JOURNEY TO ORTHODOXY

My Spiritual Journey
by Clifford Chu
Clifford is an architect. He and his wife Alma were born and raised on Oahu, and currently live in Ewa with their three boys.

I grew up in Kaimuki, where my parents sent me to Sunday School at the church down the block, which happened to be a Fundamentalist, Jerry Fallwell type of church. While I will always be grateful for all the Bible verses I memorized at Sunday School (many of which I still remember today), it was a very separatist type of church, and was especially anti-Catholic. I believed that all Roman Catholics would go to hell because they were relying on works for their salvation, not faith.

Later, as a young man, I came to realize that Christianity encompassed thousands of different denominations and independent churches, with theologies that differed from which I had been taught. After several years of visiting many different churches, I settled down at an evangelical church whose brotherhood of churches believed the following: 1 ) No creed but Christ. 2) No book but the Bible.

3) Where the Bible speaks we speak, where the Bible is silent we are silent.

4) In Essentials unity, in opinions liberty, in all things love.

At the time, these teachings made so much sense in light of all the differences between churches. It wasn't until later that I realized the Bible is silent about the teaching "Where the Bible is silent we are silent". The Bible is also silent about "No book but the Bible" (11 Thess. 2:15 teaches just the opposite). I also found it unsettling that this brotherhood of churches that emphasized unity would split up over non-essential issues (once, over the issue of whether communion should be taken from one cup, and once, over the issue of whether musical instruments should be played in the church). Even more unsettling was when our own Church split up in the 1980's over the issue of spiritual gifts. Having been there when the split occurred, I witnessed the bitterness and hurt feelings.

My journey to the Orthodox Church began while having a conversation one evening, with an evangelical friend named Robert. I was criticizing the Roman Catholic Church, and to my surprise, Robert began defending the Roman Catholics. What was even more surprising was that he was making sense, which challenged my childhood stereotype of Roman Catholics. I decided to find out the truth for myself, by attending a Catholic Mass. Expecting to hear "Hail Mary" a hundred times, I was very surprised at how Christ centered the Mass was. I then proceeded to study church history, to find out how the church came to be what it is today. At the same time, my friend Robert gave me a book by Peter Giliquist entitled "the Physical Side of Being Spiritual". Giliquist was a Protestant evangelical who was calling for a return to the historic church (he, together with 2,000 other evangelicals eventually joined the Orthodox Church).

My studies led me to realize how much today's Protestant church has changed doctrinally, not just from the first century church, but even from the Reformation church of Martin Luther. As an example, Martin Luther (as well as Catholics and Orthodox believed both in infant baptism and the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, unlike most evangelicals today. The Roman Catholic Church had also changed, with the addition of the papacy and the Immaculate Conception.

By this time, I had gotten married and was still attending the same evangelical church with my wife. She knew of my journey to Orthodoxy but understandably had reservations about becoming Orthodox. In the past she had been active in Campus Crusade for Christ and had gone to a Missionary & Alliance church, Baptist and charismatic church, which were quite different from Orthodoxy. We once visited Peter Giliquist's church in California (St.Athanasias) and occasionally visited the local Orthodox Church for a couple of years, but I never forced the issue. What helped were the mid-week Bible studies that had a very familiar evangelical flavor. But what ultimately led to our "taking the plunge" to become Orthodox was our concern for our first child. We wanted to be settled in our faith before he was old enough to understand church. It's been over five years now, and all three of our children have been baptized and are taking communion in the Orthodox Church, just as children have for almost 2,000 years!