Seeming Orthodox Vs. Being Orthodox

TAC - Seeming Orthodox Vs. Being Orthodox by Rod Dreher

The liturgy and the icons are inextricable from the theology, and from the “cultural shift” the Bartel family found was beyond their capacity. The Orthodox life is not about enhancing your Sunday morning experience with a few candles and a change of presentation. It’s not about changing your Sunday morning lifestyle; it’s about radically changing your life. The Orthodox liturgical experience has been essentially unchanged for many, many centuries. You can’t expect to “get” it after only a month of services. You have to have faith that there is something present here that Christians across the vast geography of nation, culture, and time, found valuable and true about this worship, this approach to God. If you stick it out, it will be revealed to you. But you have to submit to Orthodoxy’s rhythms and practices. You have to be willing to make the cultural shift, in order to be remade. To think that Orthodoxy is only about adding smells, bells, candles and icons onto what you normally do is like thinking you can dress up like the Queen of England and become Her Majesty...