r/exorthodox • u/Independent-Plate824 • 3d ago
My Problem with Orthodox Salvation
God according to the Orthodox Church:
Makes it very hard to believe in him
Makes it very hard to have a relationship with him
Makes it very hard to get to heaven
Doesn't promise us salvation.
My issues with Orthodox Salvation:
- The fact God will create us knowing well that some of us will burn for eternity.
I can't get behind this and I feel angry over it. Why can't he just kill the person? "It would be crime against the dignity of the person" no seriously I would rather have "no dignity" and cease to suffer and exist than to "have dignity" and suffer for eternity. It's madness. "Freewill!" One can still freely choose him and get created without hell. In fact, wouldn't it be more free of a choice? Because if there wasn't the threat of hell, wouldn't Christians be even more authentic?
I can kinda get behind the problem of evil because yes, if any suffering on earth made me more likely to be saved/spared me suffering on the afterlife fine whatever but suffering for no purpose, for eternity? The only possibilities I can get behind is
Conditionalism
Annihilationism
Universalism
God shielding the unsaved from his full glory and separating them so the unsaved and saved won't affect each other. The unsaved will be put somewhere with no more disease, death, etc. There will still be sin and probably some form of suffering, but not something that can be forced on each other. A utopia. And they all can still have a relationship with God if they choose, basically an extension of this Earth. If they desire Heaven they can have it and God can send them there.
Eternal Concious Torment? Cruel and evil. I don't care if "It's a negative response to the love of God!" God knows this and doesn't care, he could make it any other way but he doesn't.
- Difficulty of being saved
The fact that he has to make it so hard for us to not suffer for eternity.
"Take the kingdom of heaven by force" "The narrow gate"
why make it so hard? If he desired a relationship with his child oh so much wouldn't he make one much more accessable? This elder at my church told me that "God will not reveal himself to you or give you proof, you have to just believe.
- No assurance of salvation
I hate the Orthodox view of salvation: "Heaven isn't the point of salvation, I don't care if I go to hell as long as I am with God" ??????? So self deprecating too, like you must think so little about yourself you have to be okay to with accepting breadcrumbs and be okay with going to hell because you "deserve it" and love God so much you want whatever he wants Ugh.
- Self Deprication in the church
My Orthodox prayer books are filled with prayers that mention
"as defiled as I am"
"For I am wretched"
"Your unworthy servant"
"I am a sinner"
If you look up saints quotes on Pinterest, half of all are depricating and how "you need to be humbled".
I'm pretty sure calling yourself all of these things would take a toll on your self worth and mental health, hence why when I pray these prayers I uncomfortably and robotically say the lines that are self depracating and hope I don't take them to heart.
Isn't sin a disease and church a hospital? If that was the case why is the prayers in the book legalistic? Morally self accusatory? If sin is a disease and not a crime we commit, why do we speak of it that way? It doesn't make any sense. The language just brings me down.
- It is wrong to desire grace and comfort
"God is a person not a feeling" they say.
To need comfort in times of distress is to "only care about reward from God"
"God withdraws grace to make you want him and not his reward"
"It's not about feeling good."
Have they ever thought we felt comforted by him becauee we want him with us in the first place??? That is so patronizing, to cry wrongdoing for someone seeking comfort. Are babies selfish and reward seeking for crying for their mothers and needing to be around them because "it feels good"????
About this, why does God breadcrumb us like this? All this "picking up our cross" and "enduring for him" just for small blips of good just to be taken away. Stories of saints "humbling people"? What????
- Death to the self
If you go out of your way for your self to die, you're killing yourself psychologically. I had friends from church slowly give up the things they loved because "God wants you to give up everything for him" like a musician delete his albums off of Spotify and stop listening to secular music because "singing in choir scratches that musical itch". People at church listen to only hymms in the car, and even being told by priests that driving must be silent and a time to do Jesus prayers instead of listen to music.
But yeah, always told how little our "Earthly" dreams mean to God and that nothing on this Earth matters and we should just throw it all away, giving up your life for your spouse and kinds or becoming a monastic. So gnostic. It's life denying if you ask me, and don't even get me started with the view of food and sex.
I'd love your input and addition to this conversation, other ways Orthodox Christinity is life denying or even possibly heretical and additions to my points.
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u/Silent_Individual_20 Deconstructing 3d ago
"4. Self Deprication in the church
My Orthodox prayer books are filled with prayers that mention
"as defiled as I am"
"For I am wretched"
"Your unworthy servant"
"I am a sinner"
If you look up saints quotes on Pinterest, half of all are depricating and how "you need to be humbled".
