Convert mistakes/bad theology

[RobNJ]

Ok, I’ll say it....converts can be ultra annoying!! On one hand converts bring a new enthusiasm, energy, Bible knowledge, and excitement to Orthodoxy, but on the other hand, they can be loud, ask so many questions that you want to pull a Magneto and pluck their fillings out, and feel like they have to do weird things like throw their former churches off the bus and try to prove how Orthodox they are. After only a few months they fancy themselves Jedi Masters of the highest order. They often think they have to know everything and learn Russian or Greek, etc.

I’ve observed these behaviors firsthand. It’s annoying. They’re often loud and irritating. They try to get involved in everything and anything and are about as subtle as a Lamborghini.

However, some cradle Orthodox I’ve watched frequently miss Liturgy, know very little about their own faith, see Orthodoxy as an ethnic club, and are Biblically pretty lacking in knowledge.

There is good and bad in everything; I can see how both sides can be strong or annoying. LOL

An autobiographical post, perhaps?

 

[~Anastasia~]

I have to admit that I don't see this as being true of high-church Calvinism. There's still just too much preening over how well read you are and how skilled you debate, despite the increased emphasis on Church authority.

I REALLY dislike the "how well you debate" being a measure to be proud over (as if pride has a place in spirituality at all anyway).

I simply adore some of the simple phrases uttered by the Saints at times - usually very loving, but always right to the heart of the issue and shedding light.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, I very much dislike seeing on CF that it sometimes devolved into a contest of who can get in the best jabs at mocking the other's beliefs, and I get the distinct impression that folks are sometimes persuaded that the most zingers define truth. It's very sad. Very, very sad.


Though I do acknowledge that with most Protestant thinking, and often Catholic as well, it is necessary to build a logical argument in order to show the truth, or rather to have it deemed worthy of consideration. It's the way those denominations teach though, so the persons can't be faulted for that. It's better than some that simply "feel" what is right, which might or might not be the leading of God.

 

[Lukaris]

What I believe is comforting about Orthodoxy is that I do not assume
I am saved and that another person ( other Christian, non Christian) is not. While universalism is wrong, I believe the 2 great commands & the golden rule give us much reason to hope but also fear.

 

[mothcorrupteth]

At the opposite end of the spectrum, I very much dislike seeing on CF that it sometimes devolved into a contest of who can get in the best jabs at mocking the other's beliefs, and I get the distinct impression that folks are sometimes persuaded that the most zingers define truth. It's very sad. Very, very sad.

Oh, people turn that into its own virtue-signalling contest. In a group of Reformed friends where we were all known for ironic over-the-top braggery (partly as a way of making fun of the liberal caricature of Trump), we were all making tongue-in-cheek pro-Pinochet memes, and somebody asks what the best anti-communist movie is. I suggest Enemy at the Gates. This new guy to the group starts saying the movie is totally pro-commie and I'm a commie for liking it. Taking him to be pulling my leg, I ask him if he flunked high school English Lit. (I don't think guy friends roasting each other is necessarily wrong if we're all on the same page that this is just a form of play.) The guy must have taken it personally, though, because--right after he called me communist--he's like, "This is the problem we Reformed have! Ad hominem arguments! Why do you think you have to insult me to win the debate?!" I'm like, "Dude, I apologize if you took that personally. I thought you wanted to joke around." Nope. He didn't want none of that. Wouldn't accept my apology. Because he wanted to come off as the more prudish dude in the posse.

It's better than some that simply "feel" what is right, which might or might not be the leading of God.

Very true. People often conflate avoiding the errors of rationalism with embracing irrationalism.

 

[gurneyhalleck1]

An autobiographical post, perhaps?

 

[gurneyhalleck1]

I must say that a lot of the 'convertitis' hyperdox oddness that annoys me is predominantly a Millenial thing. I work with Millenials, my wife works with and trains Millenials at the hospital as new nurses, and I go to Church and have to deal with Millenials all the time. I will say that generation is utterly bizarre. I find myself at age 42 (soon to be 43) sounding like my grandpa used to sound when I was a kid. Millenials tend to be helpless, needy, snowflakey, unrealistic, and overly confident about their abilities while paradoxically needing their hands held every step of the way. But at the same time they want to sign up for everything, be involved in everything, and they glom on to extremes. I don't meet many moderate Millenials. They tend to become Catholics who think they're more Catholic than the Pope (which, I guess with Pope Francis is pretty easy!), or Orthodox who instantly think they're St. Seraphim of Sarov. On the other hand, the other Millenials seem to be victimized and liberal. No middle ground half the time.

