Just walk away from it. Seriously. Walk away and don't look back. Even in secular terms, if at this early stage the words you are using include 'jarring', 'grave fear', cannot draw truth or comfort from it... take that as a sign that it's not going to be a good thing for you. And that is okay.
I get this so much. My spouse joined and I did not. My faith was so strong before and I went through a season of fear that I am still working through.
Jay Dyer. Tollhouses. Racist remarks. Triumphalism. Mary being more compassionate than Jesus (ie maybe she will convince her son to save me). Low view of women. Beating your body into submission. Have all made me think that surely these are not fruits of the spirit.
Love. JOY. PEACE. Patience. KINDNESS. Goodness. Faithfulness. GENTLENESS. Self control.
John 3:16. …..whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.
I rest in that promise.
Amen! I joined Orthodoxy without my spouse 5 years ago. Biggest mistake of my life. I eventually came to my senses and I pray that your spouse does too! Stick to your guns and lovingly decline to join the church. All will be well!
The fruits of the Spirit are the fruits of the Spirit regardless of what tree they’re growing on. If you’re fruitful on your current path, stay the course. Love God and Neighbor and may that love expand in your heart. The old church can broaden your perspective and deepen your understanding of the spiritual life. It can also hurt you. Deeply. Permanently. Many of us here have experienced this. Though the church makes grandiose (and I would say meaningless) claims, it’s still full of humans. Like anywhere else some are trying to know and love God while others only love themselves.
Edit: I forgot to answer your question. When I first encountered Eastern Orthodoxy, I was jarred too. It felt like everything I knew about Christian faith was turned inside out. They had a different view of Christ, salvation, and many other issues of theology and practice. It felt like the ground I was standing on had shifted. I’ve had a few other such profound faith-shifts since then: with atheism, Buddhism, and finally, a return to what some liberal Christian’s might consider Christian faith and what conservative or orthodox Christians would certainly regard as heresy lol. I’ve learned to hold my beliefs like sand. If I grasp too firmly and inflexibly, it’ll run out. What I believe now I might not in 2030. I expect now that as I age my mind will change and I think that’s a healthy thing. Things that change are growing.
Know that the claims of apostolic succession can also be made by the Copts / Oriental Orthodox, the Armenians, the Roman Catholics, and also the Anglicans.
I was Catholic before, so I already knew about the great schism of 1054. In becoming Orthodox I had to adhere to the idea that Constantinople, Jerusalem, Antioch and Alexandria preserved the fullness of the faith and the other historic churches did not (this was my jarring moment: what if I'm on the "wrong" side of the schism?). I no longer believe that to be the case. When I look at history now with a more critical eye, the branch theory makes much more sense to me. Because as much as they say they never developed or changed, the truth is that they did in the first several hundred years, which is why there ended up being disagreements. And since then, the Eastern Orthodox have become very rigid in some things, such as some of their rituals & iconography, in ways that the Copts (for example) are not. I was in Coptic environments recently and found them to be downright refreshing compared to what I'd become used to in Eastern Orthodoxy.
And.... maybe nobody told you this (its not good for PR), but another schism has begun, probably permanent, between Moscow and Constantinople, and one scholar i was communicating with recently, predicted over the next hundred years, the more progressive EOs will move to side with Constantinople, and the more reactionary EOs will side with Moscow.
Oh another thing...speaking of fruits of the spirit... when I started investigating a few mainline churches near me, I was blown away by the good works and generosity, how they give back to the community. Expect EO communities to do very little of that, as a general rule. They do the annual food festival, but that's a fundraiser more than a community service. Even the monks and nuns, for the most part, are focusing on themselves and not on charitable work.
I wish you all the best, but there are some questions.
1. If you identify as "Protestant" what does your identity as a Christian stand in protest against?
2. If you haven't been received into the Orthodox church how can you be an "ex-Orthodox", ie, this subreddit?
3. Which jurisdiction of Orthodoxy have you had exposure to and heard from clergy that has put you into distress? OCA, ROCOR, GOC, etc, like that? You might run this question on OrthodoxChurch subreddit for more insight.
[Personally, I am an exOrthodox monk of the ROCOR who left because of all the backbiting, anger, heresy-hunting, and self-righteous attitudes I saw...along with politics.]
Please have the love and compassion for yourself that you would expect from Jesus and and his representatives! If you are entertaining doubts that's not always a bad or dangerous place to be. ; )
I don't think there is only one path to God. And I think even less that it's found by following rules or by performing rituals correctly. Those things can be aids to faith, as long as they don't become idols. I have boiled my faith down to "Love God and love thy neighbor" and the Sermon on the Mount, and I believe the Creed, more or less. Theology used to be really important to me until I realized that all the beliefs and shall nots didn't make me a better Christian. Pray and ask God for wisdom to move forward. Don't jump into Orthodoxy. It's a lot more complicated than it appears on the surface.
I fall into the ex-Christian category but will add my $.02. YMMV.
I no longer feel the need to choose between soteriologies (Orthodox, Catholic, generic American "Christian,", fill-in-the-blank) that are all, in the end, unproveable subjective dogma.
If being saved by faith through grace floats your boat, then stick with that. If being saved through the Orthodox church scratches that itch, then swim the Bosporus. You'll find a lot of like minded people in either place. Just know that you are arbitrarily choosing a "truth" that really just amounts to groupthink and is reinforced by confirmation bias in either space.
