I've been Orthodox for over five years. How am I feeling now?

The ups and downs of being Orthodox, and experiencing some burnout

It’s been over six years since I jumped into Orthodox Christianity. In spring of 2020, Orthodoxy caught my interest, my spiritual sensitivities heightened in the midst of Covid mania and the Evangelical congregation I attended at the time being shut down. I read lots of books, studied, prayed, and started attending a local Orthodox parish. I was baptized in January 2021, and I’ve continued going there to this day.

I’ve written previously about how and why I became Orthodox. I haven’t written so clearly about where I am now. What’s changed? How have my thoughts about things evolved, now that the novelty has long since worn off? Today, I’ll attempt to answer that.

My engagement has changed

Back in 2020, and the Early Years in general, I consumed a vast amount of Orthodox content and media. I was eager to learn the theology, history, patristics, you name it. This is a pretty common experience for the inquirer/convert, especially in the current era. There is a heavy emphasis on the more rigorously analytical and theological aspects of Orthodoxy.

The problem was that eventually I hit the point of diminishing returns. I understood what I believe as an Orthodox Christian, and why I believed it, so I didn’t have much interest in going further into theological specifics. I had no desire to debate Roman Catholics (with whom I have vanishingly few connections or conflicts in the overwhelmingly Evangelical world in which I live) and Evangelical friends, family, and acquaintances didn’t care about my pivot toward Orthodoxy, let alone particularly challenge me on much of anything. Not wanting to be an annoying convert who starts arguments with people, I’d learned how to defend what I believed, and on here I’ll occasionally write an article touching on that sort of thing, but didn’t really need to go much past that. People I know in real life, especially outside of my parish, don’t really read my writing on here.

At any rate, I rarely buy Orthodox books now. I don’t listen to a lot of Orthodox content on YouTube or podcasts anymore, and what I do “consume,” tends to be more related toward pastoral topics or the daily grind of spiritual life than stuff related to complex theology or apologetics. This is a combination of several factors: laziness on my part, exhaustion with the various Orthodox personalities on new media platforms (many of whom I now simply find annoying at this point), and the realization that lots of head knowledge wasn’t, and couldn’t, make me a better person.

In another sense though, I think I got burned out on the sort of culture that emerged in the online convert sphere of Orthodoxy, or what could be considered “Ortho-bro” culture. The endless videos of dense theological topics and apologetics seems reflective of a tendency of Western rationalism to turn Orthodoxy into a tidy intellectual system, with an essentially systematized theology constructed out of patristic texts and other sources, in a manner that really just fits Orthodoxy into the same kind of overly-tidy container as you’d find Roman Catholicism, Calvinism, or Lutheranism, to give some examples.

As it turns out, highly individualistic Western male nerds have something of a tendency to take Orthodoxy and re-frame it in a way that suits their particular intellectual and cultural proclivities. Now sometimes left-leaning progressive Orthodox people will use this as a sort of retort to defend their own antics (“You’re just opposed to the LGBTQWERTYUIOP+ agenda because you wrapped an Orthodox veneer over your RIGHT-WING REACTIONARY box, unlike I, who believe in the Authentic And Totally Inclusive Orthodoxy!“), which is vastly sillier. Regardless, there is merit to the idea that heavily-intellectualized converts often miss the whole point of Orthodoxy and re-frame it in a way that it becomes a weapon in their toolbox, so to speak, more than a way of life.

However, the other end of Ortho-bro culture is represented by those guys who go extremely hardcore into the practices rather than, or in addition to, the theology. For this type, fasting, endless prayer services, and consuming vast amounts of relevant literature comes rather naturally. For me, however, it does not, and attempting to try this route quickly led to burnout and disappointment. It is also worth noting that the layperson Super Ascetic Bro is almost always a single guy, and thus unencumbered by the unending, practical challenges of family life (especially family life with multiple babies or toddlers, which is my situation.) He might grumble about not being able to find a wife, but really, if he were actually to marry and have kids, this would dramatically sabotage his ability to pursue the Orthodox Lifestyle.

