If we could suspend our disbelief, just for a moment...

I've had some conversations lately about Orthodoxy, and in each of these conversations I seem to recognize a trend toward doubt, skepticism, or just well-intentioned caution.

In these conversations, ardent Christians would use those things we assume to be basic truths/priorities of Christianity as yard sticks against which to measure the Orthodox church:

"Do they believe in faith alone?" 

"Do they teach that you should pray to the saints?" (Because only God is worthy of our prayers...)

"Do they venerate Mary?" (hushed tones...this is a serious offense...) 

"What about evangelism? Do they have any programs to reach the community?"

"What about fellowship? Is there any chance to grow personally if all you're doing is following the old traditions of dead religion?"

"How are people supposed to relate to it when there is so much to understand? Is the gospel message even preached?"

I totally get it, because I was not only cautious but down-right antagonistic when I first heard the claim of the Orthodox church to be the "original" and "true" Church. (I mean, who actually makes a claim like THAT these days? We Evangelicals know better...)

I look at all of these questions, and I remember.

I remember what it was like to be stuck in this whirlwind of doubt.

I was telling a friend recently that for me, there was a "switch" that got flipped somewhere along the way, and I now see differently. Not only that, but it feels as though I've crossed a bridge, and I'm unable to go back, even if I wanted to.

At the time I was annoyed with myself that I couldn't find the words to talk more about that phenomenon. What WAS it that "flipped the switch"? I've learned more about the church, for sure...but it wasn't one piece of information that changed my mind or left me convinced.

Recently when going through some of my notes written in the margin of The Way by Clark Carlton, I landed on a quotation from a book by Peter Gillquist that seemed to hit the nail on the head. (Peter Gillquist is the author of Becoming Othodox, which details the journey of a small group of evangelical Christians in search for the true church of the Bible...and how their search brought them instead to the Orthodox church.) 

Gillquist wrote:

"Ultimately, the change came for us when we stopped trying to judge and re-evaluate Church history, and for once invited Church history to judge and evaluate us....

Instead of asking if Christian forebears like Anselm, Augustine, Athanasius, and Chrysostom were in our Church, we began to ask if we were in theirs!"

What if, instead of charging into Orthodoxy with a list of my own priorities and immediately looking for all the ways it must be wrong, I simply sat at her feet and tried to learn from her?

Friends, I want to suggest that we put down our yard sticks. Stop measuring the Orthodox church based on our own beliefs and assumptions about what church is or should be. Wipe all those assumptions away and really LOOK.

I suppose the fear here is that if we go into something blindly, we might get swept along into some heretical version of the truth and not even know it. But if we'll take some time to learn more, to read more, to listen more, to pray more....I think we might be surprised.

But first, we've got to suspend our disbelief.