CHARACTER, TRUTH, AND SELF-ACTUALIZATION

What does “character” mean to us today? What personal traits and goals do we value? For the late psychologist Abraham Maslow, it was a matter of self-actualization - "fulfilling themselves and doing the best that they are capable of doing".

Another website listed 13 personal goals worth pursuing:

1. Becoming the person you aspire to be.
2. Fixing your priorities
3. Specifying your values.
4. Determining your lifestyle.
5. Defining your ethics.
6. Improving your knowledge, potential and awareness.
7. Enhancing the quality of your life by being more spiritual and healthy.
8. Developing strengths, learning techniques or methods to achieve wisdom.
9. Fulfilling aspirations.
10. Building human capital.
11. Defining and executing personal development plans.
12. Developing spirituality.
13. Improving health.

Both sources have a lot in common – self-fulfillment. However, different eras esteemed different goals and traits. Historian Daniel Walker Howe highlights the differences:

• In the development of Western political thought, the control of passion by reason has been an issue of critical importance. Stephen Holmes’s Passions and Constraint shows how the creation of free political institutions required that people control such strong passions as tribal hatred or the resentment of social slights by the exercise of sober rationality… “The principal aim of [early] liberals who wrote favorably of self-interest was to bridle destructive and self- destructive passions, to reduce the social prestige of mindless male violence, to induce people, so far as possible, to act rationally, instead of hot-bloodedly.” (Making the American Self)

While today, we esteem self-fulfillment, yesterday, self-control, a virtuous character, and rationality were praised. Jacksonian historian George Bancroft’s laudatory description of George Washington is very revealing of what had been esteemed:

• His faculties were so well balanced and combined, that his constitution, free from excess, was tempered… [with] the power of self- control, and enabled him to excel in patience, even when he had most cause for disgust.

Why the sharp difference and what does it mean? Why has self-fulfillment replaced self-control along with the other Christian virtues? With the onslaught of secularism and its denial of an afterlife, there is nothing to live for but the “now.” Therefore, “character” – honesty, integrity, courage, and other-centered-ness – has become only a means to an end, a payoff in the now. Virtue has become a commodity to barter as the changing situation requires.

However, our Founding Fathers, even the least religious among them, could not conceive of this American experiment working without the Christian faith and its virtues as its foundation.

The Unitarian and our second President, John Adams, wrote:

• “The general principles upon which the Fathers achieved independence were the general principals of Christianity… I will avow that I believed and now believe that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God.”

• "We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." (October 11, 1798)

• "I have examined all religions, as well as my narrow sphere, my straightened means, and my busy life, would allow; and the result is that the Bible is the best Book in the world. It contains more philosophy than all the libraries I have seen." (December 25, 1813 letter to Thomas Jefferson)

• "Without Religion this World would be Something not fit to be mentioned in polite Company, I mean Hell." (John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, April 19, 1817)

Even our Deist President, Thomas Jefferson, wrote:

• “Of all the systems of morality, ancient or modern which have come under my observation, none appears to me so pure as that of Jesus.”

• “God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are a gift from God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, and that His justice cannot sleep forever.” (excerpts are inscribed on the walls of the Jefferson Memorial in the nations capital; Source: Merrill . D. Peterson, ed., Jefferson Writings, (New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 1984), Vol. IV, p. 289. From Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia, Query XVIII, 1781.)

Were they right? Can our liberties remain secure as the Christian faith continues its exile into the margins of American life? How can they! When we deny objective moral truths and the afterlife (and the pursuit of gratification fills the gap) we will care less about abstract and distant principles such as liberty until its disappearance begins to impinge on our pursuit of immediate gratification.

Also, this pursuit will set us against each other in competition for scarce resources, whether they are advancements, recognition, influence, pay-increases, or even legislation that will favor our side. Consequently, we will resent those competitors and wish them ill.