My interests have shifted

My interests in Orthodoxy was motivated by all sorts of things, but it’s hard to deny that one of them was the fact that it gave me the framework to potentially treat my faith like one of my weird, OCD male nerd hobbies. I figured that being able to do that would sustain my faith in a way that I was never able to do in the vague, subjective world of Evangelical practice.

In a way, it did, at least at certain times. But here’s the thing: my interest in my OCD nerd hobbies ebbs and flows. And once I’d put together my Ultimate Prayer Corner and Shelf Of Orthobooks, I found myself losing a bit of motivation since I didn’t have quantifiable goals to work toward - just much more difficult, unfun, spiritual ones, where I wasn’t seeing much progress, just continual, repetitive discouragement. Dealing with constant disappointment and failure is just sort of the nature of this whole thing, so learning to manage the feelings around that is, practically speaking, a critical step for the modern American convert.

But anyway: as a result, things started to get… boring. I didn’t have more books that I needed (or wanted) to read, and instead of edifying me, Orthodox content just made me feel more upset. I’ve been through the whole yearly cycle of services over and over again, so there wasn’t much new to experience, aside from something like going on pilgrimage to distant monasteries, which for various reasons, isn’t particularly viable right now.

I don’t care about Russia

An interest in Russia never had much to do with my interest in Orthodoxy. I don’t care that much about geopolitics, even less so now that back in 2020. I’ve never been a Putin cheerleader or cared all that much about what he, or Russia in general, is up to. I neither believe Putin is Hitler 2.0, nor that Russia is going to save the world, both extremes of which represent common opinions On The Internet these days.

The fact that I ended up going to a Russian parish was mostly incidental: upon researching the churches in my area, it was the most appealing for a variety of reasons, but none of those included “because it uses some Slavonic” as a criteria.

Over time, I’ve become less, rather than more, interested in Russian stuff, and generally find gratuitous Slavonic in services to be tiresome (despite being less than five minutes total in our liturgies), especially considering that the percentage of our congregation as native English speakers has only increased over time, so that at this point I’d guess 60-75% of my congregation are Americans rather than first or second-generation immigrants from Eastern Europe or wherever.

I can feel a twinge of LARPiness at the way some converts go gung-ho into enthusiasm for All Things Russian, though it’s worth pointing out that this is heavily overstated, especially in the online sphere, compared to what I observe in real life. There is also far less Russia/Putin cheerleading compared to the online caricature: it does exist, but only in a very small measure, and is just one of various disparate socio-political threads amongst members of the parish.

Part of this disinterest in Russia tinges my involvement in going to a ROCOR parish. Sure, I love St. Seraphim of Sarov and the Royal Martyrs like any other well-adjusted Orthodox person, but the gratuitous Russian/Slavonic/Greek jargon involved in day-to-day Orthodox life feels like a case of “using an obtuse word like Epitemia/Zapivka/Vladyka/Matushka/Prelest when a normal one would suffice because it sounds cool.” This tradition also tends to put a lot of emphasis on the edgiest reactionary/most hardcore sorts of figures like St. John of Kronstadt, endless labyrinthine restrictions around subjects like married sexuality, and general sense of “we are more Orthodox than everyone else because of how hardcore we are about everything.” There is very little practical or spiritual accommodation toward people like myself, who are parents of multiple babies or toddlers, and as a result, the whole thing is utterly unappealing to my wife and family on a purely logistical level.

Personally, over this time I’ve gotten far more in touch with my own sense of heritage - Scots-Irish and Anglo ancestry, my roots in Texas and Appalachia, and thinking about my own socio-cultural background. I’m more interested in being rooted in who I actually am than trying to be more Russian, and feel myself often at odds with the parts of Orthodoxy that feel like Russian culture more than universal aspects of the Church. Which can end up being a lot. In an ideal world I could go to an Orthodox parish that served the Sarum Rite Liturgy or something and felt in continuity with how my pre-Schism ancestors would have worshiped, but I realize that’s probably not going to happen anytime soon.

