Posted on 10/26/2020 6:10:50 AM PDT by Cronos
Evangelicalism was not enough for Joel and Stephanie Dunn, though they come from several generations of Baptists.
And in desperate pursuit of God, they wound up amid candles, incense, beautifully-painted wooden icons, and Divine Liturgy — in the communion of saints whose lives they now say have provided the medicine for their sin-sick souls.
For the Dunns, things came to a head in 2016 when they realized that their current faith tradition, Southern Baptist, was inadequate. They were received into the Eastern Orthodox Church in 2018. Having been in the church for over a year, they were catechized for about that long in an Antiochan parish in northern California, a parish reportedly "bursting" with new converts from Protestantism.
..."Orthodoxy is not transactional. It's not 'I say a prayer, and now I have a card that gets me out of Hell and gets me into Heaven.' But rather it is being brought into the church life. And in the church life, you can be transformed through the graces that are presented within the spiritual gymnasium that is the church," he said.
...The couple started reading Mathewes-Green's book, Welcome to the Orthodox Church,
"As an evangelical, I always had this mindset, and it may have just been me and not what other people teach, but the idea was that I could remove whatever it was about me and put Jesus in there,” Joel said. “But Orthodoxy flips that around. God doesn't want to remove you from yourself and have Jesus there in place of that; He wants to heal you from all that is wrong with you so you can be who He created you to be.”
Stephanie added, "What really struck me about the Eastern Orthodox Church is in the story of the Good Samaritan. The church is seen as the hospital. Christ is the Good Shepherd. He comes along and picks me up, wounded from sin and my passions and brings me to the hospital for the soul, the church."
...Orthodox Christians understand icons to be windows into Heaven, pictures of the indwelling Christ in people.
The Dunns came to believe, particularly given the heavy emphasis on the Incarnation, that the faith traditions they grew up in were largely Gnostic, that the spiritual realm didn't really ever intersect with reality.
"Orthodoxy is not like that. Every service incorporates all five of your senses. It incorporates your body. You're standing up, sitting down. You're smelling incense. You're singing and hearing bells," Joel said.
During the Divine Liturgy where Eucharist is served, they came to believe they were in this sense of timelessness where they are with the church in Heaven and there have been accounts of seeing angels and Christ come in on the throne.
"The sense of being surrounded by that great cloud of witnesses, the icons do so much to remind us of much of that, that we are surrounded by these people and that we can ask for their intercession," Stephanie said.
...God revealed Himself to us in the form of Christ but the problem is that with all these different denominations, especially within evangelicalism, it mostly rests on Sola Scriptura and lacks tradition, she noted.
"Tradition is what gave us Scripture. Scripture is part of Holy Tradition; it's not the whole of it. That's not all that the Apostles taught. We want to know ‘what else did they teach?’ When Christ revealed Himself to us, He also showed us how He wanted to be worshiped and it looked a lot like Jewish worship."
Today, Joel asks evangelicals to "give Mary a chance."
Asked to expound on what he means by "give her a chance,” he elaborated: "Revere her in a way you haven't before because she provided the Savior."
"And there is a reason that she has been venerated since the beginning of the church and I don't fully understand her role and it's uncomfortable to ask for her intercessions at times, but at the same time, she is the one praying and interceding on behalf of all of us to her Son. And it is through her prayers that most of us come to know Him."
"I grew up my whole just thinking that Mary was just some random chick that just happened to be there at the right time and right place and it's just not so. The history of the church has put her in a place where she should be and if evangelicals could give her a chance, it might open up their world to her."
Stephanie interjected, "Our salvation is not possible without her. And He chose to make it that way."
Joel continued, "And we say in the Liturgy, 'Theotokos (Mother of God) save us’ … If you don't understand that during the Liturgy, we transcend space-time as we know it. We're telling her, ‘Accept what the angel is telling you, accept this child because it is through Him that we shall all be saved.'
"And don't be so literal about everything. Everything is not literal. God didn't set it up that way. We're not computer programs, we're people."
Orthodoxy is daily lived repentance to the glory of God, the Dunns emphasized.
"The most transformative aspect of this whole thing for me has been to see suffering not as something that God — I used to think 'why does God allow this, I did all these things right, this stuff keeps happening, I can't handle it.’ And then you hear of other people who have horrible thing after horrible thing happen,” Stephanie said.
