When Orthodox Christians use these words of other Orthodox, usually in a disparaging manner, they do not have the excuse that others outside the Church have, namely an ignorance of the ethos of Christian believing and living. They should know better.
There are not different ways of being Orthodox, as it were, to the left and to the right; rather instead we might speak in terms of greater or lesser degrees of faithfulness. If, however, one's appreciation of the richness and depth of Tradition has been impoverished by a myopic and legalistic frame of mind then the perception of Tradition will be grossly distorted and limited.
Orthodox Christians, sadly, are not exempt from temptations to fundamentalism, obscurantism and a fortress mentality. Sometimes these temptations are born from a fear or alienation generated by a willful or unconscious rejection of the world as evil, full of anti-christs, heretics or simply, strange folk.
Refuge is then taken in the Church as a place of purity and safety and sermons about the Creation as good and the Incarnation as God’s redemption and enlightenment of the whole world are passed by unheeded. Against such fatal shrinkage of the heart we set the catholicity of the Church and this is indicated by the length, breadth, height and depth of the faith ‘once for all delivered to the saints’ (Jude 3).
The Church is not an impeccably clean corner in an otherwise dirty room but a glorious and wondrous palace of untold size, fit for the King of Kings. In here are countless mansions, rooms, corridors, cellars and attics … many of them unexplored … and any of these may be inhabited as befits the residents. In this palace there are vast libraries of paper and digital record, of holy persons and sacred places of energies of prayer filling the whole place with Light.
There is nothing here cramped or ungenerous; nothing hateful or narrow minded. So to some of my fellow Orthodox I say: ‘Abandon your self-made fortress mentality and enter into the generous love of the mind of Christ which is open, free and radiant in hope!’ This does imply an abandonment of faith or surrender to the world.
We do not believe because others don't.
We live as Christians because we have a Light to bless
rather than a darkness to curse
and who knows where that Light might be found?
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