When the Homily is about Immunology

A rather poignant question over Coffee

Alana offers such. In essence she wonders about the merits of converting to Orthodoxy as a sort of protest against protestantism - no doubt this happens. I couldn't get her commenting to work and so I thought I'd post my thought here.

I think the real issue is thus:

Has our journey into Orthodoxy been fueled by what we leave behind, or by what lies ahead?

In other words...is our conversion simply a recoil OR an embracing.

For me it began as recoil and ended in embracing. No doubt I was troubled by much of protestant theology and its seemingly being cut-off from history. Furthermore my own denomination, which I felt at least had some inkling toward historicty, was none-the-less treading swiftly down the road toward complete relativism (as a side note...it continues along this road today). I knew I could not stay.

Imagine, if you will, a seeker walking down the street, looking for a church to call home. Reading, listening, and exploring - he'd looked into the past....ahh yes that ever popular quest for an historic pristine Church. He is disgruntled and has many knee-jerks to wrestle with. Yet, he began the journey with the firm commitment to bring no presuppositions of his protestant past to the table. Fully willing to rethink what he'd been taught Christianity was all about. In reference to that elusive pristine church, he would say to himself, "I will make their God, my God and their beliefs, my beliefs."

Quite a suprise to discover "their" beliefs in regards to the Church. He didn't like them and yet how could he argue with them? Why accept so much else of what they believed and not this? Could he comfortably sit in judgement of those who came some two thousand years before him?

Anyway, the seeker walking down the street sees the Orthodox Temple. He is still disgruntled and somewhat angry...certainly in a mode of reaction to what he is walking away from. He'd heard and read about their theology and their rich heritage and he was interested. But, his recoil was no doubt fueling his entrance through those doors.

Now picture this seeker laying prostrate on the floor...flabbergasted and overwhelmed. The fuel of anger, resentment, and disgruntledness will no longer burn. None of that matters anymore. Where he felt as if he was dying of thirst, now he felt as though he were drowning. Suddenly he realized that he was no longer running away from something, but running toward something.

All of this to say, no matter how we start the journey, it should end with an embrace.