completely unknown to the drafters of the Amendment. As early as 1821, the first state law dealing directly with abortion was enacted by the Connecticut Legislature. … By the time of the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, there were at least 36 laws enacted by state or territorial legislatures limiting abortion.[17]

When writing these blogs, my intention is always to be fair. In Roe, Justice Blackmun was breaking new constitutional ground, and the Court was intoxicated by the success (as it seemed at the time) of Griswold. As is often the case, he was also convinced of the righteousness of his cause, which may have led him to underestimate both the decision’s political impact and the attacks on his legal reasoning that were sure to come.

In the end, Roe represents a continuing problem with the Court in the area of Substantive Due Process: the extension of the 14^th Amendment beyond the Bill of Rights into areas it could not possibly have anticipated and that should not apply without a constitutional amendment authorizing the right the Court wishes to defend. This lack of textual support for the rights being created makes them nearly impossible to defend over time. In addition, it makes the Court an unelected legislature without the legitimacy of having been elected. Americans have become accustomed to using the Court to achieve objectives that might be difficult to attain through Congress or state legislatures. However, abortion and similar issues should be resolved by those best able to weigh public opinion and accountable to the public for their decisions, not by the Courts.

Copyright 2026, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved

[1] Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, (1973), hereinafter “Roe.”

[2] Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965), hereinafter “Griswold.”

[3] I will return to this aspect of the case in the conclusion. Roe overturned not only a restrictive law (Texas) but also a law modeled on the ABA model statute.

[4] Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey, 505 U. S. 833 (1992), hereafter “Casey.” While the Court would not overrule Griswold, it was obvious that a majority of the Court had come to see Griswold’s logic as flawed.

[5] Id.

[6] Roe v Wade and Supreme Court Abortion Cases: Reproductive Rights in the Untjed States Explained The Brennan Center for Justice(September 28, 2022) found at https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/roe-v-wade-and-supreme-court-abortion-cases(downloaded May 13, 2026).

[7] Thomas E. Dobbs, State Health Officer of the Mississippi Department of Health, et al. v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, et al. , 597 U.S. ___ (2022).

[8] Like Griswold, the Court did not fully articulate the ground of its holding, which is on reason Casey is important. In Casey it embraced the 14^th Amendment as the basis of their decision, abandoning the reasoning of Griswold, which by this time had been critiqued from the left and right. In the author’s view, Griswold should be overturned.

[9] Chemerinsky, Erwin (1999) “Substantive Due Process,” Touro Law Review: Vol. 15: No. 4, Article 15. Available at: https://digitalcommons.tourolaw.edu/lawreview/vol15/iss4/15 (downloaded May 13, 2026), at 1501. In my view, the source of Roe’s incoherence is to be found in the faulty logic of Griswold.

[10] Justice Rehnquist dissenting. “To reach its result, the Court necessarily has had to find within the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment a right that was apparently completely unknown to the drafters of the Amendment.” Roe, 174.

[11] Dobbs, at B1. I am quoting this at length, but I do not intend to discuss Dobbs per se in this blog. It awaits a future blog.

[12] Nan D. Hunter, Justice Blackmun, Abortion and the Myth of Medical Independence, 72 Brook. L. Rev. (2006). Available at: https://brooklynworks.brooklaw.edu/blr/vol72/iss1/6 (downloaded May 14, 2026).

[13] Gregory C. Sisk, Willful Judging of Harry Blackmun, The, 70 MO. L. REV. (2005) Available at: https://scholarship.law.missouri.edu/mlr/vol70/iss4/6

[14] See Roe, at 164-65 Daniel A Farber, Did Roe v Wade Pass the Arbitrary and Capricious Test 70 Missouri Law View, 4 (2005), 1253.

[15] F. K. Beller & C.A. deProsse, Confusion of Trimester and Viability: Consequences for Abortion Laws in the United States and Abroad 37 Journal of Reproductive Medicine 6 (1992), 537-40.

[16] See note 1 above.

[17] Roe, at 174-175.

John Mirador, who becomes Juan de la Cruz Bardero, appears in all three of the Arthur Stone books. A former special forces officer, Bardero first appears as the “Watcher,” an operative sent into sensitive areas to watch and report. Unfortunately, in Marshland, Mirador is betrayed, nearly killed, and must hide from the government he faithfully served. It is the beginning of a new life.[1] Mirador grew up on a ranch in South Texas of a family of immigrants who came from Mexico in the 1920’s, when Mexico experienced political and economic unrest. Orphaned in his teenage years, he ended up enlisting in the armed forces and served in Viet Nam. A special forces operative, he was still active in the early 1980’s when Marshland takes place.

At the beginning of Marshland, Mirador is betrayed by someone. He was supposed to die during his mission in Mexico but fate saves him. Searching for a safe hiding place, his family in Mexico send him to a monastery outside of San Miguel de Allende, where he becomes an oblate in the Benedictine order while in hiding.  In Marshland, he is part of the uncovering of the connections between events in Mexico and the Texas Savings and Loan Crisis. During this time, he becomes friends with Arthur Stone and Ahn Winchester. After the events of Marshland, Mirador, now Juan Bardero, becomes a business man in San Miguel with Arthur, Gwynn, and Ahn as business partners.

In Peace at Battle Mountain, Arthur is forced to investigate a suspicious death in Los Cabos on the Pacific coast of Mexico. Bardero is the person who is responsible for personally undertaking the investigation. In the process, he meets and falls in love with Maria Mendoza, who appears in Marshland as well. Maria already has a child by a short-lived relationship. He appears again in Leviathan and the Lambs. Now in late middle age, he is called upon to assist Arthur in saving a member of his family.

The Decent Man

In the series, Bardero represents the decent man. He faithfully serves is country, his family, and his friends, often without being seen and without recognition. He is one of countless people who serve their nation and families in good and bad situations, not always agreeing with what is being done, but doing their own part with honor and strength. Not surprisingly, his life is punctuated with drama that others create while he brings a justice and health to the situations in which he becomes involved.

I am writing this on Memorial Day 2026. Memorial Day is a day in which we celebrate the many men and women who placed themselves in harm’s way to protect the liberties we enjoy. As I write this there are many, many John Mirador’s quietly going about the business of protecting our freedoms while decently living out their own private lives. Some of them are far from home and loved ones, a few I suspect are in very dangerous and hostile places, watching.

My Father

On Memorial Day and other days, I remember and celebrate the life of my father. Born in 1921, he was of draft age when World War II began. He served first in the Marine Corps and then in the Navy commanding a small ship as a First Lieutenant. After the war, he joined the FBI where he served for another thirty or so years. After retiring from the FBI he was a City Counselman and then Mayor of Springfield, Missouri. If you put it all together, he served our country in one capacity or another for fifty or more years—all of his adult life. He did not get rich in government or politics. He and Mom struggled to put two sons through college and to pay off debts from an accident that nearly ended both their lives. The driver of the car that hit them was uninsured. John Mirador is a fictional character. Dad was the “real deal,” decent man who did his duty to God, family and country and expected little in return.

Our news today is filled with political stories. One of them that caught my eye is about a candidate for public office who refuses to salute the American flag. I posted a simple reply: “You cannot lead with wisdom a person or organization you don’t love.” There is plenty to be said for developing a critical attitude towards our government and our culture. However, there is a limit. When people no longer love a country, a culture, a business, a church, or whatever, they cannot possibly heal it. All they can do is destroy—and what they build in its place will likely be a harmful monstrosity born of anger and rage instead of love and care for others.

Conclusion

This Memorial Day we are home with one of our children and a grandchild visiting. Soon, it will be June 6. During the seventy fifty anniversary year of D-Day, Kathy and I made a pilgrimage to Normandy. As a student of the battle, I enjoyed seeing the reality of what I had seen on maps and read about in books. But the most moving moment was visiting the cemetery where those who fell that day are buried. Rows upon rows of young men who never had a family, a career, children, or grandchildren. Instead, in terrifying and terrified wave after wave they landed on that beach behind their graves where they died for a nebulous notion of freedom and America’s call to preserve that freedom. My Dad and Grandfather came back from World War II. Today, we celebrate the lives of those who did not.

Copyright 2026, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved 

[1] This blog, as have three recent blogs deals with what I call the Arthur Stone series, written under the pen name,  Alystair West, The books are Marshland (Westbow, 2023); Peace at Battle Mountain (Quansus, 2024); Leviathan and the Lambs (Quansus & Bookbaby, 2026), all written under the pen name Alystair West and available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and from other vendors.

 

A contributor on X, Brivael Le Pogam, wrote a posting that I want to share with you with my comments. Those who are not on X can find him on his website.[1] I do not normally simply re-print another’s work, and I am not doing so today. However, I felt that what he is saying is so important that it needed to be sent along to my friends. He takes a subject of immense complexity and gives an introduction to what is deeply wrong with our elites in a few sentences. The bold type shows my reflections on what Le Pogam wrote. Here it is in its entirety.

“I want to offer my apologies, on behalf of the French, for giving birth to French Theory (which in turn gave birth to the worst of all ideological monstrosities: wokism).”

It’s helpful to refer to this as “Deconstructionism,” “Continental Postmodernism,” or even intellectual nihilism, which can go to extremes. Calling it “French,” a term a French person might use, adds a layer of race to the conversation. The term “Woke” has an interesting history. I think it is linked to the Enlightenment and Kant’s idea of “waking up” from his intellectual slumber to develop his idealistic theories. The term now often suggests becoming aware of racial, sexual, intellectual, and other injustices, as well as how society can be organized to benefit some groups over others. 

“We gave the world Descartes, Pascal, and Tocqueville. And then, in the intellectual ruins of post-1968, we gave Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze. Three brilliant men who forged, in the elegance of our language, the ideological weapon that today paralyzes the West.”

Descartes was an early Enlightenment figure, and Pogam is tracing the French Enlightenment from its beginning through its decay as French intellectuals turned against it, yet could not return to the innocence of the Age of Faith—that is, the Age of Roman Catholicism in Western Europe and the intellectual faith of the Reformation. Pascal was a French Catholic and a devout Christian. Tocqueville, who has been a subject of these blogs, was a French political theorist who visited the United States and wrote Democracy in America. [2]

“We must understand what they did. Foucault taught that truth does not exist, that there are only power relations disguised as knowledge. That science, reason, justice, the medical institution, the school, the prison, sexuality—everything is merely a staging of domination. “

The “postmodern age” is strongly Nietzschean. The reduction of all claims to Truth, Goodness, and Beauty to power relations enters Western thought through him. In such a world, there can be no real community, truth, reason, justice, or any other “noetic value.” Foucault focused his critique on the exercise of power within social systems to construct and maintain institutions of power. He saw history as consisting of thought systems that determine social activity and are constructed to serve the ends of those in power.

“Derrida taught that texts have no stable meaning, that every signifier slips away, that every reading is a betrayal, that the author is dead, and the reader reigns supreme. Deleuze taught that we should prefer the rhizome to the tree, the nomad to the sedentary, desire to the law, becoming to being, difference to identity.”

Deconstruction is a philosophical approach introduced by French thinker Jacques Derrida. His technique examines texts, binaries, and cultural institutions to reveal hidden assumptions, internal contradictions, and reliance on arbitrary structures. This approach ultimately shows us that texts have no fixed “meaning” and are unstable, and that meaning cannot be fully captured. If words are simply signs that create or sustain power relationships, then texts can have no absolute meaning. There is no definitive “truth,” “goodness,” or “beauty” that words can reliably point to. This idea influences modern debates and discussions widely and is present in movies, the media, and even politics. It is widely popular in academia. It suggests that texts have no specific meaning, and the author’s intent isn’t always the main point. Some see this as a challenging perspective within “reader-response” theory. While it offers valuable insights, it can also be viewed as a revolutionary ideology in an extreme sense. It emphasizes change over stability, which can sometimes be harmful to people, families, communities, and society as a whole.

“Taken individually, these are debatable theses. Combined, exported, and popularized, they form a system. And that system is a poison.”

Like all heresies, each of these movements contains a small element of truth that has been elevated into a theory of knowledge and existence. Words are used to create power relationships, but they are also used for many other purposes, such as expressing love, discovery, awe, friendship, appreciation, and the like. In a way, deconstructive postmodernism reflects the nihilistic end of reductive critical thinking. It is reason turned in on itself in science, morals, law, politics, and other areas of inquiry. It can also give rise to twisted moral positions and the justification of violence.

“For here’s what happened. These texts, unreadable in France, crossed the Atlantic. The departments of Yale, Berkeley, and Columbia absorbed them in the 1980s. They found there a soil that did not exist among us: American Puritanism, its racial guilt, its obsession with identity. French Theory married this substratum, and the child of that union is called wokism.”

Having studied philosophy and worked in theology earlier in life, I can honestly say that the specialized language can sometimes be quite difficult to understand. Unfortunately, some academics use this jargon as a mask for superficial ideas or a lack of real understanding. The ideas of American individualism, materialism, and the relentless pursuit of prosperity, peace, and personal happiness created ideal conditions for this theory, especially during the 1960s when a whole generation moved away from traditional values. At the same time, critical theory, with its Marxist leaning and skepticism of capitalism, traditional faith, and Western societal structures, started gaining ground in academic circles. Sadly, this led to a harmful influence on academia, the intellectual community, the media, the arts, and almost everything it touched.

In American English, “woke’ originally meant people who became aware of the injustices of racism. These days, however, the term has often been co-opted by political activists, many of whom lean far-left or socialist, and whose broader goals extend beyond just fighting racism. 

“Judith Butler reads Foucault and invents performative gender. Edward Said reads Foucault and invents academic postcolonialism. Kimberlé Crenshaw inherits the framework and invents intersectionality. At every step, the matrix is French: there is no truth, there is only power, so every hierarchy is suspect, every institution is oppressive, every norm is violence, every identity is constructed and thus negotiable, every majority is guilty.”

The French had one of the most oppressive colonial policies, perhaps only surpassed by the Belgians. In the end, feelings of guilt over past racism and colonial history fueled modern frustrations against current institutions. Once again, there’s a reasonable sense of guilt, but some postmodern thinkers turn it into a harsh rejection of Western culture. Apart from Theodore Roosevelt’s efforts, the United States has generally been more supportive of anti-colonial perspectives. In the hands of critical theorists, it is often combined with revolutionary Marxism and a hatred of all Western cultural institutions.

