My Road To Orthodoxy
My Journey On Discovoring The Orthodox Church
-Serbian Orthodox Monastery of the Nativity of the Most Holy Mother of God in St Joseph County in Indiana
This is not meant to be an authoritative source of material on what Orthodoxy is. I do not speak for the Church. The biggest advice I could give you is to find a local Parish, sit through a Liturgy and speak with a priest to find out more. Also, I am not trying to say that if people don't do what I have done that they are doing things wrong. I merely want to write about my journey into Orthodoxy as a way to put my thoughts to words and if it helps someone else come to the church, Glory to God!
Some good books to read on the subject of Orthodoxy:
Religion of the Apostles: Orthodox Christianity in the First Century
Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy: Finding the Way to Christ in a Complicated Religious Landscape
These are great books to check out if you are curious about Orthodoxy. Or, just go talk to a priest.
“I wish not merely to be called Christian, but also to be Christian.”
This is what I desire.
*Most of this post will be discussing the differences between Orthodoxy and Protestantism as Protestantism is what I come from. It is nothing personal to Protestants*
How Did We Get Here?
For the longest time I have looked at God as being just this vague being who created our world but was largely inactive in our day to day lives. So I come from a place of understanding when talking to the atheists/agnostics when they say that they feel that there is no God (I personally feel that the reason most people think this was due to social engineering, but that conversation is for another time). This left me with a deep hole inside me of feeling all alone in the world even when I was surrounded by people. This is Nihilism. The utter feeling that there is no purpose to this world. We are just on this rock floating aimlessly in a vast galaxy just living and dying, working and trying to make the best we can out of this meaningless life. It left me feeling depressed most days and I felt that there HAD to be more. I've never been under the impression that there is no creator to this world, it seems unfathomable to me that this could even be possible and because of this, a lot of questions constantly flew through my mind on how did we get here? Did aliens put us here (silly scientologists)? Did we evolve from some single-cell microorganism? If so, where did that microorganism come from? How do scientist know for a fact that the world is 8 billion years old? What is good and evil? I started looking into a lot of this stuff and it is what eventually led me to where I am today.
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I have already discussed some of my thoughts on this topic before in my post My Thoughts On Christianity but on this I plan go into more details as I have learned a bit more and am actually attending a local Parish and soon to become a catechumen (a convert who is under instructions before I am baptized into the Church). How did I find the Orthodox Church? Let’s look back.
The First Steps
It all honestly started with politics. I was never much into politics as a teenager. I remember 9/11 and how it impacted our society but beyond that, politics was foreign to me. I was never that big of a fan of Bush, he seemed dishonest to me and there was always something about him that I didn’t like, turns out I was right to think that. Fast forward to 2008 and Obama is running for office promising to bring “Change”. My young, ignorant mind couldn’t grasp the real agenda that he was planning to implement, so I decided to vote for him because I was convinced that our world was in desperate need of a change, ironically, now we need change more than ever. They were using a lot of the same rhetoric that politicians are still weaponizing today; racism, hate, greed, etc. and I fell for it hook, line and sinker. I know, what a huge mistake haha. If only I knew then what I know now, all I can do is plead ignorance. Skip ahead a little further and after experiencing everything that happened under the Obama regime, which I won’t get into here, Trump is now running for president. Still not fully understanding the political landscape, I thought it would be hilarious if he had won and I started paying a little more attention. Then the political persecution happened. People, who just the previous year were partying with Trump, were coming out and calling him “RACIST”, “FACIST, “EVIL MONSTER”! Why were they doing this? This was when I started seeing more of what was going on and I wasn't quite as invested as I am today but I was beginning to see some signs. Things just weren’t adding up. Then 2020 came and we experienced the virus. I’m not going to get into my thoughts about that here because that is not what this post is about but this was a critical point where my eyes were beginning to open. After seeing everything that transpired that year, I began to search for the Truth. I started reading into our country's history and the organizations that were essential for shaping our society and I was seeing that they were all against Christianity. At this point, I would say that I was agnostic and didn’t really buy what Christians had to offer. It didn’t seem authentic to me. As I started looking more into things and seeing the history of the occult in our country and the total aversion to Christianity, it made me feel that their had to be a reason that they were against it because they didn’t seem react the same way to Islam or Judaism which, at the time, seemed very similar (now, not so much). So, to me, there had to be something to Christianity. With seeing how the very basics of Satanism (self-gratification) being promoted in society, especially to the youth, I was starting to realize that Christianity had to be true or else so much time and money wouldn’t have been invested to stifle and completely subvert what it truly meant. The fact that God is real and He became man to save His creation. I started to see that evil was real and if evil was real, than there had to be an absolute good to combat it.