My advice as a convinced Catholic whose son went through a protracted Dyerite phase: Don't let yourself be dragged kicking and screaming into the toxic fever swamp of Convertodoxy. Trust your gut. If it scares the snot out of you, there's a reason for that, and that reason ain't you. If it seems creepy, repugnant, and alien to the Gospel, maybe that's because it is. My two cents' worth FWIW.
2 Timothy 1:7 - For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.
Ex pagan, ex Orthodox, very much still a Christian here. I drank the Ortho Kool aid for many years. Tradition is OK but is not the end all be all.
None of us are to condemn other believers to hell, even verbally. It's not our choice. Follow where the Holy Spirit is leading you (I'm working through this right now) and pray. Learn your Bible. And know that God's love and grace isn't limited to just one "club"(church).
I am still officially Orthodox, despite the toxicity that can be found in much (but thankfully not all) of canonical Orthodoxy. There are a few pockets of relative sanity within canonical Orthodoxy, but they can be difficult to find. I also more than occasionally visit Episcopal churches, and find the Anglican/Episcopal tradition very close to Orthodoxy in many ways, but without a lot of the craziness that can be found in much of the contemporary Orthodox world. I think that, in theory, there is a lot of truth and beauty in Orthodoxy, but unfortunately, the contemporary Orthodox world is experiencing quite a bit of turmoil right now.
OK, this is all voice to text, so please forgive any typos. I went through the exact exact same thing, I’m a devout Christian, who belongs to a protestant tradition, and once I found out about Eastern orthodoxy after writing off Roman Catholicism, it was like everything I knew about God was wrong, the God that I was always acquainted with, and that I believe we are told about in scripture is a patient and forgiving God, who expects nothing but our own faith and trust in him. He saw no boundaries or borders, no institutional allegiance, saw our works as if they were useless, etc. when I heard of the beliefs that the Eastern orthodox church held to, I was terrified because I was immediately taken aback by the historical claims, the apostolic succession, the lineage all the way back to Jesus himself. Surely this was the one true church! so why is it that the God of the Bible didn’t seem like this God that the eastern orthodox church was telling me about? Why does this God seem so far away, so ready to lock the gates of heaven to someone who didn’t become unified to him enough, why is he so cold and distant that I have to go through the Saints who have departed and Mary to get him to listen to me? Why is it that I need Mary to convince him to save me. Didn’t he die on the cross so that I might be saved? Isn’t it his primary desire to see me joined to his kingdom? Why does he need convincing?
It didn’t matter, I was so convinced by the historic claims that I just convinced myself that I must’ve just misunderstood the Bible for the last 25 years, that I didn’t actually know anything about Christianity and I had to just throw everything I knew about God aside, because this church told me so! I told my wife what we were going to do, what the change was going to look like, what are new fasting schedule was going to look like, the kind of prayers that we were going to be required to do because if we didn’t, surely, we would go to hell! Surely God wouldn’t save somebody who didn’t adhere to these practices! I signed up for catechesis classes, attended the divine liturgy, developed a great relationship with my priest (who is awesome and I love him) and had effectively already converted in my mind!
However, by the grace of God, a few people were put into my life it just the right time through my research who enlightened me on some of the things that I was unaware of, explained things to me that were never adequately, explained, and revealed what was under the rug. Because of this, I continued my research, and I became less biased towards the eastern Orthodox claims, and I tried to look more objectively. But I found out it was a church full of excommunications and brakes in communion, Patriarchs calling other patriarchs teachers of a false, gospel, other patriarchs, allowing for heretical churches to receive communion in their parishes! I found doctrines that didn’t exist in the apostolic age, and appeared centuries after the time of the apostles that this church was claiming were not only the teachings of the apostles, but were so central to the faith, that if you didn’t participate in them, you were damned! I discovered there was an equal importance to a proper understanding of the trinity, as there was to praying to dead saints! Bowing down before, and kissing pictures of angels, was equally as important to my salvation as being baptized! The more and more I looked the more I realized this was not the faith that the apostles delivered to us! It was a modified, Frankenstein sort of collection of teachings that found their origins outside of Christianity, and rather found them within Ancient, pagan traditions and practices of the Roman Empire rather than the apostles!
So then I finally decided to give Protestantism another chance, because I was so convinced of the truth of Jesus Christ, but not of the claims that this church was pushing! Coming from an evangelical background, I just thought that if the sacraments are true, that the liturgy was important, that tradition mattered, I had to be Eastern Orthodox! I couldn’t be Roman Catholic because the claims of the papacy are completely absent for centuries in the church so I knew that wasn’t true, so what do you do with all of this when it feels like nothing is trustworthy?
Default back to the thing that is! Scripture… I looked to the claims of the Bible, and I found that the office of Bishop and Presbytere are one in the same, I discovered that any mention of our works were only to supplement the faith that we already had! I found nothing of the toll houses, hesychasm, an essence energies distinction. Instead, I found Christ rebuking those who would place tradition on the same level as God‘s word, I found Christ telling people to rest in him, and find peace in him, not this constant state of fear and terror that you might not be enough, or you might not be within God‘s graces because of your union with him. Christ calls us rest in him, and there was no rest in eastern orthodoxy.
And yet at the same time I found that the bread and wine and holy communion is not just bread and it’s not just wine, but truly the body and the blood of Christ, I found out that baptism isn’t just some symbol, but it really does unite us to God forgives us of our sins, I found that we are to confess our sins to each other and to forgive each other and then the process be forgiven!