“That’s how three Parisian philosophers, who probably never imagined their practical consequences, provided the operating software to an entire generation of activists, university bureaucrats, HR managers, journalists, and legislators. That’s how we ended up with a civilization that no longer knows how to say whether a woman is a woman, whether its own history is worth defending, whether merit exists, or whether truth can be distinguished from opinion.

It’s shit for one simple reason, and it must be stated calmly. A civilization stands on three pillars: the belief that there exists a truth accessible to reason, the belief that there exists a good distinct from evil, the belief that there exists a heritage to be transmitted. French Theory set out to dynamite all three. Not out of malice. Out of intellectual play, fascination with suspicion, hatred of the bourgeoisie that had nurtured them. But the result is there. An entire generation learned to deconstruct and never learned to build. An entire generation knows how to suspect and no longer knows how to admire. An entire generation sees power everywhere and beauty nowhere.”

I apologize because we French bear a particular responsibility. It’s our language, our universities, our publishers, our prestige that gave this nihilism its chic packaging. Without the legitimacy of the Sorbonne and Vincennes, these ideas would never have crossed the ocean. We exported doubt the way others export weapons.

What is being built now, in Silicon Valley, in AI labs, in startups, in workshops, in all the places where people still make things instead of deconstructing them—that is the response. A civilization is rebuilt by builders, not by commentators. By those who believe that truth exists and is worth devoting oneself to. By those who embrace a hierarchy of the beautiful, the true, the good, and are not ashamed to transmit it.

So, forgive us. And back to work.”

Having traveled extensively in both capitalist and Marxist countries, I’ve noticed a certain spiritless starkness in much of Western society, as well as in the communist world. Sometimes, an intense focus on Right Philosophy and Right Theology can lead leaders to overlook the importance of building a wholesome society where everyone can truly flourish. This is particularly evident in the frankly nihilistic tendencies of postmodernism. Our culture often emphasizes science, materialism, and technology. In other words, we often worship power and technique, whether we admit it or not. What we need is a cultural return to the values that created our civilization and way of life, including the spiritual values that undergird the search for truth, goodness, justice, beauty, and the like.

The spirit of the Enlightenment has waned, leading to some challenging outcomes in both academic and political spheres. One significant change is the diminished belief that abstract ideals like justice are real and should guide our political and governmental decisions. This shift has resulted in a political landscape that could be described as “Nietzschean”—focused solely on a relentless pursuit of power, exercised without regard for values like truth, justice, prudence, or equity. It resembles a Hobbesian view of society, where self-interested individuals are caught in a “war of all against all.” You can see the effects in everyday life, from the breakdown of family structures to broader issues like the “economy of wars,” which threaten the well-being and growth of communities everywhere.

Just as science cannot exist without a commitment to investigating a reality independent of the observer, political and social life is debilitated when no underlying notion of justice and fairness guides policymakers’ thinking. What remains is the will to power, without effective intellectual and moral constraints beyond those imposed by the political realities of a given society. In some societies, that means little or no restraint.[3]

For those who would like to know more about postmodernism, I recommend Stanley J. Grenz, A Primer on Postmodernism (1996). It is quite readable and avoids technical jargon. Another excellent source is Postmodern Times(1994) by Gene Edward Veith. Postmodern Times is written from a Christian perspective. Finally, once again from a specifically Christian perspective, I can recommend Roger Luden’s The Culture of Interpretation: Christian Faith and the Postmodern World (1993). This book is slightly more academic. Naturally, no introduction, whether an article or even a book of a couple hundred pages, can fully replace struggling with the reality of the texts of experts. Personally, I find most postmodern oriented authors, especially the French originators, extremely difficult to digest.

 Copyright 2026, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved

[1] He can be found on X, on Linkedin, and at https://briva.medium.com/

[2] Alexis De Tocqueville, Democracy in America tr. Henry Reeve, abridged by Patrick Renshaw (Herefordshire, UK: Wordsworth Classics of World Literature, 1998), hereinafter “Democracy in America.” This is a one volume abridgement of the original two volume set published in 1835 (vol. 1) and 1840 (vol. 2).

[2] De Tocqueville did make a report on the American prisons of the early 19^th Century.

[3] See, G. Christopher Scruggs, Illumined by Wisdom and Love: Essays on a Sophio-Agapic Constructive Postmodern Political Philosophy (Hunt, TX: Quansus Press, 2024).

 

When I began writing my first novel, Marshland, and even more the second, Peace at Battle Mountain, I naively thought that women would be very interested in the character of Gwynn Murray Stone. I wasn’t that surprised when some of my more conservative women friends expressed a bit of judgmentalism about her character. I had a professional proofreader read Peace at Battle Mountain for me who shared some of it with her sister who had read Marshland. I knew the sister quite well. One day the proofreader called to ask a question. During our conversation, she advised me that her sister had told her that she never liked the character of Gwynn. The proof of you said, “well if you don’t like Gwynn in Marshland, believe me you’re not going to like her in Peace at Battle Mountain. [1]

Peace at Battle Mountain involves Gwynn making a series of mistakes driven by a brokenness from her childhood, living with the consequences, and emerging as a whole and healed human being. I was surprised that more women didn’t enjoy her pilgrimage, which is not unlike a pilgrimage. I’ve watched more than one person make as a pastor.

In the final book, Leviathan and the Lambs, Gwynn has matured into someone with rare wisdom and insight, and a fearless courage in defense of her family. In the end, despite their separation, she is Arthur’s closest human relationship and a wise counselor. She is not the central character, as she is in Peace at Battle Mountain, but she plays a very important role in the book.

There is a simplistic form of religious faith in which one becomes a believer in a religious system, and God or the ultimate, however it conceived, prevents you from making any mistakes or messing up our lives due. Unfortunately, it doesn’t take a lot of experience as a believer or pastor to know that that’s not the case. We all make mistakes. All human beings make mistakes. Some of those mistakes haunt us for years, even for the rest of our lives. The process of overcoming the wounds of our childhood is neither quick nor easy nor automatic. Faith is about forgiveness and healing, not about attaining perfection.

Learning by Reading

Over the years, I’ve learned a lot by reading novels. I’ve learned a lot about human nature and a good bit about history. One advantage of reading a novel where someone like you make a mistake is that you have the opportunity not to make that mistake. Reading alone will not make a person wise, moral, or even capable. But internalizing great truths is never a mistake. In my own case, books like the Lord of the Rings trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien and a book, The Glass Bead Game (sometimes printed as Magister Ludi) by Hermann Hesse, have changed and enriched my life. Our children know that at every moment of decision in my life, I usually read one of the two of them. For some reason, they have the capacity to focus my mind on the truly important and the character of those who successfully navigate the difficulties of life.

I am not so arrogant as to believe that the Arthur Stone trilogy, and is especially Leviathan and the Lambs, have the capacity that great literature possesses to mold us and shape us with a kind of nobility. Nevertheless, it is my small attempt to look at one family with their friends and associates, and how it is faith allowed them to navigate the problems of life.

Gwynn at Battle Mountain

In Peace Battle Mountain, Gwynn attends a woman’s Bible study in Houston quite by accident that begins a process of self-reflection that ultimately changes her life. I didn’t attend my first Bible study in quite the same situation, but the same result obtained. I found a direction out of the problems I had created for myself, found new friends, entered the life of faith, and ultimately met my wife. It was worth two hours in the life of a 27-year-old to begin a process that would lead to wholeness and happiness.

Gwynn Stone is also not alone in her recovery. Ahn Winchester, as always, provides a wise and spiritual guide to a deeper self-understanding and healing for Gwynn. In addition, she has law partners and family, all of whom help in her recovery. Then, of course, there is God acting by the Holy Spirit.

Healing as Becoming Like God

One of the images that can be important for contemporary people in reconnecting with faith is the image of Christ the healer. In particular, the Orthodox Church sees the life, death, and resurrection of Christ as primarily about restoring humanity to a lost or besmirched image of the divine implanted in each one of us. This healing is not merely forgiveness. Forgiveness begins a process of sanctification, or becoming like God in Christ.

The Apostle John tells us that “God is love” (I john 4:8; 4:16). The process of becoming more like God (theosis in Greek) is a process of becoming increasingly filled with the wisdom and love of God in Christ Jesus. In Peace at Battle Mountain we see Gwynn enter the process of loving unselfishly and unconditionally, a process that ultimately changes her life mentally, physically, and emotionally. In Leviathan and the Lambs a rogue agent, E. J. Mueller, has a similar experience, perhaps a bit more dramatically illustrated in the book.

Christianity as a Life

Most pastors are aware that the earliest name for Christians was “the People of the Way.” This implied that Christianity was not just “believing Jesus is the Son of God” but entering into the life of the Son of God coming to health and full humanity through inviting God into one’s life physically, mentally, morally, and emotionally. In Crisis of Discipleship, I put it this way:

Discipleship is not just about learning information. It involves a life-transforming relationship with a person—The Triune God revealed in Jesus Christ. As God is in relationship, so we must have healthy relationships in order to grow as disciples.Christians proclaim Jesus Christ as the “the Way, the Truth and the Life.” In other words, the key to abundant living is not an idea but a person and relationship with that person through which we are transformed into the likeness of the One who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Head knowledge is not enough. In order to know the Way, the Truth, and the Life of Christ, we must become imitators and obedient followers of Christ. As the New Testament puts it, “Christ must dwell in us richly” (Colossians 3:16).[2]

There is abundant evidence that young people today are not looking for easy answers or a faith that demands little change. Those Christian groups that provide a new way of life, healing of the past, and a discipline for the future are the most likely to grow as people find new meaning, purpose, and direction in life. What God desires is transformation, which is one of the basic messages of Leviathan and the Lambs and the entire Arthur Stone series.

Copyright 2026, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved

[1] See, Alystair West, Marshland (Westbow, 2023); Peace at Battle Mountain (Quansus, 2024); Leviathan and the Lambs (Quansus & Bookbaby, 2026), all written under the pen name Alystair West. All are available on Amazon and from other vendors.

[2] G. Christopher Scruggs, Crisis of Discipleship (Richmond, Va: Living Dialog Press, 2023).

Have you ever had a secret ambition that was never fulfilled? In my case, for years, I would tell Kathy that I’d like to write a murder mystery set in a large law firm. In my early years, I worked in a large law firm and was well aware that the large number of brilliant minds and large egos make multinational law firms a wonderful place to set a murder mystery. For more than thirty years, I did nothing about realizing my dream. Then, after I retired, I decided I needed to write a novel. You can underline the “a.” I intended to write one novel.

In addition, by the time I retired, I had not only been a young lawyer but also served as a pastor and written sermons, articles, and longer works on wisdom literature, discipleship, and leadership for three congregations. In other words, I knew just a little about religion and the spiritual and moral problems people face in their day-to-day lives. Over those years, I’d also read many religious books, some of them novels. So I set out to write a novel that would combine my legal, financial, and religious experiences with a spiritual orientation. The result was Marshland, written under the pen name “Alystair West.”

By the time Marshland was finished, I’d rewritten almost every aspect of the novel to make it something it never started out to be. (Most frustratingly, almost all the names were changed.) Somewhere before Marshland was finished, I realized that it could be part of a larger work that would become Peace at Battle Mountain and Leviathan and the Lambs.[1] My one novel became three. The latest, Leviathan and the Lambs, was published earlier this year. What began as a simple murder mystery with spiritual overtones became the story of a young man, his intelligent and beautiful bride, and an entire cast of characters over the course of forty or so years.

People ask me if I’m Arthur Stone. I always quickly clarify that I’m definitely not! There’s hardly anything about Arthur Stone that’s like Chris Scruggs. On the other hand, all the characters—even the villains—reflect a piece of me because, when you write, you naturally explore your innermost character, feelings, and motivations. One character, in particular, has become especially meaningful to me over time. That’s Ahn Winchester, who enters the story as the Vietnamese wife of a partner at Winchester & Wells, Arthur’s law firm. She’s a recurring presence throughout the novels, gently guiding everyone back to their true selves and helping them find genuine happiness.

Ahn is a Roman Catholic and a mystic. Her father was Catholic, but her mother continued to practice aspects of Buddhism that are an important part of Vietnamese culture, particularly meditative prayer. Her prayer life enables her to both distance herself from problems and enter more deeply into them and their impact on those she loves. One message of the Arthur Stone novels is the benefit of what I call “meditative decision making.” The most recent novel finds her attempting to offer wise guidance even as she faces a tremendous shock.

When I started writing the Arthur Stone series, I was a Presbyterian minister who always emphasized what C. S. Lewis called “Mere Christianity,” both in my churches and in my preaching. Since retiring, I’ve had the joy of visiting many different types of churches—from charismatic to Orthodox, with worship styles ranging from contemporary to highly liturgical. One exciting aspect of writing these books was learning about different religious traditions.

Gwynn Stone is an Anglican, Arthur and his brother are Presbyterians, and one of the characters is Jewish while another is Roman Catholic. Throughout the series, especially in Leviathan and the Lambs, we meet Episcopalian priests, mystical Muslims, Buddhist monks, Jewish prayer warriors, Orthodox monks in Greece, Roman Catholic Benedictines, and others. While it’s fair to say that I’m trying to interest readers in religion and Christianity. In particular, it’s not true that I’m trying to convert anyone to a particular faith.

Each novel centers on an economic crisis. Marshland is set during the Texas Savings and Loan crisis, while Peace at Battle Mountain takes place during the time of the Enron collapse.

Leviathan and the Lambs explores the 2008 banking crisis and the years that followed. What I find particularly interesting is that all these crises reflect common flaws in human nature more than in the laws governing our financial system. People who want to take risks tend to do so regardless of the rules in place. One important message of this series is that a free market depends on morally responsible participants. Without that moral foundation, financial instability and greed-fueled crashes are inevitable.

