It doesn't anger me - until February I didn't know anything either; I still don't know as much as I would like, but it really does amaze me how ignorant we are of our past.
The problem is that when people ask me about Orthodoxy, I don't really know where to begin. It is pure, unadulterated Christianity. Beyond that, it's hard (at least for me, in my current position) to draw fruitful parallels between the Eastern and Western Church (the Western Church being Protestantism and Roman Catholicism combined). In the introduction to Timothy Ware's (now Bishop Kallistos Ware) often-cited book The Orthodox Church, he writes the following:
"Christians in the west, both Roman and Reformed, generally start by asking the same questions, although they may disagree about the answers. In Orthodoxy, however, it is not merely the answers that are different - the questions themselves are not the same as the west."
This intense paradigm shift has been quite apparent to me since our first day at St. John's, and the remembrance of this statement has helped me work through a lot of questions that I've struggled with off and on during the last several months.
One of the biggest differences I've experienced in my Orthodox journey thus far, and one that is closely related to the shift mentioned above, has been the language difference. According to my understanding, the Western Church is sometimes classified as the 'Latin Tradition,' that is, both Roman Catholicism and Protestantism are rooted in Latin. Latin is the language of law. It has a tendency to be black and white, right and wrong, absolute, absolute, absolute. There is little room for mystery, acceptance of things beyond our grasp, truths beyond our understanding. Greek, on the other hand, is a much more open language. Some refer to it as a 'mystical' language. There isn't this inherent drive to explain everything, to understand everything, to draw these neat little lines around every concept presented in the Holy Scriptures.
In the Orthodox Church, there is mystery, there is a beauty and a richness, there is an openness to the unknowable that I had never encountered before. Now, that is not to say that Orthodox Christians are wishy-washy and unable to say anything definitively - on the contrary, there are doctrines laid out by the Ecumenical Councils that state quite clearly what it means to be a Christian (such as the Nicene Creed). There is absolutely right and wrong. What amazed (and continues to amaze) me is that there isn't an overwhelming need to explain or comprehend everything.
We can't have all the answers.
We can't understand everything.
We can't explain God.
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