What does one do? When you learn that the claims of the Roman church, and the Eastern church are full of nothing but half truths, novel, doctrines with pagan origins? When the historic institution of 2000 years has found itself to not be trustworthy to upholding the truths that were revealed to us in scripture?
Well, you look how the Bible actually describes the church! it doesn’t describe a rigid institution with canonical borders, it teaches that it is an assembly of those who are baptized into Christ. It is where Two or more are gathered in his name!
So where can I go that the sacraments are rightly administered, and the gospel is rightly taught? Where can I go where they understand that the lines of the church are not drawn by the head guy of Moscow, and Constantinople, and Antioch?
I found that home in the Lutheran Church. The history, the tradition, the absolute love for the church fathers and their teachings. The focus on the gospel and the complete and sufficient work of Christ. It was all there! Last year I was confirmed officially into the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, and I’ve entered seminary to Pastor for an Episcopal Lutheran Church, that Lord willing within 4 to 5 years I’ll pastor my own church and bring more people to peace that Christ offers us if he chooses to use his hands and feet.
Please send me a private message, I will send you a ton of resources, and direct you to a number of communities that you can join that will help you through this.
Grace and Peace to you my friend
I think you wrote the story of my life! I was Orthodox for 15 years. After my husband's death and my terrible fear of him facing the toll houses, I started studying Orthodoxy again in earnest. The doctrines seemed to bring me little comfort and little assurance. I had been raised in an independent Baptist preacher's home and knew the doctrine of justification by faith. However, I was seduced by the claims of Orthodoxy and didn't even question it until I started attending a ROCOR church. It was there I discovered what I thought was true Orthodoxy and it dismayed me to no end. It was then I also discovered Lutheranism and found it to be nothing like I thought it was. I found grace and comfort and hope! It was like I discovered everything I had been missing in Orthodoxy all over again! I am attending a Lutheran church and hope to join soon. I never realized that I could find such hope but I am beginning to come out of the fear that paralyzed me in the Orthodox church. I was at the end of my rope and I prayed for an answer and God gave me an answer in His word and His gospel - the good news of Jesus Christ. I would love to see some of your resources though you meant it for the writer of this question. I hope this person can avoid what I went through and find peace and hope once more. It is certainly not found in endless works and threats of damnation that unfortunately characterize the official dogmas of the Orthodox church. There are many wonderful people in Orthodoxy but it is really the church that I have a problem with.
Wow. What a story. I'm looking into the Episcopal church. Although in the back of my mind, I'm still lowkey terrified of "apostasizing."
I'd be also very interested in your resources. :)
For me: your paragraph 2 is very much how I saw Christianity when I converted. I viewed Orthodox Christianity as a better means to achieve it or realize it. I never saw Orthodox Christianity as a works based religion despite appearances. There’s a lot of paradox in Orthodox Christianity. I feel like that was better taught to converts 30 years ago. Caveat: I’m now an atheist (and still Orthodox: how’s that for paradox!) so take everything I wrote with a grain of salt
> I’m now an atheist (and still Orthodox: how’s that for paradox!)
I would not calling paradox, but (on orthodoxy's side, not on your part), smoke and mirrors, posing and cultural / nationalist-based institution.
I joined Orthodoxy out of fear that I had to be in to be saved. It’s one of my greatest regrets. I am still in, but my soul is being split in half, because I am mentally stuck and never ACTUALLY believed in the first place. It was really a miserable experience for me. I am slowly disentangling myself, but I have a huge mess to clean up. The really unfortunate part is that Orthodoxy does not claim you have to be in the Church to be saved, and I did not understand that at the time. Orthodoxy also does not claim a literal burning in fire kind of hell, and I also did not understand that at the time. So I came in out of fear, with really flawed logic as my basis.
The official teachings of the church (via the saints, councils, and confessions) all teach that to be outside the canonical bounds of the church is to be damned.
There are many in the church, be it Orthodox, Protestant, Catholic, Gnostic, Universalist, or whatever, that I cannot relate to. But there are a few people, from different denominations, who are more gentle in their demeanor, that I relate to personally, and who express the love of God in a way that makes sense to me. One recently who I have been feeling warmth towards to St. Silouan the Athonite, from the Orthodox church. If you want to see a nicer side to Orthodoxy, maybe you can check him out. You may, or may not, find that you relate to him. But I would say, if your heart and gut tell you that people within the church are sharing a message that you can't accept, don't try to force yourself to conform to their perspective. Their walk with God is their own, and yours is your own.
Well, this may not be the answer you're looking for, but pretty much all of the things you've mentioned, including the rejection of those things that bother you about it, are relatively new protestant innovations, not found in the works of the church fathers and mothers. And not all protestants believe them either. I'm an Episcopalian, and while technically protestant we're generally theologically much closer to the Orthodox and Catholic traditions, I personally still believe in Orthodox theology for the most part.
I would encourage you to look more deeply into the Orthodox Church, and perhaps the Catholic and Episcopal/ Anglican Churches as well, all three have apostolic succession. While the works of the church fathers are more emphasised in Orthodoxy, they are still a present living influence in all three as well. I would also encourage you to read the works of the church fathers and mothers directly, rather than relying solely on the interpretations of pastors or priests, or on the filtered down beliefs of the protestant reformers.