Despite the presence of fraud, murder, and mayhem, these elements are window dressing as one looks at deeper questions of life. In the case of Leviathan and the Lambs, we meet Arthur Stone at the peak of his professional career. He is rich, honored in his profession, and unfulfilled by his accomplishments. He suffers from what the mystics call, the “Demon of the Noonday Sun,” that lethargy and weariness that often attacks us in midlife.

I have a friend who loves to include real people in his novels. I take a different approach. I go out of my way to ensure that no living person appears in any way in the novels. As you’ll learn if you read all of them, and as I often say, “If there’s any living or dead person involved in the novels, they’ve been dead for over 1000 years.” Another one of my quips about the novels is, “Although none of the people are real, unfortunately, all of the spiritual realities are very real and attack us all.” It doesn’t take more than a look at the daily newspaper to know that human nature is pretty stable and that we human beings tend to repeat the same mistakes over and over again throughout history. I bet there was violence, greed, lust, and financial fraud among prehistoric humans.

I do not want to give away any of the details of Leviathan and the Lambs, but I think many people, secular and religious, would enjoy the read. Arthur Stone’s life, like ours is not “complete”, if the word “complete” means, “I have accomplished and experienced everything I planned or desired.” All human life is a combination of success and failure, pleasure and pain, plans that are achieved and plans that are not. Learning to live within limits is a part of achieving wisdom in this life.

Copyright 2026, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved 

[1] Marshland (Westbow, 2023); Peace at Battle Mountain (Quansus, 2024); Leviathan and the Lambs (Quansus & Bookbaby, 2026), all written under the pen name Alystair West. All are available on Amazon and from other vendors.

This week, I intended to return to write a blog post involving my latest novel, “Leviathan and the Lambs.” Then, a gunman attempted to kill the President and perhaps his wife, cabinet members, and their families. Over the past few days, as I have read and listened to politicians and media personnel defend our unhealthy political culture, I have decided to write this blog, which is itself an update to a prior blog on the problem. Quite frankly, we should all fear for the future of our nation if we do not put this kind of behavior behind us as a nation.

The United States of America has an historic problem with political violence. Four United States Presidents have been assassinated: Abraham Lincoln, James A. Garfield, William McKinley, and John F. Kennedy. In addition, attempts have been made on the lives of Andrew Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Donald Trump. Presidential candidates have also been targets of assassination attempts. Attempts have been made on the lives of Theodore Roosevelt as a candidate, Robert Kennedy (successful), George C. Wallace (seriously wounded), and former President Trump. What does this say about our political culture? What does it say about our national fascination with violence? What does it say about the deluded capacity of Americans to believe that the ends justify the means? [1]

The Myth of Redemptive Violence

In these blogs, I’ve had the opportunity to introduce readers to the notion of the “myth of redemptive violence.” The Myth of Redemptive Violence holds that violence can be redemptive. The term was coined by Walter Wink, a liberal Protestant theologian at Union Theological Seminary in New York. Wink believed that American society was and is deeply affected by a subconscious belief that violence can be redemptive; that is, violence to overcome evil is warranted and even positive. Polls show that substantial numbers of members of both our political parties subscribe to this nonsense. Wink believed the myth of redemptive violence needed to be demystified to show how deeply misleading it is. For Christians, the myth is contrary to the gospel. In other words, we all need to see that this is not true. It is a myth, and we must all avoid allowing ourselves and others to be motivated by this false narrative.

From the French Revolution to Today

The problem of glorifying and accepting violence as a political tool is as old as the human race. However, it has its modern roots not so much in theology as in a culture that has lost its moorings in history and in a tradition of political accommodation and embraced the revolutionary ideas that began with the French Revolution. People were fascinated and inspired by the French Revolution, then progressively horrified by the Reign of Terror it produced. The decline of religion and morality in pre-revolutionary France made the Reign of Terror possible. At the very beginning of the modern era, a focus on power and a materialistic view of the world tended to elevate violence over wisdom and concern for others as political virtues.

Whenever governments exclude religious and moral virtues from political action, there is a tendency toward madness and excess, and the political result is violence and decay.[2] We should all be concerned by the way in which much of American culture has come to resemble aspects of the culture that produced the guillotine in revolutionary France. The statements of many current political and media celebrities are chillingly familiar to the rhetoric of that resulted in mindless slaughter at the beginning of the modern era.

We need to be concerned about how Marxism and its modern derivatives, such as Critical Theory, can and do create an immoral political culture inclined to violence. “One can’t expect to make an omelet without breaking eggs.” In 1790, Maximilian Robespierre used those words to welcome the horrific French Revolution that had begun the year before. Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and other 20th-century radicals have both voiced and put Robespierre’s slogan into practice, which involved the murder of millions of innocent people. [3]

The idea that killing a person or persons with whom one disagrees politically is part of creating a better society is sometimes called “moral inversion” or, as I would call it, twisted morality. The idea behind moral inversion is that one is entitled to violate common moral standards, for example, “Thou shalt not kill,” when violence is used to create a better social situation. The result is a kind of moralism in which any behavior, including the assassination of political leaders, can be justified on the grounds that one is trying to overcome what one believes is a great social evil.[4]

This notion that violence is justified for political reasons is easily channeled into violent words and actions by those who are infected with this disease, especially among the emotionally unstable. It is particularly common among those who have rejected traditional religion or the moral values of a culture and who are thus thrown back upon themselves and their own personal prejudices and desires in making moral commitments. In all these situations, a person who has become morally homeless falls victim to their own prejudice.

People are naturally moral, and when education or training fails to provide a proper intellectual foundation for their moral passions, those passions can spill over uncontrollably, like a river that overflows its banks. In today’s materialistic societies, this energy often finds a new outlet in revolutionary actions and violence. Preferred channels have included communism or national socialism. Sadly, the tragedies of the 21^st century have been fueled by this redirected moral energy, which has been used destructively.

Negative Politics and Media Greed

Politicians have responded to the situation by leveraging it to their advantage. By the mid-1970s, they realized it was often easier to persuade people to vote against a disliked opponent than to support their own party’s views. This marked the beginning of what we now call “negative politics” and “negative campaigning.” Such campaigns play on our natural fears and anxieties, portraying opponents as villains who must be defeated at all costs. Particularly from the left, opposing candidates are depicted as embodiments of evil, even labeled Nazis. The result is predictable. If I am opposing someone like Hitler, the kind of total war the United States waged in World War II seems justified from a political standpoint. Whether or not the truth is on my side, or love and morality matter, don’t necessarily come into play when I’m slandering a villain. What truly counts is the effort to save the world from this perceived evil. In this context, the idea of redemptive violence can be used to justify the aggressive tactics involved. The tactic is particularly tempting to the mentally unbalanced, as we have repeatedly seen.

The media has also discovered that threats of violence, sensational language, and false accusations can attract more attention and generate more advertising revenue. One of the more unfortunate aspects of cultural postmodernism is the rise of what’s called advocacy journalism, where the focus is less on helping readers or viewers truly understand the facts and more on influencing emotions and encouraging actions, often aligning with what is considered politically correct. Sadly, whether due to a lack of moral scruples or other reasons, some journalists might even support false stories they know are wrong just to attract attention and boost sales. The result has been a visible decline in the quality and accuracy of the media and a corresponding decline in public trust.

Conclusion

It’s evident that living in a free society, where diverse opinions and free expression are cherished, can be challenging, especially in a culture that often feels nihilistic and accepts violence. Social media makes it easy for violent and thoughtless messages to spread widely. Because of this, it’s important for all of us in America to work together to calm the heated political debates.

Some of these blogs relate to the Constitution. While I haven’t yet delved deeply into the First Amendment, I can share my current perspective: it was created to enable people to share information and opinions, not to promote violence or deliberately disseminate false information. I would think this would include some people’s tendency to create false images using artificial intelligence. In addition, there may need to be some ability for public figures to sue when false or inflammatory information is broadcast over social media.

America was the first Enlightenment nation. The founders shared a worldview shaped by Isaac Newton and refined in the political arena by figures such as Locke and Rousseau. It was an optimistic age, and figures like Jefferson applauded the French Revolution even after the violence and death became wholly unjustified. They never gave up their support of revolutionary ideologies. Others, like Edmund Burke, were less inclined to justify what happened in France. Burke, for example, saw the violence of the French Revolution as stemming from a breakdown in cooperation among various elements of French society, combined with a failure to draw on aspects of the French intellectual and moral tradition that might have averted disaster.[5]

Whether America can avoid the potential political and cultural chaos ahead depends on all of us working together—academia, the media, politicians, everyday citizens, religious groups, and more—to build a more peaceful and cohesive society. It will require sacrifices from everyone and fundamental shifts in our political approach, which may have worked in the past but clearly aren’t doing the job today. In particular, voters play a crucial role in this change. Politicians from both parties who use violent language should face consequences at the polls. If they recognize that their strategies are no longer effective and may even be harmful, that recognition will motivate a quick and positive transformation in our political scene.

What is needed more than anything else is a truly postmodern, constructive political philosophy that values dialogue, conversation, compromise, and the search for social harmony over the acquisition of power and a “winner-take-all” mentality. I’ve written a preliminary exploration of this on my own. The title is Illumined by Wisdom and Love: Essays on a Sophio-Agapic Constructive Postmodern Political Philosophy. I’m not a professional philosopher, nor was the book intended to be much more than my own study notes as I developed my way of looking at the problems of our society. However, I do think it was helpful.[6]

Copyright 2026, G, Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved 

[1] This and the following paragraph are updates to a prior blog, G. Christopher Scruggs, “Our Unhealthy Political Culture,” found at www.gchristopherscruggs.com (July 18, 2024).

[2] The quotations from this work and from other works of Burke upon which this blog is based are found in Edmund Burke: Selected Writings and Speeches Peter J. Stanis, ed. (Washington, DC: Regency Publications, 1963), at 540.

[3] It is hard to fully trace the linage of this quote, which is also attributed to Lenin and Stalin.

[4] I believe that modern Western society, lacking a transcendent faith in the reality of moral values, has entered a period of moral nihilism that can affect even those who deny accepting it. The power orientation of our culture is part of its plausibility structure. Lesslie Newbigin, Truth to Tell: The Gospel as Public Truth (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1991)

[5] G. Christopher Scruggs, “Burke 3: Response to the French Revolution” found at found at www.gchristopherscruggs.com (May 13, 2021).

[6] G. Christopher Scruggs, Illumined by Wisdom and Love: Essays on a Sophio-Agapic Constructive Postmodern Political Philosophy (Hunt, TX: Quansus Publishing & College Station, TX: Virtual Bookworm, 2024).

The 1976 Supreme Court decision in Griswold v. Connecticut significantly changed the both prevailing notions of the right to privacy and the Constitutional status of reproductive rights in the U.S.[1] The story of Griswold is a long one and exemplifies how certain cases are framed and structured to reach the Court and secure the result the petitioner’s desire. It also illustrates the temptation leftist court members have to deal with local matters at a constitutional level through what is called “Substantive Due Process.”[2] Griswold is one of those cases with which one can accept and agree with the result, yet disagree with its reasoning and wish the court had done otherwise. This is my view.

History of the Case.

Here’s a brief overview: Since 1879, Connecticut had a rarely enforced law making the use of contraceptives illegal. The law prohibited anyone from helping, advising, hiring, or commanding another person to break it, with penalties as if they were the main offender. Before Griswold, there were attempts to challenge this law, but they didn’t get very far. All in all, sixteen attempts, first initiated in 1917, to revise or repeal the law were made by the Connecticut Legislature, but all efforts were blocked.[3] In Tileston v. Ullman (1943), the Supreme Court dismissed a doctor’s challenge because he didn’t show a direct threat to his personal rights.[4] Similarly, in Poe v. Ullman (1961), a woman’s challenge was dismissed for lack of standing. [5]

In 1961, the law was challenged again. Estelle Griswold, the executive director of the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut, and Dr. C. Lee Buxton, the League’s medical director, opened a health clinic in New Haven. They were arrested and convicted for providing information and advice to married couples seeking contraception, and each was fined the nominal sum of $100. Griswold and Buxton appealed, but the Appellate Division of the Circuit Court and the Connecticut Supreme Court upheld their convictions. The defendants then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that the Connecticut law violated their due process rights under the 14th Amendment.

Griswold and Buxton challenged Connecticut’s law banning the use of contraceptives, arguing that it violated the right to marital privacy. The Court’s 7-2 decision not only overturned their convictions but also expanded the constitutional right to privacy in ways that have proven controversial. Beyond its direct legal effects, Griswold set an important constitutional precedent that influenced later cases, including Roe v. Wade, which extended privacy rights to include the right to abortion.

Roe v. Wade upset many Americans and sparked a process that, for some, [6]undermined trust in the Supreme Court and the rule of law. It seemed the decision was driven not so much by law or constitutional principles as by frustration among liberals who felt they couldn’t persuade legislatures to act in line with their views. Eventually, Roe was overturned, but not before it caused significant damage to the court’s credibility and the rule of law.

Justice Douglas

Justice William O. Douglas wrote the much-criticized majority opinion. Before critiquing the opinion, I want to share a personal anecdote about Justice Douglas. While I was in law school, Justice Douglas came to speak at the University of Texas. He was a most engaging speaker. He was also careful to portray himself as a rather traditional interpreter of the Constitution. During the question-and-answer session, he was very open and charming. I would not want my disagreement with this particular decision and its logic to in any way slander the character of Justice Douglas.

Substantive Due Process, and Penumbra’s

As these blogs have previously mentioned, after the Civil War, the Supreme Court often defended private property rights against government regulation, using substantive due process as its reasoning. The notion was that the Fifth and 14^th Amendments’ protections prohibited government regulation that would inhibit the use of private property. Eventually, social pressure forced the Court to recant. From the beginning, substantive due process had been an innovation. Due process, or what we call “Procedural Due Process,” was originally conceived as a limitation on government actions that deprive citizens of fair judicial proceedings. Basically, Substantive Due Process is the invocation of some kind of pre-existing substantive (as opposed to procedural) natural right that government cannot restrict. Beginning in the 20^thCentury Substantive Due Process fell into disfavor amid the widely held view that prior courts had used the doctrine to invalidate economic regulatory laws with which the court disagreed.

