Being Orthodox in an individualistic world

Holy Tradition is a difficult thing to swallow, especially when I wonder how easily I can reconcile my own beliefs that seem to be at odds with it. As a Protestant, I was able to pick and choose whatever I wanted to believe; as most people have probably heard, “In essentials, Unity; in non-essentials, Liberty; in all things, Charity.” Yet as an Evangelical, there was always that disconnect from any kind of historical authority that I could never quite put my finger on. I always felt alone.

Not that I didn’t have good relationships at my Baptist church. Regardless of the fellowship that I may have enjoyed there, however, there was always an isolation that I could never quite shake. I remember always feeling as if it was just myself, the Bible, and what I thought was the right interpretation of it. I remember always despairing, thinking that such-and-such a group might be the ones who got it right, from the Armstrongists to the Jehovah’s Witnesses, from the House of Yahweh to the Westboro Baptist Church. Since discovering Holy Orthodoxy, however, a lot of those things have melted away. Who-wrote-which-book just doesn’t to matter so much anymore. But not only that, I no longer feel alone. I still don’t know that many people at my parish yet – I can’t even communicate properly with a number of them, due to us not knowing each other’s languages all that well – but there is that sense of being connected to the historical faith, that which was once for all handed down to the saints.

But it does have its flipside. What about the occasions in which I don’t agree with the Fathers? Take for example the stance of many contemporary Orthodox laymen and clergy alike (including one monk whose work I owe much to) who assert that theistic evolution, the protology to which I hold, is completely incompatible with the patristic interpretation of Scripture (which, at first glace, certainly seems so), and that those bishops who believe in some kind of compatibility between faith and modern science have simply been ensnared by the modernizations of the West.

I know that in the scheme of things, it really doesn’t matter what I personally think about something. The Church is going to believe what she has believed since the beginning. But I’m still not entirely sure where to go with this.