What a long, strange trip it’s been (part two)

Since I've got the first part out and let others see that, I'll now put out the conclusion for what has really turned into something of a novella.

Here is the second part of my long and strange spiritual journey. I left off where we had moved to a reformed view of Christianity, and for about 10 years, that was where we were. Some of the aspects of that reformed view changed within that time due to reasons of what particular people taught or what I would read, but overall the main points of faith and belief were there.

Apparently God recently decided I had stayed in that theological perspective long enough and I was ready to start moving down a different theological road in my life, because a little over a year ago, I was moved and challenged again. This time, the call and direction I received is towards something that many might look at and call far more ‘ritualistic’ than any of the previous churches I’ve been in, but in my opinion, it is something that as a whole is so much more beautiful and holy. No, I didn’t join the Roman Catholic Church. I went and joined the Orthodox Church. I think most people have heard it identified as Eastern Orthodox Christianity.

Why would I do this? The whole challenge began with a simple, yet profound question: where does a particular church’s authority come from? Most Protestant churches would claim the Bible as their sole authority for their teaching. However, the Bible can’t be the end all and be all of faith from the time of the Apostles to today, because what we now know and understand as the canon of scripture wasn’t identified and brought together until the late 300’s AD (or CE if you prefer). So, how did the church deliver these teachings to all the different believers in the times prior to the Bible being canonized? Or more importantly, how did all the churches in Palestine, Egypt, and modern day Turkey keep the teachings and faith from the Apostles forward? I did a lot of reading on Church History over those two years, and looking at the lives of those who lived during those times. What came out on the other end of these studies was that the faith and the church were held together through the oral and written teachings of those that were generally known as the church fathers, and were furthered by what was put forth in the councils of the church. In the Orthodox Church, their teachings are based on what was passed down from the apostles to the churches, and the councils reinforcing those teachings. This (again to me) is the church that has survived intact from the beginning until the present day. It has survived persecution at almost every turn, whether from internal or external forces. Also, if you think about it, we all rely upon or give ourselves over to some other authority than the Bible at some point. It doesn’t matter whether it’s Luther, Calvin, the Popes, or someone other modern (John MacArthur comes to mind, although one could put in almost anyone who is teaching), we look to their perspective and interpretation as a guide for our own understanding.

Once I got to that point, I started to look at what Orthodoxy teaches. As I’ve studied those positions, many of the verses and stories in the Bible have taken on new meanings, and some well known ones have made more sense. This has led to a change in how I’ve viewed many of the different doctrines and issues within the church. Seeing salvation, grace, mercy, even sin through the eastern perspective rather than what is categorized for lack of a better term as western has given me more peace than I have had in a long time.

The worship has taken a bit of an adjustment, as other elements have been introduced that I haven’t experienced before (Mary as the ever-virgin Theotokos, icons, and incense to name a few), but when you hear and read the Orthodox explanation for these and other things, you begin to realize that many things aren’t done simply for the sake of ‘tradition’ (although there are some smaller items that do fall into that category), but have a root in history and theology that make them all the more wonderful.

I will not say at this point that I’ve completed this journey. I have come to understand that my journey won’t be complete until I die. But what I can say at this point is for the first time, I have a sense of anticipation in thinking about where this journey is taking me. In the past, more often than not there was confusion (particularly in the charismatic phase), dread, or a feeling of, ‘now what?’ It will be interesting to see where the future takes me.

What a long, strange trip it’s been (part one)

This is a blog post (two actually) that I've been working on for quite some time. At this point, I've gotten it to about as good as I'm going to get it before I start having diminishing returns in editing. Anyway, without further ado....


I’ll apologize up front for the Grateful Dead reference, but the phrase really fits for me personally. What trip am I talking about? I am referring to my spiritual journey. It seems like I’ve gone (looking at things from a liturgical perspective) from a very structured denomination to what looks like a very unstructured denomination, and now I feel like I’m going back in the structured direction (and going into even more structure than I was before). In this post, I will lay out where I’ve been up to recently, the next post will be where I’m at now and where I see myself going from this point.

