Yes. It’s completely normal to have doubts when you’re becoming Orthodox.
Most catechumens experience them. You’re not disqualified from the faith because you’re wrestling with questions. You’re not secretly failing at conversion because some Sunday you sat in the pew wondering if you’re making a huge mistake. Doubt isn’t the opposite of faith. It’s often part of how faith deepens.
The Orthodox tradition distinguishes between different kinds of doubt. There’s the doubt that’s really just honest questioning. You don’t understand something yet. You’re trying to figure out how the Incarnation works, or why we venerate icons, or what we mean when we say Mary is ever-virgin. That kind of doubt is a lack of knowledge, and the remedy is patient instruction, reading, asking your priest questions, and giving yourself time. Nobody expects you to master two thousand years of theology before your chrismation.
Then there’s another kind of doubt. Fr. Andrew Damick describes it as more like a passion, something that pulls you away from God rather than toward truth. This is the anxious, obsessive doubt that keeps you up at night, that makes you refresh Orthodox forums at 2 a.m. looking for reassurance, that whispers you should just give up and go back to what’s familiar. This kind of doubt needs a different remedy. It needs prayer, confession, a rule of life, and the guidance of your priest or a spiritual father. It needs you to stop feeding it by arguing with strangers online.
Most of us experience both kinds at different times.
Here’s what the Church doesn’t expect: that you’ll have perfect intellectual certainty about every doctrine before you’re received. Orthodoxy isn’t a system you master and then join. It’s a life you enter. Some things you’ll understand better after you’ve been Orthodox for five years than you do now. Some things you’ll understand better after you’ve fasted your first Great Lent, or after you’ve stood through Pascha night, or after you’ve brought your first real grief to confession. The faith is lived, not just studied.
When catechumens come to their priest with doubts, the typical counsel isn’t “stop doubting immediately or leave.” It’s more like: keep coming to services, keep praying, bring me your questions, don’t try to solve everything by yourself on the internet, and give the process time. The catechumenate exists precisely because becoming Orthodox is a formation, not a transaction. You’re being shaped. That takes time, and it’s often uncomfortable.
One mistake catechumens make is treating every doubt as a crisis that must be resolved before next Sunday. You read something online that contradicts what you thought you understood. You panic. You start questioning everything. But the Church has been here for two thousand years. Your doubt isn’t new, and it doesn’t have to be solved in the next seventy-two hours. Bring it to your priest. Ask your questions. Then keep showing up.
Another mistake is the opposite: never bringing your doubts to anyone, just white-knuckling your way through and hoping they’ll go away. They usually don’t. The Church wants you to ask questions. We have priests and catechists for a reason. If you’re struggling with something, say so. That’s not weakness. That’s honesty, and it’s how you actually learn.
It helps to remember that the goal isn’t certainty about everything. The goal is union with God. Theosis. And that happens through the sacraments, through prayer, through fasting, through the liturgical life of the Church. It happens through participation. Some of your questions will be answered by good teaching. Others will be answered by living the faith long enough to see what it does to you.
If you’re a catechumen sitting in the back of the church right now wondering if you belong here, wondering if your doubts mean you’re not cut out for this: you belong here. Keep coming. Keep asking. Keep praying. Talk to your priest. Don’t try to solve everything alone, and don’t expect to have it all figured out before you’re received. The Church is a hospital, not a courtroom. We’re all being healed, and that includes you.
