The Benedict Option

 Link to The Benedict Option, "A strategy for Christians in a post-christian nation".

About 1/3 of the way through the book I realized that I had read another book by Rod Dreher, "How Dante Saved My Life". I enjoyed that book, and my wife actually enjoyed and made it through it as well, which is RARE for "Moose Books". I hope to blog on that book in the future as well, however this one is ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL for anyone who believes that they are a Christian to read.

Rod agrees with me, and I think millions of Christians in the US that we are officially and totally in a post-Christian nation, as well as post Western civilization. This is a new "Dark Age", and as St Benedict, born in 480 decided sometime around 500 as he journeyed to the shadow of once great Rome, now ruled by barbarians, it was time to found a "remnant" to keep the core of the faith, which he did at Norica, and in his "Rule of St Benedict".

As Dreher says; "Professing orthodox biblical Christianity on sexual matters is now thought to be evidence of intolerable bogotry, Conservative Christians have been routed. We are living in a new country" ... one which I label as "BOistan", but the label makes no difference, it is a barbarian nation.

On page 154, Rod quotes from Phillip Reiff: "Barbarians are people without historical memory. Barbarism is the real meaning of contemporaneity. Released from all authoritative pasts, we progress towards barbarism, not away from it.".  I've covered this fact a number of times ... "Closing of the American Mind", "Ideas Have Consequences", and others. Technology is not "advancement", it is just giving monkeys nuclear weapons without theology, philosophy and history. The beginning of wisdom is humility ... and barbarians have none of that!

One of the topics that is explained very well in this book is nominalism, as opposd  to metaphysical realism (see pages 26-29). Metaphysical realism tells us that EVERYTHING that is created has MEANING -- as Charles Taylor would say "It is Enchanted" ... or in philosphical terms "teleological".

This ought not be so hard for us to understand today ... one by one, from phones, to watches, to locks on doors, to thermostats, to labels on products (RFID), more and more of our "objects" have built in "smarts", and are often even "connected". Does it REALLY seem so "magical" that an all powerful God can and does imbdue his creation with sacred meaning ?

Well, everyone thought that was reality up until William of Occam in the 1300s. Strangely, Occam thought he was "letting God off the hook" because being linked with his meaningful universe of laws "limited him" ... so Bill (William) decided that the Christian God was to be like the Muslim "god" ... able to call evil good and good evil at his whim -- an issue covered really well (and a bit ironically) in a great book based on a speech by Pope Benedict, "The Regensburg Lecture".

Occam convinced the west that "matter is just matter" -- it has no meaning except that imposed from outside it, so "parts is parts" ... matter (including life) only means whatever we decide -- and as we became atomized individuals, each supposedly "the measure of all things", we arrived at; "my view is just as good as yours" and of course I think BETTER, so I'll call it whatever I want -- cells, tissue, a baby, etc ... it's ALL UP TO ME!

This book is WAY too rich for me to cover the MANY great points that are well made, so a couple key points ...

• We are in a post-Christian, post-virtue post-civilization age. A "dark age", likely to be FAR worse than the previous one. The World Wars and the Holocaust are likely just "warm ups" -- the ONLY thing our "culture" worships is gratification of the self!, and that has never ended well.
• "To live "after virtue", then is to dwell in a society that not only can no longer agree on what constitutes virtuous belief and conduct, but also doubts that virtue exists. In a post-virtue society, individuals hold maximal freedom of thought and action, and society itself becomes a collection of strangers each pursuing his own interests under minimal constraints". (p16)
• People feel they MUST "do things" ... have an affair, have a same sex relationship, etc because they would not be "true to themselves" if they did not. "It is in carnal desire that the modern individual believes that he affirms his individuality. The body must be the true 'subject' of desire because the individual must be the author of his own desire". (p43) 

In the end, this book also gives us at least the start on a "blueprint" to save Western civilization. We don't need to worry about saving Christianity ... God will do that. It just may well not be in "the west' -- as I increasingly believe from books like "The Divine Conspiracy". 

God REALLY means that we have free will! He is NOT going to be giving this or any other generation any huge "signs" to save us -- he gave us Christ and the Bible, as well as his divine and teleological creation pregnant with meaning. If we seek him, we WILL find him -- because as long as we are not actively turning our back on him as our current civilization is, it is absolutely not his will that ANY should perish -- UNLESS THEY ABSOLUTELY WANT TO! ... and it seems abundantly clear that the bulk of the people in the west DEARLY want to perish on their own terms, and in many cases, as rapidly as possible! 

I'll reluctantly close with this from page 234 ... 

"The mind of technological man cannot resist his heart's desires, because he has been trained by his culture not to question them. .... The Christian must rebel against this. The only impregnable fortress is metaphysical, the conviction that meaning transcends ourselves and is grounded in God. There are boundaries beyond which we cannot go if we want to live." 