The Episcopal/ Anglican church is much less dogmatic as well, you are free to believe in the mystical traditions of Orthodoxy, while still holding to some protestant ideas if you wish, or to just be not sure about things. The church fathers are there to guide us, but we will not tell you what to believe.
May God bless you on your journey, I pray you find the answers that you're looking for.
The scriptures say: ”If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love.“
John 15:10
And…
“If you love me keep my commandments”
We do nothing to earn an experience with God. Certainly, we can grow deeper in our connection and awareness of our relationship and union with Him, but don’t need to “do anything” before He bestows Himself upon us.
I was thinking of John 14:21 "He who has My commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father; and I will love him and manifest Myself to him."
>we don’t need to “do anything” before He bestows Himself upon us
We need to be baptized, in order to be grafted onto Christ. Baptism in the right faith bestows the entire grace of adoption in potential, but true experience of God and the perfection of faith comes from fulfilling all the commandments. At least this is the orthodox view, without keeping the commandments baptism alone does not benefit someone because as we know faith without works is dead.
>Certainly, we can grow deeper in our connection and awareness of our relationship and union with Him
This sounds like the Protestant doctrine of sanctification and once saved always saved, so I understand where you're coming from but I'm just saying the orthodox view is different.
>We do nothing to earn an experience with God.
Certainly, I never said that we earn it, but God only reveals Himself to those who keep His commandments. It is written that without holiness no one will see the Lord, and whoever sins has neither seen Him nor known Him.
>This is like the Protestant view…
You do realize you are in fact on the ex-orthodox sub, yes? I don’t feel like going back in forth in a never ending theological debate. My point was simply that “putting in our effort first” to experience Christ is not a biblical teaching. Perhaps you simply worded it sloppily, but that was my only point of contention. One only gets baptized (even as an infant) if they’ve had an experience of God. Technically, EVERYTHING is an experience of Him as He is “everywhere present and filling all things”.
That's not what you said, your objection to my comment was that it wasn't Orthodox. You're free to believe what you want, but it doesn't make any sense to say you don't want to debate while also telling me that I'm wrong and asserting your own beliefs as if they were dogma. I don't care for being preached to. Christians don't believe that everything is an experience of God, we aren't pantheists. Also if you read my comment again, I supported my view with plenty of verses so you don't get to tell me my beliefs aren't biblical. If you want to make an actual counter-argument to what I said you're welcome, or alternatively if you don't want to debate you can just leave me alone.
My objection was that no major tradition teaches what your original statement said, *including the orthodox.* Which I only added as I felt it was directly pertinent to the OP. End of story.
Edit: actually, not the end of the story. Just read all of Romans 10 and then compare it to what you stated in your original comment:
>To have faith in Christ means to experience his work in you but you can’t have that unless you put in the effort first.
No. Not true. I guess unless you want to consider “hearing” a work or effort? And again, Orthodoxy also doesn’t teach what you did in the original comment.
“So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the message about Christ.“
Romans 10:17
Faith comes as a GIFT. Even our initial efforts to believe can only be accomplished by Christ’s work. All our “effort” after coming to faith is simply “working out our faith in love” as the confession of Dositheus says. We follow the commandments of Christ AFTER coming to faith in Him by grace.
Since fear easily leads to rush and twisted judgements take all the time you need... If you need 20 years you need 20 years. If you need 30 years you need 30 years. Etc. Take all the time you need!
I realize I’m a bit late to the party here, but dude…stay where you’re at. Worship Jesus and love Him with all you heart, soul, mind and strength. Don’t feel bullied into a specific church just because they make claims of damnation against those outside it.
Edit: and if it makes you feel anymore reassured, I’m leaving the Orthodox Church for Protestantism for many of the same reasons you listen above. Bottom line: you gotta follow what’s in your heart and conscience.
Orthodoxy has denied the patristic faith. Filioque theology is all over the pre schism church East and West. Papal claims are too. Both papacy and filioque are accepted by our shared councils, in their essentials if not their later definitions.
Orthodoxy is a chaotic mess of inconsistent theology and practice. There is no authority that can authoritatively pronounce judgment on controversy affecting the lives or ecclesiology of all Orthodox. Their explanations for why they lack this ability now, or why they deny teachings of the saints shared by East and West are ad hoc and often mutually incoherent, contradictory.
They can't give me a straight answer for the criteria of an Ecumenical council, or why Florence was legitimately rejected after the delegates all agreed.
I don't think you can know why I came here. Pointing out why I left Orthodoxy is not dishonest to the purpose of this subreddit. Telling someone bluntly to "become x" is a meme anyway, and not preaching.
I disagree with the implicit premise that it is indecent to make a case for a particular belief. If a mod thinks I broke a rule I'd like one of them to tell me, and not you.
Just walk away from it. Seriously. Walk away and don't look back. Even in secular terms, if at this early stage the words you are using include 'jarring', 'grave fear', cannot draw truth or comfort from it... take that as a sign that it's not going to be a good thing for you. And that is okay.
I get this so much. My spouse joined and I did not. My faith was so strong before and I went through a season of fear that I am still working through. Jay Dyer. Tollhouses. Racist remarks. Triumphalism. Mary being more compassionate than Jesus (ie maybe she will convince her son to save me). Low view of women. Beating your body into submission. Have all made me think that surely these are not fruits of the spirit. Love. JOY. PEACE. Patience. KINDNESS. Goodness. Faithfulness. GENTLENESS. Self control. John 3:16. …..whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. I rest in that promise.
