A Protestant Reacts to Visiting an Orthodox Church

hey everybody i'm matt this is the 10 minute bible hour and i would like to process eastern orthodoxy a little bit with you i say process as opposed to like explain or teach about because i don't know enough to explain it or teach about it i'm in the process of learning about it right now and it's been really fun if you don't know me this is something that i'm fascinated by i'm a christian i guess i said in the last video you could call me an evangelical-ish reformedish christian that's what my upbringing and background has been but i'm intrigued by the groups that do it differently than me and part of the reason i'm intrigued is simply anthropological i'd like oh there are people and they're kind of a different tribe and they do stuff different they have different ideas and they dress different then they sing different songs at church and they think about god a little different oh that's fascinating i just want to know because i just want to know but part of the reason i want to know is because if you were raised around faith like i was or you've been doing it for any period of time there's a tangle of christmas tree lights that you have metaphorically speaking that much like your real christmas tree lights sometimes can be very difficult to pull apart and rearrange into one long coherent strand and i feel like a big part of my faith is wrestling through not just what i make of it and what i do with the text of the bible which is something i love throwing time and thought at and conversation at but also unpacking what other people do with it and trying to see oh well you know what what am i missing why are you coming at it that way are there other cohesive ways to read the text and read the history of the church and theology that even if ultimately i don't end up signing off on each and every detail of i can at least appreciate better and it can hold up a mirror to how i'm thinking about myself and and my own journey of faith and maybe sometimes when we have these conversations i might give the impression that it's entirely academic for me and i guess that's why i'm starting the conversation this way today it ain't it is anything but entirely academic for me i want to think about it with that coldness that removedness that calculatedness because i want to be fair to the data but it matters like the level of the heart and the essence for me i'm asking the same questions you're asking whether you're a person of faith not faith in between unsure whatever the big questions what's the point of me and all these people who i see around me people i love and know well people i don't know very well yet what's the point of the grand progress and unfolding of human history were clearly different than other things other beings that have movement and thought there's something wild and untamed and enormous inside these heads of ours the capacity to dream and think and understand meaning and see these patterns and so i'm very interested in the most profound of questions i can't help but ask them i'm not new in this i think pretty much everybody throughout all of our grand shared human history has been asking these giant questions about who we are and where we came from and where we're going and so for me this little trip to go and look at an orthodox church is one more step in really wrestling through the deep water stuff about what it is to be a person a person who i believe was made by an entity who has some kind of intentionality to that making some kind of design to it and so i want to compare notes i guess in a sense with other people who have been running these calculations almost in complete isolation from me and so as a result i get really excited when there's overlap and it's like oh you saw that pattern too oh that jumped out at you from the text as well and then at other times without meaning any disrespect i go on a tour like this tour i just went on and like what that doesn't mean well obviously i'm right about everything and you're an idiot how could you be so stupid what it means is what you're seeing in those moments if you did watch my last video is me just having the the needle scratch on the record for a second and go wait a minute okay so you looked at all the same data you looked at all the same unfolding of history and that is what you came to oh that's just wild like that that had not occurred to me as the way to read that thing and so i'm very fascinating uh fascinated rather is the point on a couple of different levels here and maybe we've never talked about that before but that's what you're seeing from me as we go through the give and take in these kind of videos so quickly here's some of the stuff that really jumped out to me as i hung out with father paul at this orthodox church in salt lake city one this church is slaying we do not have the same approach to theology evangelism the finer points of how you do a church service but any illusion that somebody like me has like oh obviously i do christianity the right way because our version of christianity is very good at connecting with people and reaching people and helping people to work through the problems of life and point them toward god and like that's great but these people are really good at it too the stories that i ran into just talking with people who were attending here and hanging around they were inspiring life-changing stuff that is stuck with me because it's been a long long time since i stopped by this church for the first time to size this thing up and those stories haven't gone away there's something very intentional there's something very merciful there's something very empathetic about what the orthodox church in salt lake city at least because that's one i visited what their understanding of the gospel and who god is has prompted in them