On Being Orthodox:

Right Worship, Right Works, and Right Thinking

by Bishop Elias

We say that we are Orthodox, but do we know exactly what that entails? Being Orthodox is more than simply the way we make the “Sign of the Cross” or celebrating an ancient Divine Liturgy; it is most importantly the way we think, because Orthodoxy represents a very different way of thinking. It is very different from Western Christianity and, because of that it has never done well when it came up against Western Thought.

Orthodoxy isn’t a list of rules and regulations that if not followed will condemn you. Its not a legal faith, like those of the west. It’s more of a Path or a Way to God. Ironically, the Japanese Zen word “do” (way) is much closer to what Orthodoxy represents amongst Christian Faiths. Sometimes this is subtle and sometimes not.

For example: In the west sinning is viewed as a failure on the part of the sinner to follow the rules. In the Orthodox Church the word for sin in Greek is “amartia”. It refers to a “missing the mark”, not failure. In Orthodoxy we are not showered with guilt for having failed, but rather Orthodoxy encourages us to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and try again; whereas western religions teach us to confess our guilt and bow and scrape, groveling at God’s feet, trembling in fear.

Because of the subtle differences, when Orthodoxy has been presented with the need to define itself, it has had trouble; and actually looked to the west for definition… and that’s where trouble begins. Until the mid 1600, there was never an Orthodox Catechism. When faced with the Protestant movement, the Patriarch of Constantinople produced one based on a western book. It came out looking very Presbyterian, and it didn’t work.

In Russia, during the reigns of Peter the Great and Catherine the Great, Jesuit Scholars were allowed to teach in Russian Seminaries. This not only brought more than western ideas into the Theological Fray, but it caused for Roman Catholic Doctrine to creep into an already perfect system of belief. Its sad legacy remains today in the Russian Church under the guise of “venerable traditions”

Over the past 25 years, Orthodox Churches have seen a large influx of converts from both various Protestant Churches and to a lesser degree the Church of Rome. While we, as Orthodox Christians, want to see people leave their false beliefs behind and become one with the True Church; we want them to do so while discarding the false beliefs to which they have clung for so many years.

In so many areas converts have come to us, because they are unable to be a part of a religion that has destroyed the beauty of the Liturgy, or because they don’t believe in women priests, or they cannot abide homosexual clergy. They come to us like one issue voters, and they are coming to us for the wrong reason. They see us as the “last bastion” of conservatism, as they see their Churches slipping into radical liberalism, and they are wrong. While we appear “conservative” we are really, simply traditional. The difference is lost on westerners who see our piety as conservatism. They are not coming to us as the One True Church, but rather as a reaction against what their own churches were doing. They didn’t seek truth, but movement away from what they saw as radicalism.

In their old churches, they held the Bible as the sole and inerrant source of truth. They often took the words in the Bible as literal truth, and find it difficult to see that the Orthodox Church doesn’t do that all the time. Orthodoxy encourages everyone to “read” the Bible, but tells us that it is up to the Church to interpret what the Bible says. Protestants were taught about the “universal priesthood” and that anyone can decide what any given part of the Bible reveals. More and more one is seeing this “individualism” creep into the Church.

You find people with minimum religious education deciding what is Orthodox and what is not. There is a Priest’s wife on the East Coast who has had several books published about herself and her husband’s journey into the Faith. Because she is an “author” she is looked at as a definitive “sayer” of Orthodox Truth. It is far from the case. Her columns appear in many Orthodox Publications. But if read carefully one can often find a “protestant” mindset in what she writes. Its slow creeping cancer into the vitals of the Orthodox Church.

Recently, there was a discussion about the possibility of the Church of Greece re-admitting women to the Order of Deacons. Women Deacon were a part of the early Christian Church, but had long been out of use. In many corners of today’s Orthodox Church, there was a violent uproar from the convert crowd about the fact that women “can’t” be deacons, because the Church “stopped doing that a long time ago”. They were wrong. In the late 1800’s St. Nektarios then a Bishop in the Church of Greece, ordained two nuns to the Holy Diaconate; in order to better serve their religious communities. St. Nekartios was reviled by many, but the Church of Greece never repudiated those ordinations. One woman, the wife of a priest said: “My husband is a Priest and he told me that the women weren’t “really” ordained, but that they were simply “blessed” to perform certain functions. Obviously her husband knows better than the Holy Synod of the Church of Greece. She was proved wrong.

There is a book called the Pedalion, the “Rudder”. It is a collection of all the Rules, regulations and commentaries created by the Greater Church in its 7 ecumenical councils, and all the pronouncements of various local councils. The book is meant as a guide for the episcopate of the Church in how to deal with the administration of the Faith. These newly admitted Orthodox, have taken up this book and have begun to bash others with it. Since the Church decides what the Bible reveals, they can’t Bible bash. So they have taken up the Pedalion as though it were Sacred Rit, and are using it to bash everyone else. It is not sacred writings on par with the Bible or the writings of the Fathers of the Church.

This brings me to the point of this “tome”… When coming into the Faith, I believe that it is important that the catechumen is given a whole year in the Church before he/she is admitted. Let them live the life of the Church in it full cycle. Let them learn that the Bishops and not the Priests are the definers of the Truth. It takes time to fully understand the nuances of our Faith. Learning the rules and regulations is a start, but the education process must be on-going. If education stops with Baptism/Chrismation, then we can have, and do have lots of problems.

A one year Catechumenate, along with continuing adult education ought be the norm. It is interesting that a one year Catechumenate was the norm for a very long time. It is only within the last 100 years, that less time has become normative. And… please understand that this doesn’t say that “cradle Orthodox” know it all. **They** need to be educated out of all the Pious Superstitions that was fed to them as they drank their mother’s milk. There are some really strange beliefs that are held by my relatives that are really quite contrary to the real Orthodox Faith.

Becoming Orthodox is a process. It begins with understanding who we are in comparison with other belief systems. It continues in an understanding the subtle differences in how we see “rules and regulations” and how we view our relationship with God as compared to the legalistic west. Once we know the rules and regs, we have to look deeper into the meaning of those words, so that we can understand that being Orthodox must give us a whole new way of thinking about God and his plan for us.

We must understand that the Church is made up of the imperfect lest we be like the Pharisee in the parable of the Tax Collector and the Pharisee.

The Orthodox Church needn’t bother itself with legal definitions of ‘right” and “wrong”, it needs to encompass our souls in the community of the Parish and to teach us that we aren’t individuals but members of a flock, all striving to achieve oneness with God. We are, and must, be a community of believers all joined on our path of Theosis. We must remember that the Orthodox Church teaches “Right Worship”, “Right works”, and “Right Thinking”. If we do this and practice this then together we will find salvation.