One thing that drives me bonkers about Millenials is that they don't seem to operate on the respect principle. They don't value years or experience or the concept of quiet gaining of wisdom. At my job, I work with two millennials at my grade level. Both young girls who are clueless. True, when one is a newbie, clueless is often understandable, but what concerns me is that they have no work ethic and don't want to be challenged to a hard day's work or building their own body of units of study. They want to go to Pinterest and Teachers Pay Teachers and just TAKE something someone else already made. They're the Siri, Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook people. I started teaching in the 1990's, and we were taught to create, design, think outside the box, BUILD. These folks are not builders. They're maintenance. They want a script and prefabricated ease.

My wife sees the same thing with new millennial nurses. Following simple directions or critically thinking is not their strength. They're extremely honest about what they don't know. And what they don't know is sizable!

Millenials don't seem to be able to learn and gain wisdom from their elders at work. They don't look to the "old-timers" who know so much. They run to Pinterest and take a shot in the dark. Throw everything at the wall, hope it sticks. Then they're shocked when my kids are ten times brighter, more resourceful, and my test scores smoke them at year's end. And yet still......Pinterest.


Part of me, forgive my bluntness, just wants millennials to do like I would do at church----sit down, shut up, pray, listen, watch, sing, learn. Stay quiet. Just learn. Just grow in faith. Respect the folks already there. Wait 3-4 years (or more!) and then ask if there is any way they can contribute. Don't walk into a parish, guns spiritually blazing, and start wanting to do book studies (as if a 30-year-old or 20-something should be!), be a reader, be a teacher, and all this other stuff. I hate seeing newbies think they're long in the beard.

Not living in the 20th Century like we Gen X'ers I think is a huge weakness. Ask college students what they think about communism, they say in large majorities who awesome it sounds! Free health care! Free college! Pensions! Yipee! They weren't around to see Lenin, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, and all the other psychopaths purge millions.

Ok, now that I sound like an utter grump, I'll stop and duck, preparing for the barrage of tomatoes, heads of lettuce and cabbage, apples, and banana peels thrown at me in retribution! LOL

 

[mothcorrupteth]

Funny you should say that. This just landed in my Facebook feed.

 

[gzt]

You probably want to excise the person's name.

 

[mothcorrupteth]

They gave permission to share, but point taken.

 

[mothcorrupteth]

But no, Gurney, I don't find you grumpy. It's what the kids coming up behind me need to hear. I had to, as a supervisor, deal with someone who fits that stereotype last year. And it's so frustrating, because the company's bound by all these prissy H.R. bylaws that prevent them from actually doing something to make these people better employees.

But it always amuses me when I see my Reformed friends making parallel mistakes within moments of deriding "snowflakes." Oh, you know everything there is to the treatment of bipolar disorder because you read Jay Adams and now you have the 'biblical' view of psychology? Let me just bow down my cumulative 17 years of personal experience with bipolar in my mom and myself, as well as my 8 years of training in psychology to your advice that you got secondhand from a 40-year-old book by someone who was writing fresh out of seminary. And what's this? You have a better idea than the deeply rooted and workable ritual of single men asking women for dates and then going--alone--together to a movie and dinner? Tell me ALL about how you figured out just from from reading Leviticus that God wants you to recreate the setting of Pride and Prejudice by replacing dating with a system where everybody has different, artificial rules for parent-mediated courtship, and public-school kids who actually have a clue as to how the mean secular world works don't have a chance of figuring those rules out.

 

[~Anastasia~]

I must say that a lot of the 'convertitis' hyperdox oddness that annoys me is predominantly a Millenial thing. I work with Millenials, my wife works with and trains Millenials at the hospital as new nurses, and I go to Church and have to deal with Millenials all the time. I will say that generation is utterly bizarre. I find myself at age 42 (soon to be 43) sounding like my grandpa used to sound when I was a kid. Millenials tend to be helpless, needy, snowflakey, unrealistic, and overly confident about their abilities while paradoxically needing their hands held every step of the way. But at the same time they want to sign up for everything, be involved in everything, and they glom on to extremes. I don't meet many moderate Millenials. They tend to become Catholics who think they're more Catholic than the Pope (which, I guess with Pope Francis is pretty easy!), or Orthodox who instantly think they're St. Seraphim of Sarov. On the other hand, the other Millenials seem to be victimized and liberal. No middle ground half the time.