Becoming A Christian
This is just the start of my journey into Christianity but it all started with my search for Truth because at the very root of Truth, you will find God because, for Christians, Truth is a who not a what. Truth is Christ. Christ is God and God is the essence of Truth and that is why I feel, now more than ever, that delivering Truth is so important. But where I was at the beginning of this, I was sort of under the assumption that being a Christian simply just meant that all I had to do was believe and in a sense you do need to believe and I will explain this later so keep reading, but just the proclamation of faith was all I needed. I was under the impression that church, baptism, communion and actually living as a Christian were all optional. It was sort of the belief of “once saved, always saved” so I didn’t really feel that much was required of me and that I could live as an individualist Christian and church was only for the community of like-minded people. I could just read my Bible (sometimes) and try to live what I felt was a good life. I still had this feeling that I should look into going to church but around this time I was noticing a trend of more and more churches doing things that I was pretty certain was wrong like women priest and, let's just say, “Rainbow Stuff". But I was still searching for guidance because when I would read my Bible, there would be verses that didn’t really make a lot of sense to me and apart of me had this understanding that the Bible had this “secret code” inside of it that would tell me how to know when the End would come. However, another verse contradicted that idea. Matthew 24:36 “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only”. Yet, I could find so many videos online that had men telling me that they had a good idea of the “signs of the time” and they could point to all these events happening around us that showed us that the End was just around the corner. Of course, now a days people say that we can’t know the exact day and I think that is because of all of the people who “predicted the End” and got it wrong. Here is one example:
I was still trying to learn more about Christianity but I wasn’t really finding out anything that I didn’t already know. Then I got into podcasting. I wanted to focus on the political and cultural events that were taking place in our world because everything was seeming to be upside down and things that used to be bad were now being praised as good. (I wrote a piece about Morality that you should check out if you haven’t) I didn’t start my podcast with the hopes of “making it big” or “becoming an E-celeb”, really, I just wanted an outlet where I could speak my mind and use it as a way to help formulate my thoughts and if it helped people to get where I was at in my thoughts or gave them some information that could get them to start looking for the deeper meaning of things, that would be great. I was then referred to listen to an online debater from someone who started listening to my show. The guy that I started listening to was very similar to my worldview, not very religious but still a Christian and more towards the Libertarian side of politics. Then, after watching him for awhile, I watched him on a debate channel who had an Orthodox Christian debating on the show. This was the first time I had ever heard of Orthodoxy. Usually when I heard that word, I would think of a Jewish religion but not Christianity and when I was growing up, I was unaware of the different forms of Christianity and I just assumed that everyone believed the same thing and Orthodoxy was no where in my life. As I started looking more into the different denominations of Christianity and the history of the church, things started to make more sense to me. I have to be honest, when I first looked into Orthodoxy it seemed strange to me. A lot of the concepts that they would talk about were so foreign to me but the more I read and listened to people, the more everything started to line up and I was realizing that I actually agreed with a lot of things that they were saying.
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“One should not oppose authorities who act for good, so as not to sin before God and be subjected to His just chastisement: Therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves (Romans 13:2).”
What Are The Beliefs?
One of the big things that drew me to Orthodoxy is how much emphasis they place on the history of the Church. They have recorded everything that has happened since the implementation of the church by Christ and his Apostles and they use what the previous Church fathers have said to solve current issues we face today and it all lines up with what is written in scripture. Along with the history of the Church, Apostolic Succession is something that drew me towards the Church. This is a practice that everything that is currently taught in the Church has been passed down all the way from the Apostles and that link has not been broken.
“And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” Matthew 16:18-19
When I used to go to Protestant churches when I was younger, the history of the church was not important. Now they probably talked about this with people that were in close support with the church but that is another thing that separates them from the Orthodox, in Orthodox churches everyone is a family and no one is left out. They want everyone to know about the history of Christianity because it helps strengthen a believers faith to understand where all of this comes from. They don’t separate the children and the adults. Everyone is apart of the church and is deserving to participate and that’s what the liturgy is, participating in God’s Grace. Communion is a very important thing to the Orthodox and is done every Sunday for those who have been baptized, including infants. In other churches that do baptisms, it is used more as a symbol and you have to be of an “age of understanding” but like I said before, the church is a family and infants are apart of that family from the beginning so they receive baptism and communion and that makes sense to me. Read more here for a better understanding on the Orthodox position on baptism.