toward their neighbors toward people who theoretically on paper might even be called their enemies there's something really beautiful happening there and i got to hear firsthand can't share them with you because they're not my stories to share but i got to hear firsthand story after story from people who have encountered something very transformative in their relationship with god through that church and through that tradition so one they're slaying and that's pretty awesome two the standing thing i know is the first question that i asked and in that tour video like we come in it's like oh there's this beautiful place and we got the cool drone shot that we grabbed in there and it's like oh look at how amazing all of this is and my first stupid question is oh yeah guys ain't got no chairs or nothing where you sit when you're done doing church yeah how's that work but i honestly it was the first thing that came to mind is just well how does a church service work if there's nowhere to sit like you just walk around the whole time or does it get a little crazy in here and you know father paul as you saw very patiently explained all of that but and then when you actually see the service you realize it really does make a great deal of difference and so many of these points of difference i think come back to something i want to talk about in a minute and that is icons and the idea of the church militant the church triumphant the idea that you have this small percentage of christians who are alive but this grand percentage of christians would grander all the time each year that the church goes by or each year of the existence of the church going by who are also present in the orthodox mind now in the protestant mind they're there like the christian is elsewhere when they die they are in the presence of god somehow but we don't really hang out for the time being and obviously if i thought the orthodox position was correct i would believe the orthodox position i'm not trying to argue that the protestant position is wrong i'm a protestant but i am definitely appreciating how much that assumption affects things and one of the things that affects is just simply how you adorn your worship area where people sit and what they do oh somebody just rang the doorbell i'm just going to hit pause because we're not done talking i'll be right back one second cool thank you chad sorry for the goofy setup all right thanks man that was the electrician i've never met him before he was super super nice and that went well what were we talking about we're talking about orthodoxy oh yeah and the standing thing so i get that if you if you view your service as being something that involves not just the humans who are in the room but the humans who've gone before you who've already to use the bible language run the race put their hand to the plow and not look back the the great cloud of witnesses who are present then well it's like you're doing a protestant stand and greet but for the entire service and some of the people are physically dead but eternally alive and represented that's not the word represented their their uh sorry icons are new to me this is difficult to find the language for they are present i think is the orthodox position in the form of an icon i'm so sorry i know a whole bunch of you here are orthodox and you're probably just cringing at me butchering your theological language that is not a slight that's just i please do not attribute to to me malice when what it actually is is ineptitude whatever the case that that service then takes on a very different feel and i could see how the pew thing would be really restrictive for the orthodox worshiper when there is really no other opportunity to do a stand and greet and a passing of the peace and a hello with those christians who are there in the form of an icon but who they believe are very much worshipping with them at the same time so when i first heard that some orthodox churches didn't do pews at all i just i really didn't know what to make of it i feel like maybe i'm starting to get a little bit more of a sense of where that's coming from but obviously i'm still processing that and still have a ton to learn additionally there's the uh the thoughtfulness of everything and again we're going to talk more about icons in a second because i think a lot hinges on that but just even the little stuff the representations the idea of the iconostasis and just in general the the attempt to merge some of the old testament imagery about the the presence of god and the tabernacle and the way the building is arranged with this modern space for worship that was interesting to me i'm not sure i'm theologically convicted that the one necessarily has to carry over to the age of the church but i don't see how you could be necessarily against it in any way either maybe the the objection that somebody might point to biblically would be like well and the curtain is torn i guess that would be a pretty big objection actually that you know by christ's work on the cross and in the resurrection that divider between the holy of holies and everything else it's no longer divided so i guess i've talked myself into saying that this would be a place where i think i would respectfully disagree with my orthodox brethren and sisterin i've never tried that word before and it sounds like cistern that's something i'd like to ask more questions about and understand better i think i'm pretty committed to the protestant building style and the theological meaning that comes with no we have a platform so you can see what's going on up front but ultimately there's you know one god one mediator between man and god and that mediator is christ jesus and therefore we want the imagery of our room to communicate that you have access to everything you can approach the throne of god with