St Justin Martyr; Defender of Marriage and Chastity.

 About 100 years after the birth of Jesus a man was born in Samaria to the north of Jerusalem who was not a Christian but someone who called himself a philosopher or a seeker of truth.   He studied many manuscripts and travelled around until he was met by an old man who told him of Christianity and Jesus Christ.   Justin found the Christian sect and studied what they had to say and eventually became a Christian.   He began to write and was caught up in a pagan description of Christians who were described as atheists who indulged in incest and cannibalism.  Atheists was used by the pagans to describe anyone who did not worship their Gods, but incest and cannibalism - what was that about?

It was said that Christians met at secret meetings where there was a 'love feast' between brothers and sisters, and where they consumed the flesh and blood of a man called Christus.   Justin felt compelled to answer this nonsense and began first to attack the pagan position.     He blasted the idolatry and sexual immorality of the pagans at that time.   It should be remembered that adultery and promiscuity, including homosexual liaisons and pedophilia, were rife in the empire.   Prostitution, both male and female, was widespread and legal.   The Government even had a vested interest in the practice since the sex business produced considerable tax revenue.    The goal of the pagans was to enjoy erotic love while escaping the responsibilities of raising and educating children.   When attempts at contraception and abortion through drugs and surgery failed, people typically abandoned the baby at some well known spot in town where they died or were picked up by pimps to be raised as male or female prostitutes or children for pedophiles.    (So have we advanced very much in the 21st century, OK we do not abndon babies we just say 'they are not human' and slaughter them, and whether they feel the pain of being cut to pieces by a knife, well that does not matter, does it?).    

"Far from holding incestuous orgies, Justin goes on to say, Christians rejected all sexual relations except in the context of a marriage ordered towards the begetting of children.    These marriages are exclusive and unto death.   Justin is here witnessing to the early Church prohibition on divorce and remarriage and he also boasts that lifelong chastity was highly prized in the Christian community.   Many people in their sixties and seventies who have been disciples of Christ from childhood their purity; and I am proud that I could point to such people in every nation".

Justin is really trying to impress the Pagans that Christianity is not just a belief system but a whole new way of life.   Now that is the point that has been lost today, as the Church in many places prefers the pagan way of life to the Christian one.   In fact paganism is so rife in the Church that pagan ways of sexual enjoyment are taught in our schools.   There is little reference to chastity and the will of Christ for his Church.   The Gospel as taught by Jesus Christ, the Bible itself, is ignored.   Little wonder there is no hunger for tradition among many Bishops and Priests.