Even now, we are inheriting the fruitage of our values and goals – polarization, division, distrust, economic decline, and bitterness. Instead, when our lives are other-centered and not self-centered, peace, trust, and cooperation reign. When we are seeking the benefit of our neighbor, how can they argue! This pertains even to our spouses, as Alexis de Tocqueville had observed almost 200 years ago:

• There is certainly no country in the world where the tie of marriage is so much respected as in America, or where conjugal happiness is more highly or worthily appreciated. In Europe, almost all the disturbances of society arise from the irregularities of domestic life. To despise the natural bonds and legitimate pleasures of home is to contract a taste for excesses, a restlessness of heart, and the evil of fluctuating desires. Agitated by the tumultuous passions which frequently disturb his dwelling, the European is galled by the obedience which the legislative powers of the State exact. But when the American retires from the turmoil of public life to the bosom of his family, he finds in it the image of order and of peace… While the European endeavors to forget his domestic troubles by agitating society, the American derives from his own home that love of order which he afterward carries with him into public affairs. (Democracy in American, 199)

Nor should Western society argue against the benefits of the Christian faith, but they do! Indian scholar, Vishal Mangalwadi, attempts to understand this peculiar auto-immune response:

• This good news [of the Christian faith] became the intellectual foundation of the modern West, the force that produced moral integrity, economic prosperity, and political freedom. If moral integrity is foundational to prosperity, why don’t secular experts talk about it? The reason is that the universities no longer know whether moral laws are true universal principles or mere social conventions made up to restrict our freedoms. And why don’t they know? Economists have lost the secret of the West’s success because philosophers have lost the very idea of truth. (Truth and Transformation: A Manifesto for Ailing Nations)

Truth has died. Only self-fulfillment remains. God help us!

Spineless Secularism

Modern secularism, having rejected any eternal, transcendent values and ideals, is strictly pragmatic. It is, therefore, exclusively concerned about what works, what give desirable results, at least for the secularist.

Secularism is also parasitic. It invades economically healthy societies, compromising them economically, morally, legally, and even spiritually, making them vulnerable to an assortment of pathogens – hedonism, moral relativism, and Islam.

How does this happen? Well, for one thing, Islam allows no criticism:

• [33:57-58] Those who insult God and His Messenger will be rejected by God in this world and the next—He has prepared a humiliating punishment for them—  and those who undeservedly insult believing men and women will bear the guilt of slander and obvious sin.

• [33:59-61] Prophet, tell your wives, your daughters, and women believers to make their outer garment hang low over them, so as to be recognized and not insulted: God is most forgiving, most merciful. 60 If the hypocrites, the sick of heart, and those who spread lies in the city [Medina] do not desist, We shall arouse you [Prophet] against them, and then they will only be your neighbors in this city for a short while. 61 They will be rejected wherever they are found, and then seized and killed. (Haleem) 

• Bukhari (59:369) - This recounts the murder of Ka'b bin al-Ashraf, a Jewish poet who wrote verses about Muslims that Muhammad found insulting.  He asked his followers, 'Who will rid me of this man?' and several volunteered.  al-Ashraf was stabbed to death while fighting for his life.

• Bukhari (4:241) - Those who mocked Muhammad at Mecca were killed after he had retaken the city and asserted his authority.

Consequently, even in moderate Malaysia, “Cops seek duo [two people] over Facebook insults on Islam,” (Bernama, April 17, 2015).

How do secularists deal with the Islamic intolerance of free speech? Do they proclaim, as Patrick Henry did, “Give me liberty or give me death?” Or do they take the pragmatic path of least resistance, claiming that “Islam is a religion of peace” and criminalizing anyone who claims otherwise or creates a cartoon or book critical of Islam. In fact, one influential secularist goes a step further to proclaim, “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.”

Principle is routinely sacrificed for short-term comfort. Liberty and freedoms of speech and religion are sold in exchange for pleasure. Justice is a commodity freely replaced for a fleeting measure of peace.

What will happen if Muslims attack the offices of Facebook, as they had Charlie Hebdo, because Facebook allows articles critical of Islam? Would the secularists stand against this or would they declare, “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam?” I think we already know the answer.

Society cannot consistently be nourished by modern secular pragmatism and stand. It will fall to those of conviction, even malevolent conviction. Instead, society must re-embrace its eternal foundation of truth.

Absurdity, Moral “Freedom,” Postmodernism, and Chaos

Emergent guru, Tony Jones, claims that “Postmodern philosophy saved my faith.”