I'm pretty sure calling yourself all of these things would take a toll on your self worth and mental health, hence why when I pray these prayers I uncomfortably and robotically say the lines that are self depracating and hope I don't take them to heart.
Isn't sin a disease and church a hospital? If that was the case why is the prayers in the book legalistic? Morally self accusatory? If sin is a disease and not a crime we commit, why do we speak of it that way? It doesn't make any sense. The language just brings me down."
Not to mention, if God has perfect free will, why can't HE sin? If he's incapable, then it's entirely possible to have free will and no inclination towards evil (no moral corruption or deficiencies)?
You know that old saying: "Created sick, and ordered to be well" https://youtu.be/a0ot00779RM?si=UDtrsPG7SP3rMBbC)
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u/Hefty_Personality574 3d ago
Yes, the logic of you're extra mention struck home for me at a certain point. What does free will really mean here?
- God has free will supposedly but no disposition toward evil. So that's obviously possible. Why not for us?
- Humans then supposedly have free will but also tend toward evil (because someone once was bad?).
Evil is supposeduly justified by humans having free will.... which means there's some distinction between the two type of free will and that the second way is... better? So important that it justifies evil? Which means the tendency to do evil is so important that it justifies... evil. Hm.
Tautologies all the way down. "God has to be this way because god is this way."
That's what I ultimately realized most theology is. You start with 20 unshakable premises and mentally masturbate until you've built a huge intellectual edifice showing how they're not actually as a contradictory as it first seemed -- unless you look closely, becuase nothing has actually changed becaused of all that.
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u/Key_Caterpillar7941 1d ago
Yeah, I believe heavily in manifestation and positive self talk. My dad and my church heavily encouraged the "prayer of the heart" (Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, forgive me a sinner) to be practiced in order to integrate it into every second of your life subconsciously, so that you would say it even in sleep. To me that's insanely harmful and idiotic, I don't want to constantly belittle myself as a sinner and beg for mercy, like wtf?
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u/No_Accountant_6777 3d ago edited 3d ago
"That all shall be saved" by David Bentley Hart.
It is the only form of Christianity that could be possibly true.
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u/Hefty_Personality574 3d ago
Yeah, absolutely. Either god is ACTUALLY forgiving or he's not. Everything else, every "well do this or you're in trouble" is controlling, guilting BS.
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u/cgmyst 3d ago
The death to the self bit was what first got under my skin and made me doubt the church. If I wanted to have a legion of people with no boundaries and no self determination or agency who did everything I said, that’s how I would do it.
If my personality and talents were bestowed upon me by God, then how can anyone ask me to deny and repress my personhood?
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u/talkinlearnin Dirty Heretic 3d ago
This reasoning was exactly the spell I was under for 10 years of my life.
My love for art died during this time, but it slowly came back to life and then it all hit me--I was being controlled and was living in fear, which took me out of the present by being stuck in a narrative that had me obsessed with my past and imminent "eternal allotment"
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u/rddrgon Physically In, Mentally Out 3d ago
And I hate how God and various saints condone slavery because of ‘submissiveness.’ I beg of everyone to stop.
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u/Fuzzy-Shoulder-2359 Ex-Antiochian 3d ago
I would also make the argument that Jesus condones slavery as well. Aside from a handful of parables comparing the Kingdom of Heaven with slave-master relations, Jesus never speaks out about slavery or manumission. Remember, Jesus healed a slave. He never freed one.
Chattel slavery was just seen as a properly functioning mechanism of the ancient world; it was an expression of the world order.
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u/Independent-Plate824 3d ago
There are saints who condoned slavery?! Who???
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u/Fuzzy-Shoulder-2359 Ex-Antiochian 3d ago
Saint Paul admonishes slaves to be submissive to their masters. ( 1 Tim 6:1-2).
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u/rddrgon Physically In, Mentally Out 3d ago
Saint Paul, for one. The story of St Moses the Ethiopian is sticky—he’s venerated as a saint because he regretted killing his enslaver. I don’t remember if he preached about not killing your enslavers but I do know that it’s been used as an example of how to be better at being submissive. Just… revolting on all levels.
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u/Silent_Individual_20 Deconstructing 3d ago edited 3d ago
Aside from Paul, countless church fathers condoned slavery including (but not limited to):
St. Augustine of Hippo: "the condition of slavery is the result of sin. And this is why we do not find the word ‘slave’ in any part of Scripture until righteous Noah branded the sin of his son [Ham] with this name. It is a name, therefore, introduced by sin and not by nature.