confidence that's a lot of hebrews that has just randomly come up in this conversation so again if you've got a different set of assumptions then that kind of building i suppose makes a ton of sense one way or another i appreciate that it's not thoughtless i mean there's there's an ideology behind it there's a theology behind it and of course the catholic church and the orthodox church are going to have a higher view of the mediating role of the priesthood of the church in general the church hierarchy than protestantism is going to have it's like one of the key points of theological disagreement and again if i shared that biblical theological understanding with catholics and orthodox christians i would be catholic or orthodox but i respectfully don't and if you're still here it means that you can work with that and we can get along okay anyway so but the bread i was talking about thoughtful things the bread even the bread did you see that they got it divided in the quadrants and each little stamp means a different thing people in the congregation don't even see that that is like the depth that has gone into some of the great literature you compare some of the really shallow kitty lit stuff where they act like there's a whole world behind this young adult novel but you can tell not a lot of thought was put into this world or what goes on behind it it doesn't really hold up but then you go and look at something like tolkien and you're like whoa he thought through all of middle earth before he ever thought through this one little story that he's telling us in the lord of the rings it it's like that world building gives it a richness and a depth and that's the same emotion i felt when i saw the bread i'm like yeah maybe you like chunk this thing up and you give it to people and then they eat it like no one is really fully encountering this is just so many layers of precise intentionality and look again whether you're a person of faith not faith this faith and other faith one version of christianity another version you gotta respect any expression of this thing where people for centuries have sat down and said how can we best articulate what we deeply believe to be the faith that was handed down from us and what we deeply to believe to be an accurate representation of who god is and what worshiping god looks like and what the bible wants us to do and how many places can we cram full of this meaning because we think it's so true that we want it to permeate everything and everybody who touches it or is around it even in a passing way we want a little bit of that transcendent truth to rub off on them and i thought that was beautiful and i i've come to highly respect that about orthodoxy but then finally we get to the the icons thing and even maybe even saying icons thing is inconsiderate i don't know and i need to just disclose that my interactions with orthodox christians on the internet um have been the most how can i put this diverse of any of the groups that i've visited and that i've interacted with and in part that's a compliment and in part respectfully there might be a little bit of a critique in that i've run into orthodox in the comments section orthodox christians have emailed me and so forth where it just looks like the faith that this expression of christianity has engendered in you the the attributes your attitude toward people is beautiful it's like you're not troubled by this or that thing that's going on today you're not maybe quite as obsessed with the end times and how things are going to go with prophecy and what pakistan and israel means and what just happened in the news like maybe some other groups are there's this piece and there's this chill about it whether i agree with every detail of the theology or not i i see what it's done in you and i really like interacting with you and i see a ton of that also you would think it would be like the really angry fundamentalist types who in my internet travels i've had some of the roughest interactions with but and please i'm not trying to be mean i'm just trying to do the transparent honest thing the roughest ones have been certain pockets of orthodoxy there's a combativeness there that i just do not understand and i i wasn't joking in that last video when i referenced like is there a pew crowd and kind of an angry not pew crowd and these people get after each other because man nobody has come in hot at me like a certain pocket of orthodox christians and i am let me just say it i'm not even joking i am so sorry for whatever i have done to offend you i absolutely do not mean disregard or disrespect to your faith i'm going and looking because i'm honestly curious and i honestly respect you and care about your well-being and i honestly want to better understand who you are and where you're coming from but man some of the remarks are like straight up violent i have to delete them off the channel at times like i had more than a dozen people come along and say hey if you ever wore a ball cap into the lobby of our church i'd walk up and punch you in the mouth like your priest said it was like cool and maybe just don't you know take it off at this point like punch me does anyone go to your church that's insane man i don't think that's a punching violation and maybe that's some kind of throwback to like some misguided notion of stuff that happened at the council of nicaea and well if punching was cool there punching is cool now i assure you it wasn't then and i don't think it especially is now either that's messed up and so that's been kind of weird i wouldn't say hurtful because people say stuff on the internet but it's been weird but in addition to weird it's also been telling like wow there is a passion here i don't understand of people railing at me over putting my hand in my pocket and pointing to a thing and asking a