I’ve been thinking for awhile that I should write an essay that I would title, ‘Why Orthodox Converts are Obnoxious.’ And I know a lot of my non-Orthodox friends would really resonate with that, because they do find Orthodox people, including me, obnoxious sometimes. Because of two things: we insist on the perfection of what we’ve found in Orthodoxy, and secondly because we keep talking about the differences, we keep trying to distinguish Orthodoxy, or Eastern Christianity, from Western Christianity, and that seems unnecessary and rude and rejecting to them; they would rather emphasize the things that we have in common.

So I want to take a minute to think about those two points. The first offense is because it sounds like we’re saying the Orthodox Church is the perfect church, and everything here is absolutely the way it ought to be, and there’s no other Church like this. I think they naturally hear us saying that in the same way a Roman Catholic might talk about the Roman Catholic Church, that the institution, the infallible leadership of the Pope, that all of these things constitute a kind of perfection that belongs to that institution.

The thing I try to get people to grasp—and I have to say, I don’t think I get this through very well—is that it’s not like the Roman Catholic Church; it’s more like saying Buddhism. We’re talking about a path of spiritual healing. A package of spiritual disciplines that are effective if they are followed. That’s the thing that’s perfect, that the early Church worked out the way to theosis, and it proved so durable that it could go into any culture and remain intact, that it could actually fit any human being living anywhere in the world, anywhere in time. It’s stonewashed, as they say. It’s like it’s gone through the washer plenty of times now, it’s gotten boiled down to the essentials and to what will actually work. It fits human beings like sunlight and water and oxygen do. So we’re praising this way of spiritual healing, especially because a component of it is that you have a personal individual spiritual director who helps you adjust it to your individual needs. I think it’s perfect, it is the way.

That doesn’t mean that everybody associated with the Orthodox Church is perfect, though. The Orthodox Church is blessed to be the repository of this way. We are the Church that has continued it until the present day, and this is where it is found. On the other hand, you can’t draw the conclusion that everybody in the Church is practicing it. We can think of this way of healing as being like a health club, like the Bally’s health club that’s near me. A lot of people have cards, a lot of people have memberships, but not everybody goes and works out. And not everybody who goes and works out does it diligently enough to make a difference. Just having your club card doesn’t mean that you are healed, or are even in the process of healing.

I think this is further complicated by the fact that the main way that the faith is spread and taught, that this way of healing is taught, is that people learn it through listening to the liturgy. And if the liturgy is not in a language that they can understand, then they’re just not going to be able to do it.

There’s plenty of times that people have said to me, ‘Well, you’re saying this great stuff about Orthodoxy, I know somebody who grew up in an Orthodox church, and he says it’s completely dead, that there’s just no living, lively faith there at all,’ as if this disproves, you know, as if this is an argument against the treasure, the spiritual inheritance of Orthodoxy. So that’s one thing I see, that consistently there’s a misunderstanding that we’re saying we have the perfect institution, and that everybody in it is on board with this program, that everybody in it is a saint. Not at all.

Nor are we saying that there are members of other churches out there who know nothing. I often learn a lot from Roman Catholic friends and protestant friends and non-denominational friends. Their love of Jesus Christ can be so sincere and so strong that many of us Orthodox should take a lesson from that.

So why are Orthodox converts obnoxious? I think the first reason is I think they mishear us as saying something akin to, ‘The Pope is infallible, the Roman Catholic Church is the right institution’; they think we’re saying sort of the same thing about the Orthodox Church. We’re actually saying something that’s different.

The other reason that I think Orthodox converts are obnoxious is because we are so frequently trying to differentiate this new faith we’re in from what we knew previously. We are people who many times did a lot of studying before we joined the Church. We’re coming from a tradition that we knew very well, we’re going into this brand new thing, and for years and years it seems like you’re always learning something new. You’re always discovering, ‘This word means this in my old tradition, it’s something completely new in Orthodoxy.’ And so you spend a lot of time trying to get the hang of the new grid or the new paradigm. And every time you figure something out, it is so delightful; it is so enjoyable to see something new, to get that new insight.

And so when we talk to people, we will talk about the difference, and their impulse is to say, ‘Well, really we’re all alike. Really we all are worshipping the same Lord. Really it all means the same thing,’ and Orthodox converts are often eager to say, ‘Well no, it’s a little bit different,’ because those differences have such profound implications.

I’ve come to think that probably the underlying thing is that Western Christianity was built on a Latin translation of the Bible, of the New Testament. And the New Testament was written in Greek, the Church councils were held in Greek, most of the early Church writers wrote in Greek. But Western Christianity was built on the basis of this translation into Latin in about 380 or 400. And it’s just a different worldview. A language creates a worldview. There are terms that had no equivalent in Latin.

So even if you’re talking about the Reformers in 1500 or 1600, they have inherited a whole framework for looking at the New Testament that was brought to them by the centuries and centuries and centuries of commentaries and Bible thinking done on that Latin translation. So even when they go back to the Greek, they can’t see it with the freshness that Eastern Christians see it.

So the other point that I wanted to make was: why do we seem so obnoxious? I think it’s parallel to why adolescents seem obnoxious, or even are obnoxious. Adolescents are trying to comprehend their unique identity, trying to break away from the childhood family sphere and understand who they really are, and how they’re different from who their parents and uncles and aunts and friends and extended family thinks they are. They’re trying to establish this and clarify it in their own minds. And they’re trying to do this, not in the face of hostility—now that would be difficult, but a lot of times that’s bracing and clarifying. They’re trying to establish it in the face of affection, that mom and dad look at him and smile, and think, ‘He’s going through a phase,’ and, ‘Isn’t it cute,’ and, ‘He’s still our little boy,’ and, you know, and Grandmom and Pops, and Uncle Joe, and they love that little guy, and isn’t it just cute how he’s going through this phase.

Well, the little guy, you know, smoke is coming out of his ears, he’s so outraged at this, but he has good reason. He knows that this is a change that is deeper than they know, deeper than they will acknowledge, and that it’s going to be a permanent change, and that as he’s growing up, as he’s going through those teen years, he’s turning into a different person. He’s beginning to become the adult that he’s going to be. And their affection, their affectionate attempts to deny the differences, feel suffocating and end up making him angry. So this is why the adolescent is sullen, or even outspokenly angry. This is the only way that he can see to differentiate himself.

Well, you know, I feel that same impulse myself sometimes when I’m talking to protestant friends. They love the Lord, I love the Lord. I say, this great thing I discovered in Orthodoxy isn’t it so eye-opening, isn’t it mind-blowing? And what they often want to say is, ‘Well, we’ve got that.’ And I have to say, ‘No, you don’t, actually. You don’t have that.’ Or, ‘You have parts of it but you’ve mixed other stuff in with it.’ Or just, ‘You don’t understand what I’m talking about.’

Well, naturally, the more I insist that I’m talking about something different, it’s like the adolescent sulking at the Thanksgiving dinner table. Everybody wishes he would just go back to being the sweet little boy he was. And he’s not going to do that.

So that, I think, is sort of the psychological reason, rather than the intellectual reason, why converts to Orthodoxy are obnoxious. And if I find a cure for that, I’ll tell you about it, but I haven’t yet. So fellow Orthodox converts out there, let’s try to be a little bit kinder, a little more patient and keep in mind, at least, how very obnoxious we can seem.