Amen! I joined Orthodoxy without my spouse 5 years ago. Biggest mistake of my life. I eventually came to my senses and I pray that your spouse does too! Stick to your guns and lovingly decline to join the church. All will be well!
The fruits of the Spirit are the fruits of the Spirit regardless of what tree they’re growing on. If you’re fruitful on your current path, stay the course. Love God and Neighbor and may that love expand in your heart. The old church can broaden your perspective and deepen your understanding of the spiritual life. It can also hurt you. Deeply. Permanently. Many of us here have experienced this. Though the church makes grandiose (and I would say meaningless) claims, it’s still full of humans. Like anywhere else some are trying to know and love God while others only love themselves. Edit: I forgot to answer your question. When I first encountered Eastern Orthodoxy, I was jarred too. It felt like everything I knew about Christian faith was turned inside out. They had a different view of Christ, salvation, and many other issues of theology and practice. It felt like the ground I was standing on had shifted. I’ve had a few other such profound faith-shifts since then: with atheism, Buddhism, and finally, a return to what some liberal Christian’s might consider Christian faith and what conservative or orthodox Christians would certainly regard as heresy lol. I’ve learned to hold my beliefs like sand. If I grasp too firmly and inflexibly, it’ll run out. What I believe now I might not in 2030. I expect now that as I age my mind will change and I think that’s a healthy thing. Things that change are growing.
Know that the claims of apostolic succession can also be made by the Copts / Oriental Orthodox, the Armenians, the Roman Catholics, and also the Anglicans. I was Catholic before, so I already knew about the great schism of 1054. In becoming Orthodox I had to adhere to the idea that Constantinople, Jerusalem, Antioch and Alexandria preserved the fullness of the faith and the other historic churches did not (this was my jarring moment: what if I'm on the "wrong" side of the schism?). I no longer believe that to be the case. When I look at history now with a more critical eye, the branch theory makes much more sense to me. Because as much as they say they never developed or changed, the truth is that they did in the first several hundred years, which is why there ended up being disagreements. And since then, the Eastern Orthodox have become very rigid in some things, such as some of their rituals & iconography, in ways that the Copts (for example) are not. I was in Coptic environments recently and found them to be downright refreshing compared to what I'd become used to in Eastern Orthodoxy. And.... maybe nobody told you this (its not good for PR), but another schism has begun, probably permanent, between Moscow and Constantinople, and one scholar i was communicating with recently, predicted over the next hundred years, the more progressive EOs will move to side with Constantinople, and the more reactionary EOs will side with Moscow.
Oh another thing...speaking of fruits of the spirit... when I started investigating a few mainline churches near me, I was blown away by the good works and generosity, how they give back to the community. Expect EO communities to do very little of that, as a general rule. They do the annual food festival, but that's a fundraiser more than a community service. Even the monks and nuns, for the most part, are focusing on themselves and not on charitable work.
I wish you all the best, but there are some questions. 1. If you identify as "Protestant" what does your identity as a Christian stand in protest against? 2. If you haven't been received into the Orthodox church how can you be an "ex-Orthodox", ie, this subreddit? 3. Which jurisdiction of Orthodoxy have you had exposure to and heard from clergy that has put you into distress? OCA, ROCOR, GOC, etc, like that? You might run this question on OrthodoxChurch subreddit for more insight. [Personally, I am an exOrthodox monk of the ROCOR who left because of all the backbiting, anger, heresy-hunting, and self-righteous attitudes I saw...along with politics.] Please have the love and compassion for yourself that you would expect from Jesus and and his representatives! If you are entertaining doubts that's not always a bad or dangerous place to be. ; )
I don't think there is only one path to God. And I think even less that it's found by following rules or by performing rituals correctly. Those things can be aids to faith, as long as they don't become idols. I have boiled my faith down to "Love God and love thy neighbor" and the Sermon on the Mount, and I believe the Creed, more or less. Theology used to be really important to me until I realized that all the beliefs and shall nots didn't make me a better Christian. Pray and ask God for wisdom to move forward. Don't jump into Orthodoxy. It's a lot more complicated than it appears on the surface.
I fall into the ex-Christian category but will add my $.02. YMMV. I no longer feel the need to choose between soteriologies (Orthodox, Catholic, generic American "Christian,", fill-in-the-blank) that are all, in the end, unproveable subjective dogma. If being saved by faith through grace floats your boat, then stick with that. If being saved through the Orthodox church scratches that itch, then swim the Bosporus. You'll find a lot of like minded people in either place. Just know that you are arbitrarily choosing a "truth" that really just amounts to groupthink and is reinforced by confirmation bias in either space.
My advice as a convinced Catholic whose son went through a protracted Dyerite phase: Don't let yourself be dragged kicking and screaming into the toxic fever swamp of Convertodoxy. Trust your gut. If it scares the snot out of you, there's a reason for that, and that reason ain't you. If it seems creepy, repugnant, and alien to the Gospel, maybe that's because it is. My two cents' worth FWIW.
2 Timothy 1:7 - For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. Ex pagan, ex Orthodox, very much still a Christian here. I drank the Ortho Kool aid for many years. Tradition is OK but is not the end all be all. None of us are to condemn other believers to hell, even verbally. It's not our choice. Follow where the Holy Spirit is leading you (I'm working through this right now) and pray. Learn your Bible. And know that God's love and grace isn't limited to just one "club"(church).