Many drop out

It’s been surprising - or, maybe not really surprising - just how many people I’ve known from my parish, have dropped out: stopping going to Church, leaving Orthodoxy altogether, or converting to something else. Others brimming with initial enthusiasm just disappeared with no real explanation.

That’s the thing about Orthodoxy, at least in my experience: it exerts a very loose grip on you. If you want to leave, walk away, drop out, you don’t get much in the way of pushback. You can disappear, and nobody really seems to care. Is that better than a toxic, controlling environment where you can’t leave, where psychological manipulation and pressure keeps you in the fold? Well, yeah, it is, but regardless, something about this is a little troubling. You can get the sense that if you’re not sufficiently enthusiastic, you’ll slip through the cracks.

It’s not the fast track to holiness

In six years in Orthodoxy, I haven’t really gotten better. At all. I think I’ve become worse in almost every respect. If anything, it’s just highlighted how much worse I am than my prior, already negative opinion of myself in most regards, and seems to have contributed directly to my general psychological state, which could often be generously described as depressed.

I often wonder, was this worth it? Would I be better off at the Day of Judgment being a naïve evangelical than a lousy Orthodox failing to stop even the most basic of sinful behaviors? Maybe. It’s a bit hard to say. I often feel like the whole thing has just given me more rope with which to hang myself.

What can be additionally frustrating on this point is that when I raise such concerns with my clergy, the answers I get back feel an awful lot like gaslighting: “No, you are getting better, you just can’t see it!” This might be enough for some people, but I have a much higher-than-average self-awareness, such that I’m quite aware whether things are, or aren’t, the case in regards to myself. Of course, I easily might overlook or miss my flaws or things that I’m doing wrong, but I’m unlikely to miss when I’m doing something right, especially when I’m only interacting with a priest at church one or two times a week.

What I am experiencing is decided not what you often see in Orthodox literature, where some obviously very holy guy thinks he’s the worst of sinners because of some utterly inconsequential thing like pouring a slightly-fuller cup of tea for himself than the other monks. I know I’m likely reading too much between this lines, but this kind of rhetorical often comes across as jumping through some hoops as a roundabout way of feeling satisfied with yourself while circumventing more obviously Pharisaical pride. As a result it’s hard for me not to roll my eyes when I hear clergy, monks, etc. make self-effacing comments because it can come across as a sort of obligatory posturing. It’s rather more convincing when they take a more low-key tack, of just politely nodding when somebody compliments them or whatever and then moving on, and not going into the whole no-I’m-so-awful thing.

On this topic, I’ve had numerous experiences of meeting someone regarded by everybody else as Insanely Holy, or reading their books or listening to them teach, or whatever, and… feeling basically nothing. Of thinking this is just a guy (or lady). Yeah, I’m met some nice people who clearly have some spiritual quality about them - like my godmother. But it’s not such a vast night-and-day difference as hyper-zealous converts seem to make it out to be.

Tyranny by monastic rule

Hands down, the biggest friction I’ve had with Orthodoxy has been what I might call monastic tyranny, wherein the writings or musings of Elder So-And-So are treated as an infallible rule when he goes off on very particular notions of how you shouldn’t have fun, do anything enjoyable, have sex with your wife unless you run through a labyrinthine checklist, and so on. The subtext tends to be that if you’re enjoying anything other than standing in church services then you’re very nearly sinning if not explicitly sinning, and really you shouldn’t even be enjoying church services anyway because that probably also means you’re doing it wrong.

This was a bit hard to see coming when I was an inquirer, and only really becomes apparent as you spend a lot of time in Orthodoxy. There can be a lot of - I hate to use this term, as abused and misused as it can be by evangelicals - legalism, that can come across as the self-serving (or at least, not very self-aware) musings of monastics tying up heavy burdens to be borne by their rapt listeners, that are basically easy or natural for monastics to follow in their life situation but difficult or impossible for those of us with families to deal with, yet often indiscriminately applied to the latter category regardless. (I will cut some slack for texts explicitly intended for monastics, such as the Ladder Of Divine Ascent.) I am reacting here more to modern-day teachings/musings by Orthodox figures, rather than ancient ones - again, in keeping with my general affection for very ancient Desert and Church Fathers over more modern ones.

