Leaving Orthodoxy

9/25/19

Here is a list of the reasons I wrote to my son when we left Orthodoxy a year and a half ago. I’ll use this as a starting point.

 1)      The Church says it isn’t legalistic—but there is the fasting. And you’re supposed to pray twice a day at home—reading prayers from a prayer book. And Saturday, the priest said at Catechumen class that if we went to another church’s service—a baptism, for example—we they would be committing spiritual adultery. And if we went to a non-Orthodox funeral, we were to stand in the back and repeat the Jesus Prayer (they wear prayer beads and repeat this prayer to focus their minds: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, Have mercy on me, a sinner). That’s pretty controlling. And Darren has had very bad experiences with religion in his childhood, so control doesn’t sit well with him at all. It actually triggers trauma.
2)      There is a heavy emphasis on venerating (kissing) icons (pictures of saints) in and out of church. They want you to pray to the icons to ask Christ to help you. That doesn’t really make much sense to us, but to them, the saints are alive, just in a different… dimension, I guess. But present—they are aware of us, we just aren’t aware of them. And there is an even heavier emphasis on choosing a patron saint, learning about saints’ lives, and wow, they really revere Mary. They frequently pray for her to pray to Christ to intervene for them. Like, constantly, in fact. “Oh Holy Theotokos, Save us.” And mainstream Christianity is VERY Christ-centered. It’s Christ, and He is ENOUGH. A lot of EPs (Evangelical Protestants) don’t view Catholics or Orthodox as Christians and think they worship Mary and Saints as idols. But I have noticed that all denominations like to throw around the word “heretic.” So, at any rate, this all feels very extra. As Darren said, “I hear more about saints at church than I do about Christ.” [This seems to depend on the liturgical cycle, because I haven't found this at all in the past few weeks] (And in the Mormon Church, we used to say, “I hear more about Joseph Smith at church than I do about Christ,” so it’s like a similar stripe).  So, that’s troublesome. It seems unnecessary. And it distracts people from reading the Bible, which leads me to
3)      They don’t want you to read and interpret the Bible on your own. (Mormons don’t either—they say the Bible is not translated correctly and want members to read the Book of Mormon instead. Because the New Testament very clearly contradicts Mormonism). The Orthodox like to say that personal interpretation of the Bible has led to more than 19,000 different Christian denominations. So, they really want you to read about saints’ lives or read the Church Fathers and go to a Bible study with your priest there to guide the interpretation. And to mainstream Christians, this is very suspect, because the emphasis should be on the Bible, and everyone has their own agency to interpret it. A lot of Protestants are Sola Scriptura (the Bible is perfect the way it is because the Holy Spirit covers for any imperfections, and you can’t add to it, because it says not to). Darren and I are NOT Sola Scriptura. And the Orthodox would counter that they actually chose which books should be included in the Bible, which is true. But it’s all kind of hard to swallow when you’ve been steeped in a western mindset, which obviously, we have.
4)      They say in their Creed, “I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins.” Does this mean they think everyone else is going to hell? Well, they won’t really give you a straight answer to that, and we don’t believe that’s the case. For example, you and your brothers are not religious or Christians, but I don’t think you’re going to hell. (And a lot of Christians would consider me to be a heretic because I hold that view, but I don’t care).
5)      They believe that when they bless their communion wine and bread that it LITERALLY turns into the blood and body of Christ. We think that when Christ broke bread and gave it to His disciples saying, “This is my body,” that he was being metaphorical. But they will actually give communion (they call it the Eucharist) to a sleeping baby two months old. That doesn’t bother me so much as fascinate me, but it bothers Darren. He thinks it’s ridiculous. And, frankly, it is a little. I haven’t entered so deeply into the faith that I really understand it or see how the Orthodox view it.
6)      The Orthodox want you to really surrender to the authority of the Church, and it’s very difficult to do. I don’t want to ask my priest to give me a blessing if I change jobs or if I want to take my medications in the morning before Eucharist so I need to drink some water and have a bit of toast. They also emphasize regular confession, which is also problematic because basically you’re telling all of your secrets to a person who puts on their pants one leg at a time just like you do. And if God already knows… well… it seems controlling. They have a strong emphasis on humility, which is all very well and good, but not if you surrender your brain completely. If you aren’t using your free will, then is it really free will?
7)      The Orthodox take baptism very seriously. Like a marriage. As catechumen, they view us to be engaged to the church. And they view the church as inseparable from Christ. We don’t. So, they don’t want you to enter into baptism unless you’re ready to commit to the church for life—on their terms. And so, we really couldn’t go forward. But it took a lot of conversations to really kind of tease all this out and identify the issues. It has taken several days of reflection to be able to lay this out this way.

