(I wrote this piece over a year ago. When I showed it to some friends in the Orthodox Church, rather than express concerns for my spiritual struggles, they were horrified at my audacity to criticize “THE Church.” With harsh response of one friend in particular, whose opinion I quite value, I pulled the post and set it aside. Yet within the last months, I have read things and thought more about this, and I that this post should be out there to be read by anyone who stumbles across it. I would think that if it causes distress to see the Orthodox faith criticized, then perhaps the proper response is not to nuke me, but to try to understand why I feel the way I do and to both help me and pray for me.)

September 25, 2023

I quite imagine that any Orthodox person, having read some of my posts, is by now saying to himself, “This guy isn’t Orthodox. He’s still Protestant at heart in an Orthodox skin.” Fair enough. Maybe I am still Protestant in my thinking, and it may take a few years for me to accept the Orthodox notions of a God who allows His redeemed people to climb all the way to the top of the Ladder of Divine Ascent, be tricked by a defeated foe (aka the devil) and thus fall into an eternal torture chamber. I may need many more years of indoctrination to accept the idea that after we have been freely forgiven by God, we are allowed to be tested by the demons who await at the Ariel Toll Houses so that they can have one more crack at damning us to an eternity of horror away from God. At Pascha, we Orthodox sing, with considerable gusto and joy, “Christ is risen from the dead, by death He trampled death.” So . . . I just don’t get it. God tramples death underfoot, destroys and empties Hades, and then turns around and allows death, hell, and the demons one more crack at us. Maybe I should stop thinking altogether because this makes no sense to me. Hades is destroyed, but the construction firm of Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas LLC has firmly rebuilt it and the demons are packing it as full as they can, eagerly awaiting the Judgment Day when they will see, to their delight, billions of souls condemned to eternal torment.

Before I start, let me hasten to say that there is nothing wrong with Orthodoxy. Orthodoxy is good. Not perfect, but really good! I love the Orthodox faith. It is me that is completely messed up.

Admission: I am a dysfunctional person. I have many of the earmarks of someone who is dysfunctional:

• Problems of esteem and acceptance
• Fragmentation
• Difficulty tolerating strong emotion
• Lack of harmony between feelings and self-concept
• Presence of self-states that lead to erratic or contradictory actions
• Rigidity
• Inability to effectively self-direct in accordance with internalized goals and ethical standards
• Impulsive and risky behavior, such as having unsafe sex, gambling or binge eating

Like many dysfunctional people, I dealt with my emotional train wreck through various addictions. This is what dysfunctional people do. In AA jargon, it is called “medicating your pain away.” The addiction, whatever it is – drugs, money, sex, pornography, success at work (workaholism) all have the same effect – they make the addict feel good about himself, something that his family and life in general has not done for him. It is the grace of God that I survived two drug overdoses and am here and alive today. But, like all addicts, this does not mean that I am “cured.” In AA Twelve Step programs, we say, ” I am an addict,” not, “I was.” The inner pain and demons that drove us to addiction are still very much there. The goal of any good program is to help the addict live in victory over those internal forces that drove us to whatever addiction we used to make the pain go away. There are many things that I do not do anymore because I am free from the power of their addiction. I no longer look at pornography, have no desire to do any drugs of any kind, and have mostly overcome my need to be perfect in the sports I play. But . . . I can still feel the desires deep within. I once described it to a friend in this manner:

“When I was in full-blown addiction, it was like being caught in a violent thunderstorm. Now, the storm is no longer here and in control of me, but I can still, from time to time, hear the call of the thunder far away.”

What creates a person in this mold? I would like to speak from my own experience and tie it to my animus against some of the ideas about God that I find repulsive. They are repulsive because they make God to sound just like my father.

My father never – not once in my lifetime – ever said, “I love you.” to me. Not. Once. His pet nickname for me was stupid, and if he didn’t mutter it my way, he could make facial and bodily expressions that told me that I was a walking mistake. And that is no exaggeration. I’ll introduce you to my brother if you need verification for this, and he will tell you that our father was a completely self-absorbed man with little time for his sons. In different manners, but with the same result, he made us both feel that we were simply not wanted. I don’t know how such thinking came to be, but I have hints. His father was a turd.  It passes down from generation to generation. Ask any psychologist.