Nobody cares

I thought Orthodoxy would lead to some dramatic transformation in my environment, that those around me would be drawn to it. That didn’t happen. Now, some of that is certainly a failure on my part to actually live up to the ideals of it, which is pretty normal. But in five years, I’ve made absolutely no progress in getting my wife, children, or other family members to care at all or give it even the most cursory consideration. I have noticed that this is extremely common - for married couples with children, it’s almost always the husband who expresses interest in Orthodoxy, and the rest of the family either immediately converts with him, or simply does not care. This often leads to tension, and eventually, family breakup or divorce. I’ve known only one or two cases out of many where the wife who didn’t convert with her husband/kids, later converted. I know more cases which ended in divorce.

That is the personal level. What about the bigger picture?

Many in the Orthodox convert sphere harbor fantasies of America/the West becoming Orthodox en masse or something like that, but short of the society collapses / Strongman Warlord assumes power and restores order / Said Strongman then converts to Orthodoxy - which, granted, is a scenario with historical precedents - I don’t see it happening.

The problem is that westerners in general, and Americans in particular, are just too culturally antithetical to the demands of Orthodoxy for it to plausibly take hold, short of some dramatic upheaval (which is certainly in play.) The degree of rigorism and asceticism demanded by Orthodoxy, especially the hardcore ROCOR variety, is simply too at odds with Western European nature, and the culture it produced, for it to have mass appeal. Evangelicalism is the de facto Christianity of Americans because it’s lowest-common-denomination faith. It has no foundation for any sort of spiritual depth, but it’s easy to market and propagate; it harmonizes with the Western character. In cultures like Greece and Russia where Orthodoxy has been interwoven with the entire societal fabric for over a thousand years, it possesses a sort of cultural inertia, but there’s no such situation in the West.

The fact is, Orthodoxy attracts a very particular sort of person with a certain set of proclivities well outside of the mainstream cultural impulse of America as a whole. The “Ortho-bro” impulse, whether manifested in the form of rowdy, reactionary young men or tightly-disciplined families, seems to reflect impulses that once upon a time manifested in Puritanical or Calvinistic manifestations, but are now filtered through an Orthodox lens. As a result, you have parishes like mine seemingly exploding with growth, largely sparked by guys watching videos by social media personalities.

But here’s the thing, outside of my parish nobody I know is familiar with Orthodoxy or cares at all. Out of the hundreds of Evangelicals I knew from before I started attending my parish, I don’t know a single one who has converted to Orthodoxy or shown any interest in it. This fact makes me extremely skeptical of the idea that people are really mass-converting to Orthodoxy, despite the fact that lots of new faces are constantly showing up at parishes around the country. Maybe a notable percentage of above-average intelligence male nerds is converting, but the trend I’ve noticed is that a lot of these guys don’t have much else going on in their lives. I don’t have a lot of confidence that anything we’re doing is going to positively move or influence the culture; if anything, the bad rep of converts seems to be doing quite the opposite. The best-case scenario at present seems to be Orthodoxy existing as a sort of self-contained subculture.

The other factor is that I don’t see normal patterns of reproduction going on. Few of the single guys have found girlfriends or gotten married. There are “cradle Orthodox” girls around, but most of them are in middle school or teenagers, and I strongly doubt they’d have any interest in nerdy convert guys even if they were a few years older. There simply aren’t enough girls around for Ortho-bro convert guys, and only a very small percentage of said guys are interested in becoming monks. Interestingly, there are some single girls who’ve been attending or converted, but I rarely see single guys interact with them at all. The most viable pattern seems to be guys who start coming to church with their existing girlfriends or wives. Which leads to my next point.

Don’t Convert Alone

Here’s my spiciest take: if you are married, you should not convert to Orthodoxy unless your spouse is as enthusiastic about it as you are.

Out of at least eight families I know of (excluding myself), only one has ended up with the wife eventually converting to Orthodoxy. Three are married but with the wife not attending.