At the beginning of Griswold, Justice Douglas carefully makes a distinction that he believes saves the opinion. Essentially, without altering the ongoing status of substantive due process in economic matters, he states that the Court does have the authority to handle issues involving the right to privacy, which is a non-economic right guaranteed by the Constitution, at least to some degree. Douglas then extends this to the relationships between husbands and wives as relates to birth control.

From an originalist perspective, of course, this viewpoint is completely unfounded. There was no one at the time of the signing of the Constitution or the adoption of the First Amendment who thought these rights included reproductive rights, abortion, birth control, sexual orientation, or other areas that the Court has been led to address since Griswold.

In order to create this right to contraception, Douglas invokes the notion that there are “penumbras” within the Constitution. That is to say that certain rights given under the Constitution have an undefined penumbra, what we might call a “cloud of applicability” that surrounds them, allowing the courts to extend or create certain rights previously unknown to previous generations and perhaps opposed by many in the current generation. Douglas writes:

The foregoing cases suggest that specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance.  Various guarantees create zones of privacy. The right of association contained in the penumbra of the First Amendment is one, as we have seen. [7]

In support of his position, Douglas cites several cases that are only vaguely applicable. In each of the cases he cites, the Court was dealing with an established right under the Constitution as it applies to specific circumstances, not creating a new right. For example, Douglas cites Pierce v. Society of Sisters, in which the right of Catholic parents to put their children in private schools was established by the First Amendment protection of freedom of religion due to the 14^thAmendment.[8] The difference between this situation and Griswold is obvious. The First Amendment applies to the states by virtue of the 14^th Amendment, and it guarantees freedom of speech and religion, not reproductive rights. Each of the cases is cited by Douglas, and supporting his views, can be similarly criticized.

Perhaps the most egregious of Douglas’s references has to do with the case of NAACP v. Alabama. In that case, the state of Alabama attempted to force the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to provide State authorities with a list of all its members’ names and home addresses. A leading force in the burgeoning civil rights movement, the NAACP was highly controversial at the time, especially in southern states. If its individual members were identified, they would be at risk of harassment and intimidation – or worse – from opponents of civil rights. Such retaliation may even have been the outcome that state officials had in mind when they made the demand. Unspoken by Douglas was the fact that the 14^th Amendment was specifically enacted to protect a minority from interference with its civil rights. No new right was being given by this case; instead, a constitutionally guaranteed right was being enforced.[9]

Let’s take a closer look at “Penumbras.” The innovation of Penumbras has perhaps been the most criticized aspect of Douglas’ logic in the case. The term “penumbra” had several meanings: it described a partial illumination during an eclipse, a surrounding area where something exists to a lesser degree, or, unfortunately, something that covers, surrounds, or obscures. Douglas also used the word “emanation,” which traditionally meant the originating of the world through hierarchical radiations from the Godhead, to refer to “something that emanates or is produced by emanation,” or even an isotope of radon from radioactive decay. It was not originally a legal concept, though there is some precedent for its use where the court is extending existing language by implication.[10] The notion was not considered to allow radical extensions of existing rights or change the constitutional balance between the federal and state governments. In Griswoldit simply indicates what a majority of Supreme Court Justices believe should be included in the Constitution.

The Ninth Amendment

The Ninth Amendment to the Constitution provides that

“The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” [11]

During the first 175 years of its history, this Amendment was cited in a total of nine court cases. Some Constitutional scholars began to call it the “Forgotten Amendment.” This is not the place to analyze the Ninth Amendment. It is sufficient to say that “reserving rights to the people” is not the same as “giving the United States Supreme Court the right to determine or create those rights.” As Justice Black eloquently states in his dissent, the Ninth Amendment was passed,

“…not to broaden the powers of this Court or any ‘other department of “the General Government,” but, as every student of history knows, to assure the people that the Constitution in all its provisions was intended to limit the Federal Government to the powers granted expressly or by necessary implication.”[12]

Justice Black is careful in his language, but clearly believes the majority and concurring opinions misused the language of the Constitution, the intent of which was not to broaden the Court’s powers but to assure the people that the Constitution, in all its provisions, was intended to limit the Federal Government to the powers expressly granted or by necessary implication. Where there is a need to protect these rights, it is the duty of the people, through the process of constitutional amendment, to protect them. Thus, Justice Black observes:

I realize that many good and able men have eloquently spoken and written, sometimes in rhapsodical strains, about the duty of this Court to keep the Constitution in tune with ‘the times. The idea is that the Constitution must be changed from time to time and that this Court is charged with a duty to make those changes. For myself, I must with all deference reject that philosophy. The Constitution makers knew the need for change and provided for it. Amendments suggested by the people’s elected representatives can be submitted td the people or their selected agents for ratification.[13]

Over time, Griswold’s influence seems to have shifted the Court’s role, turning it into a kind of “Guardian Council” that believes it has the superior wisdom to decide which laws should be enacted and what limits should be placed on the state’s powers. This wasn’t what the Founders intended. Since Griswold, the case has led the Court to explore issues that should be decided by the people themselves, even those that the United States Supreme Court should not interfere with.

Tenth Amendment

The decision of the Court is made even less palatable by a fair interpretation of the wording of the 10^thAmendment:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.[14]

At the time the Constitution was written, and at the time of the Griswold decision, it was clear that the state’s police powers were the proper place for legislation affecting the health and morals of the people. At the time the Constitution was written, none of the founding fathers would have agreed that the right to control birth control, abortion, homosexual marriage, or a host of other matters was protected by the Constitution. These were matters reserved to the states. The prohibition contained in the 10^th Amendment applies to the United States government. In other words, it prevents the United States government from entering into those matters that have traditionally been reserved to the states unless specifically given to the federal government. The regulation of sexual behavior is not one of those matters.

The impropriety of Griswold is evident in the Connecticut Supreme Court’s refusal to overturn the law, despite having been given the opportunity. The Connecticut legislature also recognized the problem and could have repealed the law. They did not. The voters of Connecticut could have demanded that their constitutional representatives repeal this legislation. They did not (although, I believe that, in time, they would have done so). Under the circumstances, it was not the prerogative of the United States Supreme Court to step in and do for the citizens of Connecticut what they should have done for themselves.

Conclusion

It’s fair to say that Griswold marked a significant shift rather than a minor tweak in how we interpret the Constitution. Essentially, this case was motivated by a situation that many Justices believed aligned with current moral standards and what they personally saw as just. Perhaps they were right. However, it’s important to remember that Supreme Court decisions have real impacts. One notable outcome of this case has been a major expansion of the Court’s power to define civil rights on its own terms, including invalidating statutes that earlier generations would not have thought the Court had the power to hold unconstitutional. This shift, begun with Griswold, has contributed to a steady decline in the Court’s reputation among many people.

All in all, just as in the early 20^th Century expansive Court decisions in line with current sentiment lead the Court into the quagmire of using the 14^th Amendment to prevent economic regulation, in the late 20^th Century another Court was led into the quagmire of using the Amendment to effect social changes that neither Congress nor state legislatures would adopt. In the end, they were led to use their powers in ways that did not do credit to the Court and ended up undermining both the rule of law and social stability and harmony.

Copyright 2026, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved 

[1] Griswold v. Connecticut 381 U.S. 479 (1965). I will refer to this case hereafter as Griswold.

[2] Substantive due process is a legal principle holding that the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments’ due process clauses can protect fundamental, unenumerated rights from arbitrary government interference. In its early form, it was used to protect property owners from government regulation of their businesses. More recently, it has been used to limit government regulation of private behavior.

[3] State v. Griswold, 151 Conn. 544, 200 A.2d 479 (1964).

[4] Tileston v. Ullman,  318 U.S. 44 (1943).

[5] Poe v. Ullman, 367 U.S. 497 (1961)

[6] Roe v. Wade 410 US 113 (1973).

[7] Griswold, 484.

[8] Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U. S. 510 (1925).

[9] NAACP v. Alabama, 357 U.S. 449, 462 (1958)

[10] There is some historical validity for the use of the term in judicial decisions, in particular by Justice Holmes, which Douglas has unquestionably read. See, Henry Greely, “A Footnote to Penumbra in Griswold Connecticut.” University f Minnesota Law School Repository  https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1409&context=concomm (downloaded April 20, 2026).

[11] US Constitution, Amendment Nine.

[12] Griswold, at 520.

[13] Id, at 522.

[14] US Constitution, Amendment 10.

This week, I’m going to be looking at a series of books by John Strickland, who an American Orthodox priest and scholar. He has published a look at Western civilization from the perspective of the Orthodox faith. It is in four volumes, the first of which is The Age of Paradise, which takes us from the Acts of the Apostles to around the year 1054, when the East and West divided.[1] The second book, entitled The Age of Division, includes the final separation of the Eastern Orthodox from the Roman Catholic tradition and the Protestant Reformation.[2] The third book, the Age of Utopia,covers the modern world from roughly the Enlightenment until the mid-19^th century.[3]  The final book, The Age of Nihilism, covers the period from Wagner and Nietzsche until today. It is an extremely ambitious undertaking, as you can see.[4]

I think Strickland’s project is important for the future and for understanding the past. The modern world is over, and the way forward is to look to the past for clues to recovering a holistic view of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. For Christians, the Orthodox tradition offers us a window into the past that can point us to the future. For all Christians, the consequences of the shattering of the universal church that began with the Great Schism are significant. This is particularly challenging for Protestants because it requires reevaluating some of the positions developed during the Reformation in light of the Great Tradition embodied in what I might call “Universal Christianity.”[5]

For a number of years, I’ve been interested in Orthodoxy, which is important and interesting because it did not participate in the Christianization of the West, nor did it participate in the divisions in Western Christianity that produced modern denominations. Furthermore, for most of its history, it’s been a persecuted sect under both the Muslims and Soviet communism. Therefore, since the end of the Byzantine Empire, it has never been without its problems. Theologically, it is a less legalistic and more mystical form of Christianity. Once again, Latin Roman legalism never impacted the East in the same way it impacted the West.

Because it did not participate in the Reformation, it also avoided both what might be called the naked Biblicism of the Protestant and Reformed tradition and the dogmatic legalism of the Roman Catholic Church theology. I well remember being in Moscow during the years just after the fall of the iron curtain and being told by a Russian Baptist that they did not participate in American fundamentalist arguments and didn’t want them brought to Russia.

The Age of Paradise

Protestants and postmodern readers may have a slight difficulty grasping the impact of the title, The Age of Paradise. Protestants may think that the pre-Reformation period is being portrayed as paradisical, and Roman Catholics may think that, in some sense, the period before the Great Schism was an earthly paradise. This is not what Strickland means by paradise. The age of paradise is intended to indicate a time when the church was united in one voice, pointing to what God had done in Jesus Christ and to the establishment of the kingdom of God, as reflected in the church. Strickland is very well aware of the misbehavior of both the early church and the Byzantine emperors. Nevertheless, one might say that this was a pre-dogmatic time, focused on the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, the church as the bearer of that revelation, and the church’s cooperation in improving the human condition within the confines of the undivided Roman empire.

The form of government the church developed during this period was called “Conciliar,” taking its cue from the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15), where the church addressed difficult questions by convening councils. The most famous of these councils is the Council of Nicaea in the year 325, from which we get the Nicene Creed, which would be finalized in succeeding councils until a full-blown doctrine of the Trinity was established. During this period, the Bishop of Rome, whom we call the Pope, was merely the first among equals. It is a long story, but eventually the bishops of Rome began to claim that they had greater powers in the universal church than the conciliar form of government allowed.

In addition, in the West, under the influence of Augustine and the political demands of Charlemagne’s Empire, the creed was eventually supplemented with what is called the “filioque.” This adds “and the Son” to the creed with respect to the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father. This may seem like a small, technical matter, but it was not a technical matter at that time.

There are two reasons why the East could not accept this. First, it was not done by a universal council. According to the concealer theory, no change can be made to the creed without the agreement of an ecumenical council of bishops. The pope had no right to insert this into the creed without calling a council. Second, it implies a kind of bi-theism, suggesting that the Father and the Son are independent entities and that the Spirit is derivative. In other words, it is not a proper way of describing the actual relationships. In the east, they felt that the Father was the source of both the Son and the Holy Spirit.

These two issues, together with the gradual cultural and legal separation of the eastern and western empires, resulted in the Great Schism of 1054. Personally, I found this first volume the most intriguing of the books, except for the last, because it is a part of history that we westerners rarely study.

The Ages of Division and Utopia

The Age of Division. The end of The Age of Paradise highlights how Italian politics and the waning influence of the Roman church contributed to widespread corruption. The Age of Division continues Strickland’s account of the rise and fall of key figures and events in Western history from around 1054 until the Protestant Reformation. Beginning with the Great Schism, it examines the papacy’s efforts to introduce meaningful reforms across Western Christendom. Aside from aiming to strengthen the spiritual vitality of church life, the Papal Reformation also inspired other movements, including the Crusades and, more indirectly, a penitential piety that gradually lessened the concept of paradise within Western culture. In other words, the Western Middle Ages embraced a cross-centered rather than resurrection-centered piety.

The book also recounts the story of Eastern Christendom during this period, when the Fourth Crusade and the Turkish invasion finally brought Constantinople to its knees. Yet in Russia, the Orthodox Church continued to foster the culture of the old Christendom, despite increasing isolation from the West and the destruction caused by Ivan the Terrible. The Age of Division ends with the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation, which both continued the transformation initiated by the papacy in the eleventh century and, in significant ways, brought it to a close.

The Age of Utopia. Protestant scholars, who tend to be critical of the modern world, failed to recognize that the roots of modernity and the issues of the postmodern era trace back to the Reformation. During the Reformation, people in the West first challenged the authority of human tradition by asserting their personal judgment. Initially, this was limited to reforms within the Roman Catholic Church, which most people saw as unfortunate. Eventually, it extended to faith itself and to moral principles. Ultimately, the religious wars of the 16^th century bred deep dissatisfaction with religion among intellectuals. It was the French Revolution that institutionalized this discontent, a concern that continues to influence the modern world.