One thing that drives me bonkers about Millenials is that they don't seem to operate on the respect principle. They don't value years or experience or the concept of quiet gaining of wisdom. At my job, I work with two millennials at my grade level. Both young girls who are clueless. True, when one is a newbie, clueless is often understandable, but what concerns me is that they have no work ethic and don't want to be challenged to a hard day's work or building their own body of units of study. They want to go to Pinterest and Teachers Pay Teachers and just TAKE something someone else already made. They're the Siri, Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook people. I started teaching in the 1990's, and we were taught to create, design, think outside the box, BUILD. These folks are not builders. They're maintenance. They want a script and prefabricated ease.

My wife sees the same thing with new millennial nurses. Following simple directions or critically thinking is not their strength. They're extremely honest about what they don't know. And what they don't know is sizable!

Millenials don't seem to be able to learn and gain wisdom from their elders at work. They don't look to the "old-timers" who know so much. They run to Pinterest and take a shot in the dark. Throw everything at the wall, hope it sticks. Then they're shocked when my kids are ten times brighter, more resourceful, and my test scores smoke them at year's end. And yet still......Pinterest.


Part of me, forgive my bluntness, just wants millennials to do like I would do at church----sit down, shut up, pray, listen, watch, sing, learn. Stay quiet. Just learn. Just grow in faith. Respect the folks already there. Wait 3-4 years (or more!) and then ask if there is any way they can contribute. Don't walk into a parish, guns spiritually blazing, and start wanting to do book studies (as if a 30-year-old or 20-something should be!), be a reader, be a teacher, and all this other stuff. I hate seeing newbies think they're long in the beard.

Not living in the 20th Century like we Gen X'ers I think is a huge weakness. Ask college students what they think about communism, they say in large majorities who awesome it sounds! Free health care! Free college! Pensions! Yipee! They weren't around to see Lenin, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, and all the other psychopaths purge millions.

Ok, now that I sound like an utter grump, I'll stop and duck, preparing for the barrage of tomatoes, heads of lettuce and cabbage, apples, and banana peels thrown at me in retribution! LOL

You make me actually feel good about how my daughter turned out, lol.

Not that everyone doesn't want to think their kids are somehow outstanding. But the fact is, I carry a bit of guilt for my daughter losing the "perfect" childhood I tried to give her, and having been essentially kidnapped, and suffering abuse. I was helpless to stop all that. She keeps assuring me that she has become a much better person because of it. She did start her adult life "knowing better" than anyone else, but I figured that was due to typical teenage egotism. Life has helped her outgrow that. She's almost 22 and pretty competent at managing all aspects of her life, and has been paying her bills and managing her life for quite some time. She has a young man who similarly impresses me - her own age - but who has been though some hard knocks himself. And from what I can see, seems similarly able to manage his own life.

Maybe that "perfect childhood" I tried to give her, and managed to maintain pretty well for about 7-8 years ... was overrated. Maybe the parents who were successful at maintaining it produced all those snowflakes.

I've watched a couple of them turn around and get it together after spinning their wheels for a year or few in the real world. Seems when their expectations aren't met, some are able to do something to turn it all around. Others - just wow. I remember at first I thought the high-school kids I encountered who thought they had it all figured out and were in a total fantasyland in their planned futures were being sarcastic. But yeah, we are producing a lot of reality-handicapped individuals.

 

[gurneyhalleck1]

Ok, I must confess that the "kidnapping" and "abuse" stuff I have no clue about. I'm lacking context.

But I understand your post well, the point of it. My own 3 kids are a treasure, VERY innocent, super Christian, incredibly sweet and ignorant about the cruelty and rough nature of the world around them. Maybe it's their Christian school education, our intense care to keep them shielded from filth and the debauched culture we live in, and yet I'm not sure as a parent exposing them to too much reality is good either.

