In the wonderful book about the Elder Porphyrios, a monk says that in order to reach salvation, people need always be obedient to the Church. Of course, all Patristic books speak of the importance of obedience, and yet today's Orthodox Christians, caught up in the values of this world, somehow feel that they need to reserve that little bit of personal "freedom." If you cannot be obedient, then you will never understand what love in its highest spiritual sense is.
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People new to Orthodoxy fail to realize that when we are self-willed, we completely alienate ourselves from God, and if it goes unchecked, we will become His enemy, and quite possibly lose our soul. That is why it is so dangerous to say, “I prefer…”, “I think…” or “My own opinion is...”

From the sayings of Hieromonk Averky (+2004)