THE DEAD END OF
CONVERT INFATUATION

I’m the first to celebrate when men and women find their way into the true historic Church. Orthodoxy is the Church that traces its origin all the way back to the apostles in an uninterrupted continuity. I’m all for it.

Too many converts, however are so enamored with their new discovery that they burn their religious bridges behind them. This is regrettable especially when converts come out of evangelical or pentecostal Churches that hold much in common with Orthodoxy.

Such converts do their utmost to prove they are now really Orthodox by rejecting everything they were taught and they experienced, though it could have been doctrinally sound and orthodox. I’ve known converts, for example, who have disavowed the scriptural teaching on rebirth and the Holy Spirit baptism which was basic in their former churches.

Consequently, such infatuated converts – God bless them – in effect end up depriving themselves spiritually rather than enriching their experience of the mystery of Christ. As a matter of fact, in some cases converts suffer a spiritual loss by coming into Orthodoxy, as paradoxical as this may sound.

Converts in this category are ready to give up anything and everything from their religious past in order to gain Orthodoxy. Alas! They end up grasping on to the religious externals and structures of the Orthodox Church.

One convert recently confided in me that what was exciting in his conversion was the fact he found in Orthodoxy Apostolic Succession, the Ecumenical Councils, Church Fathers, Holy Tradition, and other such religious enticements. I would have been more impressed had he said that he had been drawn to Orthodoxy because of the apostolic power and testimony for the Gospel he had found in this church and that he was stirred and inspired to see how fired up for Jesus Christ people were in the Orthodox churches he had visited.

Such converts end up not really having an awareness of authentic Orthodoxy. It’s a conversion not to the fullness of Christ, but to an obsessive attachment to religious externals, like icons, incense, liturgy, veneration of saints, etc. They major in the minors.

Instinctively, they seem to have an aversion to anything that resembles renewal, revival and evangelism. They rend their garments in shock and indignation when they hear me say that the need for renewal in the Orthodox is very critical.

How can the true church need renewal? How can there be any “spots or wrinkles” in the Mother Church of the Apostles and Holy Fathers? The very thought of renewal or spiritual rejuvenation shakes them to the depths of their being.

The reason for such a reaction of spiritual insecurity is that they betray the fact they are not resting on the Rock, the living Christ. Their ultimate spiritual security rests on a religious abstraction, religious system or institution called the Orthodox Church.

Being unsettled spiritually in this way can be painful and threatening. I must confess I went through that stage in my earlier years in the priesthood. It was a traumatic experience for me to finally recognize that my inner peace and rest was not on the Rock, but on the institutional church.

I was a hard core Orthodox, a religious legalist of the worse kind, and I was miserable. My Orthodoxy was the source of my misery. There was a void in my heart and life I was not willing to acknowledge.

I had to come to terms with my spiritual immaturity. But it wasn’t easy. It required the supernatural intervention of divine grace and mercy to cause me to recognize the deception I was living and to welcome the new liberation in the Holy Spirit.

The Lord brought me into touch with the anointed writings of St. Symeon the New Theologian – and this, I am convinced, was an answer to my persistent seeking the face of the Lord on my knees day and night. His elaboration of the Holy Spirit baptism which is fundamental in his teachings prepared my heart to be opened to the Lord’s direct involvement, as I waited upon Him in fervent prayer and supplication.

I needed to recognize the void in my heart and life and that only being immersed in the Holy Spirit for inner catharsis could bring me into a face-to-face, life-changing meeting with my divine Savior. The lingering emptiness on the inside of me required a new liberating experience of Christ on my part. The Lord opened my eyes to see that my theology was cerebral and discursive. It was devoid of a heart and love relationship with Jesus.

The discovery that the personal experience of Jesus in all His fullness ultimately is Orthodoxy revolutionized my communion with the Lord and my priesthood generally. The Holy Spirit had to re-educate me, as my new teacher. He enabled me to distinguish what is absolute and immutable from what is relative and subject to change in Orthodoxy. He helped me to see the events in the course of Orthodox history in a new light.