I'm hoping my own kids are grounded enough in Christ and their own dignity as human creation from God and their prayer/church life is powerful enough to help them stay strong in a hostile society. But I'm also aware that there will be a learning curve for them. They're going to go through a period of 'shock' and 'awe' at how mean people are out there, how impatient people are, and just how poorly-educated and zombie-like they are as well. My oldest son especially!

You make me actually feel good about how my daughter turned out, lol.

Not that everyone doesn't want to think their kids are somehow outstanding. But the fact is, I carry a bit of guilt for my daughter losing the "perfect" childhood I tried to give her, and having been essentially kidnapped, and suffering abuse. I was helpless to stop all that. She keeps assuring me that she has become a much better person because of it. She did start her adult life "knowing better" than anyone else, but I figured that was due to typical teenage egotism. Life has helped her outgrow that. She's almost 22 and pretty competent at managing all aspects of her life, and has been paying her bills and managing her life for quite some time. She has a young man who similarly impresses me - her own age - but who has been though some hard knocks himself. And from what I can see, seems similarly able to manage his own life.

Maybe that "perfect childhood" I tried to give her, and managed to maintain pretty well for about 7-8 years ... was overrated. Maybe the parents who were successful at maintaining it produced all those snowflakes.

I've watched a couple of them turn around and get it together after spinning their wheels for a year or few in the real world. Seems when their expectations aren't met, some are able to do something to turn it all around. Others - just wow. I remember at first I thought the high-school kids I encountered who thought they had it all figured out and were in a total fantasyland in their planned futures were being sarcastic. But yeah, we are producing a lot of reality-handicapped individuals.

 

[~Anastasia~]

Ok, I must confess that the "kidnapping" and "abuse" stuff I have no clue about. I'm lacking context.

But I understand your post well, the point of it. My own 3 kids are a treasure, VERY innocent, super Christian, incredibly sweet and ignorant about the cruelty and rough nature of the world around them. Maybe it's their Christian school education, our intense care to keep them shielded from filth and the debauched culture we live in, and yet I'm not sure as a parent exposing them to too much reality is good either.

I'm hoping my own kids are grounded enough in Christ and their own dignity as human creation from God and their prayer/church life is powerful enough to help them stay strong in a hostile society. But I'm also aware that there will be a learning curve for them. They're going to go through a period of 'shock' and 'awe' at how mean people are out there, how impatient people are, and just how poorly-educated and zombie-like they are as well. My oldest son especially!

Well, Orthodoxy provides extra context for raising children that I never had with raising my daughter.

My idea of "perfect childhood" was to keep her safe from even a risk of predators at an early age so I could keep her innocent, to try to let her have friends she could have fun with who wouldn't pull her in a wrong direction, to give her lots of fun, let her enjoy her education (which I still very seriously pursued), have parents present for her, protect her self image, yadda yadda. I did my best, but honestly ... other than school she wouldn't have had real challenges to deal with if I'd had my way.

I think that's what is missing in many of these perfect childhoods. If the child is always affirmed, always has fun, never challenged, never shown the dark side of anything, made to think they can do anything and it's going to be easy ... well, that would have been a failure on my part. I saw traces early on ... a perfectionism that was afraid to try if it was challenging. I still remember her tear-filled objection that she "couldn't read" ... in the middle of reading out loud. She also told me years later that she actually thought something might be wrong with her because I made such a fuss over little accomplishments when she was very small.

I was very misguided. I had good intentions at least. But no wisdom. Lots of education and psychology background but little real experience.

It seems to me that Orthodoxy doesn't put children on a wrong pedestal, teaches them a degree of humility and obedience. So you're probably doing a much better job than I did.

As to the other, I don't talk about it much. She was taken illegally by family members and hidden away from me for three years, during which time (and prior) she had been pretty much brainwashed. I've learned firsthand now about certain - tactics. And in the end she resisted, and it led to abuse. I didn't know where she was, if she was ok, etc. for about three years. And it drove me half-crazy.

I carried a lot of guilt for not being able to prevent it. But ... I think she's right. I think it has served to form her in ways that strengthened her more than I would have done. I still regret it, but I'm thankful that she tries to ease my guilt, which will probably never go away entirely. And as always, I'm thankful that God brings good from what others intend for evil. I think my relationship with my daughter is probably stronger and better now than it would have been if this hadn't happened, and we both learned exceedingly valuable lessons from it. I just pray for the ones responsible, because their intentions were not good.