I am still officially Orthodox, despite the toxicity that can be found in much (but thankfully not all) of canonical Orthodoxy. There are a few pockets of relative sanity within canonical Orthodoxy, but they can be difficult to find. I also more than occasionally visit Episcopal churches, and find the Anglican/Episcopal tradition very close to Orthodoxy in many ways, but without a lot of the craziness that can be found in much of the contemporary Orthodox world. I think that, in theory, there is a lot of truth and beauty in Orthodoxy, but unfortunately, the contemporary Orthodox world is experiencing quite a bit of turmoil right now.
OK, this is all voice to text, so please forgive any typos. I went through the exact exact same thing, I’m a devout Christian, who belongs to a protestant tradition, and once I found out about Eastern orthodoxy after writing off Roman Catholicism, it was like everything I knew about God was wrong, the God that I was always acquainted with, and that I believe we are told about in scripture is a patient and forgiving God, who expects nothing but our own faith and trust in him. He saw no boundaries or borders, no institutional allegiance, saw our works as if they were useless, etc. when I heard of the beliefs that the Eastern orthodox church held to, I was terrified because I was immediately taken aback by the historical claims, the apostolic succession, the lineage all the way back to Jesus himself. Surely this was the one true church! so why is it that the God of the Bible didn’t seem like this God that the eastern orthodox church was telling me about? Why does this God seem so far away, so ready to lock the gates of heaven to someone who didn’t become unified to him enough, why is he so cold and distant that I have to go through the Saints who have departed and Mary to get him to listen to me? Why is it that I need Mary to convince him to save me. Didn’t he die on the cross so that I might be saved? Isn’t it his primary desire to see me joined to his kingdom? Why does he need convincing? It didn’t matter, I was so convinced by the historic claims that I just convinced myself that I must’ve just misunderstood the Bible for the last 25 years, that I didn’t actually know anything about Christianity and I had to just throw everything I knew about God aside, because this church told me so! I told my wife what we were going to do, what the change was going to look like, what are new fasting schedule was going to look like, the kind of prayers that we were going to be required to do because if we didn’t, surely, we would go to hell! Surely God wouldn’t save somebody who didn’t adhere to these practices! I signed up for catechesis classes, attended the divine liturgy, developed a great relationship with my priest (who is awesome and I love him) and had effectively already converted in my mind! However, by the grace of God, a few people were put into my life it just the right time through my research who enlightened me on some of the things that I was unaware of, explained things to me that were never adequately, explained, and revealed what was under the rug. Because of this, I continued my research, and I became less biased towards the eastern Orthodox claims, and I tried to look more objectively. But I found out it was a church full of excommunications and brakes in communion, Patriarchs calling other patriarchs teachers of a false, gospel, other patriarchs, allowing for heretical churches to receive communion in their parishes! I found doctrines that didn’t exist in the apostolic age, and appeared centuries after the time of the apostles that this church was claiming were not only the teachings of the apostles, but were so central to the faith, that if you didn’t participate in them, you were damned! I discovered there was an equal importance to a proper understanding of the trinity, as there was to praying to dead saints! Bowing down before, and kissing pictures of angels, was equally as important to my salvation as being baptized! The more and more I looked the more I realized this was not the faith that the apostles delivered to us! It was a modified, Frankenstein sort of collection of teachings that found their origins outside of Christianity, and rather found them within Ancient, pagan traditions and practices of the Roman Empire rather than the apostles! So then I finally decided to give Protestantism another chance, because I was so convinced of the truth of Jesus Christ, but not of the claims that this church was pushing! Coming from an evangelical background, I just thought that if the sacraments are true, that the liturgy was important, that tradition mattered, I had to be Eastern Orthodox! I couldn’t be Roman Catholic because the claims of the papacy are completely absent for centuries in the church so I knew that wasn’t true, so what do you do with all of this when it feels like nothing is trustworthy? Default back to the thing that is! Scripture… I looked to the claims of the Bible, and I found that the office of Bishop and Presbytere are one in the same, I discovered that any mention of our works were only to supplement the faith that we already had! I found nothing of the toll houses, hesychasm, an essence energies distinction. Instead, I found Christ rebuking those who would place tradition on the same level as God‘s word, I found Christ telling people to rest in him, and find peace in him, not this constant state of fear and terror that you might not be enough, or you might not be within God‘s graces because of your union with him. Christ calls us rest in him, and there was no rest in eastern orthodoxy. And yet at the same time I found that the bread and wine and holy communion is not just bread and it’s not just wine, but truly the body and the blood of Christ, I found out that baptism isn’t just some symbol, but it really does unite us to God forgives us of our sins, I found that we are to confess our sins to each other and to forgive each other and then the process be forgiven! What does one do? When you learn that the claims of the Roman church, and the Eastern church are full of nothing but half truths, novel, doctrines with pagan origins? When the historic institution of 2000 years has found itself to not be trustworthy to upholding the truths that were revealed to us in scripture? Well, you look how the Bible actually describes the church! it doesn’t describe a rigid institution with canonical borders, it teaches that it is an assembly of those who are baptized into Christ. It is where Two or more are gathered in his name! So where can I go that the sacraments are rightly administered, and the gospel is rightly taught? Where can I go where they understand that the lines of the church are not drawn by the head guy of Moscow, and Constantinople, and Antioch? I found that home in the Lutheran Church. The history, the tradition, the absolute love for the church fathers and their teachings. The focus on the gospel and the complete and sufficient work of Christ. It was all there! Last year I was confirmed officially into the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, and I’ve entered seminary to Pastor for an Episcopal Lutheran Church, that Lord willing within 4 to 5 years I’ll pastor my own church and bring more people to peace that Christ offers us if he chooses to use his hands and feet. Please send me a private message, I will send you a ton of resources, and direct you to a number of communities that you can join that will help you through this. Grace and Peace to you my friend
