I converted from protestant evangelical stuff to Orthodox. you would think it was a whole different religon.....
here is my story
My journey to the Orthodox Church. . . . .by me.
Once upon a time a was a very good little protestant girl. I did everything right. Went to church on Sundays (and about every other opportunity I had), I prayed what was on my heart and read my Bible even committing a good portion of it to memory. I saved myself for marriage and married a guy who had done the same. I didn’t use birth control, I was a stay at home mom, I birthed good little Christian babies and educated them at home. I tithed, I fasted, I studied, I believed. Therefore, I should see blessings coming just around the corner, right . . .wrong. All that prosperity and promise and blessing seemed to be lost on me like I was some sort of holy black hole. But I persevered. That is after all what good protestant girls do. Year after year my life continued to unravel. It was getting harder and harder to believe what I was being told. I was becoming disillusioned by what seemed like shallowness all around me. In the churches I attended year after year God was doing something bigger and better and more blessed than he was doing the year before. Something louder, more chaotic, and generally more absurd. Because suddenly what was perfect and “it” the year before was no longer good enough. And sin was becoming less and less of a problem for this god and his church. After all if sin abounds then grace abounds and hey, its all about grace right. But that whole sin doesn’t really matter attitude was really ticking me off. After all why try at all. Then one Sunday morning I was sitting in church and looking around me and thought “Holy crap. We are all going to hell. “ ok ,maybe that was a little dramatic, especially since the thing that finally triggered my break down was the amorphous white blobs in the front of the church (they highlighted the worship light show - no, I am not making that up. You can‘t make this stuff up.). And, I grew up with this guy named Chuck. First he was Chuck the business guy. Then Chuck the intercessor, once that book had sold a few copies he was promoted to Chuck the prophet, and then Chuck the Apostle. Not like the 12 apostles but a new shiney modern apostolic age apostle. The kind that can sell a few books and do a few tours with his fellow intercessors/prophets/apostles. And I move across the united states and land smack dab in the middle of a church with white amorphous blobs and you guessed Chuckles. And I don’t mean another guy just like Chuck. I mean Chuck himself. What are the odds. (Nope, not making this part up either). As things began to spiral into the weird zone at that church they started quoting Chuck from the pulpit. Yep, time to bounce on out of here. I remember sitting there and thinking if there really is a God then surely he is not this stupid. And if this is a reflection of this god he is not worth worshiping. Playing cards with and drinking a beer, maybe, that could be a good time, but not eternal worship. Besides, I can play cards and drink beer with anyone. Another incident that had a profound impact on me was a U2 concert. No I am not going launch into a soliloquy about how Bono helped me find God . . . .quite the opposite actually. Before I go any further I just want to go on the record saying it was an phenomenal concert . . No scratch that . . .event, phenomenal event. Heck of a good time. But I watched everyone lifting their hands up and singing along, blissed out and doing pretty much everything everyone did at church, at first I looked around and judged everyone for worshipping a band. Shame on them. Then I realized I was wrong. Oops, shame on me. They were not worshipping anyone. They were grooving. Caught up in a collective emotional, group response to really good music. Maybe that’s all church was. A collective emotional group groove. Lets face it. The better the worship band the better the groove/worship was. It looked the same. It felt the same. And I realized that at least for me it was. Other people might be better Christians than me but I was just getting caught up in the music. An unconscious (although sometimes forced) emotional groove.
