Question about Changing Churches... (Orthodox only please)

[TheLostCoin]

So, my life from the time of my youth to now has been corrupted by sin and disorder, and up until I started going to the Orthodox Church I've been going to now for about 2 years, my life was on a downwards spiral.

I started changing some of my ways, and while I believe I've cast away a good chunk of my legalism (it's still there to a degree) and got to a point where my own room wasn't always in a complete disarray, I still was flawed in many respects, but still noticed a small climbing upwards from where I was in spiritual progress little by little, chunk by chunk.

For some reason though, from the time of the end of Pascha to now, I've hit a massive ceiling and feel like I'm not progressing and am getting worse and worse spiritually, and anything I do - prayers, Bible readings, asking for prayers, giving to the poor - nothing's at all changing it.

Now, as someone who has had depression in the past, I still struggle from it to a degree, and I sometimes am really mistaken about character judgments, and will sometimes come to irrational conclusions about how other people feel about me or think about me based on anecdotal evidence.

However, I feel like there was a veil between me and my Father Confessor, because my Priest would always say these wonderful platitudes and sayings, and would often times give me wonderful answers to questions I had, while also seeming to actually care for me - but it seems that now, after having spent this much time with him, that veil has torn, and I'm seeing him just as someone who really doesn't have a dynamic relationship with people - he repeats the same platitudes over and over and over again like a memorized script, and he appears to be really petty and passive aggressive towards people for little reason. In fact, there was a moment in time a while ago where I just snapped at him because I was quite sick of some of the seemingly passive aggressive comments that he gave me (if I'm not just overanalyzing it), to which I apologized for my behavior.

I might regret posting this because I do think he reads this site and might figure out who I am, but just today, we were talking about who Christ was, and we were talking about the Chalcedonian definition, and someone asked the question about whether Christ had a post-fallen or pre-fallen human nature, and he took like a whole 20 minutes elaborating on that without answering the question. He also briefly talked about the 6th Ecumenical Council and compromising with the non-Chalcedonians, so I asked a question, that it wasn't clear what a "will" was compared to an energy, other than I know they are separate, and he just said "Well, you know, I worked on my thesis with that, and it's fascinating, but that's beyond the scope of the class. Anyways, ..."

Like, maybe I'm reading way too into it, but like couldn't he just say "Well, we are running low on time, maybe some other time?" Or "Would it be okay if we talked about it another time, due to how complicated it could be?", or maybe even "Sorry, I don't have scope right now to answer to that one."
The class follows a very loose structure and is often allowed to be derailed, including such a complicated question like the above about human nature, but just the blunt, cold, rejection of my seriously innocuous question in a context where it seemed perfectly legitimate, considering he himself was the one who brought up the idea of the heresy of "Monoenergism," the thought that had enter my mind was "Wow, what a jerkish thing to say."

And there's instances like this all the time! He just says some things that either come across as possessing a pure unbridled apathy towards me, or sometimes even pure hostility. Like, he told me straight to my face that while I was not the hardest person to work with, I was "up there" in terms of my difficulty of working with me.

So, I feel like I don't have a Priest any longer whom I can talk with, I also have other people that I struggle with; while the older people in my Church really do care for me and are really nice, and loving to me, and there are people my age who do love and care for me, there is a clique of people who hang around the Church like mosquitoes looking for blood, who are my age and whom just seem like toxic and emotionally immature / unstable people to deal with. Like, I have a friend who used to go to the Church but left, and I told him quite frankly to his face that one of these people, a girl he used to date, is really emotionally unstable and immature, and he just started laughing at it in agreement, saying "you don't say!"

We had another Priest, and I considered this Priest to be a more dynamic person in how he relates to people, but he's leaving he Church, which is already a bad problem than switching to a different Priest in the same Church.

I'm only gonna be at this school for a couple of months, and I'm really conflicted about staying in this Church or going through the process of changing Churches just for the next couple of months, before leaving again.

Based on these things, I'm seriously voting for the latter, because I'm miserable in how cut off from others, and thus God, I can feel at this Church, and I think that this reason has been a subconscious root in my problems of not feeling confident in Orthodoxy - maybe my soul wants me to find ANYTHING to change my bad habits and paralysis that I can't get rid of.

And I know there's no such thing as a "perfect Church," but I feel like when it's at a point where the Priest is not helpful in paralysis, and only encourages such paralysis, there's a point where you just have to leave before he drags you to hell.

