www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West Why are some converts so angry?

Dear Remie,

Yes, Limbo has been likened to an earthly paradise for those who die without baptism.

But I think you correctly interpret the descent of Christ into Hades and "Limbo" has often been referred to in the past as "Hades."

At best, it has become a word implying one is "neither here nor there."

Alex

We all know what kind of cookies they serve in toll houses.

Sharon

Sharon Mech, SFO
Cantor & sinner
sharon@cmhc.com

Dear Sharon,

As long as they're sugar-free, I'll have four.

Alex

As Father Seraphim Rose observed about his own Orthodox bretheren:
"'Cradles' have too much patience and not enough zeal; Converts have too much zeal and not enough patience".

Our goal, it would seem, is to find that blessed balance in between. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.
Subdeacon Randolph, a sinner

Sharon and Alex,

Toll houses

Your local puzzled Latin who does so need educating.

Toll houses are where cookie lovers go when they die. Don

(sorry Alex for stealing your lines)

Yes.. It is symptomatic of most converts who convert - away - from something and not - to something.

Many of this type of convert approach religion in the modern way of looking for it to change him. Looking for his religion and its practices - to make him a saint. If you spend time at school and study hard and apply what you learned - you become a doctor or something - right? If you join a gym and go there on schedule and do the rounds and repetitions - you lose weight and sculpt your body - yes?

We look out at the world and the people in it and its problems.. And we want to change ourselves and others - so we dedicate ourselves to our religion� we cherish its beliefs, we do its practices and we adhere to it with an inner dedication. We apply the church and all we think are its teachings to ourselves� and after an initial honeymoon� we find ourselves no happier. We then begin to recognize sin and hypocrisy in its members - after all - it is not working. Look at its failures to make its members - holy. It was all a veneer.

So we look around for another church, another set of beliefs and another set of practices. We bad mouth the last church - because within it we were not changed. Its beliefs and practices - did not change us from what we no longer wanted to be, into something much better that we do want to be.

Our problem is that we think of the church as, really, just another institution. Yes, it has God as its head - but we do not experience God on a day to day basis. God is an absentee Dean.

What is the problem? Have we not eaten the bread weekly? Have we not gone to confession but month after month we fall to the same secret sins - over and over until it is embarrassing to even mention it (yet again) to the priest? Do not I sit regularly and read the prescribed prayers? Do not I speak up for my church and preach it and Christ often, even when the occasion does not really call for it?

Here is our problem.

We treat holiness as a behavioral change. We want to notice a change in our behavior - after we have applied all the prescribed methods to change ourselves. We are in reality - Pavlov�s dogs. Our method is to manipulate and re-program our habits. The doctrines of our church we learn like there will be a test later. And when we do inevitable fall again to our secret sins - do not we re-dedicate ourselves to prayer (which we had slacked off on during the good days). Have we not cried very sincerely to God to change things around us - to smooth our way? And it is as if God were deaf. So THIS - must not be the �right� church or else all we were doing should have changed us. Now that it has not changed me - I can look around and see that it really has not changed other members. They are secretly jealous. Secretly proud. Secretly greedy. Secretly hypocritical. No - this is not the right church .

What is missing - is Providence.

Since the church began, it is the daily cooperation with a living Providence, that sanctifies man. It is the daily molding, by God�s hands, of the clay, which forms the man into God�s image. And ultimately it is our cooperation with Providence, that makes us friends of God and not just servants.

It is because a person does not know the doctrine of Providence, nor that it is Providence alone which effects the changes in us, that a person looks to apply �methods� of behavioral change to himself.

Again, I say that the type of convert you are talking about, is running away from himself, and not running to - anything. And it is the failure of changing himself, that he is ultimately angry at. It would not matter what church he joined or belonged to�. As long as he treats the church as if it were school of behavioral modification� and knows nothing about Providence.

Quote from -Ray

"Here is our problem.