Another profound incident that led to my crash happened in the bathroom of the gym we had a membership at. Most likely waiting for Ava to “finish up already“. I started thinking about the “salvation thing” you know repeat after me and get your get of hell free card, trick them into saying it when they are little because once they grow up they might not be so inclined. It hit me that is not salvation. It can’t possibly have anything to do with salvation. And further more who are we to assure everyone it counts? And that they can never loose that salvation which we are so sure they have and they are just fine even if they don’t feel saved. It made no sense. It scared the crap out of me. I may have assured people they were fine when they weren’t and now they will go to hell because they will never reach for more of God because I told them they don’t have to. LORD HAVE MERCY!!! What does it mean after all to make Jesus your Lord? A lord is someone who rules over you. Someone you are subject to. You can’t just call Him lord. You have to make him your Lord. You can’t just call him King. He has to be your king. And a King rules you and you are subject to him and when you cease to be subject to him and cease to be loyal and cease to obey his rule you are cast out of the kingdom. Uh-oh. I was scared for us. How dare we carry on telling people all they have to do is say the magic words. Think about it. Even if everything else was ok does anyone have the right to assure someone else of their salvation? And if we do and they are not indeed in the clear is their eternal blood on our hands so to speak?
I had received a gift card for my birthday that year. I bought a book called Jesus of Suburbia. I was still trying to get a grip on all this God stuff. I really wanted to find the missing piece everyone else seemed to have. Their confidence and faith. That deep well that quenches and the bread that satisfies. I started reading the book. I figured it could go two ways. Mediocore or bad. It changed my life. I was completely unprepared for what I read. The author didn’t seem to have a lot of answers but he did know one thing- a lot of Christians are worshiping an imitation Christ. A plastic replica of the God of the universe and that is why they are missing the awesomeness of the real deal. He likened it to his 2 year old son playing with plastic toy animals in the zoo gift shop. He was so into it he didn’t want to leave the toys. Little did he know that a few feet away was the real deal. Larger than life, alive, and there waiting. But he had never seen real animals. He did not know what he was missing. And could not be swayed to reach further and grasp something better than the plastic imitations. They were good enough for him. And what if he left his toys for the unknown and the unknown wasn’t good enough. Could he trust his parents on this? And that was my problem in a nut shell. Somewhere where out there was a real God, living and breathing, worthy of worship, awesome and powerful and frightening. And I wanted HIM. Not a cheap imitation. Not a God who bowed down to my whims and the latest fads.
In the midst of my spiritual turmoil my marriage was falling apart. My husband was having an affair, addicted to porn, and trying to convince me I was insane and doing a right fine job at it (if you are reading this don’t say I never gave you any credit) I was seriously flipping my lid. Nothing in my world made sense and least of all God. I mean... I was a good bride, good wife and good mother. I was doing it by the book. So while stalking my husband and his online hootchies I not only got good at finding him and hacking his passwords but I had lots of time to surf the internet (I was more than a little obsessed with him and yes, I was stalking them, I am not ashamed to admit it. You know you would do it too.) but while I was wasting time surfed a parenting message board. There was one lady who got my attention . A preists wife. She annoyed the bejeebus out of me. Someone would ask a simple question and she would spring into these long explanations of church history, and bishops and saints and who knows, I generally skipped her posts unless she made some outrageous claim in the first few lines about “one true church” or “early church” or “infant baptism” or other such craziness. But as time passed I began reading what she was saying. I couldn’t argue that I was right and she was wrong any longer. I had nothing with which to claim I was right. I still thought she wrong but “I think your wrong just because I have always thought the opposite even though I think those people are wrong now too” just doesn’t seem like an intelligent argument. Honestly it sounded like something my 5 year old would say. However, she had me reading, secretly of course, I couldn‘t admit she was getting to me. Then it happened. Over the course of about a week or so . She had posted some pictures of a family’s baptism. I secretly read her blog (secretly because she was wrong and why would I read the blog of someone so wrong . . . ) because her photography skills are above average and her children are of above average in the cuteness department. I am a sucker for pretty pictures of pretty kids. What struck me this time was not just the beautiful pictures (and boy howdy were they beautiful. The church, the people, the lighting everything just radiated beauty) but she had an explanation for every.little.movement. Not only was there a reason for every movement but SHE KNEW WHAT IT WAS. And when we asked her a million questions she had answers for every.single.one of them. This was shocking to a girl who grew up with baptism being nothing but a trite little unnecessary symbol (actually anything that had been watered down past the point of recognition and therefore the origins forgotten had been deemed merely symbolic) and more or less quick photo op. This on the other hand was something substantial. Something Holy. It was under these circumstances it meant something and something that meant something bigger and more far reaching that my mind could conjure up; now that was . .well. . . Something! I am not sure where I went from there. The next week was a blur of reading everything I could get my hands on. Let the games begin. Everything made so much sense. Of course everyone in the church could agree on it. When you put it altogether in the light of their understanding everything made sense. Its easy to agree when things make sense and when everyone before you has also agreed on it. It was also clear to see this was the early church. Historical documents and archeology back that up. It struck me that for as much emphasis as the protestant church puts on sola-scriptura no one seems to know where the Bible came from. Not even those of us who majored in Biblical studies (how did I not learn this in college?) . . . .No not everything we need to know about the early church is in the Bible. They had been living it for 400 years before they decide what was going to be cannon. Some things were just done. They didn’t need to spell it out. After all, when you are writing a letter that long you don’t need to make a list of everything these people are doing right. Think about it.