Earlier I had mentioned the idea of just believing to be saved. I fully agree with this and I would say that the Orthodox church would believe this as well. It only becomes a problem when it enters into Sola Fide, one of the 5 Solas formulated by Martin Luther during the Reformation which means Faith Alone. While I agree that first and foremost, one must believe and have faith that Christ is the incarnation of God and that he died for our salvation but what does believing this actually mean? Does it mean that you can just say yes, that this is true and just go about your day? If this were true, why would Protestants say that someone living a homosexual lifestyle who says they believe in Christ not be saved? What about Mormons, are they Christians? Joseph Smith claims that he saw Jesus and God at the same time! Of course, that goes against what we believe for the Trinity because we dont believe in three different gods, we believe in one True God so no, Mormons are not Christians. To me that would say that there has to be a bit more than just a proclamation of faith. When you believe something, or more importantly believe in someone you will follow them exactly the way that they want you to follow them. You can find in scripture that Christ has instructed us on what we are to do. At the end of the Gospel of Matthew, Christ says this:
And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen.
Matthew 28:18-20
Now this right here is another point that states that baptism is very important along with keeping His commandments, but who was he talking to? Can anyone who is a believer go and baptize? Christ was only speaking to his Apostles in this verse and not speaking to a large crowd of believers so that would lead me to believe that there are only certain people who are meant to lead the church and baptize the believers. Now from what I understand (I could be wrong) but some Protestants believe that the act of baptism is just a symbol and therefore anyone is able to preform a baptism. Some don’t even view it to have any salvific grace but if this were true, why would this be something that Christ tells His Apostles to do? I have even heard that there have been Catholics who baptize in the name of land, air and sea…I'm no expert on this topic but given the verse that I quoted above, THAT’S WRONG!
And He took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” Likewise He also took the cup after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood, which is shed for you.
Luke 22:19-20
Communion, or the Eucharist, as I said earlier is done every Sunday at an Orthodox Liturgy but only for those who are baptized members of the church. From what I can remember from Protestant churches is that this was viewed more as a symbol but again, Christ said “do this in remembrance of Me”. Clearly Christ wanted us to do this for a reason. In Orthodoxy, they have a belief known as Theosis. This is essentially the understanding that through our complete devotion to God, we begin to become in perfect unity with God. I would suggest reading from the link that I provided as they have a better understanding than I but I don’t want to confuse people by thinking this is a thought that we begin to merge with God. From my understanding, this is a process that begins to transform our soul for when we are in His Kingdom. I will not speak too much on this as I don’t want to say anything wrong on this but I would definitely suggest reaching out to a local priest to understand this more but from what I have read on this, it shows just how important the sacraments are in the church. This is something that I never felt in any other church that I went to. This belief that when we do these sacraments, God is repairing our broken soul so when it is time for us to join Him, we will in complete unity with God. Something to add to what I was saying on being saved. To the Orthodox, salvation is a daily thing that we need to work on and that is what makes the sacraments that much more important. We constantly need to focus on purifying our souls.
Another thing that I want to talk about is the way that the Orthodox talk about sin. I have come across a few people who call themselves Christians that will say it is impossible for them to sin since they have proclaimed their belief in Christ and this is that “once saved, always saved" idea where, even if you do things that go against God's will, it would not be a sin and at no point could they fall out of grace. This is completely opposite to Orthodoxy. Orthodoxy is daily repentance. The way that the Orthodox talk about sin is that sin is simply missing the mark, harmartía. Most of the times when I here preachers talk about sin, it would be in a “fire and brimstone” style where your sins angers God and he wants to punish you for the sins you commit. In Orthodoxy, they view sin as a disease that causes spiritual sickness and that the church is a hospital for the sick, there to help people become better. Take that how you will but this makes sense to me. This would mean that everyone is welcome to join the church but, as I said earlier, you must repent and choose to live a life with Christ. Even when you read some of the writings from the Saints, they are so humble and will tell you that they are the WORST of sinners. I know not all Protestants feel this way but there are some who act as though the church is only for the “most holy and the best" of Christians and there are probably some Orthodox that think this way too. But that is the thing, I am not saying all of this to say that the Orthodox are the best and they are the only ones who will be saved. These are just some of the things that have brought me here.