priest about it in an orthodox church i'm like i don't i don't know where you put your hands like pockets don't come up that much in the bible there isn't really a verse that i can think of about make sure your hands don't go in those pockets that's odd but and thank you for hanging with me through that acknowledgement of the both the beautiful and the not so beautiful stuff that i've heard back and overwhelmingly beautiful and a small minority not so beautiful thank you for hearing me out on that but i bring it up for a reason and that reason is to say i am better understanding not agreeing with i don't think that's cool but i'm better understanding why your fuse is so short those of you who have had a short fuse and been angry there is there is something very unique that changes in your brain when you ascent to the theological assumption that the dead in christ are present in the church that they are worthy of veneration and that they are accessible that you can somehow interact with them that you can bring prayer requests to them and that they can actually hear that and do something with that and that that would be somehow efficacious i'm not trying to be critical but that that doesn't compute i again as i talked about earlier for the protestant there is something of a divide that sin death and mortality puts there we would fully acknowledge that the dead in christ are alive in christ that they are in the presence of god whatever that looks like whatever that means in terms of how time works but the accessibility thing would certainly be a point of departure and indeed it was a point of departure in the protestant reformation so hopefully we can extend grace to each other and understand that that's just going to be a little bit confusing for outsiders but it's not confusing to the eastern orthodox you guys been doing this for a really really long time and so if you come to my church nobody's buried in there like they do in the western church we don't have any icons in there if we do have some representations of some famous people from church history or maybe an old pastor of this church who's beloved and now passed on or maybe some characters from the bible i mean they're just paintings it's like that reminds you the story that reminds you of that person that's a faith example it's a pretty cool thing orthodoxy goes to the next level and this is why there was such a tremendous theological friction between the east and the west in the late first millennium because i understand better now it is a very big assertion and so i get how it could come off badly to have a guy come in with flannel shirt and with his dumb lumberjack beard and kind of walk around and just talk like he'd normally talk to anybody else and ask questions about things i assure you what isn't meant as disrespect but the icon question the icon thing boy it ups the ante on somberness and solemnity to a place that is pretty foreign to a protestant outsider and i'm trying hard to better understand that all the time well again you come to our church we don't have anybody buried there and we don't have icons so oh you go to church in this room and then afterwards if you want to play some capture the flag with youth group kids that's not weird that's fine there's a reason that we build multi-purpose rooms we also really like sanctuaries where people don't necessarily play basketball afterwards and it's a little more set in terms of what it does and the fancier the protestant church probably the more somber the more respect becomes an important issue in that facility but respect that's a big thing and anything that has looked to my orthodox brothers and sisters as not respect has been pretty off-putting and you've let me know i think i get that better all the time it's kind of like a video game in a sense you've got these equippable slots when you're playing a game you got like an armor slot and a helmet slot you can't wear five helmets at once you can just put the one helmet in that slot and i feel like at least right now in the conversation there is an inventory slot when we talk about the actual christian life and it's like the same slot lends itself to only being occupied by the ring of respect or the ring of personal piety and personally working through your salvation now to the protestant the latter is very important an understanding of the bible and of god should somehow transform the way i think not all christians agree on exactly what every detail of right wrong naughty and nice and all of that looks like but theoretically the transformed life you're a new creation in christ there's some kind of transformation that happens and you want to talk different prioritize different live differently and that's a kind of personal process and so the ring of personal piety and also of personally working through your theology and wrestling with that goes in this inventory slot for most protestants and it is a big deal for most protestants to deeply think through on their own how do all these different things work i'm sure this exercise is baffling for some of you who are from a more high church perspective like you protestants have it so hard i mean look at this poor guy he's got to think all of this through for himself and he's visiting other churches and trying to wrestle all of it through and man that's rough whereas we just have the truth it was handed down to us forever over here in the high church and it's not that we don't think but we we respect the authority of the church and we assent to the truth of the church and is there wrestling in that sure there's wrestling in that but not with the same wide-ranging nature that you protestants have to deal with did you catch that all of that was in like orthodox or catholic voice and hopefully that made sense so what i think happens then is there's a thing that's really