I don't know, thoughts?

 

[ArmyMatt]

when you say, different Church, you mean a different parish but still Orthodox, right?

 

[TheLostCoin]

when you say, different Church, you mean a different parish but still Orthodox, right?

Yes, I live in a place where there are a few more Orthodox Churches near by.

And I should say I do love my Father Confessor very much - I hold no antagonism or ill will towards him. But I feel like where he is lately (or how he's always been, maybe I was too enamored with Orthodoxy at the start to really notice it) has been really dragging me down, to the point that I feel like I need change

 

[ArmyMatt]

if you really feel like you need to, just let the new priest know where you are at in your journey. and I would tell the former priest out of courtesy.

 

[TheLostCoin]

if you really feel like you need to, just let the new priest know where you are at in your journey. and I would tell the former priest out of courtesy.

I was afraid you were gonna say that.
Okay, no problems Father Matthew.

 

[ArmyMatt]

I was afraid you were gonna say that.
Okay, no problems Father Matthew.

why were you afraid?

 

[TheLostCoin]

why were you afraid?

While I knew I was going to have to tell my Priest about how I feel paralyzed and how I want change, at the same time I don't like awkwardness.

Not that it will be, but I don't like the possibility of it.

 

[ArmyMatt]

While I knew I was going to have to tell my Priest about how I feel paralyzed and how I want change, at the same time I don't like awkwardness.

Not that it will be, but I don't like the possibility of it.

I don't know if what I said is what you should do, but it is what I would do if I was in your shoes.

 

[TheLostCoin]

I don't know if what I said is what you should do, but it is what I would do if I was in your shoes.

Pray for me

 

[ArmyMatt]

Pray for me

will do!

 

[~Anastasia~]

I don't know if this is possibly helpful at all or not --- but I will say that I have gone through times of being absolutely innundated with thoughts about other people based on some little nuance of their words or behavior (or sometimes something more overt). It was focused often enough on my priest, or sometimes on anyone else who played some key role in my relationship with the Church. In my case it was overwhelming enough that I recognized something didn't seem quite normal about the thought process (and there was a time when I could be very critical of others - it was one tendency I battled quite a bit). It was a situation where the rather extreme-sounding bits of counsel to monastics regarding humility and so on was eventually quite helpful.

Since then I have had a few others come to me with similar struggles so that it seems to me it can be a fairly common kind of attack/struggle.

Of course I know NOTHING about your situation in fact, and of course what you've observed can be a real issue to deal with. So what I'm saying might have nothing to do with your situation. I am not feeling too confident about posting at all. But maybe it's just that I'm thinking what if someone else sees your post and is thinking they can identify - I don't know.

It was doubly difficult for me though because I didn't feel as though I could discuss it with my priest, or anyone who was involved. So for the most part I really had to work through it myself, with only the help of dear Abbas and Saints through their writings, and prayer. But God has been a great help, and my thinking has learned to sometimes put these things away before they can get started.

More importantly, I have found in my further observations that the motives I assigned were often clearly not there, and I never found a case where they were - well - maybe in one person's case. I can't go into too much detail. But what I have found is that in that one person's case, they have changed an amazing amount as I was working through this (I think I was something of a target in their case). But the dynamics of seeing what God does is very enlightening. I don't know if this part makes any sense. But what I can say is that even the healing on my own part has opened my eyes to the good things in others, taught me to have compassion on their struggles, and improved relationships all around - at least in my experience. If God is merciful perhaps they don't see any improvement - because I hope they aren't even aware of any tension on my part with them.

Forgive me. This may be too much to share. I simply find that the intricacies of relationships between people seem to be a very weak place the enemy can do much to exploit. At the same time, I also find that accepting God's help there can be infinitely beneficial. And I guess that's much on my mind.

 

[abacabb3]

"In fact, there was a moment in time a while ago where I just snapped at him because I was quite sick of some of the seemingly passive aggressive comments that he gave me (if I'm not just overanalyzing it), to which I apologized for my behavior."

It sounds to me you are being tempted by satan. It is common, after a couple of years, to all of the sudden start hating your spiritual father. You need to confess every Saturday, "Father, I am wicked, I hate you and I only bad reasons why."

Could priests give better answers to questions and better homilies? Sure. Pray for him and humbly wait for God to answer.