Elements of Idolatry: Sexual Pleasure 

There is no right way to do a wrong thing! Wrong in Gods eyes is Wrong! Thank you for this important teaching. Never as a Protestant did I ever hear more clear direct teaching on this subject.

Now I understand more why the judgment seat is fearful and the day of judgement as well and also how we are in need of much mercy. Instead of spending time justify and excusing ourself, we should just beseech the saints, Panagia, and God for mercy.

Lord Help Thy Servant To Come Out Of The Terrible financial crisis that My Family are facing Lord Have Mercy Christ Have Mercy Holy Spirit Have Mercy ✝️❤️

It comes down to respecting our bodies and those around us. The Holy Apostle Paul says that our bodies are the temple where the Holy Spirit dwells...by giving into the passions we are defining ourselves and others. We must pray to God to help us in our resistance to these temptations and also repent and ask for his forgiveness whenever we commit these sins!!

Την ευχή σου πατέρα Πέτρο.

Pleasure Clout Power Materialism The gods of this world.

Please add Czech subtitles! Thank you very much! God bless you 😉

Amen. Thank you Father 🙏☦️

This was so interesting. What I got out of it was that, while morality is a roadmap with which we navigate our earthly lives, is that it exists to keep us out of the hands of the demons who seek our ruin, and to remind us to use our bodies as they were intended by God to worship him. Thank you, Father.

Excellent teaching Father. Thank you!

I’m Roman Catholic but I love listening to you father.

With homosexuals sexuality is severely Distorted… they enter a very dark abyss

Powerful!

Sexuality within a marriage has a second purpose. It bonds the couple.

im helpless please pray I want freedom. I have become ruined. pray for light. and a church

If we are going to theologically reduce the sacrament of marriage in the same Aristotelien fashion Aquinas and the west reduce the Eucharist, I will still vehemently disagree that the "purpose" of sexual relations in marriage is childbearing. The Orthodox purpose of sexual relations in marriage is Eucharistic integration, the ultimate two becoming one, with God in their midst, the reproduction (not merely of children, many couples have sex and never conceive) of a profoundly holy Trinitarian type of the archetypical Trinity Himself: God, Husband, Wife, the primary type of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, experienced most profoundly in the marriage bed, a type of the Transfiguration itself (makes me wonder if you've ever experienced this type of transfiguration). We should only do this for the purpose of children?!! So the woman who undergoes a hysterectomy should never have sex with her husband again? This is western theological reductionism. It is Aristotlelienism at its worst, dear Father. This is NOT Orthodoxy. This is Roman Catholic heterodoxy and fear mongering when you suggest that married couples are worshipping demons when they give themselves to each other Eucharistically in the undefiled marital bed. There's a reason we separated from Rome in 1054.

Elder Savvas Achilleos, that's to whom Fr Peter refers. His canonization isn't far. He foretold some things about the vax..

TY🍇💜🙏☦

Ahhh, this makes sense finally: From the Statement of the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of the United States, on of all times Bright Thursday during the first week of the Paschal celebration: "The Assembly can further confirm that Archpriest Peter Heers is not a clergyman of, or on loan to, any other canonical Orthodox jurisdiction in the United States. To the extent that this individual purports to act as an Orthodox priest in the United States, including celebrating the Divine Liturgy and the other services of the Church and teaching the faithful and those who inquire into Orthodoxy, he does so in a manner outside of the Holy Canons."

When Sexual pleasure becomes deified by perverted Godless ppl, then door to Demons opens

who do yo love? who do you trust? who do you worship?

Fr Peter can you please speak about toll houses ,they are very scary and many people want them not to be real even though they are ?

💞....Truth

I've struggled with this through much of my adult live. Besides prayer, are you saying icons in the house can help against these demons?

Father I just failed. Im very disappointed with myself. I know it's wrong while I'm doing it yet I do it anyway. Why must I give into these demons. I want so desperately to defeat this addiction to lust and pleasure

Amen

Fr. Peter, thank you for your teaching. I’m trying to find patristic sources on abstaining from coming together during pregnancy?? This teaching makes sense but is new to me and I’d like to read more on it.

What if one of the purposes of married sexual pleasure is also for bonding and strengthening the marriage bond. Isn't that a legitimate purpose?

Why nobody tells that the experience of God's presence and his mercy is higher experience than sexual pleasure? Orgasm as the highest form of material pleasure is just a mud footprint related to the touch of God.

7:32 This is not explicitly explaining. I prefer the KJV it makes it more precise. 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 KJV Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, [10] Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.

Would the reverse be true as well? Is artificial insemination immoral due to severing pleasure from purpose? also btw I'm a protestant, but I really love what you are saying about how the moral life is inextricably linked with the spiritual / cosmic war. I came out of the occult, so that was very obvious to me as a young Christian. Sometimes I feel we can downplay the truly hideous impacts of sin so as to try and comfort the sinner.

where can iu go for help, prayer and confession /

Fr. Peter, when there is no chance for procreation (in my case as I had a vasectomy procedure over a decade prior to finding the Church) would it be considered a sin to have sex with my wife as only the element of pleasure is present? Please help me understand!

I get the impression that if you want to be Orthodox you have to wear old clothes from Good Will. You have to eat very little and what you eat has to be basic and plain. You can't buy a new car so you end up with an old car which then requires thousands of dollars in repairs. If the whole world became Orthodox, what would it look like? Would everyone live in the woods and eat snakes and scorpions? I've visited Orthodox Churches in America and I see a lot of nice cars parked outside. In fact, some of the Greek Orthodox Churches I've seen are extremely affluent. Frankly, Orthodoxy leaves me feeling confused.

