Like many Americans, I lived a long period of my life without hearing the gospel. Perhaps I did hear it during those many years, but I surely did not recognize it as such. I was raised as a nominal Roman Catholic. Baptized in early infancy, but rarely attended church. I did my first communion in fifth grade, but did not attend church often after that. Others in my family had transitioned into the Presbyterian church. I did receive a little instruction there, but it was minimal. When I reached my teens, I was highly skeptical of it all, and I thought that atheism might be the way to go. Yet, there was so much atheism could not address, I just couldn’t embrace it.
After graduating high school I dabbled in eastern mysticism, and Greek philosophy. In fact, I thought I had figured out the role of religion. I unknowingly became a Platonist. What I mean is that I concluded that all of the miraculous and particulars of the given religions was simply the way that God spoke to primitive people in order to convey his purposes and instructions for our lives. In other words, there was a world a reflection of perfect forms, God’s perfect creation, and the religions of the world sought to convey this direction in life to particular people groups so that they might attain to those forms.
After I was married I began to attend the Roman Catholic church with my very devoted wife. I found some joy and peace there. I began to receive instruction, and for the first time I tasted something of God in Christ, but I was by no means clear or sure of Christianity.
At the ripe age of thirty-three I was presented with a western expression of the reformed Protestant gospel. It went something like this: Since you believe that God is perfect, is he not the perfect judge? Consequently, there is good and there is evil, and you will be judged for every good and every evil you have done. Moreover, just ONE evil will condemn you to an eternity of damnation.
Then came the question, is there any evil in your life? If there is, then there is only one way to avoid damnation, put your trust in Christ, that he will save you from the wrath of God the Father, because on the cross he paid the penalty for all your sins. So then, if I put my trust in Christ , then my sins would be overlooked because Christ had already paid for them, and there is no double jeopardy with God. My trust or faith equalled acquittal. It was at that point that I embraced the transaction.
While I later came to reject that view, with a deep hunger after thirty-three years of starvation, my search for the truth began, I devoured lectures and books. It took me Three theology degrees, two ordinations, and nearly twenty years to sort it out, but I eventually found the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic faith of the Orthodox Church.
Oh, if I only could have begun there! In Orthodoxy I discovered and different God, a different salvation, and a very different life and worldview. One where God did not need payment for satisfaction. A faith wherein merit was not the issue, not my merit nor Christ’s merit. I found the one true God, and what it means to be united to him. I had to relearn the meaning and role of repentence, faith, salvation, the image of God, purification, illumination, and theosis (God-likeness). I will be posting several articles about my journey to what the apostolic church refers to as “saLvation”.
