From West To East
“No matter how much we may study, it is not possible to come to know God unless we live according to His commandments, for God is not known by science, but by the Holy Spirit. Many philosophers and learned men came to the belief that God exists, but they did not know God. It is one thing to believe that God exists and another to know Him. If someone has come to know God by the Holy Spirit, his soul will burn with love for God day and night, and his soul cannot be bound to any earthly thing.”
-Saint Silouan the Anthonite
The word “conversion” literally means the process of changing or causing something to change from one form to another. From one form to the next. This is principally the essence of becoming an Orthodox Christian. A true conversion happens when you submit yourself to the process which is guided and guarded by the Holy Spirit and the grace of God through the blood which was shed for us by Jesus Christ’s crucifixion. This is Orthodoxy.
I was raised in a typical Westernized Christian home. We began in the Pentecostal Assemblies of God church and moved around quite a bit after that. Most commonly into “non-denominational Bible-believing” churches. We are all familiar with that type of terminology here in America. There’s practically one on every street corner in every small town. I intentionally said “churches” because one of the many pitfalls we find in these “non-denominational churches” is that they all practice and interpret the Bible differently. So, moving around is quite normal in Western Christianity. I digress… We attended service every Sunday and I was always forced against my adolescent will to attend youth groups a few times a month. The Bible was the center of our faith, we followed strict Christian values in our home, and we accepted Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior.
As I got older and started exploring my faith on my own, I found myself in the same repetitive process that most Americans find themselves in when exploring Christianity. I kept hopping from church to church. I would show up to one for a little while, and then after a few weeks or a month the pastor would say something I didn’t like and I would leave. My ignorance was in how I was searching for the “right church”. I, who had an extremely basic understanding of Christianity, was relying on myself alone to distinguish which church was right for me. It wasn’t until a few years later that I realized how wrong my entire approach had been. However, this is the same song and dance for a lot of us here in America. We usually have a very basic understanding of the Bible, we affirm Jesus as our Lord and Savior, and we know we believe in God. But that’s it. That’s usually where it ends.
When I really began to question Protestant Christianity, was during covid. Covid, as we all know and experienced, caused a plethora of issues in America. But, we are here to speak about the faith, not our tyrannical government. I’ll leave that for another discussion. This time period truly exposed how weak and unstable modernized Christianity had become. All of a sudden, it didn’t matter if you attended services, the churches became beacons of politics, they divided their congregants into despair, and all of a sudden it felt like God left His church. I felt abandoned and quite honestly, betrayed. Every single church here handled this time frame differently They all had their own responses, their own rules, and their own way of interpreting what was going on. So here I was, like millions of other people at that time, feeling suffocated by my government and the church. All the powers of influence on my life had seemingly shown their true colors. In a time when I needed God most, I couldn’t seem to find Him. This is when I knew I needed to make a change. I couldn’t submit myself to the ebbs and flows of Western Christianity anymore. From the time I was a child to becoming a young adult, I was plagued by this persistent process of change within the church. It didn’t make sense to me how this was the church handed to us on Pentecost. Fortunately, I was blessed with the burden of an over-analytical mind. Shallow answers or reasonings have never sufficed in my rationale. I’ve always needed more and more to quench the thirst for understanding that burns in my mind. I knew God existed and it was deeper than what I had been exposed to, I just needed to find Him.
Thankfully one day while scrolling aimlessly on Instagram I came across a video of a Priest in an Orthodox Church talking about God and covid. It was absolutely beautiful what he was saying. I was confused at first to be quite honest. What is this thing on his head? What accent is this? Why are there so many paintings and beards? Is that a robe he’s wearing? It was a rather large culture shock, to say the least. But, I loved what he was preaching so I researched him and the Church he was preaching at. Come to find out, it was an Orthodox priest at a parish in Australia but he is Assyrian. When I saw “Orthodox” I thought in my mind “Why was a Jew preaching about Jesus like that?”. I had never heard of “Orthodox” before in my life outside of the Orthodox Jewish religion. Thankfully that day I had nothing but time so I began researching and quickly found out he was not Jewish. There is a thing called Orthodox Christianity. I then found other sermons online from this gentleman and I truly enjoyed listening to him preach. His preaching was at a depth my shallow faith had never reached before. It blew me away! That began my ascent into the Orthodox Church as I started to study what the Orthodox Church was and what it stood for.
After extensive online research through YouTube, patristics, ancient Church writings, and Orthodox apologetics against Catholics and Protestants, I finally went to go find a local parish. The Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Parish in Portland, Maine. This parish ended up being the parish I was Chrismated in and still attend diligently to this day. I stumbled upon their website, emailed the priest, and began meeting with him once a week every single week. The conversations started basic in their content but quickly evolved into 2-3 hours-long conversations about theology. This priest, whom I love dearly to this day, was able to explain theology to me in the Orthodox way. A deeply rich, unfathomably deep, and Christ-centered way. I learned more from this priest in a month than I learned from any church I had attended in my entire life up to that point. I instantly felt at home. I knew God led me to this parish for a reason, and it was no coincidence I stumbled upon that Orthodox priest on Instagram. I fell in love with God again. I never fell out of love, per se. I finally got a real taste of His Grace and it turned me into a different person. All these years of bouncing around from church to church, in and out of my faith, feeling lost and abandoned finally came to an end. I was home.