When Thomas More wrote his great work Utopia, he was fully aware that he was describing nowhere. He also wanted to make clear that the Greek word utopia did not mean paradise. It meant nowhere. Unfortunately, as the modern world developed, especially after the French Revolution and Marx’s work, secular people began to transfer the notion of a paradise existing not on this earth but in communion with God to this world. The result has been a series of misadventures on both sides and much human misery. Both Marxist Communism in all its forms and Nazism are the results of this misguided attempt to create an earthly paradise.

Most recently, we see the romantic ideal of an earthly paradise, reflected in both the left and the right, and the notion that there can be an end of history within history in which all human problems have been solved. I’ve argued elsewhere that this is a grave mistake. Human beings are not capable of producing a paradise on earth. There will always be injustice and room for improvement. The best we can do is make the world a better place for ourselves and our families.

The Age of Nihilism

Strickland completes his survey in The Age of Nihilism. What makes the modern and postmodern world potentially demonic can be traced to the work of Wagner and Nietzsche, both of whom rejected Christianity, sometimes violently, and both of whom substituted a kind of pagan will worship that becomes fully developed in Nietzsche’s “Will to Power.” The first part of the Age of Reason involves the shift from the naive optimism of the Enlightenment to the extreme pessimism of postmodern theory. The first major postmodern theorist was Nietzsche. With Nietzsche came a hatred of Christianity and religion, a complete rejection of the Western Christian tradition, and the placement of human fulfillment in the Will, which finally reached a pathological level. Whatever the defenders of Wagner, Nietzsche, and their postmodern followers may say, there is a direct line from them to the Holocaust and to the deprivations of 20^th-century communism in the East and West.

Both Wagner and Nietzsche were classic megalomaniacs (narcissists), unable to sympathize with others or to keep their thoughts and actions within moral boundaries. Ultimately, their ideological commitments led to the modern and postmodern glorification of power. This obsession with power is not unique to Marx. Western capitalism, in all its forms—social and otherwise—has been influenced by the idea that power can create a paradise. Strickland spends a significant amount of time criticizing Western liberalism (in its original sense) to show that the three major experiments of the modern world—Soviet communism, Nazi oligarchy, and Western liberal social democracy—have all failed to offer a meaningful purpose for human life or a guiding principle that limits the use of power to achieve political goals. The result has been progressive cultural and political decay in the East and West.

Conclusion

Strickland’s work is truly monumental. The attempt to summarize Western civilization from an Eastern perspective over more than 2,000 years is a monumental task. If one quibbles with an occasional conclusion, most of what it said is both historically accurate and a reasonable interpretation of the history involved. If occasionally I became overwhelmed by the amount of detail being delivered, generally speaking, the books kept my interest from beginning until end. Most importantly, it was fascinating to look at certain historical events that we westerners are familiar with from the perspective of a different cultural heritage.

People who are mostly secular might not find the entire series particularly appealing or the main message it aims to convey. However, they will definitely find the historical details within the book quite enlightening. For instance, I was especially captivated by the era spanning from the fall of the Roman Empire, during Augustine’s lifetime, to the reign of Charlemagne and his successors. This is a fascinating period of history that rushed by in school!

For Christians and others seriously concerned about the state of our culture, the four volumes, especially The Age of Nihilism, are long, serious commentaries on the difficult situation in which Western civilization finds itself. Strickland holds that Westerners need to recover their Eastern heritage to overcome our current cultural decline. I believe he makes a very good case for this view.

I will give Strickland the final word:

Without a transcendent anchor, the saeculum inevitably degenerates into self-destruction. The holy father Augustine, who more than any other established the concept of secularity, would have frozen in horror, had he foreseen the fruits of cosmological desecration. The secular disorientation of the West degenerated into an indignation with no outlet but violence. This was especially true after the rise of Communism, Nazism, and liberalism. Within the space of a single half century, for instance, collectivization (10 million peasants killed), General Plan East (45 million Eastern Europeans killed) and Roe v. Wade (65 million unborn children killed) made this clear enough. Only repentance can save the world. [6]

My reason for these blogs is to hopefully, in some small way, assist in forestalling the continuation of this tragedy.

Copyright 2026, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved

[1] John Strickland, The Age of Paradise: The Rise and Fall of What the West Once Was, Vol. 1 (Chesterton, IN: Ancient Faith Press, 2019). The author has a website (https://johnstrickland.org/), which I recommend and used in preparing this blog.

[2] John Strickland, The Age of Division: Christendom from the Great Schism to the Protestant Reformation Vol.2 (Chesterton, IN. Ancient Faith Press, 2020.

[3] John Strickland, The Age of Utopia: Christendom from the Renaissance to the Russian Revolution Vol. 3 (Chesterton, IN. Ancient Faith Press, 2021.

[4] John Strickland, The Age of Nihilism: Christendom from the Great War to the Culture Wars Vol. 4 (Chesterton, IN. Ancient Faith Press, 2019.

[5] This term “Universal Christianity” avoids the use of the word Catholic. It is nearly equivalent to what C. S. Lewis called “Mere Christianity.”

[6] Age of Nihilism, 380.

The Eleventh Amendment is the first Amendment to the Constitution after the Bill of Rights. Congress passed the Eleventh Amendment, and the states ratified it on February 7, 1795, though it did not take effect until 1798. The amendment states that “The Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State.” It was enacted to overturn the Supreme Court’s 1793 decision in Chisholm v. Georgia. I think it is worth studying because, although it was later overturned by amendment and clearly stepped beyond the intentions of those ratifying the Constitution, those involved were attempting to delineate a proper relationship between the Federal and State governments and to ensure the payment of war debts. It illustrates three important realities: (i) well-meaning people can misunderstand the public’s willingness to accept innovations, (ii) a tradition (in this case American and English law) does not speak with one voice, (iii) the amendment process is part of judicial correction when errors are made.

The Issue

One of the most significant issues arising from the Constitution’s adoption concerned the proper balance of power between the national government and the states. Federalists desired a strong central government that would unify the states into a single nation. Anti-Federalists feared and opposed a federal government that could threaten their status as independent, sovereign political entities. We continue to struggle to find a workable and effective solution to the delicate problem of implementing our system of divided sovereignty between the states and the federal government.

This concern as regards judicial power was reflected in Article III of the Constitution. Article III covers lawsuits between states, between a state and citizens of another state, and between a state and foreign states, citizens, or subjects. During ratification debates, three states suggested placing explicit limits on suits against states, but these proposals were unsuccessful. As was often the case when agreement could not be reached, the document was vague regarding the full scope of the federal judiciary’s powers.

Those who opposed allowing states to be sued in federal court had several concerns. Most importantly, the states had accumulated substantial debt during the Revolutionary War. Although many of these debts had been assumed by the federal government under Alexander Hamilton’s economic plan of 1790, state officials still had to cope with the possibility of being overwhelmed with financial claims by citizens of other states. They also feared being taken into federal court by frequent challenges to state land grants. A less concrete but equally important worry was based on the idea of state sovereignty. If states could be sued in federal court, many believed they would lose their sovereignty and independence as political units and become entirely subject to the federal government. These concerns all came to a head when the Supreme Court decided Chisholm v. Georgia. 

Legal Debates Before Chisholm

Generally speaking, what we call “sovereign immunity” prevents lawsuits against a government without its permission. As early as Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England, it was the law in England that “no suit or action can be brought against the king, even in civil matters, because no court can have jurisdiction over him.”

The delegates to the Constitutional Convention did not debate or address the issue of state sovereign immunity. However, Article III described the judicial power in language suggesting that states would be subject to suits by individuals in federal courts under certain conditions. This issue became a point of contention during the ratification debates. Anti-Federalist George Mason of Virginia asked, “Is the sovereignty of the State to be arraigned like a culprit, or private offender? Will the States undergo this mortification?” Patrick Henry argued that if states could be sued for debts, holders of the “immense quantity of depreciated Continental paper money in circulation at the conclusion of the war” would be able to demand repayment of the face value of these notes “shilling for shilling.”

Federalists, such as Alexander Hamilton, John Marshall, and James Madison, tried to ease concerns by claiming that states would not be forced to act as defendants in federal courts, regardless of what Article III states. Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 81, “It is inherent in the nature of sovereignty not to be amenable to the suit of an individual without its consent.” During Virginia’s ratification debates, Madison argued that states would need to sue in federal court to bring a claim against a citizen of another state but that they would have immunity unless “a state shall condescend to be a party.” Marshall agreed, saying, “It is not rational to suppose that the sovereign power shall be dragged before a Court. The intent is to enable States to recover claims of individuals resident in other States.” Patrick Henry ridiculed these claims, once again pointing to Article III’s language about suits involving states “without discriminating between plaintiff and defendant.”

This brings us to Chishom v. Georgia and an early example of judicial overreach that failed.

The Facts and Runup to Chisholm

Chisholm v. Georgia originated from actions taken during the early years of the Revolutionary War. [1] In 1777, American troops stationed in Georgia needed supplies. Commissioners, authorized to act on behalf of the Georgia government, purchased the necessary items from Robert Farquhar, a South Carolina merchant. Although the commissioners had funds from the state treasury to pay Farquhar, they did not do so. Farquhar died in 1784 with the debt remaining unpaid. His executor, Alexander Chisholm, petitioned the Georgia legislature for payment, but the petition was denied in 1789.

Following this denial, Chisholm filed a lawsuit against the state in the U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Georgia. Georgia argued that the state had sovereign immunity and could not be compelled to appear as a defendant. The case was heard by Supreme Court Justice James Iredell, riding circuit, and U.S. District Judge Nathaniel Pendleton, both of whom agreed that the court lacked jurisdiction. In 1792, Chisholm brought a suit in the Supreme Court of the United States, where Georgia again claimed sovereign immunity.

The Supreme Court’s Ruling

After the case was heard, the Supreme Court held that Georgia did not have sovereign immunity and could be sued by individual plaintiffs in federal court. Each justice wrote a separate opinion, with Chief Justice John Jay and Justices John Blair, Jr., James Wilson, and William Cushing in the majority, and Justice James Iredell dissenting. Chief Justice Jay noted that Georgia could not justify its objection simply because it was named as a defendant in federal court, since the Constitution allows suits between states, in which states will inevitably be defendants. The objection, therefore, was based on the fact that the plaintiffs were individual citizens of another state. “That rule is said to be a bad one,” wrote Jay, “which does not work both ways.” In other words, if Georgia had the right to sue citizens of different states in federal court, it would be unjust for those citizens to be unable to sue Georgia.

Jay then examined the language of the Constitution, which extended the judicial power “to controversies between a state and citizens of another state.” He argued that these words were “express, positive, free from ambiguity, and without room” for implied exceptions. To accept such an exception, Jay wrote, would “contradict and do violence to the principles of a free and equal national government, one of the great objects of which is, to ensure justice to all: To the few against the many, as well as the many against the few.”

James Wilson’s Significant Contribution

While other justices based their decisions on the text of the Constitution, James Wilson believed the case depended on the question, “Do the people of the United States form a Nation?” Thus, Wilson begins his analysis with these words:

The fundamental nature of the issue presented by the case was aptly characterized by Justice Wilson: This is a case of uncommon magnitude. One of the parties to it is a State; certainly respectable, claiming to be sovereign. The question to be determined is, whether this State, so respectable, and whose claim soars so high, is amenable to the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court of the United States? This question, important in itself, will depend on others, more important still; and, may, perhaps, be ultimately resolved into one, no less radical than this— “do the people of the United States form a Nation?”[2]

The portion of his decision that is most important is his argument that sovereignty belonged to the people, who, by ratifying the Constitution, had committed themselves to the nation’s laws. States, like the individuals within them, must not be exempt from enforcing those laws.[3]

Justice Wilson began his analysis of Georgia’s claim of sovereign immunity by contesting the appropriateness of the very term “sovereignty” with regard to the new Constitution:

To the Constitution of the United States the term Sovereign, is totally unknown. There is but one place where it could have been used with propriety. But, even in that place it would not, perhaps, have comported with the delicacy of those, who ordained and established that Constitution. They might have announced themselves “Sovereign” people of the United States, But serenely conscious of the fact, they avoided the ostentatious declaration.[4]

In Chisholm v. Georgia, Wilson observes that “the term sovereign has for its correlative, ‘subject,’” and in this context, it cannot be applied because it is not found in the U.S. Constitution. The Constitution mentions “citizens,” but never “subjects.” In other words, Americans are citizens of the United States of America, but not subjects of its government. This is an important difference between the situation in the United States and Europe. Americans were never subjects at any time during their post-revolutionary history.

Justice Wilson rejected the idea of “subject” regarding the case because he understood the Government of Georgia to be republican, meaning it is based on the principle that sovereignty resides in the body of the people. Wilson also argued that Georgia’s citizens, when ratifying the Constitution, did not surrender their supreme or sovereign power to the state; instead, they kept it for themselves. Therefore, in terms of the Union’s purposes, Georgia should not be considered a “sovereign state” by the European definition.

In summary, Wilson states that if the word “sovereignty” is used at all, it refers to the people, not to any government formed by the people. I wonder if it might be a better course of action to consider the United States as consisting of three distinct sovereignties:

1. The Ultimate Sovereign (the people of the United States);
2. The Local Sovereign (the several states, sovereign in every area not specified in the Constitution); and
3. The National Sovereign (the government created by ratification of the Constitution, sovereign only within its Constitutionally prescribed areas of responsibility).

The analysis of Justice Wilson in Chisholm v. Georgia best leads one to conclude that the sovereignties of the states and the national government are, under our system of government, derivative sovereignties. The states are Local Sovereigns with the powers that were designated for them in their constitutions, and the federal government is the National Sovereign with the powers that were given to it by the Constitution. The people, however, retain ultimate sovereignty over both.

Chief Justice Jay’s opinion supports the view that the United States is characterized by multiple sovereignties, as he uses the term “joint and equal sovereigns.” In his opinion. [5]  Jay affirmed the latter went on to affirm the “great and glorious principle, that the people are the sovereign of  this country, and consequently that fellow citizens and joint sovereigns cannot be degraded by appearing with each other in their own Courts to have their controversies determined.”[6]

This kind of language supports the view that, in the United States there is one ultimate sovereign (the people) and two subordinate sovereigns, each sovereign only within the limits granted by the constitutions that formed them.

