Leaving Protestantism and Facing East
“For now a great many people listen to and question us to find fault, but it is most difficult to find a soul that loves learning and seeks the truth as a remedy for ignorance”
The last two years have been a spiritual roller coaster. The turmoil truly began around mid 2014 without me knowing it. I was simultaneously working full-time while finishing my last class to complete the requirements of my undergraduate curriculum and finally graduate. Church around this time had begun to become boring. The worship became hard to sing along to because I started to become less satisfied with the shallowness of the lyrics (think Hillsong-style music) and the sermons. The sermons were so shallow that I finally reached a point where I thought I had learned everything there was to learn about Christianity and eventually started to skip church once a month so I could stay home and read a book instead and dive deeper into topics I was thirsty to learn more about. A week turned into two over the next few months and eventually I stopped going to church altogether. I learned more from books and podcasts anyways. The church(es) I attended had nothing else to offer so I went to look elsewhere. I never stopped praying nor did I stop reading and learning about God, I had simply stopped attending church because it had nothing else to teach me. (I acknowledge this approach was selfish and incorrect, but the point is to tell what happened and not what I think about what happened).
Fast-forward to 2016 when I met my current wife. She was and still is a strong Catholic and I was at that point a strong non-denominational Protestant. Once we found out more about our Christian backgrounds we thought things were not going to go well between us and we almost ended our courtship. However, we continued to speak and I resolved myself to prove her wrong about her obviously mistaken Catholic beliefs. Through this goal I went on a journey I never dreamed I would ever embark on.
Over the last two years I have encountered the voices of the early Christians and have read the writings of people I never thought I would. I did away with RC Sproul, John Piper, John Edwards, and the writings of other (relatively) modern protestant Christians I looked up to and instead encountered the writings of Basil the Great, John of Damascus, Cyril of Jerusalem, Justin Martyr, St. Cyprian, John Chrysostom, and many others. Each encounter with these authors was like walking into a mine field for my Protestant beliefs. What I was always raised to believe to be inventions of the Catholic Church turned out to be beliefs and doctrines that the early Christians have for the most part always held (e.g. the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the necessity of baptism for salvation, the role and importance of the priesthood, the importance of the Church as an institution and not just a mystical body, Apostolic Tradition) and that older Christian traditions such as the Orthodox, Coptic, and Catholic Churches still hold to this day. I have come out of the mine field with my Protestant beliefs shattered. At this point the analogy breaks down though. The journey hasn’t been like a mine field in the sense of bringing forth death (though my Protestant friends reading this probably think I’m heading down the wrong path and forfeiting my salvation), but has been more like a metal put through fire where impurities in my belief systems have been burned away and correct ones have been made stronger and more refined.
At this point I can no longer call myself a Protestant Christian. What am I then? The answer is: I don’t know yet with full confidence, but I have my leanings. My whole life I grew up thinking there were only two sides of Christianity: Protestantism and Catholicism. It wasn’t until about a year ago that I found out the Orthodox Church existed and it made the formula more complex. It added a whole new dimension to Christianity I never knew existed. Like an Orthodox priest named Fr. Barnabas Powell says (roughly quoted) “I felt like my whole life I lived in a single room until one day somebody forgot to close the door and I walked out to find out there was an entire undiscovered mansion I didn’t know had existed”. I honestly didn’t know Christianity was so large and so rich. This led to more reading and more learning.
Over the past two years I have found all sorts of useful resources and have encountered modern Orthodox authors to learn more about Orthodoxy such as Fr. Patrick Henry Reardon, Frederica Mathewes-Green, Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick, St. Paisios of Mount Athos, and Fr. Josiah Trenham along with quite a few Catholic authors who I respect and admire deeply such as Stephen K. Ray, Dr. Scott Hahn, Fr. Mitch Pacwa, Trent Horn, and Bishop Robert Barron. All of these authors have only served to further enrich my life and mind as well as to help cause some confusion as to whether I should become Orthodox or Catholic.
At this point I’m not sure which one I am. I just know my Protestant faith is no longer sufficient. I am at a fork on the road where at the end of this journey I will either become a Catholic or an Orthodox Christian. Both have their fair share of pros and cons, but I am being drawn towards Orthodoxy. This paragraph deserves its own separate post but to make this short what is at the core of the reason for Orthodoxy is the spiritual life it offers. We tend to think too much in the West and tend to confuse (at least I do) theological and philosophical pursuits with worship (though worship should incorporate these into its lyrics and liturgy). I have fallen in love with the liturgy of the Orthodox Church and its worship services (they use the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom which was written in the 5th century), its prayers, and the mystical aspect of it among other things. I have found in it something that I have not found in Catholicism and that is deeply misguided in Protestantism (especially in the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements). I’m tired of just reading; I want to start living, but I want to live using the proper guidance set by the Church and not just by what I think is right anymore.