We treat holiness as a behavioral change. We want to notice a change in our behavior - after we have applied all the prescribed methods to change ourselves. We are in reality - Pavlov's dogs. Our method is to manipulate and re-program our habits. The doctrines of our church we learn like there will be a test later. And when we do inevitable fall again to our secret sins - do not we re-dedicate ourselves to prayer (which we had slacked off on during the good days). Have we not cried very sincerely to God to change things around us - to smooth our way? And it is as if God were deaf. So THIS - must not be the "right' church or else all we were doing should have changed us. Now that it has not changed me - I can look around and see that it really has not changed other members. They are secretly jealous. Secretly proud. Secretly greedy. Secretly hypocritical. No - this is not the right church .

What is missing - is Providence.

Since the church began, it is the daily cooperation with a living Providence, that sanctifies man. It is the daily molding, by God's hands, of the clay, which forms the man into God's image. And ultimately it is our cooperation with Providence, that makes us friends of God and not just servants. "


Dear -Ray,

What a reminder that theosis or growth into the Life of God is not a behavioral science!

It is a growth process that is ongoing for eternity. It is God's working in us and shaping us. Our work is to cooperate, with a greater or lesser degree of success, with Him.

We are but a small part of the working out of the Providence of God.

Thank you for the reminder.

Steve

Dear Angela,

You are a smart cookie yourself!

"Toll-houses" are an Eastern eschatological expression to denote a kind of Particular Judgement following death.

Some Fathers had visions of two angels accompanying the newly departed soul through about 20 "toll-houses" each denoting a particular virtue.

At each toll-house there is a demon who is the antithesis of the particular virtue who argues how the soul sinned against the virtue in life. The angels defend the soul and ultimately, having "won the argument," the soul goes on to the next "toll-house."

Hopefully, the soul will get through all of them with, well, "flying colours."

The toll-houses are sometimes mentioned in the liturgical prayers.

The Mother of God, by tradition, asked Her Son to be relieved of this ordeal at her Dormition.

This is why, on the icon of Our Lady's Dormition, Christ stands over Her bier, holding in His Hands the soul of His Mother and keeping anything evil from even approaching it.

Alex

Thank you Alex -- light begins to dawn

BTW may I say publicly [ after holidays it takes ages to catch up the the happenings that have occurred whilst we have been away ] thank you for that Athakist you[ and the Administrator ] posted. Abolutely wonderful . I have printed it out and put it with prayers that have become favourites of mine.

Thank you so much for the time and effort [ not to mention the writing materials] put into it's composition.

May Our Blessed Lady, Mary ever Virgin, Mother of us all and our Mistress, keep you in her tender care.

Angela

Dear Angela,

Yes, the Administrator kindly consented to post that here and I am happy for the lives it has touched.

The Administrator was also blessed to actually be in the presence of the Mother of God Herself in Her miraculous icon of Pochaiv.

She wanted him there. And she brought him to herself!

Alex

Ray-

What a great post. It has personally given me some food for thought. Thank you.

Columcille

Yes Columcille,

No other doctrine is more central to the church. And all other doctrines only make sense, and take their efficacies, from it.

Simply stated the doctrine of Providence is that all things and all events are under the total control and governance of God. God either directly wills that this or that happen to us, or he allows this or that to happen to us (due to our stubbornness and desire for things our own way or due to our tremendous insecurities). More than just governance (for that makes it sound as it things and events have some existence on their own and God just manages them). As Saint John put it so well �without Him, came to be, no-thing.� which in the original Hebrew and Greek a �thing� included any event or experience.

Of course, Jesus said it too well in the Psalms �Behold, I have come to do your will.� and in the gospels �Your will be done.� �Who is my mother, my brother? He who does the will of my father.� expresses that we become adopted sons of God when his will is done in us. No longer servants (who do what they are told without understanding why) by now friends of God because of our knowing cooperation with God�s Providential actions and purposes. The one and only purpose of God through his Providential actions which form us as the potter forms the clay - is to change us - much deeper than intellectual learning of ways to act - but form us by the hammer of experiences that come to us each and every day.