I was longing for his acceptance. I wanted to hear words of appreciation from him, to see him smile in approval at something I had done, rather than to refer to me by his favorite nickname for me, which was “stupid.” Yes, you heard that correctly. He would verbalize his disgust with any of my failures by calling me stupid. Or by rolling his eyes in a manner which conveyed those words to me without the need for verbal pyrotechnics. I was a loser, a severe disappointment to him, and he was not above letting me know it by either verbal pronouncement or bodily expression. Add to that his absence at my pee-wee football games, my little league baseball games, or any of the other things which I tried as sports, and you have a recipe for a little kid starving for the slightest sign of approval from his dad.

Thus was born the perfectionist, the child who thought that perhaps if he won the gold trophy, took the first-place prize, succeeded with straight A’s in school, or in some way performed the astounding, he would get that smile of approval, that “Atta boy!” he was so desperate for.

Now carry this enslaving perfectionism, this drive to feel worthwhile as a human being, into the realm of a Christian faith which is constantly reminding you in prayer that you are “a wretch,” “an awful sinner,” “deserving of hell,” and a hundred other expressions of self-loathing found in the Orthodox prayer book, and you have the perfect recipe for despair. I find myself constantly battling thoughts that I have failed God, that He is displeased with me, is going to do something bad to me because I’m a bad person, etc. Yes, I know that is not Orthodox thinking and is quite messed up. I have been told by my dear friend, Fr. Elias, “God is not your earthly father, Ed. He loves you.” Well, that’s nice to hear, but the reality is that, just like an ink stain from an old-fashioned fountain pen on a white dress shirt, the stain of being raised in a dysfunctional family by an uncaring and distant father doesn’t just disappear because you try to bleach it out with some nice words about God’s love. This stuff goes deep into the psyche and rests there.

I suppose if you are raised in a good and wholesome Orthodox family, you don’t much think about this stuff and find what I am saying difficult to understand. You accept that this is the Church, God is good and loves mankind, and while yes, you are a sinner, you are loved by God despite yourself. You accept this, along with the Sacraments of the Church and go about your life. You have hope in the future and especially in the life after death because you know God loves you. You were raised in a family that loved you unconditionally, warts and all, and you knew that you were loved and accepted by the way you were treated and spoken to.

It doesn’t work that way for the dysfunctional person, especially coming in as a convert. I read the stories of the saints who experienced God’s love in a very personal way, look at my life, and can’t help but feel that by comparison that I am worthless, and that God tolerates me only because He is good. The perfectionist in me thinks that if only I could fast on bread and water for the forty days of Lent, or spend a couple of years sitting on a rock praying, or something else like these saints did, then I would be acceptable to God. Remember, for the dysfunctional person, it is all about finding and then doing perfectly those works which will make me acceptable to people (and God). The dysfunctional convert, unlike a normal person, sees the ascetic extremes of the monks on Mount Athos and is intensely drawn to them because they appear to be the apex behavior which will win God’s approval. After all, if you don’t win His approval, if you fall off the Ladder of Divine Ascent, or when at the Ariel Toll House called “Pornography” you are shown a picture of a naked woman and respond to it, well . . . that’s it. You are finished, and God washes His hands of you as the demons drag you down to hell. Again, I am not saying this is true or a correct picture of our loving heavenly Father. I am trying to show you the wrong thoughts that a dysfunctional perfectionist struggles against. Unconditional love is something that the dysfunctional person simply cannot wrap his head around. He has never experienced it. Every bit of approval from others has had to be earned, often at quite a cost. It is hard – almost impossible – to divorce God from such thinking. It doesn’t help that thinking to see others who, by their actions, enjoy a robust relationship with God. It is also unhelpful to have theologians and pastors give out messages that indicate that the love of God is in some way conditional, and if you don’t measure up – to hell with you! It puts you right back on the treadmill of earning affection by works and trying to feel good about yourself.