important to protestants those of you who are more high church maybe this will be useful in understanding people who aren't like you and and that equippable item really has a lot to do with the personal journey of faith and the individual relationship with jesus that of course happens in the context of the authority of the bible and the church and all of that stuff but i think the church does a lot more of that heavy lifting in the western catholic church in the eastern orthodox church and again that is not to say that catholics and orthodox do not think good heavens have you heard of the jesuits i mean no i mean all christians think all christians wrestle there's just a little different flavor i think to what that wrestling looks like and so if you have a higher view of the church it would make sense that what you would want to put in that inventory slot would be the ring of submission to the authority of the bride of christ the authority of the established church now there's a little bit of disagreement between the western catholic church and the eastern orthodox church as to who exactly that is which one is the really old version of church exactly what we regard as authoritative in scripture and who we regard as authoritative and acknowledging that distinction both parties there i think would agree that the church is the holder of truth they know what they're doing they are drawing on all of the authority of church tradition all of the authority of the bible all of the authority of the current torch bearer of the church handed down from the authority of the first apostles and therefore in that equipment slot what you need is the ring of acknowledgement of the authority of the church he who doesn't have the churches his mother cannot have god as his father and so for me one of the really eye opening things about this wrestling through the icons the lack of pews the imagery around the church has been just trying to appreciate that more i think again broad brushes and tendencies is all i'm speaking to here i think your high church types will tend to be baffled by outsiders who do not instinctively and intuitively demonstrate the tremendous reverence toward the church the authority of the church the authority of the church's teaching and the honest questioning and wrestling that is part and parcel of what it is to be a protestant i think that can just be out and out off-putting and then perhaps there's a possibility that even slight unintentional gestures might come off as disrespectful when at least in my case come on they're not i also think this is really helpful for protestants looking at people who are members of the high church in the east or the west for us to look at that and be able to say this respect is not a forfeiture of personal piety or thoughtful pursuit of understanding god or growing in those things there's just in the high church there's just much more optimism about the role of the central hierarchy of the church and historically what role that has played not just in the grand scheme of the church but in your individual life as you are a participant in this larger collective thing that is the church and maybe i'm saying stuff that is unbelievably obvious and has always been obvious to you but you know we all move at our own pace and for me i'm just gaming this stuff out now and i'm finding myself better appreciating because of a few little theological nuances i've picked up from this conversation i find myself better appreciating how much sense orthodoxy makes within the context of orthodox assumptions and i would ask for a little bit of grace because i think a whole lot of protestantism makes a ton of sense within the framework of a few key protestant assumptions as well what i'm finding in all of this is the more i dig the more i ask the more i get to know you people who might not think the same stuff as i think the more at peace i feel with the process of faith the more at peace i feel with the reality that man most christians don't think all the same stuff i do and that is not terribly threatening that's all right the more i learn about this stuff the more peace i even feel with the people who yell at me on the internet from time to time you and me if you're one of the people who's yelling at me on the internet we're cool it's all right thanks for getting all of this out with me i've got a bunch more to think about my next two videos probably two i might bunch it into one will be a sit down interview with father paul to get deeper into some more questions here about church history and theology and all that goes along with that so if you haven't subscribed to the channel and you like conversations like this i'd appreciate it if you'd hit subscribe and the notification bell then you know when it's coming and i'll try to flip that around quickly and we'll just get into the next phase of our conversation together thank you for one being up for this kind of stuff in general thank you for two being cool with this style of video i really want the videos where i process a tour or a theology conversation to feel just like this here i am it's going to take a little bit longer to work it through because i i am working it through with you and in front of you and i'm doing that because i want this part of my soul and my process to be on display with you i want to invite you into the same process and i want to foster the peace and grace and community with you in agreement and in not agreement as we try to think as honestly as we know how about stuff that's really important i appreciate you i'm matt this is the 10 minute bible hour let's do this again soon

Channel: Matt Whitman

Views: 66,634

Keywords: Bible, Theology, Study, Matt Whitman, TMBH, No Dumb Questions, Matthew, Jesus

Id: ZNUQyVSG_Js

Length: 29min 56sec (1796 seconds)

Published: Wed May 26 2021