My
journey that finally brought me home to Eastern Orthodoxy started
many years ago started in 1992 when I was at Moody Bible Institute.
It was then that I first visited an Orthodox Church. As for any first
time visitor coming from a Protestant background, it would be hard to
capture the experience in any one word except different.
Even
at that time I could articulate that Protestants had thrown out too
many babies with the Reformation bathwater. What bothered me the most
was the Protestant abolition of the the sacrament of confession.
James 5:16 was so clearly missing. Some groups, realizing the loss,
started incorporating a form of it into men's groups, but the fact is
that it could never take off because it ran contrary to
individualistic Protestant values. Knowing nothing about Orthodoxy at
the time, I remember going to Roman Catholic priests and begging them
to receive my confession, but they refused because I lacked
sacramental communion with them.
In
1996 I converted to Calvinism, and I won't deny the emotional
stability that it brought to me. At last I had a relatively old
document (The Canons of Dortrech) that could give me a sense of
rootedness. But I still did not how to pray, much less how to live.
Around this time through the ministry of Leanne Payne, I was
introduced to the Anglican Communion and liturgical prayer. I began
praying the Book of Common Prayer. It was very meaningful to me, but
I only could practice in isolation. The fellowship I kept did not
generally value liturgy.
I
would run across articles or patristic writings that would remind me
that there was something more than Protestantism, but I was too
entrenched to ponder it deeply. In 2001 an interest in Orthodoxy
flared again, and I read a couple books introducing Orthodoxy. I also
visited a couple Orthodox churches, but there were none near where I
lived and besides the non-English liturgy was not accessible to me,
so I again put it aside. Eventually, I moved to China, where the
spiritual desert compelled to me keep digging wells deeper than
Protestantism. I took a 5 day retreat at a Roman Catholic monastery
in Taiwan. God spoke to me while there, but I did not feel a leading
toward Rome.
When
I went back to the mainland, I decided to retrench in the Reformation
since I could find no better alternative. A friend introduced me to
the free online courses at Reformed Theological Seminary. I started
eating at the table of Westminster. I read, memorized, and meditated
on the Westminster Standards, looking for a sense of rootedness. It
was good while it lasted, but I needed something deeper. I went back
to the Book of Common Prayer, but that well had already dried up too.
About
this time I was taking a course on Church history at RTS. The
professor's goal was to get to Rome as soon possible so that he could
turn toward Wittenberg, but he could not just completely ignore 1,000
years of history, so we visited Byzantium. And that it where I came
face to face with the early church. And I no longer could deny that
the early church had little resemblance to Protestant Christianity.
This was not necessarily welcome information because all my friends
and family and everything I had known was Protestant. But I had to
face the discrepancy. I began researching Eastern Orthodoxy with
desperation.
I
discovered the Horologion,
which provides a structure for the ancient Christian practice of
praying at fixed times of the day and began praying it as best as I
could with no guidance. I devoured these podcasts:
I
wrote many emails seeking guidance but kept getting refused because
of my physical location. Finally, one Father Dionisy in Hong Kong
responded favorably. He put me in contact with another Orthodox
believer named Christos in Xiamen. Christos and I started meeting
every Sunday morning to pray matins,
and he began to catechize me. I continued to read voraciously, but
these were the really important reading materials at this point:
- The Orthodox Way by Bishop Kallistos Ware, and
- The truly devastating Sola Scriptura: In the Vanity of their Minds by Fr. John Whiteford
At
this point I took a trip to Hong Kong to meet Fr. Dionisy and to
inquire how to proceed toward conversion since I lived in a country
where this faith was illegal, and it cost $300 to take an
international flight to the nearest Orthodox Church. He said that he
would accept my time as a Protestant as my catechumenate,
and that I could convert whenever I felt that I was ready. He alerted
me to the fact that I would have to publicly renounce Calvinism,
which gave me significant pause, and lent me two books both by Fr.
Peter E. Gillquist:
- The captivating Becoming Orthodox: A Journey to the Ancient Faith
I
went home and searched my soul for the courage to publicly renounce
that thing that had given me identity for 16 years: Calvinism. I read
everything I could find here:
http://orthodoxinfo.com/inquirers/inq_reformed.aspx
and just could not make the leap. Finally, The
Original Gospel by Fr. James Bernstein got me over the hurdle. I
realized that the primary attribute of the God I had been worshiping
was wrath, not love. And so that is the reason I had reduced the
glorious Gospel from a Christlikeness-creating love relationship with
God to a wrath eliminating juridical transaction. I was ready, so I
contacted Fr. Dionisy again, and he invited me to be christmated
on January 6, 2012 (Christmas Eve on the Julian calendar).
I
began to prepare for chrismation by participating in the Nativity
Fast. I typed my life confession since Fr. Dionisy's first
language is Russian, and he was concerned that he would not be able
to understand me if I confessed orally. I was sad that I would be
chrismated with no friend to witness it, so I asked Christos to
accompany me to Hong Kong, and he agreed. So we went to Hong Kong
together. Around 6 p.m. on January 6, 2012, I received the sacrament
of confession for
the first time. Then around 8 p.m. I received was chrismated. Shortly
after midnight, I received the sacrament of Eucharist
for the first time. And then at 1:30 a.m. January 7, 2012, the feast
began and went on until 3:30 a.m.
Although
my chrismation was the culmination of a long journey in itself, I
realize that it was just the beginning of another journey. But the
prospect of this continuing journey no longer scares me because now I
know that the God whom I worship is love, and I know that He has
lovingly provided me with the Holy
Tradition of the One,
Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Church to support me along the way.