Postmodernism is the belief that all truth claims, including any claims of objective moral truth, are subjective and are merely human inventions. Here’s how Jones puts it:

• The slipperiness of meaning, the impossibility of objectivity, the incommensurability of truth claims — these themes of postmodernism appealed to me and gave my faith room to grow.

“Room to grow?” This “freedom” results from the belief that we are not confined by unchanging truth. Consequently, there are no truth claims that can constrain us; no one who can say, “You are wrong.” This frees us to become the captain-of-our-own-ship and to create our own “truth” – whatever feels right! But what does freedom from truth constraints look like? Here are some examples:

1. Without a moral law that is independent of what we think and feel, problem solving and reconciliation become difficult. A wife discovers that her postmodern husband has been cheating on her. He responds, “Playing around is my personal ‘truth.’ This works for me, and you have no right to impose your ‘truth’ on me!”   

2. Law and social stability are undermined. Imagine a postmodern moral relativist who files a burglary complaint with the police: “I feel your pain, but what are you complaining about? As you know, your complaint is no more valid than the burglar’s interests. Why then should I take your desires any more seriously than those of the burglar’s?”

3. There is no way to correct others. Imagine telling Mr. Hitler that he did wrong in committing genocide. He might respond: “You are a hypocrite. You can only say, ‘Genocide feels wrong to me!’ Meanwhile, I feel that genocide is right for us. You have no right or basis to judge our culture or laws! What makes your feelings any more valid than mine? Nothing!”

4. Any form of correction becomes absurd. Imagine the mother who confronts a teacher for failing her son: “You have undermined my son’s sense of worth and his future. How dare you impose your subjective, relative standards on him!”

Postmodernity and its affirmation of moral relativism render life absurd and dissolve the social glue. If there are no higher moral laws, we might momentarily feel free, but this kind of freedom will produce meaninglessness – like playing chess without any rules – and then bondage. Bondage? Yes! In order to rescue ourselves from the jail of chaos and meaninglessness into which we have condemned ourselves, we then have to recreate what we have torn down, but now using inferior products.

What products? “Laws” that are necessary to preserve society, even human life, independent of the existence of any immutable right and wrong! Based on what? What benefits the majority! Why? Well…… postmodernism cannot possibly answer this question! Remember – freedom!

Threat, Thugs, and Capitulation

How were Hitler and his National Socialist thugs able to take over Germany? Through intimidation, violence and murder! How were Mao, Lenin, Stalin, Pol Pot, and Castro able to prevail? Through the same instruments of terror! How is it that Islam is now enjoying the protection of Western media, universities and government despite their many atrocities? How is it that anyone who speaks against the Islamic threat and terror is labeled an “Islamophobe” and silenced? Their willingness to act out violently has made cowards of our Western institutions and has even convinced them that they are performing a righteous act by accommodating to Islam.

How is it that the homosexual agenda has suddenly gained such widespread acceptance, gaining such support that anyone who resists them is termed a “homophobe,” a hater of gays, a denier of human rights? Through intimidation and violence! In fact, I just received a sample of their methods today in the form of two anonymous responses to my blog:

• Oh eat a bag of cock go devour a pound of shit you judgmental homophobic redneck cunt. I hope you sit on a cactus.
  
  
• OH YOU ARE A GIANT DOUCHE FAGGOT YOU ARE A FAGGY QUEENY DOUCHE YOU NEED TO GO FUCK YOURSELF CAUSE NO ONE ELSE TOUCHES YOU!

What did I do to deserve such intimidating messages? Much as the Center for Disease Control, I cited various studies in an essay entitled Homosexuality: the Costs.

Such methods of intimidation are not foreign to the pro-gay community. I began listing some of the many instances of pro-gay intimidation, but I stopped. These few incidents would simply trivialize the extent of their violence. Then I tried to include all the incidents I could find on the web, but I deleted them. There were just too many to read.

However, there is nothing surprising or newsworthy that there have always been thugs and bullies who have resorted to the use of any tactics to get their way. What is more surprising is that our democratic institutions that are supposed to expose intimidation and other forms of criminality have all capitulated, even many on the right.

