Why I am Orthodox

When I first began to reconsider the Christian faith, the one thing I accepted without hesitation is the premise that there is something terribly wrong with us, as humans. We are wonderful. And, we are amazingly so. I don’t deny that. And yet, we are capable of horrendous evil. And, the evil we bring into this world is in no way necessary.

I can imagine a world very much like this one with the exception that we don’t treat each other the way we do in this one. The evil we bring into this world is not necessary. Sure, we have our reasons. But, ultimately, that is all they are. We don’t have to mistreat, malign, and in general hate on each other. And, certainly, we aren’t necessitated by nature to destroy each other. All that to say, I accepted without hesitation the premise that there is something terribly wrong with us.

But, that’s not quite right. The truth is, I believed it to be (and still do) an empirical fact that we are incapable of somehow not screwing up everything we touch. Even when we bring beauty out of the ashes, it is borrowed.

Anyway, the whole premise of sin was not a mystery to me. For all of human history we have sucked, as a humanity. Even with all of our beauty and wonder and goodness, we have destroyed, denied, and ignored. And we didn’t have to. We never have to. Furthermore, it didn’t seem to me we were any closer to turning things around. We know more now than we have ever known and yet we still chip away, unthinkingly, at what is good. And so, it seemed clear to me that if humanity was “imprisoned” in this condition, then humanity needed an ontological savior. The question was not a moral one, but an ontological one.

A moral teacher cannot overcome an ontological problem. The issue that needs to be addressed, or so it seems to me, is not the question of right and wrong. The issue that needs to be addressed is the difference between dead and alive. We are not what we can be. We are not what we should be. The way we are destroys that which is as it should be. So, in this sense, we are not alive. That is why I am orthodox.