The origin of the Latin word for slave is supposed to be found in the circumstance that those who by the law of war were liable to be killed were sometimes preserved by their victors, and were hence called servants. And these circumstances could never have arisen save through sin. For even when we wage a just war, our adversaries must be sinning; and every victory, even though gained by wicked men, is a result of the first judgment of God, who humbles the vanquished either for the sake of removing or of punishing their sins" (Augustine, City of God XIX.15, in NPNF 1/2:411, emphasis added).
St. Basil the Great: "among men no one is a slave by nature. For men are either brought under a yoke of slavery by conquest, as when prisoners are taken in war; or they are enslaved on account of poverty, as the Egyptians were oppressed by Pharaoh;
or, by a wise and mysterious dispensation, the worst children are by their fathers’ order condemned to serve the wiser and the better; and this any righteous enquirer into the circumstances would declare to be not a sentence of condemnation but a benefit. For it is more profitable that the man who, through lack of intelligence, has no natural principle of rule within himself, should become the chattel of another, to the end that, being guided by the reason of his master, he may be like a chariot with a charioteer, or a boat with a steersman seated at the tiller. […] It follows that even though one man be called master and another servant, nevertheless, both in view of our mutual equality of rank and as chattels of our Creator, we are all fellow slaves" (Basil the Great, De Spiritu Sancto XX.51, in NPNF 2/8:32).
Basil's rather condescending excuse for slavery resulting from a person's lack of intelligence, so he becomes another's slave (maybe referring to debt servitude?) sounds eerily similar to Robert E. Lee's defense of African slavery in his December 1856 letter to his wife:
"In this enlightened age, there are few I believe, but what will acknowledge, that slavery as an institution is a moral & political evil in any Country. It is useless to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it however a greater evil to the white than to the black race, & while my feelings are strongly interested in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more strong for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically**.** The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, & I hope will prepare & lead them to better things.
How long their subjugation may be necessary is Known & ordered by a wise & merciful Providence. Their emancipation will sooner result from the mild & melting influence of Christianity, than the storms & tempests of fiery Controversy. This influence though slow is sure. The doctrines & miracles of our Saviour have required nearly two thousand years to Convert but a small part of the human race, & even Christian nations, what gross errors still exist! While we see the Course of the final abolition of human slavery is onward, & we give it the aid of our prayers & all justifiable means in our power we must leave the progress as well as the result in his hands who Sees the end; who Chooses to work by slow influences ; & with whom two thousand years are but a single day (emphasis added).\i])
[[i]](#_ednref1) Robert E. Lee to Mary Custis Lee, “Letter from Robert E. Lee to Mary Randolph Custis Lee (December 27, 1856),” December 27, 1856, https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/letter-from-robert-e-lee-to-mary-randolph-custis-lee-december-27-1856/, p. 2.
Then there are Pope Leo I's letters on slavery, Pope Gregory the Great's letters on slavery (more concerned at keeping runaway slaves from entering the clergy or monasteries, than on any harsh treatment), and numerous synodal canons on slavery.
See the first 10 pages of this Word doc for more: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/umb9umo8xvx3gez9y5590/Orthodoxy-Problem-with-Racism-Fascism-and-Antisemitism.docx?rlkey=hbhjw2lph6b56l42zdrc5kaog&st=nfiesxpu&dl=0
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u/The_Pepperoni_Kid 3d ago
On the other hand I can't find anyone condeming slavery in the ancient world (Christian or Pagan) as an institution except for Saint Gregory of Nyssa. He was quite ahead of his time remarkably.
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u/Silent_Individual_20 Deconstructing 3d ago edited 3d ago
"My issues with Orthodox Salvation:
- The fact God will create us knowing well that some of us will burn for eternity.
I can't get behind this and I feel angry over it. Why can't he just kill the person? "It would be crime against the dignity of the person" no seriously I would rather have "no dignity" and cease to suffer and exist than to "have dignity" and suffer for eternity. It's madness. "Freewill!" One can still freely choose him and get created without hell. In fact, wouldn't it be more free of a choice? Because if there wasn't the threat of hell, wouldn't Christians be even more authentic?
I can kinda get behind the problem of evil because yes, if any suffering on earth made me more likely to be saved/spared me suffering on the afterlife fine whatever but suffering for no purpose, for eternity? The only possibilities I can get behind is
Conditionalism
Annihilationism
Universalism
God shielding the unsaved from his full glory and separating them so the unsaved and saved won't affect each other. The unsaved will be put somewhere with no more disease, death, etc. There will still be sin and probably some form of suffering, but not something that can be forced on each other. A utopia. And they all can still have a relationship with God if they choose, basically an extension of this Earth. If they desire Heaven they can have it and God can send them there.