• Fox Sports Southwest fired football analyst Craig James for supporting traditional marriage. (World, October 5, 2013, 8)

Even more surprising, the Mormons – and they had contributed heavily to the passage of the recently invalidated the 2008 popular vote in favor Propositional 8 in California, limiting marriage to male/female unions – had recently invited a couple to speak in favor of making their church “more welcoming places for our LGBT brothers and sisters”:

• Officially the LDS church says marriage is between a man and a woman and that same-sex relationships are sinful, but the church was a quiet force behind the new Boy Scouts policy to allow into the program homosexual boys. (World, October 5, 2013, 12)

I’m sure that the Scouts always had youth with gay proclivities. However, this ruling opens the door to gay behavior and sets the stage for the anticipated argument:

• The gay youth in the scouts should proportionately be matched with gay scoutmasters.

Meanwhile, the Scouts have already had many problems with sexual abuse. However, what is most shocking is the Mormon capitulation. In the wake of the passage of Prop 8, the pro-gays were able to obtain lists of supporters and harassed them, even desecrating their churches. Instead of challenging this threat, they have conveniently seen the politically correct light.

This reminds me to the advance of Hitler’s National Socialist thugs. Albert Einstein had observed their surprising onslaught:

• Being a lover of freedom, when the [Nazi] revolution came, I looked to the universities to defend it, knowing that they had always boasted of their devotion to the cause of truth; but no, the universities were immediately silenced.  Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers, whose flaming editorials in days gone by had proclaimed their love of freedom; but they, like the universities, were silenced in a few short weeks. . . . Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler’s Campaign for suppressing truth.  I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration for it because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual and moral freedom. I am forced to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly.

There are no longer many lovers of freedom. They have been silenced by the threat of consequences to their careers, their possessions and even their lives, and the thugs have been encouraged by it.

Today’s Secularism and the Death of Liberty

We eventually loose what we take for granted. (Which Founding Father claimed that the price of democracy is constant vigilance?). Our liberties require moral responsibility – the very thing that we increasingly find burdensome. Therefore, we reject the source of our liberties and expect to retain them.

The theologian Jurgen Habermas has pointed to the source of our liberties:

• Christianity and nothing else is the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights and democracy, the benchmarks of Western civilization. We continue to nourish ourselves from this source.

This is because God loves us individually and has created us to be like Him (Gen. 1:26-27). This bestows on us great intrinsic value! Even the Deist, Thomas Jefferson, was unable to conceive of these rights without God:

• And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? (Notes on the State of Virginia)

In contrast, the secularist thinks that he can take what he wants from the Bible and reject its Author. He wants to retain the notion of liberties and equal and human rights without its Source. However, history has another verdict. It shows us that pre-Christian humanity has consistently rejected equality. Even the anti-Christian philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche observed:

• Another Christian concept, no less crazy: the concept of equality of souls before God. This concept furnishes the prototype of all theories of equal rights. (Will to Power)
  
  

However, the today’s secularist refuses to acknowledge such a debt. In light of this, it is interesting to note that the most renowned philosophers of the classical world also disdained the biblical assertion of human equality and liberties. Dinesh D’Souza wrote:

• Aristotle, too, had a job for low men: slavery. Aristotle argued that with low men in servitude, superior men would have leisure to think and participate in governance of the community. Aristotle cherished the ‘great-souled man’ who was proud, honorable, aristocratic, rich. (What’s so Great about Christianity)

Well, aren’t human equality and human rights self-evident? Perhaps, but secular materialism, by its very nature, must deny these. How? Materialism is the belief that only what is material – energy, matter, space (the things of science) - exists. If this is so, we are constrained to regard humanity merely materialistically. However, when we do this, we undermine any possible basis for equality, since some people are strong, others weak; some are intelligent and some are not; some are healthy, while others are not; some make positive contributions to society, while some are a burden. Therefore, the materialist is intellectually unable to treat all with the same positive regards.

Consequently, we will loose what can no longer rationally defend. Even now, our freedoms of speech, privacy and religion are being whittled away in favor of a monopolistic, demanding Secular State.

