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I played the devil's advocate, hoping that you would fall for reverse psychology and go to church doubly hard.

I saw my priest today and we talked about all of this. He was very understanding and supportive. He is going to work with me and my therapist as we handle my issues. We're keeping things very hands off, but we had a confession and I'll start communing again. Thank you all for your prayers. This...

Thank you.

I've decided that my commitments to the Church are like those of a marriage. I can't just leave in order to wade through the seas of Protestantism to find which group is closest to the truth as I perceive it. I need to work out my issues where I am. I don't know what that means, exactly, but...

My obsessions are mental.

My intention in this thread was not to discuss or critique Reformed theology. Perhaps I shouldn't have mentioned anything about it. While I cannot control the conversation in this thread, I would request that critiques of Reformed theology/Calvinism be kept to its own dedicated thread. I know I...

Thank you for responding. It appears that we are not all that unalike. I'm starting to come to terms with this as I realize I pretty violently pulled myself from my prior Orthodox faith, after obsessing over the issue for a number of months. I doubt that if I was neurotypical in this regard, I...

I drove out of town to go to a Vespers service tonight. I didn't want to run into anyone, but I ended up briefly talking to someone who recognized me. I wanted to remember and revisit. I guess I have a lot to process still. That's all.

I feel like this sort of discussion could go on forever, and that's not really my intention. You can certainly search for the Reformed understanding of that and other passages if you're interested. I can see the shortcomings in various interpretations.

In the Reformed understanding, this is explained by saying that God ordains both the ends and the means. So, when a righteous man prays for someone to be healed, it is only because God decreed that the man's prayers would be a means of healing. I know this makes God look like a puppetmaster just...

Maybe not the right word then. I get what you mean, at any rate. I have given mental assent to an idea. That would need to change for me to let go of monergism. Now, that could be caused by anything, but the intellectual framework still needs to change, no? I don't know, maybe I'm overthinking...

I've never believed that prayer, in and of itself, affects change. Prayer to me has always been the aligning of our will with God's will. God changes things, but uses our prayers as a means of the change. If it's God's will to heal someone, and we pray for that person, our prayers serve as a...

I'm familiar with the psychological tactic of detachment. To be honest, I really have come to reject synergism in favor of monergism. I get what you're saying, but I would need to intellectually change. Seeing how I've spent the past 6 months obsessing about the issue, I don't think a pithy...

I have my suspicions that I've been transplanting Roman Catholic views into the discourse. Whenever I read arguments against synergism, they are strictly in reaction to Roman Catholicism. I convinced myself that the same basically applies to Eastern Orthodoxy. To be fair, most if not all of the...

Yes. I've been in and out of treatment. I should go back.

Thanks for all of your responses so far. More precisely I felt that God's love was conditional on whether or not I "did more" for my faith (increasing my prayers, going to confession more). I know that's not what Orthodoxy teaches but when you have severe OCD you can't shake obsessions even...

I left the Eastern Orthodox Church a while ago. I became very transfixed on soteriology and ended up looking into Reformed traditions. I've been going to different churches on Sunday, but I haven't joined anywhere yet. I didn't want to leave and I miss my friends and my community, but I...

Very interesting, indeed. I would be curious to hear more from our Serbian posters. Thanks for sharing, Mor.

Glad to see Infidels in your top 10. "Jokerman" is one of my top favorite songs of all time. Interesting that you included Modern Times and Time Out of Mind in your top 10 as well. I guess I haven't really cracked open the genius of late Dylan yet. I count Basement Tapes, but just barely. I...

It's fun, but it's not really my thing. I'm glad he's still at it, but I pretty much dropped off in the 80s.