I struggled over Saints and Mary and liturgical prayer and icons and “the stuff” but all those obstacles faded away relatively quickly. Then came Theosis . . . . Well I still don’t entirely get it but I am OK with that. And I would like to hear one protestant preacher expound on those scriptures intelligently (without dismissing them as symbolic or poor translation). . . Just one . . . I would pay money to hear it. It didn’t take long before I was convinced this was sound doctrine. Free from fadishness, silliness and the absurdity of the modern evangelical charismatic pom-pom shaking, flag waving, sexual sermonizing, sin justifying, etc etc churches I had been a party to. Now I just had two obstacles left. Bringing up the subject with a husband who already hated me and clearly was not at all interested in being anywhere where sin was a serious matter and actually going to church at an Orthodox church. A Greek Orthodox church. Its hard to say which was a scarier prospect.
Husband - the husband had not been to church with me since the affair had started about 4 ½ years earlier. And before that he preferred to hang out with his friends than come sit with me or be a spiritual leader to our little family. He never saw me or the kids and our marriage was pretty much in the pooper so what would he care. Its not like I was joining a cult. Nothing to worry about. Right. WRONG!! Suddenly he is all about God and family and being a spiritual head of our house (bossing me around with Gods approval but doing all that bossing while still getting away for weekends/weeks with his lover . . . Spiritual head? Only if that head was up his . . . ahem . . .where was I) and putting his foot down etc. he even got his parents in on it. And his employees. Suddenly what had been a very private journey/crisis of faith was very very public. Suddenly I had to defend a decision I had not even made to everyone and anyone he felt the need to run this by. I was bad for wanting this and I wasn’t even sure I wanted it. Suddenly my husband who had not been to church in years was having all kinds of ideas about churches. Specifically ones who weren’t all that concerned with sin and where his single, younger friends were in charge. Ones that were focused on youth and fun and coolness and shock value. Yay. Was it really so bad to worship like a grown up? When you were 33? I was willing to compromise a bit and go to both. It worked out. That church met in the evenings and mine met in the mornings. Oh but wait. They had a morning service and he might get to play guitar at it and that is clearly what church is about and that is far more important than actually going to church as a family or giving your wife a little room to work with what the Holy Spirit was doing. Perhaps that was his only objection to the Orthodox church. He would never have the chance to be a worship leader on his guitar. And even better yet it foiled my plans for some real time with God quite nicely. Maybe he was trying. Maybe he wasn’t. Either way it sucked. This time I put my foot down.