Thinking about Human Dignity

Ultimately, the way we think about humanity is the way we will treat humanity. The late and renowned Swiss theologian, Emil Brunner, affirmed the impactfulness of our worldview:

• The recent terrible years of the world war and of the preceding totalitarian revolutions have shown us that the understanding of man is the basis of all social order and of all culture…The denial of this dignity is equivalent to the total abandonment of man to the power of the state…The totalitarian state can arise, and is bound to arise, whenever the idea of human dignity has been lost. The idea of human dignity, however, is historically and, in principle, none other than the idea of man’s being created in the image of God. (The Scandal of Christianity, 69-71)

Most embrace an idealistic concept of the dignity of humanity and also acknowledge that, without such a concept, humanity is no more than an animal to be manipulated and used. But are there necessary preconditions for such an idealistic and dignified view of humanity? Brunner thought that there were:

• [The] time of idealism has always been followed by one of materialism in which human dignity was denied. Such was the case after the idealist tide of the nineteenth century, which was followed by a terrible ebb of crudest materialism, which had nothing else to say of man but that he was the most differentiated and developed animal.

Sheer secular humanism cannot long retain this idealism. It lacks the necessary presuppositional underpinning and, therefore, belief in human dignity will eventually erode. If the human is no more than a sophisticated bio-chemical robot, eventually he will be treated in this manner. Robots are esteemed as long as they serve a purpose, and then are thrown on the junk heap.

Brunner concludes:

• [The Christian] doctrine of man, which acknowledges the image of God as well as the depth of sin, is able to create a social order which has room for the dignity of man and at the same time provides for the necessary precautions against the terrible forces of evil which are slumbering in man.

These forces seem now to have been revived with renewed “progressive” vigor.

Freedom, Family, Sexual License and Fulfillment

What is freedom? We tend to understand freedom and liberty as an absence of limitations. However, if we just consider this notion for a bit, it falls apart.

Life is a game of chess. If you play chess without rules or limitations – if you can move any piece in any way, whenever you want – the game becomes entirely meaningless. Life is the same way. Every move or decision is not the same. Each carries with it its own particular costs. Jumping off a building is not the same as jumping into a swimming pool. It costs us dearly! Instead, we maximize our freedom as we live according to certain laws or principles that are consistent with our nature and goals.

Just consider a goldfish confined in his tank. Now imagine that he sees the great world through the glass in his tank and grows increasingly displeased with his fishly limitations. Determined that he will not live with this confinement, with a great show of strength and courage, he propels himself out of his tank and flops helplessly about on the waterless floor of his freedom.

Perhaps our lives are the same way, and we disdain the limitations that actually maximize our freedom and well-being. Perhaps there are inherent limitations in the area of family and human sexuality. Perhaps we too must pay a hefty cost when we jump out of our fishbowl.

Indian scholar Vishal Mangalwadi points to an unexpected cost of sexual libertarianism – an inevitable and severe backlash:

• Our [Indian] neighbors could not even refer to their wives by their names. A wife was Bhitarwali – the one who belongs indoors. Women’s enslavement was then sold as traditional morality. The consequence? Not one girl in our village had gone beyond the fifth grade because the nearest middle school was three miles away. It was too risky to send a girl far out of sight…What they considered morality was, in fact, our women’s slavery. (The Book that Made your World, 277)

How did such “slavery” come about? Why would parents treat their daughters in such a repressive manner? And husbands, their wives? Mangalwadi explains that this repression was the result of sexual permissiveness. He refers to a Hindu temple in that vicinity which gives testimony to an age sexual libertarianism:

• Every imaginable sexual act had been carved in stone to adorn Hindu temples. My ancestors’ religion of “sacred sex” had enslaved our women just as it did in the pre-Christian Greco-Roman civilization. (277)

Sexual libertarianism inevitably leads to abuse. This is generally followed by a repressive reaction, which can imprison women for centuries. It also leads to a disdain of women, even among the most “liberated.” Mangalwadi claims that:

• Rousseau – one of the fathers of secular enlightenment and a champion of liberty – believed that woman was unfinished man. Hindu sages taught that a soul with poor karma incarnated as a female to serve males.

