As a
priest, I am always concerned about why people leave the Orthodox Faith. Over
the years, I have noticed that the problem may have to do with the very modern
ways in which we think about our spiritual lives as personal journeys.
In
pre-modern societies, a person’s identity was forged almost entirely in
relation to his or her tribe. As a member of the tribe, your ‘journey’ was
well-defined through rituals of birth, coming-of-age, marriage, the making of
war and peace, and death. Your ‘journey’ was not your own, but one that your
ancestors had taken before you.
In the
modern world since the 18th century, the ties between individuals and
communities have largely been severed. As a result, the sense of life as a
journey has come unmoored. While your journey to maturity used to be
well-defined for you by your tribe, now you must invent not only the
destination (whatever constitutes ‘personal fulfillment’), but also the route
and the markers of meaning along the way.
I think
of myself as a typical example of this modern situation. When people learn that
I’m an Orthodox priest, they often asked whether I am Russian or Greek. The
assumption is that I entered the priesthood because it is my tribal religion.
In fact,
I was born in the Seychelles, raised in southern and eastern Africa, and
emigrated to western Canada. I chose to attend an Orthodox Church independently
of my family, who found my decision strange and alienating. Entering the
priesthood was very personal for me. It was my journey, one that I undertook
for myself, rather than as a part of the well-worn path that the members of my
tribe had followed before me.
In this
sense, then, the modern breakdown of the tribally-defined journey has been a
good thing. It has made it possible for people like me, who are outside the
Slavic, Greek, and Palestinian tribes, to discover the riches of our Orthodox
spiritual heritage.
But
there’s also a dark side to these personal spiritual journeys. When the tribe
no longer defines your journey into spiritual maturity, then every path and
every destination is equally valid, because you chose it, and it’s right for
you.
This
assumption can be very dangerous. If every path you choose is right as long as
it’s part of ‘your personal journey,’ then Orthodox Christianity, which
considers itself the way to human salvation through Jesus Christ, is no more
right than any other spiritual path. Worse yet, Orthodoxy may become just
another stop along your way to something ‘more fulfilling’….
In short,
when we uncritically adopt the modern understanding of the spiritual life as a
personally-defined journey, we allow for the possibility of reducing
Christianity to a purely subjective faith, dependent on our notions of
‘personal fulfillment.’ While the modern sensibility has broken down barriers
and allowed people outside tribal boundaries to journey into an encounter with
the fullness of the Gospel, it also has a dangerous tendency to make the
journey away from the Church just as valid as the journey towards it.
If we
have to talk about a ‘personal spiritual journey’ or a ‘journey of faith’ (and
it would be hard not to do so), we need to remember that as Orthodox
Christians, our journey and the destination—the fullness of Christ in the
tradition of the Orthodox Church—are not self-defined, but a given.
However
personal our journey to Orthodoxy may have been, once we arrive, we are called
to do something profoundly anti-modern: to conform the rest of our journey to
that of the spiritual tribe to which we ultimately belong—the Church.
While
Orthodoxy may have been a choice we made because it ‘felt right,’ our choices
as Orthodox Christians cannot be made using that same approach. Rather, we must
continually make our spiritual decisions within the context and understanding
of the Church, asking how we can choose a path that is consistent with that of
our spiritual ancestors – the apostles, the saints, martyrs, evangelizers and
the Mother of God, herself – those who have walked before us.
Only then
can we avoid the pitfalls of modernity, which too easily leads us away from our
hearts’ true home.
By Fr. Richard Rene
Source:
http://wonder.oca.org/2018/04/11/leaving-the-orthodox-church/
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