I have been percolating on this one for awhile now, James. Thanks for putting it up for contemplation.
Yes, His life is Mine - and perhaps more emphatically: His life is ours. I had been pretty comfortable in my protestant thinking - subscribing to \'branch theory\' as the only way to reconcile the contradictions and conflict of beliefs. But in reality, if I didn\'t like what another group did or believed, I could just distance myself from them and say \"Oh, it doesn\'t matter. The differences are not essential to salvation.\"
But now I am in the Orthodox Church, and quite honestly, I have never met so many people who, though nice, are really really weird in some fashion or other.
My initial gut reaction is to shy away from them and not be too interactive. I claim my upbringing as a New Yorker to politely mind my own business and conveniently hide in my heritage of \"being Chinese:\" stoic, unflappable, enigmatic. If all else fails, I just pretend that I don\'t speak the language.
Orthodoxy will not let me get away with this. We are saved together - in the Church. And I realize now that all these things happen so that I may work out my salvation - as His life becomes mine, and ours.
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