There's a lot
to Orthodoxy - thousands of years of well-preserved teachings, practices, and human examples - that can seem overwhelming for us Westerners who think we have to mentally conquer a thing before we can sign up for it. How on EARTH can you assimilate the whole of Orthodoxy, make sense of it, and then accept or reject it with your rational mind? Some might feel this task is too daunting, and might recoil from the idea because they can't handle the self-imposed pressure of figuring out how to "do it perfectly." We see a "legalism" flag going up, and so we flee.
Interestingly, the Eastern mindset out of which Orthodoxy came doesn't expect us to "get it" with our intellect, nor to "do it" perfectly, but to simply show up. To come to the table. To worship God.
But, unaccustomed to this "just come and see" viewpoint, we still tend to feel burdened by the pressure of "too much." It's too "high church" - too "ornate" - too complicated.
So, when a church says, "We stick with the simple truth - we've boiled it down so it's easy to understand without all the extras!" - Well, that feels really freeing.
But how much are we willing to give up in our pursuit of "boiled-down" truth? (And, how do we safeguard against "watering down" truth inadvertently?)
I like analogies. Consider this one:
Great, great Granny has a famous chili recipe, which has 47 ingredients and requires 3 whole days of simmering, resting, and flavor-mingling in order to prepare it "just right." Even so, few have been able to give it that "special something" Granny always could.
So, to make it easier to manage, we "boil down" the recipe to the essentials: ground beef, tomato puree, beans, salt, and chili powder. We celebrate its simplicity, and we reason that this may actually be even BETTER than Granny's original recipe. After all, the myriad herbs and spices in the original recipe almost overwhelmed the simple chili flavor we expect. We can all better focus on the meat and the beans, which is the important stuff, without all those superfluous spices getting in the way. They were distractions, in fact.
So, we celebrate our new invention of Granny's chili, and we proudly serve it up at every get-together in remembrance of great-great-Granny. As this new chili recipe gets passed down, others add their own "relevant" flare: the kids like it with spaghetti noodles! Cheese is easier to add as a topping than minced cilantro! And who uses dried beans anymore when you can just pop open a can? All these changes create a continually morphed "Granny's chili" that - truth be told - looks nothing like the original recipe.
That's ok, we tell ourselves.
Granny's chili was more of a symbol, anyway. We're keeping the memory alive in our own way, which is what Granny would have wanted...
But let's think about this. Sure it's still chili, and sure we've kept all the basics, but is it the same thing as Granny's chili? Not even close. And if our goal is to truly honor and remember great-great-Granny and her amazing chili, then does "boiling down" her chili recipe help us do that? Not a chance.
I fear the only thing this altered chili recipe helps us do is to fill our own tummies - faster, more easily, and more in keeping with our own tastes. If that's the goal, then bravo! The new recipe is perfect. But if there is a higher goal in mind, we might want to reconsider boiling down the original recipe - lest we make so many alterations and substitutions that we find ourselves eating something else entirely.