The church -
That part was easier than I had thought it would be. I was kinda scared of the priest. I thought he hated me actually. And I was pretty sure he thought I was a moron. (I used to work for him) There were some other issues with some other people I knew there too. But Father P was so sweet when I asked him about church and so welcoming. As were the other people I had issues with in the past. Ironically they were the ones who made me feel most welcome. And people were so kind. They didn’t ask me why I was there or why my husband wasn’t. they just told me to drink more coffee and eat more donuts. The down side was the parish had no priest and Fr.‘s English was limited. Liturgy was scarce (maybe once a month) and parishioners were even scarcer. Its really hard to be the obviously new kid in church. Even harder when there are only 10 other people in the building. But from the first moments in liturgy I knew this is where the real God dwelled. I knew these people had found Him. No one was worshipping in a way that suited their lifestyles. No one was pandering or begging them to join in. no coffee bars, big screens, smoke machines and pyrotechnics (well, ok fine, we have incense and candles which sometimes go terribly wrong......). If it was not good enough for me no one would have come after me asking me how to make a god that worked for me. Their God was huge and holy and didn’t need me. I needed Him. Their God was not going to bow down to me. I was going to have to bow down to Him. I was not there for a feel good fest or to get a boost or to even hear a lesson. I was there to worship and to pray. People didn’t come in reluctantly and in their pajamas. They didn’t leave early or kick up their feet. Church started when it started regardless of if anyone was there or not. Yes sir. These people were all about it and so was their God.
Then came Father G. He had a sweet wife and sweet children and I hit it off with them right away. He spoke English. Huge bonus. Shortly after they came to our parish my life completely fell apart. My worst fears were confirmed. It was not an emotional affair, or an online relationship, it was a full on sexual love affair. Had been from the very beginning. All his time and money were being poured into this other woman. But the church came around me with so much love and support. As if they had known me since I was in diapers. This is not a charismatic church mind you. If someone faints or starts crying people notice. And they make a fuss. No one assumes it is just the Holy Spirit moving on that person. Oh no, tears, fainting, grab a Dr. , some tissues and some baklava. Now if I started glowing . . .that would be blamed on the Holy Spirit. Or a stray candle. In the absence of smoke or the familiar smell of burning hair though definitely the Holy Spirit. I was in a daze for a few weeks. But one thing was clear to me. I was joining the church. We had put it off in hopes that my husband would join with us but that clearly was not going to happen and I no longer cared if it did. I no longer cared if he was my husband. So if he gets a girlfriend my babies get baptized. End of story. Fr G did not disagree. Things moved quickly from there. We had been going to liturgy and other services for over a year so Fr saw no reason to make us wait. I had read a truck load of books, pamphlets, flyers, and online whatevrers so no need to do any homework at this point. All I needed was a date and baptismal names and godparents. I was worried no one would want to be our godparents. Much to my surprise lots of people did. What a blessing!! Within a few weeks we were ready to go. It was a small simple affair (remember, my life was falling apart all over the place and I was still going a little crazy) but so full of love and support and kindness. Even when things went south (the husband walked out, the in-laws freaked out, I had filed for a divorce a few days before the baptism so things were more than a little awkward on that front) everyone just gathered around in love. They shared stories of their families freak outs, offered to run interference, and assured me that everything would be ok. I love these people. Ya know, the baptismal freak out was actually a good thing. It became more than a baptism. We joined the church in more ways than one that day. They became my family. A family I love so very much. So far so good too. No silliness is creeping in, at least not in liturgy . . . Coffee hour is full of silliness. A home grown, church basement, sugar laced, long table and folding chair kind of silliness. I love coffee hour. It feels like a family holiday every Sunday afternoon. Laughing, hugging, kissing, and a hodgepodge of everyone’s favorite carb-o-licious foods. However - the day they bring in a light show and amorphous white blobs - I am so out of there. Priests sporting sombreros and “kiss me I’m Greek” aprons I can live but amorphous blobs . . .well now, that just crosses a line.
): "Maybe that’s all church was. A collective emotional group groove."
That thought faded quickly. i know there are people at that church who really know God. and I know God moved in that place, in some of those lives. I still think that whole sort of thing is corney but I think God is big enough to break through the silliness also.
: Ive had lots of times feeling like you described too.