Correct me if I am wrong, is this teaching saying that unless a husband and wife have sex and are always open to the act of creating children during sex it's fornication? And are there ANY exceptions to this? For an example mother struggles with mental health or physical ailments that could keep her from taking care of multiple children?

Question: I am a catechumen, Before I came to the church ai had five children and then tied my tubes and seperated from my husband. I am in a new relationship now and marriage has been discussed. Having my tubes tied, it would seem that purpose would be removed from the equation. Is it then a sin to be in a marriage or engage in sexual relations after marriage?

Bless, Father. Is there some way to improve the streaming quality?

It's better not to even look for a spouse, even for men. According to St Paul. It's kind of extreme and I have to disagree in some regards to Paul..But I guess I have to if I Love Jesus. Sigh....

Fr. Peter, are you an Orthodox priest or a Roman Catholic priest? I ask this because you sound about 90% Roman Catholic with the Aristotelian theological reductionism in which you divide "purpose" and "pleasure" with a surgical knife fashioned by Thomas Aquinas himself. This is NOT Orthodoxy and NOT the ancient Christian understanding of sexual relations in marriage. You go so far as to characterize aspects of the sacramental marriage bed as blasphemous? St. Paul declares "the marriage bed is undefiled" in Hebrews 13:4, and Solomon instructs us, "rejoice with the wife of thy youth. Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe; Let her breasts satisfy thee at all times; And be thou ravished always with her love" (Proverbs 5:18-19). "Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter" (Isaiah 5:20). You are going so far as characterizing the act of love and unity in marriage as "idolatry," scaring the faithful with accusations of worshipping demons simply because they find pleasurable the great blessing God has given us, the very act of union between man and wife, the very integrating sacrament that is the very type of the Eucharist, Christ's own nuptual union with His bride the holy Apostle Paul says quite succinctly in Ephesians 5:32. This is exactly what Fr. Alexander Schmemman speaks so clearly against: the Western Captivity of the Orthodox Church. This teaching to the faithful destroys marital union, breaks trust, and instead of the Eucharistic integration between husband and wife, encourages disintegration of the Eucharistic type of sacrament Marriage actually is. I invite you to embrace the Eucharistic and Holistic ancient and Orthodox understanding of sexual relations in marriage and stop calling what is good, evil, and stop scaring the Lord's flock. Married people are NOT worshipping demons when they experience pleasure in their marital union. Pleasure is not inherently good nor evil. It's just pleasure. Obviously pleasure can "spoil" the soul, but with the marriage crisis going on in the 21st Century today, we, as pastors, need to be encouragig married couples to rejoice in what God has given them, to rejoice in each other, and to come together often in their undefiled marriage beds, not to abstain from it, anymore that we would encourage them to abstain from confession and the Eucharist. Lord's blessings Father. --Fr. George Hill, OCA, US Army Chaplain

Are we only to have sex to have children? Not to make love with out spouse?

As much as I love this ministry, and as tremendously helpful as it continues to be, on THIS particular issue I feel that it very much misses the mark! There is SO much more to sexual relations within marriage than JUST (1) pleasure and (2) procreation! To narrow it down to ONLY these 2 things, is almost in a way TURNING marital sexuality into a form of idolatry!! The REAL issue in marital sex is about giving of each other in LOVE, so that the 2 can literally become ONE FLESH, which of course is about Christ and His Church! The concept taught here is eliminating the 2 most important aspects of sexual relations in marriage, and sadly replacing them with (1) physical pleasure (which is focusing FAR more on the passions), and (2) procreation, which GOD is the one that determines whether or not we will produce offspring, not us! What if a couple is physically unable to produce offspring? Would we say they need to remain abstinent for the rest of their marriage because the "element of procreation" can no longer be tied to the "element of pleasure"? I highly doubt that would be the case! Sadly, this teaching seems to have a very low and even earthly view of the marital sexual relationship.

How can a married couple have sexual congress (at least at the beginning) without pleasure (if they do I would consider it a bigger sin ... a clinical sin)? ... Pleasure equals idolatry? ... You've got something wrong here. There's nothing wrong in a sense of idolatry between a loving couple, as long as they have the knowing of an overarching greatness. I've been looking in to Orthodoxy recently and I've been quite taken with it ... but you've put me off ... hopefully you're not the majority voice.

Alphabet insanity has arrived. Thank you for the info.

Watching this smoking weed….Lord have mercy on a sinner…

Is it idolizing because you enjoy the other person's body as you have intimacy? Seems that Augustine would agree and say before the fall, sex was mechanical without passion. I mean if people are thrown to hell for that than maybe it's better not to have sex, even with your wife. I've heard in Bulgaria of old believers who will not look at each other's body or wear pillowcases over their heads and sheets while they have intimacy. You think people are making mountains out of molehills.

I’m a catechumen, but this whole thing about me not being able to have sex anymore without having babies everytime doesn’t sit right with me . . . I must be misunderstanding something . . .

Sex ONLY for procreation? What if you are medically unable to produce children?

Frustrating audio.

Some mature content below warning: 1. If it was a sin to have sex apart from child bearing, women would get pregnant every time no? 2. If the body is the temple and holy, wouldn't every part of the body be holy? So why are we calling it unclean for sex? Augustine was wrong about sex he had mental hangups because he destroyed his conscience before converting. 3. I understand sexual activity in the rear being sinful because it is damaging, germs sodomy, and weird But if we can kiss other's hands, dead people, and feet, which are more dirty than a private... How is kissing your spouse's sensitive area bad? 4. How do we know individual church fathers are correct and not just opinion? I can pull up many 2nd century church fathers who affirm chilliasm strongly and hold the oldest tradition despite later councils.

Please add Czech subtitles. Thank you very much! God bless you! 😉