Aftermath and Legacy

In his dissent, Justice Iredell asserted that every state was “completely sovereign” other than where its powers had been delegated to the federal government. On the nature of sovereignty, Justice Iredell had the following view:

Every State in the Union in every instance where its sovereignty has not been delegated to the United States, I consider to be as compleatly sovereign, as the United States are in respect to the powers surrendered. The United States are sovereign as to all the powers of Government actually surrendered: Each State in the Union is sovereign as to all the powers reserved. It must necessarily be so, because the United States have no claim to any authority but such as the States have surrendered. [7]

According to Iredell, no suit by private citizens against a state could proceed without the state’s consent unless there was English common-law precedent to support such an action. Finding an English case allowing a claim against the Crown to proceed inapplicable to the present case, Iredell believed that the Supreme Court lacked jurisdiction over the plaintiffs’ claim against Georgia. After a Constitutional Amendment, Iredell’s view prevailed.

Interestingly, although the justices did not agree on the merits of the case, they did agree that the Ultimate Sovereign in the United States is the people themselves, and each of the national and state governments are local and national sovereigns, with only such powers as the Ultimate Sovereignty of the people has given them. This is consistent with the language of the Constitution that “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”[8]

Conclusion

I wouldn’t spend an entire blog on just one Supreme Court case if I didn’t truly believe it was so important. It’s not only crucial for understanding the history of the Constitution and the 11^th Amendment, but also for shaping how we view our government today. Sadly, many Americans have come to see the national government as the ultimate authority. After the Civil War, the balance of power between state and federal governments shifted, with the federal government becoming the more powerful of the two. But, it’s important to remember that nothing in the Civil War amendments takes away the ultimate sovereignty of the people of the United States over their government.

As our national, state, and local governments develop increasingly detailed rules that influence almost every aspect of our daily lives, it’s important to remember that this can sometimes feel like overreach that infringes on the rights of the people. While the federal government has expanded its regulatory scope and built a large bureaucracy, it’s also vital to remember that the Constitution limits the areas the federal government can regulate. When definitions of federal powers broaden too much, they can unintentionally encroach upon the sovereignty that rightfully belongs to the people.

In an increasingly urban and socially and economically interdependent society, it is easy to forget the people’s ultimate sovereignty as governments struggle to solve social problems. Nevertheless, both state and federal governments need to remember that they serve the people, not rule over them.

Copyright 2026, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved

[1] 2 U.S. (2 Dall.) 419 (1793).

[2] Chisholm v Georgia, 2 U.S. (2 Dall.) at 453 (Wilson, J.)

[3] Randy Barnett,” The People or the State?: Chisholm v. Georgia and Popular Sovereignty” 93 Va. L. Rev. 1729-1758 (2007).

[4] Chisholm v. Georgia, 454. See also, Barnet above, at 1731.

[5] Id, 477 (Jay, C.J.).

[6] Id, 479

[7] Id, 435,

[8] U.S. Const. amend. X.

Lent is a time for focused prayer. Don’t get me wrong, prayer is always essential to Christian discipleship, growth, community, and life. But, Lent is intended to be a time of deepening prayer, especially that prayer which leads to a change of life.

On my bookshelf, I have several books on prayer, and I’ve read many of them. However, prayer is like playing an instrument or any sport. The real question isn’t, “How many books have you read?” but rather, “How much have you practiced?” Prayer isn’t mainly about knowledge; it’s about practice. The best way to learn to pray is simply to pray.

Throughout my ministry, I treasured the weekly practice of including a prayer list in our bulletin, which we prepared together as a staff to support and uplift our congregation. Every Tuesday at 9:30, a dedicated group of staff members gathered in prayer, creating a special sense of community. Years ago, during a denomination transition, we started holding heartfelt prayer vigils on the first Friday of each month, providing a prayer guide outside the chapel and hosting services at 7:00, 12:00 noon, and 6:00 in the evening. Although attendance varied, these prayer days were meaningful moments for us to pray for our church, community, and the world all day long. The Session also regularly set aside time to pray for our church’s needs during each meeting, often for an extended period, which we found deeply encouraging. Additionally, our Men’s Saturday reunion group spent the first Saturday of each month in prayer, meditation, and seeking to strengthen their connection with God, fostering a wonderful sense of fellowship and spiritual growth.

Paul’s Good Advice.

In this blog, I want to begin with a verse from Philippians. The Philippian church was a lively and supportive community, standing firmly with Paul during tough times. They were genuinely generous, giving freely to help the church in Jerusalem when it needed it most. Like any church, they weren’t perfect—after Paul’s departure, they faced challenges such as false teachers and other struggles. As we examine today’s passage, it’s clear that two members, Euodia and Syntyche, are in disagreement. Paul’s advice to rejoice, pray, and focus on what is true and good stems from his response to this situation.[1]

Therefore, my brothers and sisters, you whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, dear friends! I plead with Euodia and I plead with Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord. Yes, and I ask you, my true companion, help these women since they have contended at my side in the cause of the gospel, along with Clement and the rest of my co-workers, whose names are in the book of life. Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you (Philippians 4:1-9).

The Problem: Our Human Condition.

Prayer begins with understanding the human condition. The conflicts between the two people in Philippi remind us that, at times, we are not in God’s will. We are naturally self-centered, self-interested, short-sighted, seeking temporary pleasures and trivial pursuits, prone to worry and anxiety, sometimes jealous of those who have more, and inclined to form factions. Not everyone has all of these tendencies, but we all have some. These issues exist because none of us, by nature, possesses the spiritual connection with God that helps us avoid them. The story of Genesis and the fall illustrates our human condition and its real-life consequences. Since the fall, humans have struggled to stay connected with God.

I’m confident you will believe me when I say that Kathy and I would never, ever quarrel. I’m sure that none of you who are married ever argue. However, I have noticed that couples do argue, and when human beings argue, we often stop communicating. When communication breaks down, our problems rarely improve. In fact, I’ve observed over the years that many quarrels originate from a failure of loving communication from the start!

Our relationship with God is similar. Our tendency is to push God to the edges of our lives, maybe only on Sunday morning or a few moments each day if we remember. The result is that we lack the ongoing relationship and communication with God needed to experience the joy and peace He wants for us. When we do reach out to God, it’s often because of an immediate problem. We communicate urgently, but without the depth of a well-developed relationship.

The Solution.

The first step in shifting our focus from ourselves and our desires to God and His desires for us is to rejoice and be thankful for the gift of life and what God has done. It’s interesting that immediately after Paul comments on the quarrel in the Philippian church, he says, “Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say, Rejoice!” (v. 4). A life of prayer starts with rejoicing in faith. Our rejoicing may not always be free from pain, fatigue, or anxiety. Still, we know there is a God who cares, so we pray to Him.

Second, Paul tells the Philippians to be gentle and not to worry, but to do everything with prayers and petitions, letting God know what we need. It is as if Paul is saying, “Once you have your attitude right about God and have begun to praise God and rejoice in your salvation by faith, then start talking. Let God know what you need and how much you need it. Just let God know what is on your heart—everything that is on your heart.” Once again, the point is not that we will never be anxious. The point is to constantly turn our anxiety over to God.

Third, Paul encourages us to be thoughtful and focus on things that are true, noble, right, pure, lovely, and admirable. By doing so, we open ourselves to be filled with the Spirit of God—the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. Thinking about these virtues keeps our hearts centered on the One who embodies them all—True, Good, and Beautiful. When we fill our minds with these good and lovely things, our prayers naturally become more focused on Godly desires.

Finally, Paul encourages the Philippians to reflect on what they have seen him do, how he has lived, the results the Gospel has brought in his life, and to put the Gospel into practice. It is only when we rejoice, pray, grow wise, and actively apply the grace we’ve received that God’s peace will fill our hearts. Just as study should lead to action, prayer should lead to action as well. We need to practice what we pray for.

When I was in active ministry, our congregation supported The Presbyterian Outreach Foundation, which funds missions in the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, and other denominations. One member of the Outreach Foundation’s Board of Trustees, who lives in the Southeast, is a true prayer warrior. Occasionally, I would go into my office and find a prayer message on my phone. Sometimes he called and prayed. I also received emails with words of wisdom and prayers.

I have watched my friend for some time now. He is not a pastor; he is in business. He served on a financial-related committee of the Outreach Foundation. He is almost always cheerful and gentle. He is clearly prayerful. His prayers are powerful and very touching. His comments are almost always wise and thoughtful. In his personal and professional life, he practices what he believes and prays for. He does not just pray; he lives a prayerful life.

An Approach.

In the past, I have written about and preached the ACTS method of Adoration: Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication, as well as other prayer methods. Today, I want to discuss a way of prayer that can help each of us grow in our personal prayer life.  In writing this, I found a meditation in one of my prior sermons:

In prayer, three things happen: We come in touch with God and God’s will, we come in touch with how our will and God’s will can become one, and we come into unity with our brothers and sisters in Christ. When our will and God’s will become one, the power of God’s wisdom and love becomes unleashed in our personal lives. When God’s will and the will of a community of believers become one, the power of God’s wisdom and love is unleashed in the world.

The first step in building a prayer life is alignment. If we only ask for things, our prayer life will eventually burn out. None of us receives all of our prayers answered, and we all have times when we ask God for things we cannot or should not have. As we listen to God and align our prayers with His will, we gradually begin to pray within His will. When that happens, our prayer life becomes more powerful.

Second, one reason we gather and pray together on Sunday mornings—whether in worship, small groups, or classes—is that when our church, classes, and small groups pray collectively, our wills and prayers begin to align with God’s will. This is why Jesus wanted his church to be a “house of prayer.”

Think of alignment like a laser. Lasers are essentially light beams that have become ‘coherent”—meaning all the beams of light are traveling in the same direction. As we pray and listen to God, our wills and God’s will become aligned. We stop asking for things that are not in God’s will. When a group prays and listens to God, its prayers become aligned—meaning we all pray within God’s will. When that happens, God’s power is unleashed in our families and communities. This is one reason spouses should pray together.

Second, we should pray constantly. We all need quiet time. We all need to have special times of prayers at home and church. At the same time, we should try to develop the habit of constant prayer—a kind of prayer without ceasing. Paul says we should pray in everything, and that means about everything and all the time. When we are worried, tired, stressed, short, jealous, angry, etc. we need to pray. When life is not going our way, we need to pray.

Kathy and I have been exploring Orthodoxy lately. One of their spiritual disciplines, which I’ve been trying to include in my daily walk, is reciting the Jesus Prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy upon me, a sinner.” The idea is to repeat that prayer so often that we pray it in our spirit even when we’re doing something else. I’m not quite there yet, but I can say it makes a big difference when I remember to dedicate my daily walk to prayer.[2]

Another habit Kathy and I have tried to develop is what I will call “Listening Prayer” or a “Prayer of Silence.” Twice a day, we sit for between ten or twenty minutes in silence, listening for God. In some groups, this is called a “Centering Prayer.”

If we want to align ourselves with God and His will, we need to develop the habit of listening. It’s hard for those of us who are active and used to being busy. It’s not easy for me either. But alignment and consistency in prayer are not natural; they are gifts that God gives to those who wait and long to be united with Him in important spiritual matters.

Conclusion.

Most of us know that on the night before he was crucified, Jesus went to pray in the garden. He prayed to be relieved of the duty God had placed upon him. He ended the prayer with “Not my will, but your will be done” (Matthew 26:39). In other words, Jesus’ human will had aligned with God’s will, and now he had the strength to endure what was about to happen. Not all of our prayers will be in easy times. Not all will have pleasant results. Our prayer, in the end, is for our human will to embrace God’s will so we may be filled with his power, whatever the circumstances.

Copyright 2026, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved 

[1] The scholarly sources for this blog include William Barclay, “The Letters to the Philippians, Colossians, and Thessalonians” in The Daily Bible Study Series Rev. Ed. (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster 1975) and Richard R. Melick, Jr., Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon” in The New American Commentary vol. 32, (Nashville, TN: Broadman Press, 1991).

[2] The actual words of our short prayers can vary. We might say the classic version of the Jesus Prayer, or we might say, “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.” We may say, “Lord Jesus, have mercy.” Ancient monks used another version, “Lord, make haste to help me. Lord, make speed to save me,” all day long. There is nothing sacred about the words themselves. Sometimes I use another Orthodox prayer, “Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us.” For Protestants,  a verse from the Bible or another prayer might do just as well. The point is to come closer to God.

Whenever I talk or write about stewardship, I honestly admit that being naturally generous doesn’t come easily to me. Deep in my Scottish roots, there’s a bit of a miser lurking. While I was working full-time, I automatically set aside 10% of my salary, which made it easier to remember to give. In retirement, my income comes from many different sources, some of which are irregular. It’s been a challenge to stay generous under these new circumstances. But I am grateful that this Lenten season gives me a special opportunity to work on becoming more generous.

The Catholic and Greek Orthodox traditions highlight three main Lenten spiritual disciplines for both laity and religious: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. These practices have deep roots in Christian history and faith. The main purpose of the Lenten disciplines is to cultivate the virtues of faith, hope, and love in believers. The virtue of almsgiving is connected to the virtue of love. The roots of the words for alms in both Greek and Latin are linked to the words for love or charity. [1]  Traditionally, Lent has been a time when people are encouraged to give money to those in need.

The Biblical Basis for Almsgiving

Almsgiving, which means giving to the poor and needy, is a meaningful theme throughout the Bible. It shows God’s love for justice, mercy, and compassion. This act of kindness is a heartfelt part of the Judeo-Christian tradition, highlighting how important it is to care for those who need it most.[2]

Old Testament Context. In the Old Testament, almsgiving was associated with righteous living and the provision of justice to the widow, poor, and oppressed. The Torah includes numerous provisions for the care of the poor, widows, orphans, and foreigners. For example:

When you reap the harvest of your land, you are not to reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You must not strip your vineyard bare or gather its fallen grapes. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner. I am the LORD your God” (Leviticus 19:9-10).