But within Orthodoxy, suffering is seen as a tool, she explained.
No, God provided the Savior. Mary was an obedient servant of God...we can in fact learn from this lesson of obedience and admire and live by this example, but she is not the source of salvation.
Getting lost in ritual is not a good thing.
Another step on their journey.
Hopefully it will end at the feet of the Savior, and with Salvation.
Clearly, they have little familiarity with Scripture.
Clearly, they don’t. I wonder if this is evidence of the great falling away? 🤗
That’s what I was thinking.
It sounds so familiar...
“ When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, “Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.”
“Aaron answered them, “Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me.”
“So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron.
“He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, “These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.”
“When Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of the calf and announced, “Tomorrow there will be a festival to the LORD.”
“So the next day the people rose early and sacrificed burnt offerings and presented fellowship offerings. Afterward they sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry.
“Then the LORD said to Moses, “Go down, because your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt, have become corrupt.
“ They have been quick to turn away from what I commanded them and have made themselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf. They have bowed down to it and sacrificed to it and have said, ‘These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.’
“I have seen these people,” the LORD said to Moses, “and they are a stiff-necked people.
.......
1. Truth isn’t enough
2. Humans crave false religions, beads, candles, idols, demigods
And so it goes.
Ping!
This is what happens when your church doesn’t preach the scripture and gives itself to the seeker sensitive movement.
To say she has a special relationship with Jesus is an understatement. She is his mother and due the unique honor in the church and heaven. This is an area where many Protestants are ignorant or in their anti-Catholic bigotry - wrongly marginalize Jesus' mother.
It's also true that Mary was a sinner in need of a Saviour. "My soul doth magnify the Lord, And my spirit hath rejoiced in GOD MY SAVIOUR." -Luke 1:46,47.
The following verse should put to rest that anyone other than Jesus intercedes to the Father for men: "For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus" - 1 Timothy 2:5
“though they come from several generations of Baptists”
Baptists need to decide to be baptists. It isn’t genetic.
“”Orthodoxy is not transactional. It’s not ‘I say a prayer, and now I have a card that gets me out of Hell and gets me into Heaven.’”
Been a baptist for decades. Never heard a preacher say pray once and you are saved forever. I HAVE heard pastors say that if you GENUINELY convert, then God will keep you safe to the end. But that is vastly different. All agree a faith that doesn’t change you is not a saving faith. But yes, it STARTS with a prayer, and it is GOD who sustains those who truly believe.
“He wants to heal you from all that is wrong with you so you can be who He created you to be.”
“For those he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, so that he would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.” - Romans 8
We are to be “conformed to the image of his Son”, not made better versions of our natural man!
“The Dunns came to believe...that the faith traditions they grew up in [Baptist] were largely Gnostic, that the spiritual realm didn’t really ever intersect with reality.”
Give me a break! In 4 decades of moving frequently and being in a ton of baptist churches, the idea that baptists don’t believe your faith needs to affect how you really live is just nonsense!
I know I did, when I belonged to a false religion. I don’t know why, but I did.
well, in your opinion — in the person who converted to orthodoxy’s opinion God has entered her soul
1. There is a comment section at the site where you can address the persons
2. The article doesn't say "she is the source of salvation" - only you wrote that, nowhere eslse
3. The article says
3.1. "revere her"
3.2. "she has been venerated"
3.3. "she is the one praying for us"
She is not and nowhere claimed in the article or by the persons who speak, as being the source. They say the she is the God-bearer so being the channel through which God entered the world.
BINGO “Getting lost in ritual is not a good thing.”
On what basis do you make that out? They were Southern Baptists from childhood and from what they write, they seem to have a lot of familiarity with Scripture
Are you judging people without knowing anything about them?
Matthew 7
1. “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2 For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.
3 “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4 How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.
I specifically quoted what I was responding to.
Mary, the God-bearer, the Theotokos, the mother of God, who was created by her Son and whose Son preceded her was also saved by her son
Yep, ohhh, they have candles and incense and holy water and stained glass and the priests wear robes, etc. People are drawn in to what appeals to their 5 senses. It HAS to be the true “religion”.
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