Pursuit of Orthodoxy can often feel like a bit of a vain pursuit done to the exclusion of time or effort that could be exerted toward my family or other pressing considerations. In general, Orthodoxy is a very introverted, introspective, self-absorbed manner of Christianity, which is perhaps a bit surprising given its “eastern” orientation and grounding in cultures that are more group/community-oriented than our individualistic one, but not surprising in the sense that much of Orthodox spiritual practice originates with solitary monastic life.

This seems like a large factor in the tension involved when one member (usually the husband) converts to Orthodoxy while the others don’t. It feels like the demands of Orthodox life clash with all other aspects of family life, such that it is exceedingly difficult to be faithful to both. Orthodox practice is likely to strike an unenthusiastic spouse as weird and self-indulgent, and nerdy husband being nerdy (Just a hunch, but I suspect INTJ personality types - same as mine - are dramatically over-represented amongst American converts to Orthodoxy.) Orthodoxy is basically an entire lifestyle transplant, which in some ways sounds great, but that inevitably clashes with the lifestyle of the rest of your family, if they don’t immediately get on board with you.

When I have talked about this kind of thing with clergy, the general message is along the lines of “don’t worry, just focus on your own spiritual life and they’ll be drawn toward the Church.” In my experience, and most other cases I’ve seen, I have not found this to be the case at all, and it seems rather like pouring more fuel on the fire. If you stop watching TV, playing video games, listening to music, and just want to go to church half a dozen times per week, this rarely impresses your family. It just makes them think you’ve gone crazy. I am, of course, far less fervent than that sort of behavior, but the tension is still there.

In my own life, I often feel like the pursuit of my Orthodox faith and pursuit of my family are in constant conflict with each other. To be a Good Orthodox Christian, I have to devote more time to long prayers and readings and going to church, which takes time away from my family. To give my family care and attention, usually requires me to do that instead of Church stuff, and the tension is there right from when I wake up in the morning when I try to find time for morning prayers in between the other family chaos and I get pulled in conflicting directions, resulting in a sort of emotional tug-of-war where I vacillate back and forth between one or the other, periodically, and end up constantly feeling emotionally and spiritually drained.

In all honesty, I’m not really sure that God is more pleased with the monk on Mount Athos sitting in his room all day trying really hard to experience the Uncreated Light, than He is with the well-intentioned Evangelical lady who holds many mistaken beliefs and maybe has some sinful habits but instead of spending all day spiritually navel-gazing, faithfully serves in a crisis pregnancy center counseling scared and anxious girls to not get an abortion, or caring for homeless people at a shelter, or whatever.

Does it actually work?

A big factor in my disillusionment with evangelicalism was that its practices, often vaguely defined and squishy, did not work. I didn’t have rapturous experiences of God in silly pop concert “worship” and the rhetorical performances by Charismatic Preacher-Man made no difference at all in my spiritual life and didn’t bring me closer to God. I’ve never regretted leaving the Evangelical world and harbor no sentimental attachment to its antics.

But, six years into Orthodoxy, I’m not sure that it’s worked either. I never had much of a hangup with “praying to Saints” or the Mother of God, or icons, relics, and holy water and blessed bread and all that. I found all the explanations of these things pretty reasonable and nothing at all like the caricatures presented by Evangelical rhetoric. But if I’m being completely honest, I can’t say that I’ve experienced those things making much of a difference.

Holy water and lighting candles at church did not save my mother from pancreatic cancer. Praying to the Mother of God has not helped my marriage or family. My day doesn’t seem to be noticeably better or worse based on whether I do a lot of prayers, a few prayers, or no prayers. Obviously, none of these things are like magic spells guaranteeing a particular result, and it’s possible that if I wasn’t doing all that things would be dramatically worse, but I have no way of knowing that for sure.

To make matters worse, fasting - a vitally important part of Orthodox life - has led to nothing but negatives for me. I am cranky and low-energy during fasting periods, and having to juggle the demands of trying to prepare fasting compliant meals for myself is just one more thing to deal with. I am not good at fasting anyway, so this is just one more area where being Orthodox has just introduced more stress and complexity to an already challenging life situation. It wouldn’t be such a big deal if my wife was Orthodox making fasting food and I didn’t really have to think about it, but once again, I feel like I’m trying to swim upstream of everyone else in my family.