The theme of generosity for the poor appears in Psalms:

It is well with the man who deals generously and lends, who conducts his affairs with justice. For the righteous will never be moved; he will be remembered forever. He is not afraid of evil tidings; his heart is steady, and he will not be afraid until he sees his desire on his adversaries. He has distributed freely, given to the poor; his righteousness endures forever; his horn is exalted in honor (Psalms 112:5-9).

Wisdom literature also highlights generosity, teaching, “Kindness to the poor is a loan to the LORD, and He will repay the lender” (Proverbs 19:17). The prophets continue this theme, “Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow” (Isaiah 1:17). Thus, the theme of justice for the poor and needy is a constant in Jewish literature both before and after the exile to Babylon and became increasingly important during the intertestamental period.

New Testament Teachings. Jesus and His followers extended beyond the Old Testament teachings in emphasizing the importance of generosity in the Christian life. By the time of the New Testament, it was increasingly influenced by the Pharisaical belief that almsgiving earned merit from God. In the New Testament, almsgiving is viewed as a spiritual discipline. Jesus emphasizes the importance of giving with the right heart. In the Sermon on the Mount, he is recorded to have said:

So when you give to the needy, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have already received their reward. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving remains secret. And your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you (Matthew 6:2-4).

The New Testament church embraced almsgiving as a central part of their communal life. Acts describes the generous spirit of the early Christians: “All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they shared with anyone in need” (Acts 2:44-46). The significance of almsgiving is emphasized in Acts, where the first dispute involved collecting for the poor (Acts 6). Additionally, the story of Ananias and Sapphira highlights the dangers of pretending to be more generous than we truly are (Acts 5).

This call to charity appears often in the New Testament, emphasizing its significance. Paul took up a collection for those suffering in Jerusalem (2 Corinthians 8). The writer of Hebrews describes acts of charity as sacrifices that are genuinely pleasing to God (Heb 13:16). Both James and John remind us that a generous attitude toward those in need reflects a profound spiritual connection. Such actions demonstrate that a person truly has a living faith (James 2:14-17) and serve as an important test of authentic Christian commitment (1 John 3:16-18). [3]

The Church Fathers on Almsgiving

The Catholic emphasis on almsgiving is deeply influenced by the experience of the early church, as reflected in the teachings of the early post-apostolic Church Fathers Here are just a few quotations from the Church Fathers on almsgiving:[4]

Do not be ready to extend your hands and receive, only to pull them back when it’s time to give. You should not hesitate to give, nor complain when you do. “Give to everyone who asks you.” Barnabas (c. 70-13)

If someone in need receives alms, they are guiltless. However, if someone receives alms without need, they will face punishment. They will be scrutinized for their actions and will not escape until they repay the last coin. Regarding this, it has been said, “Let your alms stay in your hands, until you know to whom you should give them.” Didache (c. 80-140)

Do not be someone who extends his hand to receive but pulls it back when it comes to giving. If you have anything, you shall give with your hands as a ransom for your sins. Do not hesitate to give, nor murmur when you give. Didache (c. 80-140)

Alms should be given to those who deserve it, using good judgment. This way, we can gain a ‘reward from the Most High. But woe to those who have enough but accept alms dishonestly. Woe to those who try to help themselves but want to take from others. For he who takes… out of laziness will be condemned. Clement of Alexandria (c. 195).

Although we have a treasure chest, it is not made up of money spent on purchases, like a religion that has a cost. Instead, on the designated day each month, if he wishes, every person can contribute a small donation—but only if it is his choice and he is able. There is no pressure; everyone participates voluntarily. These gifts are meant to support and care for poor people, to provide for boys and girls who lack resources and parents, and for elderly individuals confined to their homes. They also help those who have faced shipwreck. And if any of us happen to be in the mines, banished to the islands, or imprisoned—for no reason other than their faithfulness to the cause of God’s church—they become the recipients of their confession. Tertullian (c. 197).

If we give alms to others with the intention of appearing charitable before people, and if we seek to be honored because of our generosity, we only earn the praise of humans. In truth, everywhere, anything done by someone who is aware that they will be glorified by men has no reward from Him who sees in secret. For He gives the reward in secret to those who are pure. Origen (c. 245).

By giving alms to the poor, we lend to God. When it is given to the least, it is given to Christ. Therefore, there are no reasons for anyone to prefer worldly things over heavenly ones, nor for considering human matters before divine ones. Cyprian (c. 250).

Our particular duty to care for the poor

The purpose of almsgiving is to care for the poor and those in need. Thus, Lactinius, who could be quoted many times on the need for generosity, says:

Why do you discriminate between persons? Why do you look at bodily forms? Be generous to the blind, the feeble, the lame, and the ‘destitute. For they will die unless you bestow | your gifts upon them. They may be useless to men, but they are serviceable to God. For He preserves life in them and endows them with I breath. Lactantius (c. 304-313, W), 7.175.

The early Apostolic Constitutions of the church contain the same teaching:

What if some persons are neither widows nor widowers, but stand in need of assistance— either because of poverty, disease, or the responsibility of a great number of children? It is your duty to oversee all people and to take care of them all. Apostolic Constitutions (compiled c. 390, E), 7.427.

From the righteous labor of the faithful, provide for and clothe those in need. The sums of money collected in the manner mentioned above should be designated for the redemption of saints, the liberation of slaves, captives, and prisoners. They should also be used for those who have been abused or condemned by tyrants to single combat and death because of the name of Christ. Apostolic Constitutions (compiled around 390, E), 7.435; extended discussion: 5.476-5.484, 5.530-5.533.

It should be clear that the early church was focused on almsgiving and caring for the poor and needy. This concern involved not only Jesus but also the apostles and those who later became witnesses to the Christian faith and practice.

 Conclusion

Almsgiving beautifully reflects God’s loving character and the core values of the Christian Church worldwide. It is a heartfelt way to show love and obey God’s call to care for the “least of these” (Matthew 25:40). Giving becomes a meaningful expression of faith and a way to gather treasures in heaven (Matthew 6:19-21). Additionally, by sharing what we have, we participate in God’s amazing work of redemption on earth. When we help meet others’ physical needs, it opens doors to share the gospel and demonstrate Christ’s love through our actions.

Almsgiving is a heartfelt aspect of Christian life that inspires us to show compassion and be willing to make sacrifices for others. We are encouraged to give with joy, just as Paul reminds us, “Each one should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not out of regret or compulsion. For God loves a cheerful giver.” (2 Corinthians 9:7) At its core, almsgiving is a genuine expression of Christian love and faith, deeply connected to biblical teachings and our cherished traditions.

Copyright 2026, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved

[1] The English word “alms” is an abridged form of the Greek word, eleemosune and the Latin elemoynam. (from which our word “eleemosynary” derives. The word appears in gradually reduced forms in German Almosen, Wyclif’s Almesse, Scotch Aw’mons, and finally the English Alms.

[2] I am indebted to several sources for this blog, including Bible Hub https://biblehub.com/topical/a/almsgiving.htm (downloaded March 7, 2026).

[3] See, Biblical Training. Org  https://www.biblicaltraining.org/library/alms-almsgiving (downloaded March 7, 2026).

[4] See, Puritan Publications, “The Early Church and Ideals about Alms-giving: Articles on Christian Stewardship” https://www.apuritansmind.com/stewardship/earlychurchalmsgiving/ (downloaded March 7, 2026). I have included only a few of the many quotations this site provides. I have also made more contemporary some of the quotes. The source for most of them is the Ante-Nicene Fathers series or the Apostolic Fathers Greek-English editions.

One of the benefits of fasting, and Kathy and I are observing a fast this Lenten season, is that it reminds you that you need God’s mercy. Every morning around 6:30 am, I get up and make a pot of coffee. Usually, I go to the refrigerator, pour half-and-half into my cup, and go back to bed while it brews. During this Lenten season, I get up, make the coffee, and remember I can’t have my half-and-half. It’s an immediate reminder that I need to pray for God’s mercy (as well as the quick arrival of Easter morning!). Until this year, Kathy and I have observed what might be called a “Protestant Lenten fast.” In other words, we fasted from something, usually wine (Kathy) and crackers (Chris). This year, we decided to experiment with the Orthodox Church’s “Great Lent” fasting rules. It has been an experience, made more difficult by the fact that we have traveled with people who are not subject to similar fasting guidelines.

The Great Lenten Fast

All Christians understand that fasting should be practiced in secret, without the need to show off or criticize others (Mt 6.16; Rom 14). It serves to purify our lives, free our souls and bodies from sin, and strengthen our natural ability to love God and others. Additionally, it helps illuminate our entire being, fostering a deeper connection with Christ. The Orthodox rules for Lenten fasting are monastic in nature. No meat is allowed after “Meatfare Sunday” (two weeks before Lent begins), and no eggs or dairy products after “Cheesefare Sunday” (one week before Lent begins). [1] The basic diet is sort of Vegan, with the addition that there is to be no olive oil or wine during the fast.[2]

This Lenten fast is not supposed to be some kind of work that earns one some special relationship with God, but as an ideal to be striven for; not as an end in itself, but as a means to spiritual perfection crowned in love. In fact, an American Orthodox priest that I heard speak about the fast reminded his parishioners that, if we make fasting a work or if we meticulously follow the rules, it is simply a bad diet.

The Great Lent is observed from Meatfare Sunday through Easter Sunday, ending after the Paschal Divine Liturgy on that day. Recognizing the dedication required, Christians are encouraged to keep their fasting practices private, trusting that God will see their sincere efforts and bless them openly with a holy life. Everyone is invited to sincerely do their best, guided by their own faith and conviction.

Although in Orthodoxy Saturdays and Sundays are never days of fasting, this  refers only to the weekly fasts. During Great Lent, , the ascetical fast continues through the weekends. However, the weekend rules are slightly different.

Three Pillars of Lent

Fasting is one of the Three Pillars of Lent, which are also central to the faith of those who practice it. These Three Pillars are:

1. Prayer. Prayer is such a meaningful part of the Lenten season. It’s a special time when we’re invited to reflect on our relationship with God and nurture our spiritual connection with the divine. Whether it’s through daily prayers, joining in church services, or engaging in devotional activities like the Stations of the Cross, these moments can truly deepen our faith and bring us closer to God.
2. Fasting. Fasting is an important part of Lent. It involves giving up certain luxuries or desires for a period to focus on spiritual growth. This can include various practices, such as skipping meals for a day, avoiding specific foods for a time, or giving up other items like television or social media. The goal of fasting is to help individuals get closer to God by recognizing their dependence on Him and stepping away from worldly distractions.
3. Generosity. Giving generously (or almsgiving) is a special practice during Lent. As we reflect on our own shortcomings, Lent reminds us to assist those in need. Whether it’s donating to charities, volunteering at a local soup kitchen, or helping a neighbor in need, these acts of kindness are genuine expressions of compassion and love. Embracing almsgiving throughout the season encourages us to focus on our responsibilities to others, fostering a spirit of selflessness and service.

The “Three Pillars of Lent”—prayer, fasting, and almsgiving—highlight how important spiritual growth and reflection are. By practicing these, we can strengthen our faith, build our relationship with God, and live a more meaningful and intentional life.

Pastoral Flexibility

There is a lot of pastoral flexibility in the way the Lenten fast is administered in any given parish. Those who have health issues that might be exacerbated by the fast are always given a dispensation to dispense with it. In addition, those with health issues that makes certain aspects of the fast difficult are easily given permission to not fulfill all of the obligations. For example, a member of my family has hypoglycemia and really needs a diet with a bit more protein every day. This person is also in an occupation requiring physical labor, and the priest has given him permission to eat certain foods that otherwise would not be permissible.

Neither Inquirers nor Catechumens are required to observe the fast. They may do so if they wish. Additionally, many people, myself included, observed certain parts of the fast as they get used to fasting for long periods. Finally, and this year has been a good example, our priest advises that, when traveling and in it would inconvenience those around you, the rules can be loosened to prevent bad feelings. In other words, the Lenten Fast is not a law, it’s a spiritual practice intended to draw people closer to God and one another.

Purpose of Fasting

Fasting has many important purposes. One website I visited had a very helpful summary of the reasons for fasting.[3]

1 To express repentance and a return to God

2. To humble oneself before God

3. To strengthen one’s prayer life

4. To seek God’s guidance

5. To express sorrow or grief

6. To seek deliverance or protection

7. To express concern for the work of God

8. To minister to the needs of others

9. To overcome temptation and dedicate yourself to God

10. To express love and worship for God

All these reasons are present in the Great Lenten Fast and the long Advent Fast practiced among Orthodox Christians.

Biblical Practice

Protestants sometimes feel that fasting might not be completely biblical. However, the Old Testament is full of examples of people observing fasting. Devout Jews fasted during specific times and seasons designated for such practices. For example, on the Day of Atonement, everyone was required to fast from sundown to sundown (Lev. 23:32). During special holy days, people also fasted until evening (Judg. 20:26). When King Saul died, the armies fasted for seven days (1 Sam. 31:13). Nehemiah and the people fasted together as an act of repentance and mourning (Neh. 1:4; 9:1). Fasting was a meaningful way for people to humbly depend on God and seek His mercy and grace.

For Christians, it is important to consider New Testament teachings. I believe it is crucial to note that the New Testament describes Jesus fasting for forty days and forty nights before he was tempted (Matt. 4:2). The passage reads like this:

Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting for forty days and forty nights, he became hungry. The tempter approached him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.” Jesus replied, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written: ‘He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’” Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” Again, the devil took him to a high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.” Jesus told him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’” Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him (Matthew 4:1-11).

This passage was important enough that other gospel writers included this teaching in their writings.[4] We see no other instances of Jesus fasting, and we are told that his disciples did not fast during his earthly ministry. Jesus explained this by saying that wedding guests don’t fast while the bridegroom is present (Mark 2:18-19). However, he added, “The time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them, and on that day they will fast” (v. 20). The disciples’ choice not to fast was not due to laziness, lack of piety, or rejection of fasting; rather, it symbolized the Lord’s presence and the joyful arrival of God’s kingdom. Jesus himself predicted a time when they would fast (see Acts 13:2-3). Another key teaching about fasting is found in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 6:16—18), where he criticized the public fasting of the Pharisees, done to be “seen by men,” and instructed his disciples to fast in secret, so that only the heavenly Father would see and reward it. Clearly, the Lord criticized the motives and manner of fasting among the Pharisees, but not the practice itself. It is a misinterpretation of Scripture to believe that Jesus did not intend for his church to practice fasting.