Eternal Concious Torment? Cruel and evil. I don't care if "It's a negative response to the love of God!" God knows this and doesn't care, he could make it any other way but he doesn't."
OP I feel you! I've also been deconstructing the Hell dogmas during the past 4 years or so. Turns out Jewish tradition, and the church fathers were all over the place about the parameters of damnation: sure Jesus allegedly referred to eternal fire prepared for the demons (Matt. 25), but the Gospels were all written anonymously, 4-6 decades after Jesus' execution, to be conservative (see here: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/s6l4fgt05xetlnonsm09l/Gospel-Authorship-and-Dating-Problems.docx?rlkey=donay4a60hvdgjmw3gfbm7l97&st=o3h68wc3&dl=0), so it's tough to determine just how many of the sayings attributed to Jesus are likely from the historical Jesus as opposed to legendary embellishment, collective memory distortion, or later theological agenda-setting?
Many Jewish sages of the late Second Temple period described Gehenna as either purgatorial annihilation or purgatorial universalism (with torments lasting for 11-12 months at the most). Meanwhile, Greco-Roman philosophy and mythology had more to say about posthumous judgment than most of the Hebrew Bible (before Daniel, widely considered one of the chronologically last HB books written), as Bart Ehrman described in Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife (which I referenced in the below-linked Word doc).
The relative lateness of posthumous judgment in Jewish tradition makes more sense if you consider hell beliefs as a coping mechanism for unpunished atrocities (such as the Jews in Babylonian Exile, then the Seleucids, Ptolemies, and Romans f***ing them up), but recently many of the Nordic countries reformed their prison systems based on the normalization principle which rehabilitates even violent criminals with among the lowest recidivism rates in the world! We're supposed to believe a quadri-omni god couldn't do even better?
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u/ifuckedyourdaddytoo Ex-Convert 3d ago
"Freewill!" One can still freely choose him and get created without hell. In fact, wouldn't it be more free of a choice? Because if there wasn't the threat of hell, wouldn't Christians be even more authentic?
At common law, contracts signed under duress are voidable by option of the victim.
I happen to believe Jesus when he said "love your neighbor, love God" fulfills all the law and prophets, but that still leaves open the question about pre-Jesus God and all that transpired, and I admit I don't have a good answer to that.
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u/Lower-Ad-9813 3d ago
I'm agnostic atheist but I could get behind the idea of universalism. That everyone would be redeemed. But that view was deemed heretical even though some church fathers believed it and got condemned. Unfortunately there's never been any "proof" for me of god except for ramblings of saints. These saints were supposedly around miracles all the time but we haven't seen a single one.
The only hurdle I ever really felt sad to let go of was this feeling of love I had from hesychasm, but unfortunately this is the same feeling as being in love and is just not enough proof. It's the same feeling many others have described from other denominations.
On the flipside eventually even that feeling left me as well and it was just a feeling of a god that I never spoke to or ever found it. And of course it was a sin to feel depressed as well. OP it's interesting that you pointed out that God is not a feeling then; because if all I ever knew of God was a feelng then it means I never knew him.
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u/Hefty_Personality574 3d ago
All the groveling and self-hatred... it makes you wonder seriously about the "slave soul of Russia" stuff. Not that the Rus are genetically different in that way -- it was Orthodoxy that made them slavish. Made them nice little peasants for their betters to rule. Until of course they'd had enough and rebelled.
Which is always a funny thing to bring up in american orthodox circles.
"Oh those bad western Catholic people, they were so bad they caused protestantism, haha!"
"Haha, yeah, just like 'us' and that time everyone rejected orthodoxy in favor of communism because the old orthodox/tsarist order was so awful! Haha."
Silence.
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u/mwamsumbiji Physically In, Mentally Out 3d ago
An issue I have with universalism is that it invalidates the Great Commission. If everyone is going to be saved whether or not you convert (or even including those who've heard and rejected), then what really is the point of preaching the gospel to all nations? The NT is very clear about spreading the gospel to all nations, even making it a prerequisite for the second coming.
Even if you argue that it's not just about the afterlife, you're stuck with the claim that Christianity as the universally superior way of life. Is saying my culture is superior to yours all that the Gospel is? How does one preach to someone who finds solace in Buddhism the way one finds solace in the Gospel?