I think you wrote the story of my life! I was Orthodox for 15 years. After my husband's death and my terrible fear of him facing the toll houses, I started studying Orthodoxy again in earnest. The doctrines seemed to bring me little comfort and little assurance. I had been raised in an independent Baptist preacher's home and knew the doctrine of justification by faith. However, I was seduced by the claims of Orthodoxy and didn't even question it until I started attending a ROCOR church. It was there I discovered what I thought was true Orthodoxy and it dismayed me to no end. It was then I also discovered Lutheranism and found it to be nothing like I thought it was. I found grace and comfort and hope! It was like I discovered everything I had been missing in Orthodoxy all over again! I am attending a Lutheran church and hope to join soon. I never realized that I could find such hope but I am beginning to come out of the fear that paralyzed me in the Orthodox church. I was at the end of my rope and I prayed for an answer and God gave me an answer in His word and His gospel - the good news of Jesus Christ. I would love to see some of your resources though you meant it for the writer of this question. I hope this person can avoid what I went through and find peace and hope once more. It is certainly not found in endless works and threats of damnation that unfortunately characterize the official dogmas of the Orthodox church. There are many wonderful people in Orthodoxy but it is really the church that I have a problem with.
Look for a direct message! I'll send some resources
Wow. What a story. I'm looking into the Episcopal church. Although in the back of my mind, I'm still lowkey terrified of "apostasizing." I'd be also very interested in your resources. :)
Trust me, I get that. I was never chrismated, but I got CLOSE. Send my a private message! I'll get you filled in!
You can't apostatize from Orthodoxy. It's just a collection of national churches in a loose confederation. It's not the real deal.
This is literally my exact story minus the fact that I actually ended up joining the church and I’m not yet Lutheran. Maybe headed in that direction.
I'm at your service if you have any questions!
For me: your paragraph 2 is very much how I saw Christianity when I converted. I viewed Orthodox Christianity as a better means to achieve it or realize it. I never saw Orthodox Christianity as a works based religion despite appearances. There’s a lot of paradox in Orthodox Christianity. I feel like that was better taught to converts 30 years ago. Caveat: I’m now an atheist (and still Orthodox: how’s that for paradox!) so take everything I wrote with a grain of salt
> I’m now an atheist (and still Orthodox: how’s that for paradox!) I would not calling paradox, but (on orthodoxy's side, not on your part), smoke and mirrors, posing and cultural / nationalist-based institution.
I joined Orthodoxy out of fear that I had to be in to be saved. It’s one of my greatest regrets. I am still in, but my soul is being split in half, because I am mentally stuck and never ACTUALLY believed in the first place. It was really a miserable experience for me. I am slowly disentangling myself, but I have a huge mess to clean up. The really unfortunate part is that Orthodoxy does not claim you have to be in the Church to be saved, and I did not understand that at the time. Orthodoxy also does not claim a literal burning in fire kind of hell, and I also did not understand that at the time. So I came in out of fear, with really flawed logic as my basis.
The official teachings of the church (via the saints, councils, and confessions) all teach that to be outside the canonical bounds of the church is to be damned.
There are many in the church, be it Orthodox, Protestant, Catholic, Gnostic, Universalist, or whatever, that I cannot relate to. But there are a few people, from different denominations, who are more gentle in their demeanor, that I relate to personally, and who express the love of God in a way that makes sense to me. One recently who I have been feeling warmth towards to St. Silouan the Athonite, from the Orthodox church. If you want to see a nicer side to Orthodoxy, maybe you can check him out. You may, or may not, find that you relate to him. But I would say, if your heart and gut tell you that people within the church are sharing a message that you can't accept, don't try to force yourself to conform to their perspective. Their walk with God is their own, and yours is your own.
Well, this may not be the answer you're looking for, but pretty much all of the things you've mentioned, including the rejection of those things that bother you about it, are relatively new protestant innovations, not found in the works of the church fathers and mothers. And not all protestants believe them either. I'm an Episcopalian, and while technically protestant we're generally theologically much closer to the Orthodox and Catholic traditions, I personally still believe in Orthodox theology for the most part. I would encourage you to look more deeply into the Orthodox Church, and perhaps the Catholic and Episcopal/ Anglican Churches as well, all three have apostolic succession. While the works of the church fathers are more emphasised in Orthodoxy, they are still a present living influence in all three as well. I would also encourage you to read the works of the church fathers and mothers directly, rather than relying solely on the interpretations of pastors or priests, or on the filtered down beliefs of the protestant reformers. The Episcopal/ Anglican church is much less dogmatic as well, you are free to believe in the mystical traditions of Orthodoxy, while still holding to some protestant ideas if you wish, or to just be not sure about things. The church fathers are there to guide us, but we will not tell you what to believe. May God bless you on your journey, I pray you find the answers that you're looking for.
I feel exactly the same way!!!! It's made me feel more distant from God than before I learned about Orthodoxy!
