All Lives Matter
by Fr. Andrew Gromm
I got an email 4 days ago from a Youngstown church organization. When I first met a member
of them, I gave him my internet address, though I questioned it later because it is not just
Protestant, but Protestant in the activist camp. So I always had some doubts of its spirituality.
This time, the email was about a meeting, where they discussed clichés, emphasizing “racial
harmony and reconciliation” among Youngstown’s and America’s churches. All pastors are
supposed to wear black on Sunday (12/14/14) to supposedly unite and “make a collective
statement”, which is “Black Lives Matter”. Apparently, this is the newest cliché for the collective.
If you sense in me a critical tone about this email, you are correct. This email is a part of
spiritual degradation. For instance, a college professor at Smith College, a big-time college
which taught Nancy Reagan, Gloria Steinem and Julia Child, dismissed this newest cliché by
emailing that “all lives matter”. This professor got in big trouble, and even though she can’t be
fired, she apologized for saying it. I don’t know why it’s wrong to believe all lives matter.
My sermon today involved St. Paul’s doctrine that “Christ is all and in all”, that in Christ there
is no more Jew-Gentile and no more slave-free distinctions. Such thinking has levels of human
reasoning, for good or bad. As I wrote in the bulletin last week, Postmodernism is big now.
“Black Lives Matter” is classic Postmodernism. Rather than believing what the Bible says, that
there is only one human race on this earth, Postmodernists talk about many races, suggesting
that Christ is not all or in all. I haven’t heard for a while any news reports about graduation
ceremonies for Blacks only at universities, or for Mexicans only, or for Whites only, etc. But they
may still do this. Postmodernists think Blacks and Whites are so different, that Whites can’t
understand the Black culture, so Blacks should have different human rights than Whites. And
homosexuals should also have their own separate rights, among other examples. Sadly, some
Christians think this way, which ironically parallels the ideas of Ku-Klux-Klan Christians.
This of course denigrates the Holy Trinity. The Trinity is Three Persons in One Essence,
which means the principle of unity in the Trinity is based on Personhood. Postmodernism has
developed previous isms to the point that the principle of human unity is impersonal, as groupthink, as a controlled singular mind. The social group erases and re-establishes one’s identity
and meaning at the expense of the Family and Church, just like a modern religious cult.
Yes, Black lives matter, but all lives ultimately matter. No one needs to be reminded of this,
but Postmodernists think we do. Christians of this sort want us to believe that human nature is
not as Jesus Christ presents it, as a relational oneness, but as broken into pieces that can only
be united unnaturally & violently by powerful forces, according to the false philosophy (mostly
Hegel and Karl Marx) that Christ had to violently smash into our world. Such thinking comes
from the Pagan and Muslim notion that God and man are so separate, the only way for unity to
prevail is by forcing people to be good. Sadly, Western Christianity for the last 1200 years has
incubated this mentality, bringing us Atheism, Secularism, Postmodernism and other spirits.
Thus, Eastern Orthodoxy is not to be blamed for what is deemed to be Christianity’s evils.
This is why Postmodernists sincerely believe that if America should allow prayer in schools
and classes debunking Evolution, then machine guns will be pointed at their heads to force
them to worship Christ. In their fantasies, they call it a Theocracy. And this is why they assume
that nationalized politics and mass causes are always the solution and man’s spiritual salvation,
reflecting Hegel again, as well as reflecting the group Nationalism of the KKK and Nazis.
The cliché of Black lives mattering is another modern fruit of seeking joy in unhappiness,
anger & protest. Anger through Christ is used to forge group-think, to shift brotherly unity from
the Person to the Society. I’ll keep getting emails from these churches, but I will refute them as
demon-influenced. All lives matter, but Christ is all & in all. As St. Paul says in today’s epistle,
“Christ is our life”, which is a Personal unity of joy and peace. This Life is what truly matters.