It is the common path, that upon our journey to God, we at first see God�s will as rules, and laws, to follow. He is to us a moral teacher who offers us occasional hidden help if we act according to the moral precepts of the church. But if a person wishes to raise higher and become a saint (rather than just seem like one) then day by day, event by event� the Divine Doctor who knows us more intimately than we know ourselves - applies just the right medicine.

And what I am talking about should not just be stuck in terms of the Medieval saints nor concepts of the ancient East� we are all well aware today that if we peer inside ourselves - we are fragmented, divided against ourselves, and seldom does our apparent motivation hold up to scrutiny because beliefs, reactions, and ways to act and think are mostly motivated by the subconscious. We KNOW that. We do our best to change it by sheer will power or therapy (secular or religious) and manipulate or replace the �bad programming� with the �good� or socially desirable programming. We replace bad habit by creating good habits. And there is nothing wrong with this at all. However - if a person wants to skip the toll house or purgatory - they must accept it here. HERE - where we can cooperate with the changes God goads us (�Saul, it hurts you to kick against the goad.�).

Providence, as the actions and will of God applied to us - is available to all men of all times. It is not reserved for the Catholic or the Orthodox, but that same sun shines on all men. The means of sanctity are readily available to everyone�. The Jew, the Hindu, etc� even the atheist. There is nowhere and there is no time, no moment, when we are separated from God�s actions. As saint Paul said �I am convinced that there is nothing that can separate us from God.� simply because all good is directly will for and to us by and all evil that comes to us is directly allowed by God as medicine to cure us even in the subconscious layers. He - re-creates us.

For the Christian, there is no such thing as coincidence. But yet we need not know the plan and particular purpose of God in any particular event that comes to us - for that medicine to do its work.

If the common beliefs about God and his actions - were right - than the majority of men would be on their way to sainthood. Such beliefs as �God only occasionally involves himself if we pray hard enough� as if God sits off somewhere, ignored and forgotten, only to be moved to do something when enough heart felt pleading is directed his way - is a common belief. Intellectually - we may maintain that we believe something else - but as a society we see God in the way of Greek myth� where God is locked in battle with evil, the battle ground is the world, and the booty is the individual souls of men.

In any event, there are many good books about Providence as God�s daily will for us. It is the �secret� of the saints (in as much as it is ignored by everyone else).

http://www.thegenesisletters.com/Providence/Caussade/Default.htm


The efficacy of the sacraments comes to be with in the theater of daily Providence. God will not �save� us - if we do not want to be saved�. Eventually, in this world, if we wish to become more that mysterious image of God - it takes our knowing cooperation with his will daily in the small things. This is why saint Paul said we are slaves, purchased by Christ. Our daily life and activity has been under the yoke of Egypt (when we did not know Christ) - now - we may be doing the same things during the day that we had done before - but our new master (the one who wants us to do it now) is Christ. Once we recognize that our daily life is anything BUT humdrum, happenstance, necessity and drudgery - we find we are awash in the actions of God, each event personally tailored for us, as a fish is surrounded by the waters of the ocean. And now you know where the symbol of a fish - came from.

Christ is Risen!

Perhaps the reason we converts at times appear to be so angry is that we have brought with us the hurts and pains that drove us away from the churches of our birth. It is in the healing power of the Holy Spirit in the Holy Orthodox and Catholic Church that we are healed physically and spiritually and made whole. Eventually the old baggage is left and we can begin to witness in love and not anger. That is when our witness is most powerful, as we share the Healing that the Lord has given us in the true church.

Your brother in Christ,
Thomas

Thomas

What a very wise statement. I had been looking back at my life recently and wondering about where my journey was leading and in my confusion and perplexity the same type of thoughts kept rising. Thank you for saying it better than I could.

Maybe some of the anger is also due in part to the realisation that , in some respects, we have wasted valuable time - but was it really wasted ?