It's been nearly 15 years since a post has gone up on this blog. 15 years... Now that's quite the amount of time, isn't it?
Why make a post to a defunct blog (who reads blogs anymore?) that's, for all intents and purposes, well, dead? I don't know, really. I guess I was just thinking about it and thought some closure would be nice. It's not often we get closure in life. Most of the time we don't. Things just sort of end, you know? Sometimes for unknown reasons. So it's nice to have a little wrap up, to see where the characters are now, to know how the story turned out, or at least how it's turned out so far, as the case may be. I guess that's what this post is all about.
What's happened in the past 15 years? Well, assuming anyone's actually reading this, quite a lot. When I started this blog I had only been married for two years. Now it's been 17 years. You might be thinking, "That's not something that's happened if you were already married." You must not be married (lol) because marriage each year, each month, each day is something that most certainly happens to you. But I digress. Just the passage of time is interesting thinking about it.
My mindset on things have changed. The way I think of things like the faith has changed. Oh! My wife and I are Orthodox Christians now. I know, this blog already had an Orthodox Christian vibe to it, but when I created it I actually wasn't an Orthodox Christian yet. In fact, by the last post on this blog in Nov. 2009 I wouldn't become an Orthodox Christian until nearly 7 years later(!). I hit some speed bumps along the way. So, what happened? Well, long story short, I ventured into an agnostic nihilistic despair that eventually led to me questioning pretty much everything, including my faith in Christ, which led me to different philosophical approaches to life such as stoicism, deism, foundationalism, etc. However, I never stopped searching, listening, learning, and thinking, and that eventually led me back to the Reason (Logos) of it all, Christ.
When I came out of Adventism back in 2005 I began to read the early Church father's writings with a fervor. I think I've already documented that on this blog. After about a year of intensive study I quickly found my options for authentic original Christianity to be between Anglicanism/Episcopalianism, Roman Catholicism, eastern Orthodoxy, so-called Oriental Orthodoxy, and the Assyrian Church of the east. I discounted Anglicanism/Episcopalianism pretty quickly since I couldn't see myself joining a group that only existed because a king didn't like the fact that the Pope didn't give him the divorce he wanted (see King Henry VIII). As I studied more I eventually discarded the Assyrian Church of the east and the so-called Oriental Orthodox as viable options. I just didn't see their rejections of the Ecumenical Councils to be legitimate (the 3rd and 4th respectively). So that left the two main contenders: Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy (I'll drop the "eastern" now). Since I came from a very anti-Catholic background I gave some time for Rome to make her case to me. In fact, I gave her years. My friends and I over on the equally defunct blog SDA2RC had many conversations on this topic. I was the only pro-Orthodox sympathizer there with the creator of the blog, Hugo, having dabbled in Orthodoxy for 2 years before swimming the Tiber himself. I heard their arguments. I listened. I pondered. I read. I listened some more. I read some more. I watched. I pondered. For years I did this. I truly wanted to give Rome a fair chance. But during this time I was also doing the same with Orthodoxy. Even though Orthodoxy seemed to me to fit the Church of the first millennium better than Roman Catholicism did, I wanted to maintain an open mind, because I also, at one point, believed 100% that Seventh-day Adventistism was true. So I gave it time.
I think it's important to state here that I wasn't going to any Church at this time. From around May 2009 to October 2016 my wife and I didn't go to any Church. And it was during this time that I was trying to sort things out between Rome and Orthodoxy. I say this to show, I hope, that I had no undue influence from either tradition via a congregation we knew and worshipped with as that can be a very powerful influence on a person's point of view. This was a time of intellectual arguments, and one would think Rome would have the advantage here since She has pursued a highly intellectual tradition in scholasticism. But this wasn't the case for me. My primary concern was over the first millennium, and I just couldn't see Rome's Vatican I claims being true in the first millennium of the Church, whereas I saw Orthodoxy fit nicely in with the first millennium. Roman Catholic apologists would routinely criticize the Orthodox for how messy things between the Orthodox Churches are such as Churches out of communion with one another, bishops bickering with each other, multiple jurisdictions in the same city, etc. Juxtaposed to this messiness the Roman Catholic apologists would point to the apparent order and cleanliness of Rome. For me, though, I found this to be an argument in favor of Orthodoxy rather than against it. When I studied about the Church of the first millennium I found a mess, generally speaking. All of the things the Roman Catholic apologists criticized the Orthodox for I found in the Church of the first thousand years plus more! Churches out of communion with each other, bickering bishops, politics, messy jurisdictional disputes, heresies, false Ecumenical Councils, etc, etc. This, as well as other things, really helped solidify for me the Orthodox position.
In 2016 my wife was really feeling the need to go back to Church, and to be honest, so was I. So we did. But we spent months talking about it first. Each of us would say every other week, "Hey, let's go to Church this weekend.", to which the other would respond, "Okay.", but then we wouldn't end up going, lol. That went on for a number of months until we finally decided to go. One week my wife said we should go to Church. I asked her where she would like to go. She could've said anywhere and I would've been fine with it as I didn't want to force anything on her (I did believe Orthodoxy was the true faith at this point). She indicated that she wanted to visit an Orthodox parish that I had discovered earlier that year in our area. So I said sure let's do it! So we visited an Orthodox parish after 7 years of not going to Church. We went a couple of weeks in October and November 2016 but then stopped for a couple of months. We started going again in February 2017 and really experienced our first Great Lent and eventually Pascha. We were Chrismated with Holy Oil and welcomed into the Holy Orthodox Church in June of 2017 on the Nativity of St. John the Baptist.
The last 7 years have been an amazing journey in the Orthodox faith, one that can't truly be understood by someone who hasn't taken that journey themselves. And looking at what's been continuing to happen in the world of Roman Catholicism I'm convinced more and more of the bullet I dodged from swimming that Tiber to Rome, glory be to God! So what's happened in the last 7 years? Well, quite a bit as well. But that's a story for another time, and another blog, lol! It's enough to know that the story continues, and by God's mercy and grace, it will continue for a very long time and into forever.
This blog was a place for former Seventh-day Adventists and Adventists to come together and talk out their differences peacefully. A port of call, a home away from home for diplomats, hustlers, entrepreneurs, and wanderers (sorry, went into a Babylon 5 mode there for a minute, lol). This blog has memories for me, all good ones, of a time in my life that I'll never have again, but I'm glad I did. The conversations, the friendships I had, are special to me. I just wanted to say goodbye properly rather than just leave things as they were. May whoever finds this blog find within it something that benefits them in some way is my only wish.
Take care and God bless!
