Orthodoxy entered my radar at a time I was feeling pretty disillusioned with differing beliefs between different Protestant denominations, way-out ideas from mega-type churches, and the way my own church was moving towards entertainment-orientation services and music. Add to that, despondent over my poor knowledge of the bible, lack of faith, not really knowing how to relate to God or live as a Christian.
I was confused, not knowing who was right, what was biblical, what was true Christianity, not much about God, or whether I truly believed or was really a Christian. I read up about different churches in my location, read books about Christian life and faith and joined a Christian forum or two, but was still confused as ever.
Eventually I decided that the best way to sort through all the morass was to get back to basics and read through the "source text" of my faith - the bible. I started following a 90 day reading plan that ended up stretching over two years.
I learned a lot of stuff (especially in the OT) I'd never known before. I also remained confused as verses in the bible seemed to lend support to differing positions (e.g. calvinism and arminianism).
During the time I was working through the NT gospels and epistles, I started reading some of the long-running arguments between Catholics and Protestants on the Christian forum on bible vs tradition, praying to Mary and saints, faith vs works, communion being the actual body and blood of Christ or just a remembrance of what Christ did for us on the Cross, etc.
At first, like the rest of the Protestants, I waved off the Catholic defences as blindly following "traditions of men" and an example of how the Catholic church had gone off the rails sometime before the Reformation. But as I kept reading, I conceded that there was something to what the Catholics were saying - what did the first Christians have to communicate and guide them in the faith before the bible canon was was agreed on and collated into the "bible"? There was definitely a relationship between faith and works, but what? Jesus did say in John 6 that His body and blood is real food and drink that we have to consume to abide in Him and have eternal life. And who were all these early Christians that the Catholics were quoting, that you never hear about in Protestant churches, who described beliefs and worship that that sounded more "Catholic" than I'd assumed the early church to be?
What finally upped the stakes for me was a disgruntled Protestant who accused a Catholic who used verses from 1 Maccabees and other "apocryphal" books as support for praying for the dead as sidestepping the issue, and demanded proof from the BIBLE
doh
. The Catholic quickly responded back with the verse where St. Paul prays for Onesiphorus (who from the context, is obviously dead at that point). Woah. That caught my attention. And if the Catholic had a point in this area, then perhaps the other things they were saying held more water and deserved a closer look.
In amongst all these discussions, the Catholics were also saying that the Catholic Church was the true Church which Jesus founded. There were a few Orthodox that occasionally responded, no, the Orthodox Church is. The Orthodox Church?
Before then, it had never occurred to me to consider the Orthodox Church. I'd heard of Russian and Greek Orthodox, and thought it was similar to Catholicism except they didn't follow the Pope.
What piqued my interest to explore Orthodoxy further was a signature quote of one of the Orthodox posters, "The Orthodox Church is evangelical, but not Protestant. It is orthodox, but not Jewish. It is catholic, but not Roman. It isn't non-denominational - it is pre-denominational. It has believed, taught, preserved, defended and died for the Faith of the Apostles since the Day of Pentecost 2000 years ago." From there, my quest for true Christianity took a sharp right turn which culminated in being received into the Orthodox Church six months ago.