For my starting point, I was raised in the Lutheran Church. What I mean by this is my family was (is) Lutheran, and as I grew up, I went through baptism, communion, and confirmation there. Looking back, I can’t say during my growing up that I can really remember my having any issues with the teachings and theology of the Lutheran church. However, I do know that I always felt that I was different than all the kids my age (or my general age range) who were going through communion and confirmation. Looking back, I think it had to do with the fact that I knew how many of those other kids acted when they weren’t at church (and sometimes when they were), and to them it seemed to just be a formality, something that was expected of them. There was no thought or feeling behind it. To me, however, it was something that I thought about and did have feelings behind what I was doing. One of the funnier things we did was to visit other ‘major’ denominations holding services in the city I lived in (you would think that was a way to lose your younger members, instead of confirming their beliefs and staying in the church). We visited Catholic, Orthodox, Jewish, and Baptist churches among others. For me, I had a difficult time understanding why these other people went to all these other places to worship, and why those people believed (or seemed to believe) different things. I chalked most of it to ‘that’s just where they’re at’. Some of the more radical denominations I just figured were people who really wanted to believe something different. Little did I know that this was just the beginning a very wild and varying journey of faith and faith practice.

Several years later, as I began the relationship with the woman who is now my wife (has it really been almost 18 years since we met?) our discussions were often about Christianity. Her views on Christianity and the Church (whether Lutheran or otherwise) began to question and test what my beliefs were. Were those beliefs really different than mine? No. But how they were being ‘played out’ in the church I was in was beginning to become more of a concern and challenge. We did get married in the Lutheran church, but other than that, we really didn’t go afterwards. We did go one final time at Easter. The sermon delivered that morning left us both feeling we could not return. One of the ‘high points’ was the statement that Christ really didn’t have to die on the cross. Sorry, but when one of the main points of the Christian faith is put in an ‘overkill’ or ‘not necessary’ category, to me you’re just asking for trouble.

After we agreed not to go back to the Lutheran Church, we started to go to (I believe) an Assemblies of God church. The issue of joining that church became moot as I went active duty military and we moved away from Minnesota. We continued to look for churches of that type for the next year, but we ended up ‘falling’ into the on post church life once I got stationed in Germany. We kept studying and trying to understand things from the perspective we had been taught, but we had kind of ‘stalled’, as generic ‘protestant’ services tend to be bland and diluted. After the birth of our twins, and subsequent move back to the states, we then became involved in a full ‘Pentecostal’ church, complete with speaking in tongues, slaying in the spirit, and so forth. After a few months of our attending that church, which included a week of ‘revival’ meetings, we began to wonder about the truth of the whole movement. After some study, prayer, and consideration, we ended up leaving the movement entirely. It was a very difficult time, as we ended up losing almost everyone we had as friends at that time.

We then moved into a more ‘moderate’ or sedate version of Christianity, with the ‘reformed’ or for those who would better understand it as ‘calvinistic’ faith. Our perspective of salvation and other major aspects of theology fell into a ‘calvinistic’ view and generally going against the ideas of a more ‘arminian’ perspective. This is where we were at for about 10 years. These years were spent listening, reading, and studying the ‘doctrines of grace’ and other aspects of reformed theology. It was interesting and fulfilling, especially in terms of intellectual exercise. There were many times however, when I would wonder if I was ‘missing something’. My head was there, but there were times that my heart wasn’t. There were also times when the intellectual part (reading and studying) were difficult and confusing. It would be when someone would tell you not to listen to or follow the teachings of a certain person, because of a recent statement or writing they made. You would then be left wondering if everything they said and wrote was ‘wrong’. I’d be left wondering sometimes how much of my beliefs would need to be changed to remove the error that particular person had put in to my belief system.

I’m going to end this post here, and (hopefully) the next post will go through this most recent move on my journey, and at least part of the basis for it. ---