Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm really curious, what makes you choose and follow rules that other people set up (i.e. whatever part of being an Eastern Orthodox Christian forbids euthanasia), instead of making choices yourself, whatever you believe is the best for your life? Even if you agree with most of what your religion prescribes or suggests, couldn't you just pick and choose the parts that you like and that influence your life positively,…
I'm hesitant to answer for nikolay, but my guess is that he has indeed made such choices -- one of them being to live according to the doctrines prescribed by his religion. Rigidly adhering to dogma is something that many people take pride in. When done consciously, it's not blind obedience; it's a sort of trust in the groundwork that has been laid by your ancestors. In other words, to simply "pick and choose" would…
I guess what I'm missing here, is how does one come to such a decision. After all, the "tradition" is just an arbitrary set of rules that was made up by someone sometime in the past. I mean, even the name "Eastern Orthodox Christian" reveals that it's a refinement of Christianity, which is itself a refinement of Judaism, which is itself probably a refinement of something else that just wasn't written down. And all refinements keep changing; e.g. Jews shouldn't use "fire" on Sabbath (originally, AFAIK), but they adapted that to modern times to include "electricity" as well.
So my question (or failure to understand) is exactly this conscious choice - what makes one consciously decide that a set of rules made up by someone else, which may or may not still be relevant, is the best way to conduct one's life? I guess uprbringing has a lot to do with this - religious people rarely go window-shopping to see which religion is "the best" - but IMO the idea of growing up is that you make independent decisions about your life (which ideally includes learning from others - adopting other people's rules - and learning from experience - changing your rules), possibly contrary to what your parents though and taught you were the best choices.
Edit: also, I would like to point out that I see the following as distinct choices that one can make more-or-less independently: belief (into the general framework your religion describes, e.g. how the world was created), obedience/following (of religious rules, e.g. Muslims shouldn't eat pork), and belonging to community (e.g. you might not eat pork just because you don't want to be excluded from the Jewish community).