Coming in Broken

Even before the influx of people coming into the Orthodox Church after 2020, the Orthodox Church had a little bit of a reputation – at least in the United States – of being the church for people who really studied up on their faith, people who have read history and theology and such, and can debate great thinkers and theologians. Several years ago, I read the report of a bishop who suggested that when it came to opening churches, special attention should be paid to college towns, where in all likelihood there were young, educated people who, after sufficient study, might end up being interested in seeing what an Orthodox Christian church is actually like, and after that, might be convinced to pursue membership.

As I’ve spoken about before, this is not how I came into Orthodoxy. I think that there are certain aspects to theology that are more interesting than others, but I’m generally not a theology person. This ends up being something that many other recent converts don’t really understand well. Just recently, for example, an author on Substack asked a question to his readers asking which of the Church Fathers was most influential on them, particularly in their decisions to become Orthodox.

I don’t mean to be a completely annoying person online, but I felt I had to pipe up a little just to remind everybody that our saints aren’t all just theologians, that one can be completely and authentically an Orthodox Christian without ever reading a page of theology. Historically, a lot of reading was done in church because even if people could read, Bibles were very expensive, and so many people along the way became saints, probably rarely reading the Bible as well.

I’m still kind of processing something that happened on Sunday, and I hope to hash out a little of what I’m thinking about here. I was at coffee hour after church, and I ended up sitting next to a young man who had freshly experienced a huge trauma, and his distress and sorrow were palpable without him having to say a word. This young man obviously was of a lower social class than most of the people at the church, though no one there was treating him unkindly.

The priest of the parish had obviously had reached out to this person and had talked to him a bit. Sunday almost certainly had been the first time this young man had been to an Orthodox Church – and, who knows, maybe church of any kind – but he said he’d definitely be back. For many people, they say this because their curiosity has been piqued or something seemed very beautiful or right. With this young man, though, I got the impression that he said this because without it, he felt as though he might just drown as a secondary victim to the recent tragedy if he didn’t have some little thing to hold on to.

I’ve been praying for this young man all week. I hope he is able to not get sucked into a maelstrom of despair. I hope he is able to forge a better relationship with God, and with other people around him.

The thing is, were he to eventually come into the Orthodox Church, it would not be because any book or writer made a great argument. It would be because there were a couple of people who reached out to him in Christ-like love in what’s probably the darkest hour of his life.

Maybe this is too much to assume, but I don’t think he’s the type who would be interested in hard-core theology or the things that get debated endlessly online in “Orthodox” forums. I think some people look down on that, and I’ve experienced some of that myself. But I also think we ought not forget that God has a special place in His Kingdom for those of us who come with nothing to be proud of, that when we come broken and with nothing to offer to Him but ourselves, there is a special grace in that; that for all these types who like to demonstrate their “religiosity”, it’s a man who is willing to come to God on his knees, in tears, bloodied, and broken who is at a point to be healed by a God who loves him.

I really don’t want to say too much about the situation, but there’s a lot here that has given me cause to think and pray about. Also, if you are the type who does pray for people, please pray for Nathan.

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