The Practice of the Early Church

The early church adopted the popular Jewish custom of fasting twice a week, with a small but meaningful change: instead of Monday and Thursday, Wednesday and Friday became the usual days for fasting. This demonstrates how fasting was a valued part of the earliest Christian communities and how Orthodoxy simply incorporated this ancient practice into its liturgical traditions. The church fathers practiced and encouraged fasting. For example, Basil the Great taught:

There is both a physical and a spiritual fast. In the physical fast the body abstains from food and drink. In the spiritual fast, the faster abstains from evil intentions, words and deeds. One who truly fasts abstains from anger, rage, malice, and vengeance. One who truly fasts abstains from idle and foul talk, empty rhetoric, slander, condemnation, flattery, lying and all manner of spiteful talk. In a word, a real faster is one who withdraws from all evil. As much as you subtract from the body, so much will you add to the strength of the soul. [5]

Both Origen and Augustine supported fasting, prayer, and giving to those in need. It appears that the early church followed the Jewish tradition, which saw piety as a balanced trio of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. However, reflecting Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 6, the early church highlighted that fasting’s true purpose isn’t to seek applause or showcase piety. Instead, fasting, like prayer and giving, should be done sincerely for the heavenly Father alone.

Conclusion

When I advise people on budgeting, I often warn them that the first year is both the hardest and least successful, but if they stick to the discipline by year three, they will have a workable budget and be able to live within it. I have been telling myself that fasting is probably similar. The first year or attempt at fasting is sketchy at best (ours has been), but it will improve with time. Our hardest time was during an extended trip visiting friends and family who were not fasting. Everyone was understanding, but we did not feel comfortable insisting on a diet no one else was following. I suspect we are not alone in this feeling. Otherwise, when we are at home, it seems to work just fine. Finally, it is not enough to fast. Fasting is a way of deepening prayer and repentance. Without prayer, as a priest told me this month, the Lenten Fast is just a bad diet. Therefore, we will discuss Lenten prayer in a future post.

Copyright 2026, G> Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved

[1] I have taken this introduction from the American Orthodox website and its See, “Lenten Fasting” at https://www.oca.org/orthodoxy/the-orthodox-faith/worship/the-church-year/lenten-fasting (downloaded March 6, 2026).

[2] The rules are actually a bit complex in some cases, and I don’t want to mess up this blog with a lot of detaisl that interested people can find out on their own if they become interested.

[3] See the NIV Bible Website, at https://www.thenivbible.com/blog/10-biblical-purposes-fasting/ (downloaded March 6, 2026)

[4] See Luke 4:1-13. See also Hebrews 4:15, Philippians 2:5-8, which provide support for Jesus’ identification with the human race, including temptation.

[5] Orthodox teaching on fasting, found at https://www.crkvenikalendar.com/post/post-fathers.php (downloaded March 6, 2026). The number of possible quotations is enormous—too many to include in this document.

Creating and maintaining a free society is complex. Whether it’s a profession, a religion, a legal system, or any other kind of society, it relies on a foundation of self-policing discipline that helps its members keep it running properly and smoothly. These polices and discipline also permit innovations that enable the society to adapt to changing circumstances. Both elements are essential for a society to thrive and grow.[1] Where this does not occur, there is an inevitable decay. Nothing is more damaging to such a society than a deterioration of its fundamental values and the emergence of either moral inversion (upside-down morality).

Diverse Expertise in a Free Society

In his book, Meaning, Polanyi begins his discussion of the requirements of free society with an analogy from the administration of law and the search for justice. The book imagines a lawyer sitting in his office, pondering a specific case. Consciously, the judge is thinking about many aspects of the case, including the law’s precedents, the specific facts of the case, and his instincts about the justice of the parties’ causes, etc. Subconsciously, or tacitly, the judge is also bringing to bear all of his years of experience in the practice of law.

In his deliberations, the judge is generally an experienced member of the legal community, that group of experts responsible for administering the law in his society. Although this judge may be alone in his chambers, he or she is engaged in a kind of conversation with the parties in the case, their attorneys, relevant case law, and the entire tradition of law. The process of the judge’s thinking is a kind of internal dialogue in which he must weigh various views, precedents, the unique features of the case at hand, and other factors as he seeks to reach a decision.

In order to reach a fair decision, it is essential that the judge be free to exercise his own personal judgment. This freedom is not unlimited because it is also bounded by the law itself, the various cannons of ethics that govern lawyers and judges, and the political realities, the judge faces in deciding the case. It is an active judgment that involves the entire person.[2]

This process is not fundamentally different from those occurring in his society across a variety of professions. Scientists, seeking the truth, are part of a community bound by rules, procedures, and tradition. Business, although very different from an ethical point of view, is conducted according to its own traditions, rules, procedures, and laws. Medicine has its own professional standards.[3] Taking matters away from the widely-recognized professions, the same thing is true of electricians, plumbers, and others in the trades. They were first apprenticed as members of a trade; they learned certain techniques and processes; they came to understand the laws, codes, and rules that govern the free exercise of their professions, all until they had reached the requisite level of proficiency.

The Collectivist Error

In our society, there is a rich diversity of individuals, professions, trades, guilds, artistic communities, and educational institutions. They all carry out their activities according to their own rules, helping society to thrive and adapt to the constantly changing environment. One area where totalitarian societies fail is in their attempts to eliminate the freedom that allows professionals, tradespeople, and others to conduct their daily lives without centralized control. However, there is a price for this freedom: those who have it must uphold their standards of conduct, or external controls will inevitably be imposed.

During the most bizarre years of Soviet communism, nearly everything was managed by a central authority in Moscow. The result was a complete economic and social failure. Agriculture collapsed. There was industrial inefficiency. (There were either too many nails or not enough nails. There were either too many housing units or not enough housing units.) Time and time again, the bureaucrats in charge misjudged society’s needs. This was even worse in the area of the professions. As the Soviet Union began to direct scientific research, it often favored ideas that, from a scientific point of view, were nonsense. It was this particular defect in the Soviet system that led Polanyi to begin his own thinking about a free society.[4]

The Freedom that Supports a Free Society

If freedom is necessary for the functioning of society’s most important components, it is crucial to ask what kind of freedom is needed. In Western society, we often think of freedom as the ability to do whatever we want. In other words, we think of freedom as freedom for self-assertion. Freedom for self-assertion not the kind of freedom a scientist, lawyer, doctor, or other professional has when performing their duties. In this context, freedom means the absence of external restraints that allow an individual to exercise their judgment in their tasks, as long as they adhere to the professional and moral standards of their field.[5]

Polanyi is careful to distinguish freedom in a free society from mere self-assertion:

By a simple and obvious analogy, a free society must exist within the context of a tradition that provides a framework within which members of the society may make free contributions to the tasks involved in the society. The freedom of mere self-assertion can lead only to disintegration of our standards and institutions.[6]

Thinking of a free society as a carefully tended family garden is helpful: it thrives within a nurturing framework of shared traditions that guide and support everyone’s contributions. Without cooperation from those who tend the garden, simple acts of self-assertion can sometimes threaten the carefully maintained standards of our institutions. If many family members neglect their responsibilities, the entire project can collapse. Not long ago, I tried to save some azaleas dying in our front yard. It took years of effort and care, and one azalea was particularly weak. I went on vacation, and a family member who was supposed to water that azalea daily failed to do so. The azalea died. This illustrates what happens when members of a free society neglect their tasks diligently, morally, and effectively. Eventually, the culture or some part of it withers and dies.

Spiritual Foundation of a Free Society

When it comes to the needs of a free society as a whole, it is clear that such a society requires a spiritual foundation: a common belief in truth, justice, and beauty, which are the ethical standards by which people pursue their personal objectives within a community. This is true of every kind of community, whether it be scientists, scholars, lawyers, doctors, judges, artists, or even religious professionals. Without a general devotion to spiritual objectives, free communities cannot continue to exist.[7]

The path to a totalitarian society begins with the loss of these spiritual or, what I would call, noetic, transcendental values. Eventually, in the absence of the free and disciplined exercise of judgment, some central authority must begin to legislate and enforce standards for this society in order to maintain some kind of order. This results in an empty and meaningless society run by a set of rules that no one follows because they want to, but because they have to, enforced by a police state.[8]

Enclaves of Self-Policing Freedom

As indicated, a free society is made up of many sub-communities, each managing its own affairs according to its own rules, ideally in harmony with the broader needs of society. Polanyi helpfully describes this as a “bottom-up emergent order.” By this, he means that the overall order of society is shaped by the decisions of countless subgroups and individuals within it. This emergent order is something that no one could fully predict or plan.

Polanyi makes his point as follows:

It is our contention that a system that develops from the bottom up, through free interaction of its parts upon one another (subject only to a free, common dedication of its participants to the value of certain standard standards, principles, and ideal ends), is the only social system that can meaningfully be called free. The alternative is to control social affairs essentially from the top down, and so established a corporate order which is the essence of totalitarianism.[9]

This is one aspect of constructive postmodern thinking that is at odds with a mechanical view of the universe. A mechanical view of the universe treats it as something that has been built and is being built by conscious choice. It’s like a machine. An organic or postmodern view of the universe holds that the universe is unfolding from a quantum level throughout each of its levels as a process by which fundamentally independent parts emerge or evolve from prior states. This is true at the subatomic level, and Polanyi is asserting that the same phenomenon needs to occur at the level of society as a whole.[10] Societies develop and continue due to countless decisions of its members.

This highlights the issue of antisocial behavior and the tendency of groups to seek dominance over each other; in its most obvious form, it is the problem of oligarchy. The problem with oligarchy involves a small group of people, driven by their own self-interest—usually wealth—who take control of society. At this point, Polanyi’s use of the word “oligarchy” for all such cases differs from Plato’s understanding of the nature of oligarchy. Oligarchy is a degenerate form of aristocracy where social status is not based on achievement but on wealth and power. A danger of any kind of aristocracy, especially one of wealth, is the risk of degeneration into oligarchy.

A free society must avoid oligarchy, which is the rule of society’s affairs by a small group of powerful or wealthy individuals. However, it should encourage aristocracy, meaning leadership within its various sectors and over the whole that has earned such a position through merit and ability. I believe discussing Christian virtues like servanthood and love is helpful here. Without wise and moral educational institutions and moral training provided by churches and other religious groups, it seems inevitable that society will be governed by some elite oligarchic group—whether political, economic, military, or bureaucratic. Polanyi, who is generally cautious about expressing religious views, does not address the issue of love because it falls outside of his epistemological framework. However, from a practical standpoint, I think it’s unavoidable. Ultimately, without the self-giving servanthood that social love can encourage, maintaining a free society becomes very difficult if not impossible.

Dialogue and Mutual Adjustment

For a free society to last, it must achieve social harmony and progress through a gradual process of mutual adjustment. This system of mutual adjustment involves continual change as society reaches higher levels of harmony, flourishing, and meaning for its members.[11] Unlike reliance on raw power, this adjustment process uses dialogue, compromise, conversation, and the steady development of positive change for society. From this viewpoint, the modern approach of power-based social engineering is likely to fail and lead to some form of totalitarian regime.

The progress of this system of continual reflective adjustments cannot, of course, be known before it is known and therefore cannot (logically cannot) be planned for. But this does indeed seem to be the ontological situation of man in the world; if it is not so for all time, as it certainly seems to be, then at least it is his situation as of now.[12]

Here we see the practical implications of a rejection of the kind of millenarian perfectionism that characterizes every type of totalitarian regime: The attempt to create a perfect world in one fell swoop, as for example, Soviet communism tried to do, is doomed to failure. It flies in the face of human historical experience and our limited capacities. The result of any attempt to preemptively achieve a perfect or substantially better world will always be human suffering. Therefore, a wise society puts up with a certain amount of disorder and failure to achieve its deepest goals in order to protect its ability to freely adjust and create a better future.[13]

Conclusion

This is where I must pause for now. It would surprise me if I did not return to the issue of moral inversion. Not a day goes by without witnessing this remarkable phenomenon in academia, business, media, and government. It exists wherever people have abandoned traditional morality and started to create their own to justify the self-interest of their particular group. I am not convinced that our society will avoid the consequences; however, it can if good people work hard to uphold a kind of moral order and resist those who seek to undermine it.

Copyright 2026, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved 

[1] This entire blog is inspired by and largely drawn from Michael Polanyi and Harry Prosch, Meaning (Chicago, Ill: University of Chicago Press, 1975), 198. This book was written shortly before Polanyi’s death in 1076 and brought to its final form by Harry Prosch. Meaning was the culmination of Michael Polanyi’s philosophic endeavors. In the book, Polanyi investigates the meaning of this work as grounded in the imaginative and creative faculties of the human person. There is some controversy surrounding the book and Prosch’s interpretation of Polanyi’s thought. This dispute, which centers on Polanyi’s religious convictions, does not affect this analysis. The relevant chapter is Chapter 13, “A Free Society.”

[2] Id, 198-199.

[3] Id, 199.

[4] Michael Polanyi, Science, Faith and Society: A Searching Examination of the Meaning and Nature of Scientific Inquiry (Chicago, Ill: University of Chicago Press, 1946).

[5] Meaning, 202. Unfortunately, the legal profession increasingly sees the emergence of decadent judges and others who have embraced a kind of nihilism and do in fact believe that their positions are a license for unlimited self-assertion.

[6] Id.

[7] Id, 203. I have written of the noetic, gradually emerging realities of truth, beauty, justice, goodness, etc., in G. Christopher Scruggs, Illumined by Wisdom and Love (College Station, TX: Virtual Bookworm, 2025). It is not necessary to think of these as pre-existing qualities, but as gradually emergent qualities brought into existence by a community of inquiries, dedicated to the pursuit of truth, beauty, justice, or other values.

[8] Id.

[9] Id, 204.

[10] Id, 204.

[11] Id, 207.

[12] Id.

[13] Id.