The prayers in the Orthodox Prayer book are part of this problem for the dysfunctional, self-loathing person:

0 Lord, Heavenly King, Comforter, Spirit of Truth, show compassion and have mercy on me Thy sinful servant, and loose me from mine unworthiness, and forgive all wherein I have sinned against Thee today as a man, and not only as a man, but even worse than a beast, my sins voluntary and involuntary, known and unknown, whether from youth, and from evil suggestion, or whether from brazenness and despondency. If I have sworn by Thy name, or blasphemed it in my thought; or grieved anyone, or have become angry about anything; or have lied, or slept needlessly, or if a beggar hath come to me and I disdained him; or if I have grieved my brother, or have quarreled, or have condemned anyone; or if I have been boastful, or prideful, or angry; if, as I stood at prayer, my mind hath been distracted by the wiles of this world, or by thoughts of depravity; or if I have over eaten, or have drunk excessively, or laughed frivolously; if I have thought evil, seen the beauty of an! other and been wounded thereby in my heart; if I have said improper things, or derided my brother’s sin when mine own sins are countless; if I have been neglectful of prayer, or have done some other wrong that I do not remember, for all of this and more than this have I done: have mercy, 0 Master my Creator, me Thy downcast and unworthy servant, and loose me, and remit, and forgive me, for Thou art good and the Lover of mankind, so that, lustful, sinful, and wretched as I am, I may lie down and sleep and rest in peace. And I shall worship, and hymn, and glorify Thy most honorable name, together with the Father and His Only-begotten Son, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

Evening Prayers From the “Jordanville” Prayerbook. Prayer III, to the Holy Spirit

This is something very unique to Orthodoxy. You see, in Protestantism, there is not a constant litany of mea culpas like this, prayer after prayer after prayer beating the chest and bemoaning one’s sinfulness. Some Protestant religions never mention sin again once you are “saved.” You are taught the happy prayers, the “Jesus loves me, this I know” prayers, the prayers that bolster your self-image and make you rest in the fact that you are legally forgiven and bound for heaven for sure. A dysfunctional person can become addicted even to a religious practice that demands nothing of him. Doing all the things that the pastor says you should do (not drink that wicked alcohol, short hair on men, long hair on women, proper dress code, tithe regularly, etc.) can be just another addiction which makes you feel good about yourself. Religious addiction is a reality, and those who succumb to this can be really annoying to be around. I know. I am an addict and I have to be very careful that my religion does not become just one more way to medicate away my emotional pain. I am leery that my Orthodoxy might be a continuation of trying to find something that makes me feel like I am a good person before God. You know, do all the prayers, attend all the services, get everything right and God, unlike your father, will be pleased with you. After my first wife passed away, I even went to a monastery to try out for Team Monk. God sent me back, and with an experience on the last night of my stay that made it clear to me exactly why I couldn’t be a monk and what I needed to do. That was a mercy because I would have been living a falsehood.

Perhaps you can read or even pray the prayer I posted above without a twinge of conscience. For the perfectionist, who is desperately trying to overcome the shame he feels of his very existence, that is an exercise in self-flagellation of the worst kind. What is even worse, for the defiled conscience that is trying to rack up Brownie Points with God, is to miss prayer time. Going to bed dog-tired and falling asleep immediately without praying. Oh, that’s a negative blot on my ledger, the ledger that we are reminded that God will whip out on the Judgment Day and scan with a frown. For the dysfunctional perfectionist, Judgment Day is not the day we run to our loving Father, trusting in His mercy. It is the day we dread because all of our faults, the rotten things we did, the failures to do good, will be dredged up and shown to the whole universe before God gets down to the business of dispensing the whuppins. The Orthodox Prayer Book even refers to it as “the dread day of Judgment.” That language is all I have to know to know that I am screwed. It is not a day to go to the Father who is like the Father of the Prodigal Son. Nope. He is the Judge, and He is going to examine you right down to the fuzzy little hairs on your big toe. A father heals and corrects, a judge does one thing, and if you aren’t perfect, it is too bad for you.

Now imagine saying the dozen prayers like this every night which are the part of the Evening Prayers: “I’m a wretch, I’m no good, I love sin, I deserve eternal torment, forgive me please for being so rotten,” and on and on and on and on. I suppose it is hard, if not impossible, for a mentally healthy person to understand all this. It is probably impossible for someone born Orthodox to get this. The craziest part is that after considerable counseling, including reading of books on my condition, AA meetings, etc., I know what has caused this, but it won’t go away just because I have come to realize that this drive to perfection is a sick attempt to earn the love and approval that my father never gave me. You would think that coming to realize some amount of personal enlightenment regarding this problem would mean that I be able to understand, “Okay. My father was a really screwed up individual and his assessment of me was totally wrong. I don’t have to do anything to earn God’s love.” You probably wonder why I can’t just accept this and move on with my life, resting in God’s love and accepting with trust that He is good and loving.

Honestly, I wish it were that easy.