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In this video, Fr. Seraphim Cardoza, a former Protestant, reflects on his journey and the fundamental differences between the “Prosperity Gospel” and a true Orthodox life of suffering. An honest and heartfelt conversation between Orthodox Priest Fr. Seraphim Cardoza and Evangelical Pastor Perry Atkinson. Rev. Archpriest Seraphim Cardoza was a former evangelical pastor of a hippie church who found his way to Eastern Orthodox Christianity. In 1995, he was ordained and assigned to minister to a small ROCOR congregation in Medford, Oregon, US.
Fr. Seraphim Cardoza passed away in October 2023.
Video source: theDoveTV (Jan 29, 2014), watch the full interview here: https://youtu.be/IImc93s9SvQ
Fr. Seraphim:
Everything’s going to be cool and you’re going to be rich and you’re going to have a big new beautiful television station and… and all you got to do is just thank God and start, you know, that’s a… yeah… I remember I was a Protestant pastor many years ago and it started many years ago was ‘name it and claim it’. It started many years ago the teaching in the Western church ‘God wants you to be successful and God wants you to be rich and God wants you to have the best looking woman and the kindest man’ and there wasn’t anything there were not any good examples of the Gospel teaching where we are called to be warriors for Christ.
When we have a baptism, before we have baptism, we do some prayers and several times the person to be baptized… Several times the they’re addressed as warrior of Christ, not you know get a sword and cut someone’s head off, but a real warrior for Christ. St. Paul talks about that. It’s all through the Scriptures. And maybe you go to a different church than I was years ago. No one talked about suffering. No one talked about what you really want to know if the devil is real. Give your heart, your soul, your mind, your children, your wife, your money, your reputation. Give it all to Christ and mean it. And then start walking that way. You’ll find out you’re either going to be a warrior or either going to run.
We just came through our uh Nativity fast. And so there are days that we don’t eat certain things. There are days we normally cut down in our activities. We increase our prayers. We increase our fasting not to gain anything. So there’s a it’s a life of denial. And so if you’re always preaching, ‘everything’s going to be cool and you’re going to be rich and you’re going to have a big new beautiful television station and and and and all you got to do is just, you know, thank God and start…’ you know, that’s a, you know, But suppose someone said, ‘you know, Perry, I love you so much. I just I have to pray for you because if this really is God’s will, you’re going to meet the devil, man.’ And you’re going to meet him where you don’t want to meet him. Probably I shouldn’t say this, probably from other so-called Christians. I hate to even say that. I’m just saying what I hear a lot.
We don’t know how to suffer. We don’t understand that word warrior. We don’t understand that word suffer for Christ. You’re going to suffer for Christ. And if you don’t suffer from somebody, you’ll suffer in the middle of the night when the devil knocks you over the head. I mean the devil… And it only comes when you really want to, like you say in your faith, ‘press in to Christ’. You know, we don’t teach this in the West. Well, we have no examples. You should see some of the emails I get. By the way, Dove is famous all over the world now. Yeah. Why you don’t put me on every week, I don’t know, but apparently you don’t want to suffer from certain friends. I mean, I understand. I understand all that. Probably to people, yeah. But ought to see the email I get from young men and women in countries that have suffered.
The way they talk, the way they write… It’s altogether different than someone just got out of a Bible class or a… I’m going off, please forgive me. Look, I’m a former military person. And if you get wounded, what do you do? You go to the aid station, right? They patch you up and they send you right back into battle. Well, has your church taught confession? I mean, real repentance. There is no repentance without confession. There isn’t. There isn’t. There isn’t. I’m not talking about a have evangelist come in and get everybody all excited. That’s good. But I mean, has your church lately talked about real repentance? And it only comes and believe me, there’s some suffering there when you write down, you know, these are the things. These are where I’ve gone off and you humble yourself and you confess to our Lord through a priest. Priest can’t forgive your sins. Christ does through the priest. That’s a real battle. It’s a real battle, internal battle with your own ego. Our life is a life of repentance. We fall down. We make our confession, a heartfelt confession, and that’s struggling. And then we get back into the battle.
