It's Simple, Part 2

I wrote a while back on the simplicity of the Orthodox Christian life, and I return to it because of a conversation some friends and I had about mutual friends who were raised in a non-Chalcedonean church but made their way to our little parish and are the most delightful people.  The conversation centered around things like reception and worthiness.

Now, people who know me know I am not some wild-eyed ecumenist, looking to paper over real differences and just get along despite very serious doctrinal errors.  I take the truth of the Orthodox Church seriously.  It's one reason why I am an Orthodox Christian.

But there are a lot more people in the world who are not, as the comedian Brother Dave Gardner once said, "educated beyond their capacity," than those who are.  And a seminary degree, or a St. Stephen Certificate (as I hold), is not a sufficient condition for salvation.  These things are nice to have, and it's interesting to study the faith and Church history, but knowledge does not save.  Belief does not save.  And certainly, ideology does not save.

The people we were talking about have no seminary education.  They likely do not know precisely why the church they grew up in believes differently than the one they found themselves in, halfway around the world.  To the extent they do, it obviously does not matter enough to them to maintain the division (with apologies to our non-Chalcedonean friends).  But they pray, and they love, and they enter into the Christian life far more deeply than I do, to my shame.  And they have done this, simply, their entire lives.  They are model Christians.

So I'm not writing this to suggest our differences do not matter.  They do.  I am writing this to suggest that perhaps those differences, once they are sorted out and identified sufficiently to warn the faithful of error, ought take a backseat to the simple, faithful, loving act of living within the Church and praying for the salvation of all.  I don't know how precise the theological constructs of our Oriental Orthodox turned Eastern Orthodox friends are.  I could not tell you what the depth of their knowledge about God is.  But knowing about God is not our aim.  Knowing God is our aim.  And I can tell you with certainty, these folks know God.  Because knowing God is simple, and we tend to complicate it.