Traditions
The one thing that seems to draw contention with Protestants is the “man-made" traditions. Anytime that they hear this, there get almost sick taste in their mouth and want to instantly challenge this but what is the problem with this? Sure, if someone is solely trying to instill his own practices as traditions, this would be bad but the things that they have a problem don’t exactly line up.
Therefore, brethren, stand fast and hold the traditions which you were taught, whether by word or our epistle.
2 Thessalonians 2:15
“Hold the traditions which you were taught, whether by word our our epistle.” When we read through the epistles, we see Paul writing letters to the churches and these are really the setting up of the church. Then later after that, the church had the Ecumenical Councils to set up the canons and doctrines of the church and this took centuries, it wasn't just one and done. So I don't know if people think that there was something different between what Paul was writing in the epistles and what the Ecumenical Councils were doing. Maybe they say “God was working through Paul when he wrote the epistles”. Is it hard to believe that He was working through the church? Did God just stop working through men after Paul? Why was the bible written by men? God works through men to bring us to salvation. If God didn't want to work through men and tell us that we shouldn't listen to men, He could've just had the bible fall from the sky already written but no, there is an important theological reason for God working through men to write the bible and then later, it was men (the church) who determined what parts of scripture would be included in the Bible. Then later, Martin Luther decided that the apocrypha didn't belong in the bible. He said it wasn't equal to scripture and in the 1800s, the Protestant church removed the apocrypha completely from their bibles. So why is it that the original men who set up the canon of scripture were wrong but the Protestant church wasn’t? What gave them the right to remove whole books from the bible? Another thing that I am curious, in regards to Protestantism is if they view certain practices heretical and if they do, how do they determine this to be so? If two Protestants have a disagreement on interpretation of a certain scripture, how do they determine which is the right interpretation? They have no history to back them up. To me, any discussions they have about interpreting scripture is just them having their own “Ecumenical Councils". This is a reason that we need the traditions to keep believers on the right path and not waste their time arguing over things that have already been determined. Another thing that traditions of Christianity helps with is the prevention of heresy and ecumenism, the bringing together of all religions and that the Church of Christ doesnt exist, nobody has the Truth and the Church is just now being built. We can see today with the rise of the “Abrahamic Family House" that ecumenismis gaining more traction and the traditions of the church are a solid way to keep Christians from falling for this trap. Whenever the Church begins to fall away from these traditions, it is a good indicator that something is not right and there needs to be a course correction so believers are not lead astray by the works of Satan.
Closing Thoughts
Honestly, reaching out to a priest and discussing these things with him would be my highest recommendation. As I stated earlier, I do not speak for the church nor am I an authoritative source on these matters which is why I tend not to speak too much on these topics. My goal with this is just to show people how I came to Orthodoxy in the hopes that it will reach others and they will at least take the time to at least look into it. At least go check out a Liturgy, it is absolutely beautiful and, to me, is what I think worship for our Creator should be. It should be beautiful since God is the essence of true beauty. But that is just my opinion and we all have free will to chose how we go through life. I also want to be sure that I say that just because someone isn’t in an Orthodox church doesn’t mean that they are not saved. Same with people who attend an Orthodox church, that doesn’t mean that they are saved and from everyone I have read or listened to who are Orthodox would probably say the same. To me, I feel that the Orthodox life helps to keep you focused on God and the more that I get into Orthodoxy, the more my thoughts are on God. I used to constantly listen to political podcasts and, to be honest, some pretty demonic music and now most of what I listen to and focus on are things related to God. I try to read more on the Saints of the church and their writings and try to understand more how to live a Christian life and keep my thoughts focused on God and keep up with a good prayer life. Something that I have heard from other Orthodox say, in regards to people who are not in the church is that “we know where the Spirit is but not where the Spirit is not”, meaning that only God can determine who will be saved and unless it is true in your heart, that is what truly matters. God bless.
"The Lord did not come to make a display. He came to heal and to teach suffering men. For one who wanted to make a display the thing would have been just to appear and dazzle the beholders. But for Him Who came to heal and to teach the way was not merely to dwell here, but to put Himself at the disposal of those who needed Him, and to be manifested according as they could bear it, not vitiating the value of the Divine appearing by exceeding their capacity to receive it."
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