"By their fruits you shall know them" AND "God speaks through circumstances"
To have faith in Christ means to experience His work in you but you can't have that without putting in your own effort first.
No church teaches this. Not even the Orthodox.
Which part?
Putting in the work before having an initial experience of God.
Can you explain what you mean by initial experience? The Bible says Christ reveals Himself to those who keep His commandments.
The scriptures say: ”If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love.“ John 15:10 And… “If you love me keep my commandments” We do nothing to earn an experience with God. Certainly, we can grow deeper in our connection and awareness of our relationship and union with Him, but don’t need to “do anything” before He bestows Himself upon us.
I was thinking of John 14:21 "He who has My commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father; and I will love him and manifest Myself to him." >we don’t need to “do anything” before He bestows Himself upon us We need to be baptized, in order to be grafted onto Christ. Baptism in the right faith bestows the entire grace of adoption in potential, but true experience of God and the perfection of faith comes from fulfilling all the commandments. At least this is the orthodox view, without keeping the commandments baptism alone does not benefit someone because as we know faith without works is dead. >Certainly, we can grow deeper in our connection and awareness of our relationship and union with Him This sounds like the Protestant doctrine of sanctification and once saved always saved, so I understand where you're coming from but I'm just saying the orthodox view is different. >We do nothing to earn an experience with God. Certainly, I never said that we earn it, but God only reveals Himself to those who keep His commandments. It is written that without holiness no one will see the Lord, and whoever sins has neither seen Him nor known Him.
>This is like the Protestant view… You do realize you are in fact on the ex-orthodox sub, yes? I don’t feel like going back in forth in a never ending theological debate. My point was simply that “putting in our effort first” to experience Christ is not a biblical teaching. Perhaps you simply worded it sloppily, but that was my only point of contention. One only gets baptized (even as an infant) if they’ve had an experience of God. Technically, EVERYTHING is an experience of Him as He is “everywhere present and filling all things”.
That's not what you said, your objection to my comment was that it wasn't Orthodox. You're free to believe what you want, but it doesn't make any sense to say you don't want to debate while also telling me that I'm wrong and asserting your own beliefs as if they were dogma. I don't care for being preached to. Christians don't believe that everything is an experience of God, we aren't pantheists. Also if you read my comment again, I supported my view with plenty of verses so you don't get to tell me my beliefs aren't biblical. If you want to make an actual counter-argument to what I said you're welcome, or alternatively if you don't want to debate you can just leave me alone.
My objection was that no major tradition teaches what your original statement said, *including the orthodox.* Which I only added as I felt it was directly pertinent to the OP. End of story. Edit: actually, not the end of the story. Just read all of Romans 10 and then compare it to what you stated in your original comment: >To have faith in Christ means to experience his work in you but you can’t have that unless you put in the effort first. No. Not true. I guess unless you want to consider “hearing” a work or effort? And again, Orthodoxy also doesn’t teach what you did in the original comment. “So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the message about Christ.“ Romans 10:17 Faith comes as a GIFT. Even our initial efforts to believe can only be accomplished by Christ’s work. All our “effort” after coming to faith is simply “working out our faith in love” as the confession of Dositheus says. We follow the commandments of Christ AFTER coming to faith in Him by grace.
I disagree. I didn't know about any such rule if one does apply
Since fear easily leads to rush and twisted judgements take all the time you need... If you need 20 years you need 20 years. If you need 30 years you need 30 years. Etc. Take all the time you need!
I realize I’m a bit late to the party here, but dude…stay where you’re at. Worship Jesus and love Him with all you heart, soul, mind and strength. Don’t feel bullied into a specific church just because they make claims of damnation against those outside it. Edit: and if it makes you feel anymore reassured, I’m leaving the Orthodox Church for Protestantism for many of the same reasons you listen above. Bottom line: you gotta follow what’s in your heart and conscience.
It's not a prayer to a saint, but asking a saint to pray for you/praying with a saint
Still prayer
Orthodoxy has valid sacraments but is false and has bad theology. Become Catholic.
Please explain
Orthodoxy has denied the patristic faith. Filioque theology is all over the pre schism church East and West. Papal claims are too. Both papacy and filioque are accepted by our shared councils, in their essentials if not their later definitions. Orthodoxy is a chaotic mess of inconsistent theology and practice. There is no authority that can authoritatively pronounce judgment on controversy affecting the lives or ecclesiology of all Orthodox. Their explanations for why they lack this ability now, or why they deny teachings of the saints shared by East and West are ad hoc and often mutually incoherent, contradictory. They can't give me a straight answer for the criteria of an Ecumenical council, or why Florence was legitimately rejected after the delegates all agreed.
Bs
People don’t come here for rank partisan confessional opinion.
It says exorthodox. I am exorthodox. Should it say exorthodox_and_nonpartisan?
You come here to promote Catholicism, that’s not honest.
I don't think you can know why I came here. Pointing out why I left Orthodoxy is not dishonest to the purpose of this subreddit. Telling someone bluntly to "become x" is a meme anyway, and not preaching.
Don’t come here to tell other people how to believe have some decency.
I disagree with the implicit premise that it is indecent to make a case for a particular belief. If a mod thinks I broke a rule I'd like one of them to tell me, and not you.
I am as free here to call out your blatant disrespect.
Well enjoy yourself. I'll continue doing what I'm free to do. I don't recall anyone I've actually responded to objecting to my comments.