I didn’t know what to think. All I knew is that my church-averse wife was excited to attend this service. After years of dabbling with denominations that only left us feeling empty or unwanted—our last stop was likely effective agnosticism. But instead, we found ourselves standing in an Orthodox Christian church.

Orthodox services are otherworldly. Standing at attention, surrounded by strange-looking icons and a cloud of incense smoke in the midst of ancient chanting, you feel as though you’ve been transported to another time and place. That is by design, as the Orthodox Church teaches that the Divine Liturgy—its most holy Sunday celebration— happens outside of time and space.

I thought for sure my wife and kids were either weirded out or bored to tears, but to my surprise, they loved it. After the service, a couple of Orthodox approached us and spent an hour patiently answering our questions while our children dueled with unlit candles. I asked why they burned candles as an act of prayer, something that was never made clear to me in my years going to Roman Catholic churches.

It was explained that the candles represent our fleeting time on this planet in these earthen vessels, their light indicative of the eternal light of Christ—with which we hope to be imbued at our departure. Since we have nothing we can offer him, we offer a beeswax candle, because all we can really offer God is to give back what he himself has given us.

I realized that this was a place that had answers. So we came back—again and again. Over a year later, my family and I stand poised to be received into the Orthodox Church, and we’ll be far from alone. So many have joined our community over the past year that our priest has lost count. We stand elbow-to-elbow every Sunday morning, desperately seeking to expand. Ask any Orthodox Christian in the United States and you’ll probably hear a similar story.

Ancient Wisdom

Until just a few years ago, few Americans had heard of “Eastern” Orthodoxy. The churches were often closed ethnic enclaves, and

you could count the English books about Orthodoxy on one hand. That’s changed significantly in recent years, and there is now a bevy of books, blogs, podcasts, and YouTube videos covering every aspect of the Orthodox faith. Take care, though: mere knowledge is not enough to understand Orthodoxy. It must be experienced. It is not a mere intellectual exercise, but a way of life.

Many detractors will tell you that people are flocking to Orthodoxy simply because it seems new and exotic. Perhaps there is some truth to that, and maybe it’s enough to bring some in the door, but casual tourists will soon be washed out by Orthodoxy’s call to Christ-like perfection, including spending time every morning and evening in prayer, eating sparse meals during the Church’s many fasting days, and confessing sins in the pastoral presence of a priest—a spiritual father—before being received into the Church.

As a mere catechumen—an Orthodox Christian in training—I cannot speak for the Church, but I believe that the heavy cross it asks its adherents to bear is the very thing that makes it so inviting. While many Americans lead empty lives centered around pleasures and amusements, Orthodoxy calls us to fill our lives with ascetic struggle and to always keep our minds on something much greater than ourselves and our own pleasures. It challenges us to reject our passions and to gain true control over ourselves.

It is this spirit of asceticism that forms a familial bond between Orthodox Christians. The long, exhausting days of Great Lent—more than 40 days in abstinence from alcohol, dairy, meat, oil, or conjugal union—give way to the joyous late-night celebration of Pascha (Easter). Afterward, children joyfully smash boiled eggs dyed a deep blood red while the adults embrace each other over great plates of meat and generous glasses of whiskey and wine. There is no feast without fast.

No matter how busy our family is, we gather every morning and evening in our prayer corner, surrounded by holy icons—the little windows into Heaven—which remind us that

Many of us feel hopelessly alone in the modern world, despite being surrounded by technology that touts connection. But those bonds are often as thin as the glass of the screen, and our civilizational traditions have been cut off at the root by those who want to sell us plastic replacements to fill the void.

Christ and his saints are watching, waiting, cheering us on, and ready to intercede on our behalf. My wife and I are kinder and more patient toward our children, each other, and to others, because the Church teaches that each one of us is an icon of Christ, made in his image. “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”

Nothing in Orthodoxy comes easily. The Church refuses to put God inside a box. You can ask what seems to be a straightforward question and get what seems to not be a straightforward answer. For instance, you might ask an Orthodox Christian, “How do you know if you’re going to Heaven,” and they may reply with something like, “For me it is to offer the purest form of love I can to the One who fashioned me and to my neighbor. Where He decides is best for me to rest for eternity is His decision alone.”

Responses like that can sound like a bunch of mystical gobbledygook for us Westerners who expect formulas, logic, reason, and guarantees, but humility demands we must accept that God does not play by our rules. He is the rule, and we are called to be like him—to be perfect, like our heavenly father is perfect.

To become Orthodox means adopting what Saint Paul calls φρόνημα (phronema), the mind of Christ, and dispelling our modernistic, secular worldviews that reduce everything to ones and zeroes. Rigor must be tinged with mercy or else it’s of no profit at all. For instance, if you cannot fully keep the fasts and that’s discouraging your faith, your spiritual father may adjust the guidelines to match your spiritual strength. Christian asceticism is intended to raise you to Christ, not beat you down to hell.

Many of us feel hopelessly alone in the modern world, despite being surrounded by technology that touts connection. But those bonds are often as thin as the glass of the screen, and our civilizational traditions have been cut off at the root by those who want to sell us plastic replacements to fill the void.

For nearly 2,000 years, Orthodox Christians have never been alone, whether standing for Divine Liturgy surrounded by their Church family, huddled in the Egyptian desert, or suffering in a Communist gulag. In the Church, they have a family, a spiritual father, all the angels and saints, and above all, our lord and savior Jesus Christ, who gave us the Church and promised that the Gates of Hell would never prevail against it.

Josh Centers is a veteran tech journalist and author of over a dozen tech how-to books. From his outpost in rural Tennessee, he operates Unprepared.life, the top Substack newsletter for preparedness.