Now I had to restrain myself from romanticizing and idealizing everything Orthodox. I could no longer sanitize Orthodox history, especially from the time of the rule of Emperor Constantine. It was less painful for me to separate what is unholy from the holy in Holy Tradition. It was as if the Lord shared His eyesight with me.

The Lord showed me what a job Byzantium did on Orthodoxy with its imperial absolutism. It also became clear to me how the 400-year domination of the Church and jurisdiction of Constantinople under Islamic rule influenced the final shaping and structuring of worship, usages, polity and practice in the Orthodox Church.

The bottom line is that now I could believe that Orthodoxy in its present twenty-first century dress did not fall from the sky in the upper room on the day of Pentecost! It became safe for me to recognize that apostolic succession, for example, is not necessarily a hallmark of Orthodoxy. I single this one point out, because one convert shared with me recently it was one item that drew him to Orthodoxy.

I can think of some non-Orthodox that do not claim any apostolic succession in the sense we do, as “tactual succession,” that is, succession of ordinations traceable to one of the original apostles. Yet they display far more apostolic zeal and fire than we Orthodox do. They truly have succession of apostolic power. Their apostolic succession lies in the succession of a life-changing impact on souls and on the unregenerate world at large.

I don’t have any problem with Orthodox claims to apostolic succession. I attach very much importance to it, but when you stop and reflect, St. Paul, by today’s standards, surprising as it may seem, had no apostolic succession, as we conceive of it. He received no commission nor special grace from the eleven disciples. As a matter of fact he gives extra emphasis to the fact that after his encounter with Christ on the Damascus way, he did not go to Jerusalem to present his credentials to “the pillars of the church,” Peter, John and James.

Following his encounter with Christ, Paul was ministered to by a simple layman, Ananias, about whom we know nothing. “I conferred not with flesh and blood” (Galatians 1:16) he said with no apologies. He considered himself as an apostle equal to the eleven.

Could anyone dare today to question that he indeed is an apostle of Christ in the full sense of the word, that is, absolutely equal in authority to the apostles Peter, John, James and the other original ones?

Would it be all that strange for a lay believer today in the Church or a new convert to legitimately claim to have been called by God to be an apostle by virtue of a special personal experience of the Risen Christ?

St. Paul records in the epistle to the Galatians: “…James, Cephas and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given unto me” (Galatians 2:9).

Layman and ex-persecutor Paul was gladly received into the company of the eleven apostles. They had the inner, unfailing witness of the Holy Spirit that Paul was unquestionably called by God. There was no need to catechize him in the faith and to give him time to prove that he had a genuine calling.

Their acceptance of St. Paul’s ministry was unconditional, not because he passed some required exam nor because he spent a designated period of time as a disciple at the feet of the apostles, the eye-witnesses of the Risen Christ. The apostles operated totally in the supernatural dimension of the Holy Spirit, that is, in the power of Pentecost.

I think we need more of that kind of Apostolic Succession today. St. Paul was not required to be ordained by the apostles. They knew that they knew that he was ordained by Christ directly from heaven without a human intermediary. But today’s Orthodox hierarchy would protest that to follow this kind of pattern would be subversive of established Orthodox practice!

In 21st century Orthodoxy to accept that a simple layman can be called and anointed by Christ immediately for evangelism and the ministry of the word is unthinkable. This is however a caricature of true apostolic Orthodoxy. It is unmistakable evidence of legal clericalism that has infected the Body of Christ and masquerades today as “holy tradition.” It accounts for the absence of the lay ministry.

To be sure, it is proper that we submit to our bishop. But that submission must be one of respect – not subservience. The bishop is ultimately accountable to the people of God. They are the guardians of the true faith.

Suffice it to state that in the ancient church the local bishop was elected directly by the local congregation. He was not elected and shipped in by some distant synod of bishops, a total stranger to the local sheepfold, as we find to be the practice today. Yet, this custom has become sacrosanct and is now part of “holy tradition.”

This priest is not an iconoclast, advocating a free-for-all. Far from it. What might seem to be extreme positions in this article stem from the intent for emphasis and for being corrective.

I raise a red flag here, because infatuated converts come in and reinforce religious legalism and formalism in the Orthodox Church, rather than bringing in some needed fresh air and vitality and welcome renewal in the Holy Spirit.

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