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Editorial
Orthodoxy is Scary!
What a strange idea Father!” some might say.
Well it’s not as strange as you might think.
Such a huge gap has now opened up between Christianity as practised
in the Orthodox Church and other Christian traditions that I regularly
encounter a certain “culture shock” from those who encounter Orthodoxy for
the first time. This is much
more pronounced amongst those who already have some Christian background.
“Why such long services?”
“You don’t have any of the songs that I love in your church.”
“I am just confused; there’s simply too much to absorb,” and so on
and so forth.
On the one hand this distinctiveness is useful for it marks out Orthodox
Christianity as something quite different from what one usually encounters
and not just another rather unusual “flavour.”
On the other hand if we don’t help people gently into the fullness of
the truth we stand accused as those who
“bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they
themselves will not move them with one of their fingers. “ (Matthew 23:4)
Fr. Gregory an extended version of this article appears on my Blog.
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