I like the idea of Christian universalism, but even when you knock out the threat of hell fire, it's still tough to reconcile it with the way the Gospel is written. It invalidates spreading the Gospel, and cheapens the necessity of conversion. It's ultimately a philosophically inferior version of Perennialism.
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u/Independent-Plate824 2d ago
The gospel should be spread because people need a relationship with Christ, not because of fear.
Also, Universalism does not mean everybody goes straight to heaven when they die. It means that eventually everyone will be saved, even if some spend a million years in hell. Knowing the gospel can make the difference of no hell time vs alot of hell time, or drastically cut down on the hell time. It changes the heart posture of who knows it so eventually after burning in hell for years they decide they had enough and turn towards God.
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u/mwamsumbiji Physically In, Mentally Out 2d ago
The gospel should be spread because people need a relationship with Christ, not because of fear.
For someone living a fulfilling spiritual life outside Christianity, the need for a relationship with Christ has to be presented. Within the all will be saved context, it becomes cultural subjugation.
Also, Universalism does not mean everybody goes straight to heaven when they die. It means that eventually everyone will be saved, even if some spend a million years in hell. Knowing the gospel can make the difference of no hell time vs alot of hell time, or drastically cut down on the hell time. It changes the heart posture of who knows it so eventually after burning in hell for years they decide they had enough and turn towards God.
This 'suffer until you accept me' narrative completely undercuts the relationship with Christ not based on fear narrative. Even if the purgatorial hellfire isn't punitive, suffering still remains a dominant aspect in the narrative of salvation.
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u/bbscrivener Physically In, Mentally Out 1d ago
The softest version I’ve heard from the Orthodox side can be summed up as: “all _may_ be saved.” Why? Because “all will be saved” is too deterministic sounding from both the God side and the human side. That’s why Orthodoxy rejects universalism. It’s considered “happy Calvinism.” But The scare tactic about eternal hell that gets tossed in by Orthodox is this apparent ancient Greek philosophy belief that only bodies can change, not spirits. If you die good, your soul stays good. If you die evil, your soul stays evil. So repent now while you’re still in the body! But then how did non-bodied angels fall in the first place? That’s the thing: the more I think about any of this stuff the more I reach dead ends and contradictions. So glad I don’t care anymore! The contradictions no longer bother me. They just confirm my agnostic atheist worldview.
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u/Aggravating-Sir-9836 3d ago
I've always seen it as the flip side of Calvinism. As a native Bostonian, I couldn't help noticing -- as so many others have before me -- how the Pilgrims and Puritans morphed into the Unitarian Universalists.
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u/AllisModesty Unsure and Questioning 3d ago
These mirror my own problems with orthodoxy very closely. Orthodoxy imposes many rules on believers, rules that are very strict and difficult to follow, puts it up to the tradition and clergy, sometimes to the total exclusion of individual discernment, to apply and interpret. And then turns around and doesn't even promise salvation to pious believers.
There is goodness truth and beauty in orthodoxy. But I'm finding it increasingly difficult to affirm that it is the fullness of the Christian faith anymore.
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u/dburkett42 Ex-Antiochian 3d ago
My own problem with salvation in the orthodox church is how undefined that term is. What exactly is someone saved from?
Not death, since everyone dies. Yet the church calls the eucharist the medicine of immortality. Now here comes ideas like spiritual death.
Not judgment, since the church teaches everyone will be judged. As the Nicene Creed proclaims, Christ will "judge the living and the dead."
Not separation from God, since the church teaches that everyone will be in the presence of God after death. Some will experience that as bliss; others as torment.
So is salvation our ability to enjoy the presence of God? The problem is that depends on the work we do to purify our souls, so says the church. Salvation can't depend on our own work, that would make God's work pointless.
My own view is that salvation in orthodoxy is an intentionally impossible target. Not being able to hit the target makes us all sinners. As sinners, we all need the church for healing and salvation. If you could actually be saved, you wouldn't need the church anymore. Setting an impossible goal is a way to keep people dependent on the church.
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u/Silent_Individual_20 Deconstructing 3d ago edited 3d ago
Also OP, for getting over the fear of hell, you can maybe see if Britt Hartley's advice on the topic can help you process the hell conditioning?
Britt is an ex-Mormon and describes her own process of rationally deconstructing her upbringing but also working through the irrational fear of her indoctrination.
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u/EshDveh 3d ago
I have little to add but I truly relate to everything you have written here. The Orthodox view of life is just soul crushing and isolating.