Because the majority of people here are divided in between Muslims, Orthodox Christians and atheists you are looked upon with a certain degree of distrust if you don’t belong to one of the above.
I believe in God and therefore I am not an atheist.
I do not regard Mohammed as His most important prophet so I am not a Muslim either.
I know with my very heart that Jesus is the son of the Most High God and, consequently I guess I should be considered an Orthodox Christian and yet I am not.
May be about three years ago or so when I finally realized that most of the questions I had could not be answered by anyone from my own environment I decided to go the Orthodox Church for the right explanations. By that time of course I already knew that there are three main branches in Christianity: Protestantism, Catholicism and Orthodoxy and so the first question I asked the librarian from the Orthodox Church library was “so what about the rest?”
I did not one bit like the answer she gave me. She started explaining that there is only one holy apostolic church and it’s the one at which threshold I was standing at that moment. That basically was the same as saying that all these other believers from Argentina, Brazil, China, Australia and many other places in the world no matter how much they tried and suffered and believed were still going to hell just because they did probably not even know about the very existence of Orthodoxy. I told her that was ridiculous. She gave me a suspicious look and asked right away if I had been baptized in the Orthodox Church. I said I wasn’t, she shook her shoulders sympathetically and redirected me to the priest. When I met one and asked him the same question he sighed gently and told me to go home, pray and look in the Bible for the right answers. I did exactly what he’d told me and when I opened the Bible at first random page it said (forgive my memory) that there should be different churches and therefore different services so that the most skilled would appear. When I asked about Jehovah Witnesses whose faith I understand least of all and who I personally do not consider Christians at all—the Bible simply stated ( oh why can’t I find these verses to quote them here now!!) that when something ( by this I assume various types of Christian Churches are implied) is made out of gold it would stand anything and when something is made of wood it would perish but those whose faith was sincere would escape but as if out of fire.
Since then I never thought about becoming an Orthodox. I think that by repeating the oath I will be saying that I believe in the one holy apostolic Orthodox Church and at the same time I will be agreeing with all its doctrines also and isn’t it a sin all by itself because in fact I don’t and I would be lying?
I have been several time to the Catholic Church and to the various Protestant denominations, but my parents, while not being religious at all, put an ultimatum of me either attending the Orthodox Church or none at all.
I just can’t seem to find equilibrium. It says in 2John, 12 “ No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us”. Why we humans like to complicate everything so much I have no idea. I guess this will be one of the first questions I will ask the priest when I go to the Church on Wednesday.
Until then, God bless you all.