Mangalwadi also quotes from Swami Sivananda, the founder of the Divine Life Society regarding the backlash against “Kama Sutra” and other forms of sexual “liberation”:

• Sex-pleasure is the most devitalizing and demoralizing of pleasures. Sexual pleasure is no pleasure at all. It is a mental delusion. It is false, utterly worthless, and extremely harmful (287)

Celibacy had become proof of “spiritual superiority,” and it entailed a diminuation of women. Although today’s non-theists – anything but celibates - tend to blunt their negative and materialistic appraisals of the female sex, their behavior seems to convey something else:

• As skeptics, atheists and humanists prepare to gather for their largest meeting in Las Vegas this weekend, attendance by women is expected to be down significantly. Officials for The Amazing Meeting, or TAM, said Wednesday (July 11) that women would make up 31 percent of the 1,200 conference attendees, down from 40 percent the year before. A month before the conference, pre-registration was only 18 percent women, organizers said…Online forums have crackled with charges of sexism…In June, Rebecca Watson, a skeptic blogger and speaker, canceled her TAM appearance because, she said on her blog, she does “not feel welcome or safe.” Other nontheists -- both male and female -- have shared stories of unwanted sexual attention at nontheist gatherings, including propositions for sex and unwelcome touching…Meanwhile, two more skeptic/feminist bloggers announced they will not attend TAM.

One feminist skeptic even responded with the previously unspeakable – she’d rather associate with Christians!

As one thinks, so too does he live! If the female is no more than a material object and life has no more meaning that self-gratification, why then not make use of the physical “resources” at one’s disposal!

“Liberated” Yale’s notorious “sex week” also reveals the correlationbetween sexual “liberation” and the eventual enslavement of women:

• Every two years undergraduate students at Yale university are invited to two weeks of pornography, porn stars, fetishes, sex toys and sex talks, all in the name of the university’s infamous “Sex Week.”

However, what started as “liberation” has turned into abuse and now a university crackdown:

• The clamp down on Sex Week follows several years of heightening controversy surrounding the event, compounded by a formal complaint filed by 16 students alleging a “hostile sexual atmosphere” on campus characterized by pervasive harassment and assault.

Perhaps ironically, “liberation” comes at the cost of enslavement - the objectification of the female. When sex is understood exclusively as personal gratification, then the object of this gratification becomes little more than an object.

Mangalwadi explains the repressive veiling of Muslim women as a reaction against libertarianism. The Prophet Mohammad had visited his loyal follower and adopted son Zaid. Zaid wasn’t home, but his stunning wife was. She later related to her husband how captivated Mohammad had been. Therefore, the faithful Zaid divorced his wife so that Mohammad could marry her.

Although initially Mohammad refused this offering of his son’s wife, conveniently, a subsequent revelation (Sura 33.2 - 33.7) provided liberation from such an inconvenient restriction. What was the result of this enhanced freedom? Mangalwadi concludes:

• The Islamic world learned that it was safer to cover your women’s beauty than to be sorry. (280)

Mangalwadi also argues that the sexual freedom available through polygamy and divorce also served to devalue the women. In contrast to sexual “liberation,” sociologist Rodney Stark argues that:

• A major aspect of women’s improved status in the Christian subculture is that Christians did not condone female infanticide…the more favorable Christian view of women is also demonstrated in their condemnation of divorce, incest, marital infidelity, and polygamy. As Fox put it, “fidelity, without divorce, was expected of every Christian.”…Like pagans, early Christians prized female chastity, but unlike pagans, they rejected the double standard that gave pagan men so much sexual license. Christian men were urged to remain virgins until marriage, and extramarital sex was condemned as adultery. Chadwick noted that Christianity “regarded unchastity in a husband as no less serious a breach of loyalty and trust than unfaithfulness in a wife.” (The Rise of Christianity)

Mangalwadi concludes:

• I believe the habits of India’s heart (habits gaining ground in America since the 1960s) have been at the root of the enslavement of our women and the stagnation of Indian civilization. (281)

Indeed, what civilization has prospered as sexual “liberation” has been widely practiced? Instead, we maximize our freedom and well-being as we live in accordance with the physical laws. Perhaps this also applies to the teachings of the Bible!