Where I blew it with my children- A father's recompense

My wife and I were blessed with five healthy daughters. "Yes" they were all ours and "No" we were not Catholic. I guess we just didn't read the right books and never figured out what was causing our fruitfulness. Nevertheless, we didn't fight it too much and received every one of our daughters with love and hope. As a man of faith in God, I determined that I would raise them to fear God all the days of their lives. What I did not know was that I had a skewed idea of what it meant to "fear" God. I set out to teach my children a set of principles, rules, and conduct that the tenants of Christianity dictated was necessary to make God pleased with them. My method was to reward good deeds and punish the bad deeds. Surely, in this way they would learn the simple lesson that to do God's will gains God's pleasure and to not do God's will gains God's punishment. After all, isn't this why Jesus came in the first place, to take the ultimate punishment for our sins? God's dealing with the sin of man goes something like this, "God wasn't mad. He got mad. He isn't mad anymore." Every transgression demands satisfaction! Doesn't it? Well, I was successful. My daughters learned to "fear" God. They also learned to "fear" me and the weak link in this fine theology is the fact that if they do sin, fall, screw up, they feel so useless, so much the failure, so guilty, that they just can't face that fearsome, angry, punishing God. Now my daughters are having to learn to love God and the fact that God loves them. The same goes for their relationship with me. I blew it. I skewed it. And now I must make recompense.

One of the first illuminations I received when entering the truth of the Orthodox faith was the fact that there is no room in the Christian faith for an angry, punishing God. When I was a young boy in my protestant church where my father was the pastor, I heard a visiting protestant evangelist preach the sermon, "God's Three Deadlines". In the sermon, he illustrated the point that God had a standard of rules that you had better obey, that God would give you a chance or two, but you had better do right before he lost patience with you and you crossed that third deadline. If you crossed God's third deadline it was all over and God's judgement on you would be harsh. My father liked the sermon so much that he it picked it up and preached it once a year after that. I also grew up having heard famous protestant preacher's sermons like "Payday Someday" and "Sinners in the hands of an angry God". Naturally, loving my own children like I did, I wanted no harm to befall them, so I made sure they got the same message. The only problem was that it was a false message birthed out of the Western Theology of the Reformation and not the faith of the apostles or of the early church fathers.

I have been amazed, delighted, and shocked to discover that what I have believed to be the core purpose of Salvation was one that was not consistent with the historic faith...and millions have suffered, including my children. There is a stark difference between the Western and Eastern Soteriology (study of salvation). [When I say "Western" I mean Roman Catholicism and all that evolved from it, including culture, philosophies, doctrines, religious movements, organizations, ministries, and protestant denominations. When I say "Eastern" I refer to the Orthodox Christian Church and its 2000-year-old unchanging apostolic doctrines, structure and unity.] Here is what I should have taught my children concerning salvation and their relationship with their heavenly father:

1. I taught them: that the fall of man was the transgression of divine law.

I should have taught them: that the fall of man was the loss of communion and relationship with God and that it was the loss of a state of being not a loss of an ethical standing.

2. I taught them: that man inherited original sin, was guilty of it and deserved punishment for it through death and hell.

I should have taught them: that man inherited the ancestral consequences of sin, that man is influenced by his environment, and that death and hell are the consequences of sin through the separation from God. I should have taught them that Christ removed the consequences of sin so that we can return to our original relationship with him.

3. I taught them: that baptism was just a symbol or that it washed our original sin away.

I should have taught them: that baptism actually and sacramentally washes away the consequences of ancestral sin and is the door, the theosis, to restoration with God, thus baptism does save you.

4. I taught them: that man was totally depraved with no redeeming value.

I should have taught them: that man is "damaged" but not totally depraved because he is made in the image of God.

5. I taught them: that transgression demands satisfaction, that Christ's sacrifice was "required", that God needed to be appeased to keep from killing us all, and that this was a principal to which God was bound.

I should have taught them: that Communion needs restoration, that Christ's sacrifice was a "voluntary" act of love, and that God is not and has never been mad at us.

6. I taught them: that because of Christ's sacrifice, men are saved from punishment.

I should have taught them: that because of Christ's sacrifice, man has communion with God.

7. I taught them: that you get holy by being good-this is "sanctification".

I should have taught them: that you get holy by communion with God- this is "theosis".

8. I taught them: that Christ's sacrifice satisfies "original sin" but "temporal sin" must be punished on this earth and in the afterlife with the motivator being "Do good and don't break the rules."

I should have taught them: that Christ's sacrifice overcomes all sin once and for all, that salvation is about communion, that the consequence of temporal sin is the loss or prevention of our theosis with the motivator being "To better commune with God."