After my Chrismation into the Greek Orthodox Church on December 17, 2023.
The Orthodox Church began to expose me to all the shortcomings I had in my faith and in me as a man of God. Which is exactly what I desired. I knew I wasn’t smart enough to figure this journey to Christ out on my own, I needed guidance. So what exactly did the Church bring to the light? Let’s go through them.
Historicity with Biblical teachings AND practices. The church I experienced up to this point, was only 200-300 years old. If that. The Orthodox Church is 2,000 years old. Christianity is 2,000 years old. Why was I submitting myself to a church whose roots didn’t scratch the surface of Church history? Why are the modern churches always trying to reinvent the wheel which has been protected by the Holy Spirit for 2,000 years?
Continuity with early Church Fathers and Saints. The Orthodox Church is in the most correlation with how the early Church operated. This is proven through the thousands and thousands of early Church texts written by those who walked the Earth the closest to Christ Himself. It became abundantly apparent very quickly that modern Western Christians are not practicing or understanding the Faith the way it is intended to be.
Structure. The Orthodox Church has a hierarchical structure that is Biblically accurate and prevents any one person from possessing all power (like the Pope). This structure is held firm from 2,000 years of law established through the Biblical canons and agreed upon through Ecumenical Councils. This structure is exactly what has been able to preserve the Church over 2,000 years. There is not such thing as “ebb and flow” in the Orthodox Church. This has the only truly blessed hierarchy in all of Christianity. These checks and balances hold the Church accountable to each other and prevent any serious heretical practices from taking place.
Depth. The depth of real Christian theology is beyond comprehension. You just can’t find the same depth in theology in a regular church that you find in the Liturgy of an Orthodox Church. The Catholic Church also possesses a similar depth in theology as well. We study biblical interpretations from individuals in every century after Christ walked this Earth. Those who truly lived an ascetic Christian life, those who were martyred for Christ, those who were divinely inspired, and so on… The amount of reading one can do from the first millennium Church is enough to keep you busy for a lifetime!
Consistency. The consistency in the Orthodox Church also made me feel more confident in their interpretation of the Bible. The Orthodox all have the same understanding of the Bible. There’s a little bit of wiggle room, but not much at all. This is simply because we have 2,000 years of patristics and writings to study from. In American Christianity, there’s no consistency between pastors. They could all interpret any part of the Bible any way they see fit. This is not at all how we are meant to interpret the Bible.
I really could go on forever, but that’s enough for now. After an intense process as a catechumen, I was Chrismated in December of 2023 and have been growing ever since. The reason I created this website and wrote this was to hopefully guide others having similar experiences to what I had into the right place. You know God is real, you believe Jesus Christ died for us, you believe in the Holy Spirit, but you’re never feeling fulfilled in the churches you go to. I challenge you to begin researching Orthodox Christianity. That’s exactly what this site is for. I want to provide a platform that can point you in the direction of truly Orthodox Christian content and sources. I am not a priest, I am not an accredited theologian, and I am obviously not a good writer. As you can tell. I am simply trying to spread the Word of God to as many people as possible so more of us can experience the True Faith the way we are supposed to.
Converting into the Orthodox Church won’t automatically save your soul. Nor is it a promise you will be saved. Salvation to us according to the Bible is a working salvation which means it never ends. Salvation isn’t granted to us after we say one prayer or attend one service. It’s a never-ending process that calls us to deny ourselves and “pick up our cross” to follow Christ. Once you pick up your cross, it doesn’t magically disappear and you’re saved for eternity. Carrying your cross is a continuous process that you have to actively do every day. I worry for my brothers and sisters in Christianity who assume salvation and attend churches that don’t preach proper sacramental theology. I worry for those who are losing faith in God because of bad experiences in non-denominational churches. I worry for those attempting to interpret the most influential writing in human history on their own. Our Faith is not a personal spiritual journey like yoga. The Bible isn’t meant to be a personal devotion where a layman can interpret the actual Word of God by himself. We are at the farthest time period from Jesus Christ currently, and we are only getting farther and farther away. Time travel doesn’t exist yet. However, we can travel into the “nous” of those who walked the Earth closer to Christ and lived as real Christians having more Biblical knowledge than any modern-day pastor. If you truly want the ability to get closer to God, to understand Him better, and to “partake in the divine mysteries”, then you need to find an Orthodox priest and take up your cross. The journey from Western Christianity to Eastern Christianity is a struggle. It’s going to force you to live a life you haven’t lived yet. It’s going to force you to study in a way you have never studied. But you’ll have God with you the entire way.
If this message has helped one person, I’ve done my job. God bless and please, take God seriously. He is waiting for you.