For that matter, doing Orthodox stuff does not feel like it has brought me closer to Jesus. I don’t feel like I “love Jesus” more than I did as an Evangelical. This still feels, to me, like such an abstract and arbitrary statement with no frame of reference to my own feelings about anything. If I’m being really frank, my experience of Christianity has always been “accepting facts that I believe are true and trying to act accordingly” rather than motivated by Warm Fuzzy Feelings Toward Jesus. Reading books like Wounded By Love feels perplexing and discouraging because I’m seeing the thoughts of someone who Actually Loves Jesus. It’s easy to criticize Orthodoxy from the outside as a series of ritualistic hoops to jump through that creates a feeling of accomplishment, but the fact is that there are plenty of people who get the Fuzzy Jesus Feelings in Orthodoxy.

Closely related to this, the lofty goals of Orthodoxy like Achieving Theosis not only feel out of reach, they’re things that, if I’m really honest, I don’t really care much about or feel to be motivating factors. All the talk about Hesychasm and Experiencing The Divine Energies seems almost laughably irrelevant to me and my circumstances. I just want to survive another day without blowing my stack because I had to work a full-time job and do multiple loads of laundry, feed the kids at least one meal all by myself, go grocery shopping, mow the lawn, bathe and put the kids to bed, and then do some more cleaning up.

A long-term lack of correlation between doing Orthodox Stuff and positive outcomes has considerably dampened my enthusiasm for them. This isn’t to say that I think there’s no merit to it and it’s all a waste of time, but at least in my personal experience I’ve been a bit disappointed in how it’s all played out and feel like the benefits are heavily over-stated.

Confession is king

In an effort to focus on something positive for a change, I’ll point out that Confession remains one of the best things about being Orthodox. It fills a gaping hole for which no solution exists in Evangelicalism, and it creates a venue for close-up pastoral care from clergy.

Although at this point it feels like it’s rather beyond the skill of the clergy to solve all my problems via counseling at confession, at the bare minimum, it’s evident that they actually care for me, and that certainly is worth something. Likewise, I have much more of a sense of a shared community life/experience with friends and other congregants than I ever experienced in the highly-subjective world of Evangelicalism.

Unlike previous experiences at Evangelical churches, such as the one I attended in the mid-2010s, very little of my negativity stems from specifically bad experiences at my parish, where I’ve had overwhelmingly positive and good relationships with clergy and congregants. This is a significant and probably underrated factor in all of this. Despite representing perhaps the most hard-core and traditionalist vein of Orthodoxy - one where I sometimes feel myself at odds - my parish mostly has a warm and comfortable social environment rather than a harsh and controlling one.

Theological things

In terms of what I believe “on paper,” I still think Orthodoxy makes the most persuasive argument for being the true Church, and has essentially the correct theology and set of beliefs. Wondering if the Roman Catholics or Lutherans or, God forbid, the Calvinists have things right simply doesn’t keep me up at night.

But on the other hand, I find the rigorist view less convincing. I don’t think everybody outside the Orthodox Church is doomed to undifferentiated darkness, and I’m less convinced of the very hardline perspectives represented in ROCOR. Although I consider myself very conservative, theologically and otherwise, I’ve found myself very put off by the internal politics and associations in ROCOR, scandals and mishandling associated with them inside of the jurisdiction. If I moved to a different geographic location, I really don’t know that I’d go to another ROCOR parish instead of OCA or something.

