The change you never regret
11 July 2023Our journey through life has many ups and downs. Everything we know can be turned upside down from one minute to the next and we’ll find ourselves going in another direction. This isn’t always a negative development. There are also cases when, suddenly or gradually, our views on life, on ourselves, on our faith, or on our relationship with God have changed.
Our childhood upbringing by our parents or teachers in the broader sense wasn’t comprehensive as regards rectitude. The ‘musts’ and ‘religious dues’ narrowed the boundaries and damped down the personality, while at the same time helping to restrain us from excesses and obstreperous behavior.
Knowledge of our Orthodox tradition, with its breadth of spirit, and practical freedom certainly expand the personality and reveal new, powerful forms of beauty in life and a great deal of joy.
After such a change in the way we see God, ourselves and our life, we find ourselves on a new course. One that’s not easy nor without problems. This is why, at this difficult period, we need someone with us whose opinion and words we trust and who, naturally is grounded in our Orthodox tradition.
As you delve deeper into the beauty of accepting yourself and others, into the feeling of regarding God as a friend rather than a legislator with inhumane demands, you want to interrelate more closely with God and other people, to enjoy life more.
All these experiences are understood empirically. Just as prisoners rejoice on their release, as the sick when they regain their health, as the poor when their finances improve, so do those people rejoice who transform the obligations in their life into voluntary action. If, in the first instance, observation of their obligations brought them satisfaction and, possibly, self-vindication, the second brings fulness of life and joy of the heart.
This change is a different way of looking at life which makes us absolutely certain that we don’t want to turn back. Now we compare the present with the past and thank God for this gift of revelation that he’s bestowed on us.
The Fathers of the Church fought to preserve Orthodoxy not out of some undue attachment to the past but as the manifestation to the world of the proper way of life, which is the way of life of God. Heresy, as distinct from Orthodoxy, is erroneous, distorted teaching about God Naturally, the concomitant of this is that people live heretically, in error, as is apparent in their view of God, of themselves and of the world.
Unfortunately, the ‘heretical ethos’, which narrows our view of life and turns God into a despot, is not unknown among those people in the Orthodox Church who were catechized with heretical teachings that were given a lamina of Orthodoxy. It takes effort and pain for people to learn properly and to live as truly Orthodox. But, although it may take years, it’s worth the effort and the pain in order to experience the great joy of being really Orthodox and experiencing ‘the freedom of the children of God’.
