dear orthodox on the internet: what is your damn problem

I read a post from somebody saying, essentially, "Hi, I'm interested in Orthodoxy, I'm from a skeptical secular background or something, some things are hard, of course, etc." And the responses were, essentially, HUMBLE YOURSELF. YOU MUST BECOME ORTHODOX ON ORTHODOXY'S OWN TERMS.

That's not what they said, but, essentially, that was the message that got across. It doesn't help, of course, that if you're looking for information on the internet, nutterdox are far more prominent than they are in reality, but that's something else.

Part of it is certainly the culture of "replying to stuff" that we pick up: to reply to something, you must be critical, and so you find something wrong in what they said and say what was wrong with it, and that is how you reply. That's not healthy at all, or at least not pastoral, and definitely not encouraging. Even if you really think, "Everything you just said is awesome except this one little bit...", all that gets communicated is, "You're wrong about this here!" I mean, if everybody who expresses interest and concern about becoming an Orthodox Christian on the internets essentially gets lawyered into realizing that they're not good yet at this "being Orthodox" thing, who would be left? If you really read this thing, technically, we're not allowed to go to the bathroom.

The proper response is, of course, to slaughter the fatted calf. Who is so great a God as our God? Sure, don't gloss over anything or paint an unduly rosy picture, but there is, at the very least, room for another bad Orthodox in the back here.