Daughters, this is the faith. This is the heavenly father's love in its purest form given to us by way of the traditions of the Apostles and preserved in the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church for over 2000 years. Yes, I blew it, but so did my father and his father before him. We were born into a western religious culture of blended doctrines, philosophies and practices. It was not the pure faith and not the faith of the early church, though it contained elements of truth and, by God's grace, paths that led to truth. Here is what I want you to know. God is not mad at you, has never been mad at you. He loves you and wants to talk with you. Come with us on this Journey to Orthodoxy. There is life here and maybe even restoration of relationships. This is my recompense-to have the heart of my Heavenly Father and to have you see Him in me the rest of my days.

The Girl's First Eucharist Photos

Here is Cynthia and the girl's first Eucharist on Holy Saturday. What a moment that was. We wept together.

Other Chrismation Photos

Here are some other Chrismation photos. Chloe Anne, our youngest daughter, Cynthia, my faithful and brave wife of 25 years, and Casey our 16 year old. Applying the Holy Oil is Father Steven Rogers, Senior Priest of St. Ignatius Antiochian Orthodox Church in Franklin, Tennessee.

The 50 Year Journey To Orthodoxy

On April 12th, 2006 I celebrated my 50th birthday. Several of my closest friends were able to make their way to Tennessee to join me personally while several others called or sent greetings and congratulations. It was a wonderful time of hope and gratefulness for the preceding years. Much was put into perspective. Ten days later, on April 22, 2006, Holy Saturday, I was chrismated into the Eastern Orthodox Church. "So what's a good former Southern Baptist boy doing in a place this? And after 50 years of life shouldn't you know better?...by the way what is the Eastern Orthodox Church?" I have yet to meet one person in casual conversation who knows what the Orthodox Church is. I always give this 60 second explanation. "The Orthodox Church is the original church of the Apostles. There is the Roman Catholic church in the west and then there is the Orthodox Church in the east. The Orthodox church has over 250 million members and is the second largest Christian group on the planet although there are currently only about 6 million members in the United States. For 1054 years there was only one united church on the planet with five main locations, Rome (Italy), Constantinople (Turkey), Jerusalem (Palestine), Antioch (Syria),and Alexandria (Egypt), each pastored by a Bishop. Then the Bishop of the Roman church in the west claimed he had full authority and jurisdiction over the whole church. This unprecedented move was not well received by the rest of the church in the geographical east. The churches in the east remained in communion and unity while the Roman church in the west broke from that unity and became an independent body- the Roman Catholic Church. All existing protestant denominations, some 25,000 of them in the United States alone, extend out of the Reformation period almost 600 years after the Schism."

Recently one of my five daughters asked me of our move to Orthodoxy. I told her I have been asking the same question of God since I was 17, "Where is the church?" That desire to find and be a part of the true church has led me on a path with many forks and deadends. From Baptist, to Independent Bible Churches, to Charismatic Churches, to the Jewish Synogogues, to Messianic Fellowships, to the Charismatic Episcopal Church, and to the Roman Catholic Church. My puzzled Southern Baptist Father once referred to my journey as "the religion of the month" club. Perhaps now that I have traveled this road and am familiar with the paths and the deadends, I can, in some humble way, be a pathguide for others who are coming this way, and coming they are. Seeking evangelicals who, like me, have no idea or concept that they were born into a religious world with doctrines and practices that look very little like the church of our fathers. I have a degree in Religion from a Southern Baptist University and yet not once in any of my studies was I required to read or even informed of the writings of the Early Church Fathers. These were the men who formed and shaped the church, who knew and were ordained by the Apostles themselves, who continued to pastor the churches of Peter, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and the other disciples after their deaths. In fact I was advised against reading anything other than that which was contained within the pages of the bible, the mantra being "sola scriptura", the bible alone. To look at church history or "tradition" was not necessary. The day I decided to consider what men such as Ignatius, Clement, Iraneus, and Justin Martr wrote, preached, and shed their blood to preserve, was the day my religion was ruined. But MY religion needed to be ruined, for it was not the faith of our fathers. Could it be that my protestant university knew that if I read the writings of those so close to the apostles that I would discover a different church, a different doctrine, a different shape of worship, a different history than was being espoused in the institutions and churches throughout evangelical protestantism which was birthed only 400 years prior? God forbid. Ignorance is much more easily accepted than intentional deception.

So come on in. Let us reason together. But I will tell you right now that your closely held doctrines of the church, authority, salvation, the eucharist, veneration of Mary, baptism, shapes and forms of worship, music, gifts of the spirit, and many other things will be challenged. You might get uncomfortable, angry or afraid. You may even feel sorrow for me personally, that I am so deceived. At the very least, let your concern for the salvation of my soul prompt you to join in the discussion on this BLOG. In the mean time I will continue to step deeper into the faith of our fathers, the Orthodox Christian Church, with peace and rest. It has been a long Journey and I am so thankful that I am finally home.

Important UPDATE June 30, 2009
Read: "Why We Left... Where We Went"