Many of you on Tasbeha have likely been born and raised Coptic Orthodox, or perhaps even another jurisdiction of Orthodoxy, and have not had the experience of coming out of Protestantism into Holy Orthodoxy. I have been asked by several of you now through personal messages and when I first signed up on the forums about my journey to the Truth, and I decided I would use an illustration to describe Orthodoxy and Protestantism in terms of boats and ships, and the difficulties connected with going back and forth.
Have you ever been on a little fishing boat on a lake during a storm and a whole lot of wind? Scary, isn't it? It's a good thing you have your life jacket, right? It would only make sense that you would bring a life jacket with you on such a small boat. If the boat is small, it likely has been places and done things that bigger ships would go and do. Usually small boats (like my dad's former 15 foot fishing boat) are for small lakes and resevoirs, so that if you really want to, you can jump out and swim to where you likely want to be: the shore. It's safe, it's relatively comfortable, and there are no obligations to stay in the boat, because you can jump out and go somewhere else if you don't like it there.
Funny, though, how we don't bring life jackets with us on a cruise liner or ship. Granted, they have them provided, but work with me. You are going onto a ship that is foreign to you, trusting in safety measures that you are likely not familiar with, and to make it nerve racking, you cannot simply jump out if you don't like it. If you do ever muster up the insanity to jump out, you either have to trust your strength against the furocious ocean, or you have to put your life in the hands of a life raft or life jacket that you are not 100% confident will keep you afloat, and likely won't after some time. The long in short, you are stuck on the ship, with no where else to go, and it's unbearable to be told there is no land if you ever wish to jump.
When you have been on the ship for a while, naturally it gets a little easier to bear the challenges that come along with a life on the high seas: the nasea eventually goes away, the little noises and creaks that used to make you panic become either white noise or even comforting sounds, and the day-to-day routine of ship life becomes just another series of motions in your day.
There are times, especially at the beginning, where you wish you were just born on the ship, because then you will have known nothing else but the ship and her routines, but then you realize why you got on the ship in the first place: it was the last safe place to go. Having been born off the ship served as a blessing to you, because now that you are on the ship and know the routine and benefits of the ship, there is no way in your right mind you would even want to go back to your dingy, or yacht, or whatever else you were floating on before. You have been blessed with this so that you can be an encouragement to those who were born on the ship and sometimes take for granted the many unique blessings they received having been born on the ship.
In the ocean you are sailing on, there are about 33,000 other little life rafts, dingies, and yachts (we will call them "types" of ships) that will eventually be swallowed up by the ocean's anger, because those on those "types" are people who refused to get on the ship when it passed by them, repeatedly. Some "types" even get quite creative, and manage to built a "type" to look like a ship, only smaller, but it still remains a "type" and not a ship. Those on the "types" choose to stay in their little raft because it's small, not governed by a large crew, and does not have the type of regimented routine that is in place for the benefit of everyone on board--no, those on the "types" stay where they are because they do not truly care about themselves or anyone else, despite what they may say.
The saddest truth in all this lies in the ignorant refusal of those on the "types" to even try taking a full tour of the ship, because mediocrity is good enough for them, and they do not want to waste their time looking at the saving alternative. They would rather loosely lash all their radically different "types" together and say, "look, we're a ship, and we're the true right ship," but they only deceive themselves. Those on the "types" are afraid of what they will see (they are afraid of what they already see!), they are afraid that they will realize they were wrong (and we do not want the self-proclaimed leaders of these "types" to feel as though they are wrong...), and the greatest struggle is that the necessity for a regimented lifestyle is too much to ask of any one person, because like everything else on the "types," mediocrity is good enough for them.
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joe
May he help us all reach his heavenly Kingdom!