Darren and I revisited this when we decided a few weeks ago to return to the Orthodox Church, and this list, which seemed very ominous and serious 18 months ago, was almost comical to us now. We had a sense of, "Really? That was a problem? An insurmountable problem?" 

I think my opinions on this have changed in the following way (and I can’t speak for Darren, but we’ve talked about it and I think he would agree). I wanted to be Orthodox so badly before that I felt like I had to do all of it, 100% the way I was told. To assimilate and really be it. But I have read a lot of writing by my friend Rivki who converted to Orthodox Judaism. And she really tried to assimilate at first, to fit in. But now she sees how she can retain her own individuality and still be true to her beliefs.

One of our objections to the “rules” or things you’re supposed to do in Orthodoxy a couple of years ago is that we were still heavily under the evangelical umbrella of “grace is not, cannot be earned.” And I think the Orthodox agree with that. We were also under the evangelical umbrella of “Jesus came to satisfy the law. Jews live under the law, but Jesus commands only to love God and Love our neighbor and love our enemies.”

I still believe those things.

But Christ’s light can both burn and sanctify or it can enlighten and comfort. It depends on how much you want and love the light. The church’s purpose is to accustom us to the light in this life so it won’t burn us later. It’s not to get us to follow a bunch of rules that will cause us to be saved.

So, let’s examine this a little more deeply.

I want to state for the record that faith is a choice. Also that participation in a religious organization is also a choice. These are choices I am making because they give my life meaning and joy and focus. I have made different choices and not been satisfied with them, which is why I am making my current choices. So, I am not really interested in addressing the question of, “Why bother at all?” because the answer is, as stated in this paragraph, fairly simple. Because I want to.

This discussion of rules and salvation is absolutely relevant to the question of, “Why not Judaism?”

Judaism is very attractive for many of the same reasons Orthodox Christianity is:

·         It is ancient. It’s even older than Orthodoxy.

·         Observant members of the religion really live it every day. It has a prominent place in their lives. And I want that for my life. I said to my husband a few weeks ago:

"This sums up my attraction to Orthodoxy (from my friend Rivki's blog): 'Once that realization crystallized in my mind, I knew I wanted to be surrounded by others who were also trying to observe everything. This religion thing was going to be front and center with me, all the time, and I didn't want to feel like an outlier. I needed to find a community where that would be normal, even preferable.'" 

Orthodoxy and Judaism are both very participatory. But with different purposes. Judaism has 613 rules to follow from the Torah. They are the covenant people, and keeping those commandments is very important to keeping Judaism alive. So is tradition.

With Orthodox Christians, it’s more like this:

There are three specific objectives (I am using a term from grant writing—these are actually commandments):

1.      Love God

2.      Love neighbor

3.      Love enemies

And how are we to achieve these objectives? Here are some things that have worked for thousands of years for other people.

·         Daily prayer, morning, afternoon, evening.

·         Fasting and feasting.

·         Learning about the lives of people who have achieved these objectives or died trying (Saints) and celebrating their lives. (This addresses our objection to number 2 above).

·         Celebrating the Eucharist every week. Participating in the worship that is always ongoing in Heaven. (see number 5 above)

·         Confession as a means to try to improve in either loving God or loving neighbor or loving enemy because “sin” is turning away from God. And usually falls under failure to do one of those three things (so says I). (See number 6 above)