I can often feel like the eagerness of hardliners and converts calling for the immediate canonization of Fr. Seraphim Rose reflects a hasty approach and is more motivated by the urge to legitimize their perspectives and biases behind a canonized, American-origin saint. The more that comes out around this subject, the less inclined I am to think that canonizing Fr. Seraphim is a good idea. I’ve certainly gotten value from some of his writings and think he’s right about various things, but there’s still this air of LARP-y convert about him, of an intellectualized analytical INTJ nerd trying to fit his peculiarities within the box of Russian mysticism, that I don’t find entirely convincing or believe was a total or even partial success. The various scandals and controversies around the monastery in Platina seem to bear this out. It has never seemed wise to me to let Eugene and Gleb, two men with a past involvement in the homosexual lifestyle, set out into the northern California wilderness by themselves. Forgive me for me presumptuousness, but I don’t think this was a great call by St. John of San Francisco. It would seem to have been far more wise to ask these men to join an existing monastic community and spend a decade or so under obedience before doing any such thing.

I’ve noticed a lot of people in the online space get really hung up on particular things - one I see come up over and over again is whether Orthodoxy actually teaches basically the Western notion of Original Sin, for some reason. To be frank I just don’t care much about these nitpicky arguments that involve endless quote-mining of this church father and that. These strike me as the mental antics of nerds who can’t sit still without needing to constantly find something to nerd out about. My personal hangups and struggles are almost entirely practical issues, rather than specifically theological ones.

Over the last six years, there’s been an explosion of rhetoric for and against Orthodoxy online as this is where most of the movement has been (again - out of all the Evangelicals I’ve known in my life, I don’t know any others to convert to Orthodoxy or show any interest.) Various Protestants have tried to make rebuttals against Orthodoxy, but when I see things like this slickly-produced but hollow “Failure of Eastern Orthodoxy”, the arguments just aren’t convincing, especially when they try to argue things like the Orthodox “downplaying the seriousness of sin” or face-palm moments like misunderstanding the altar of an Orthodox church as “re-making the Holy of Holies.” Much of the rhetoric is easily recognized as just incorrect when you’ve spend a few years going to the services, hearing the prayers, and living the life of being inside the Church - when you hear Protestants in damage control mode make psychological statements that are obviously contradicted by what you’ve heard a million times in church or prayed from your prayer book, you don’t need to be a theological expert or memorize dozens of patristic quotes to know why they’re wrong. To me, this is a more relevant point than getting lost in the weeds of Scripture-Fu or Patristic Judo.

Although sometimes Orthodox apologists can overstate their case, I still think the evidence strongly favors the Orthodox position, especially when it comes to ongoing developments like archaeological and textual evidence for the early veneration of icons.

Hindsight is 2020

Looking back, I don’t feel like my parish or priests really handled my conversion that great. I started coming in July 2020, and was baptized less than six months later. I didn’t have a lot of catechism, the priests seeming to think that my own self-study was basically sufficient. They didn’t seem to worry about whether my wife was interested or not, or whether I was really prepared. There was a lot that nobody went over with me. For instance, I didn’t know about the frankly over-the-top “member handbook” on the parish website. Nobody told me all of the various sex rules, which I was left to find out on my own over the next few years.

To be blunt, I don’t think they should have baptized me when they did. I should have been made to be a catechumen for at least a year, and should have received much clearer practical instruction on what day-to-day life was going to be like, rather than reading about mystical theology or whatever. On the bright side the whole catechumen program seems to have been entirely overhauled and is much more robust from what I can tell, so this may be less of an issue now, but I can’t help but feel like my parish didn’t exercise much discretion in dunking myself and two dozen other people at almost the earliest possible convenience. Maybe some of that can be chalked to the everyone feel like the socio-cultural world was ending in the midst of Covid mania, but the situation still rubs me the wrong way looking back.

I hate to sound so negative, but my overall mood six years in is one of weariness. The Orthodox experience stopped being “fun” for me a long time ago, and increasingly feels like it’s wearing on me and those around me. I often feel burned out, and the way forward feels increasingly unclear. My personal and family life is taxing, and Orthodoxy only seems to be adding to that, not ameliorating it.

Should you convert? I’m definitely not telling you that you shouldn’t! But what I hope is that some of my experiences might help inquirers work through issues that I didn’t consider or know about six years ago, and avoid diving into the world of Orthodoxy with excessively rose-colored glasses. Having a more measured set of expectations going in would benefit everyone involved.