We Christians need to build a lot of small communities following something like the Rule of St Benedict. Please read this book, contact me, and let's try to be the leaven ... Dreher gives us many ideas on on existing heroes of God already doing this work. 

The Toxic War On Masculinity (How Christianity Reconciles The Sexes)

 https://billmuehlenberg.com/2023/07/14/a-review-of-the-toxic-war-on-masculinity-by-nancy-pearcey/

I learned about this book on an Issues Etc podcast. If you are not a reader, that is a good option. 
https://issuesetc.org/2023/06/30/1814-a-christian-response-to-toxic-masculinity-dr-nancy-pearcey-6-30-23/

The review leaves out what I consider to be a key insight of the book. Page 15:  "Compared to secular men, devout Christian family men who attend church regularly are more loving husbands and more engaged fathers. They have the lowest rate of domestic violence of any major group in America."

On the same page, "Surprisingly, research has found that nominal Christian men have the highest rates of divorce and domestic violence -- even higher than secular men". 

I don't find this "surprising" and believe that "nominal Christians" who are CINOs (Christians In Name Only) are a greater threat to the church than the secular culture because they their bad behaviour allows the secular culture to (correctly) based on statistics, say that Christian homes are "on average" the same as non-Christian homes.  The CINO men pick and choose what parts of doctrine they like (man as ruler of home and wife, whatever he does wrong ... drinking, womanizing, staying out late, etc is "the wife's fault" because she is not "meeting his needs". He ignores the need to be willing to sacrifice his life for his wife and family if required, and to treat her gently as the "weaker vessel". 

Page 19 gives us the modern world model of a "real man". "To be a real man, means to be tough, strong, never show weakness, win at all costs, suck it up, play through pain, be competitive, get rich, get laid". 

Significant contrast. 

While she does discuss some of the contributing reasons for this ... women's rights, women in the workforce, feminism, the secular message to woman after the pill and abortion that women have a right to all the sexual freedom that men had, etc, she lays most of the responsibility on men. Since God calls men to be leaders, there is certainly truth there. 

She leaves out what I see as another major contributing factor, the many supposedly "Christian" denominations (ELCA) that are CINOs ... even if they are "regular attenders", they likely have the same numbers as secular, since they really are. 

Not emphasized much however, is that when modern "liberated" women set themselves up as the "stronger vessel", and take on traditional male characteristics as not communicating, taking charge of how children are raised, etc, the story is not quite so simple, and may put the "not so real men" -- more sensitive, more emotional, less willing to fight, needy of strong communication, etc in positions similar to the traditional woman dealing with a CINO man. 

On balance, a worthy book.

A Purpose Driven Life

 https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=7008

As an LCMS "Reformed Catholic", which I somewhat tongue in cheek define as "Catholic with no pope, no worship of Mary or saints, no purgatory, no works righteousness. Yes, that is an oversimplification. 

Being "saved" as a too young child praying the "sinner's prayer" that Warren has distilled to "Jesus, I believe in you, and I receive you". Mine was a little longer because I had been traumatized by chalkboard visions of hell at multiple "Special Meetings", and I was in terror of Hell ... so it involved a lot of crying, pleading for Christ to save me me from Hell, admitting that I was a really bad boy, etc, etc. So I definitely feared God! 

Then I was Baptized as a "too old" teen, to "follow Christ" with no idea of the saving power of Baptism. 

1 Peter 3;20 "to those who were disobedient long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water, 21 and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also—not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a clear conscience toward God.[e] It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ"

Thankfully, I was Baptized "in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit". Baptism is God's work, not ours, so even though neither I or the pastor understood the sacramental power of Baptism, I became a child of God. 

Being genetically prone to anxiety and depression, I often doubted if I was REALLY sincere when *I* gave my life to Christ. So through multiple "re-dedications", massive guilt over a lot of lusting after beautiful girls in short skirts in the '70s,  I "got smart" in college being at best an agnostic, at worst an atheist. Naturally, given my psychological makeup, Hell kept cropping up in the dark of night very frequently, so at least the Holy Spirit was working on me. 

LOTS of reading, study, prayer, conversations with various Christian believers in largely Lutheran, Evangelical (often Baptist), Catholic, etc,  I arrived at Lutheran ... ELCA, moving to LCMS when celebration of gay "marriage" became an important part of "faith". 

While Warren proclaims the book to NOT be a "self help" book, it is. Yes, certainly it is Bible based, and other than the difficult problem of "decision theology" which casts the "God needs you", "worship makes God happy" sort of thinking throughout, the focus is on what you decide/do vs Grace and God's gifts. As with any attempt to create a "process" for Christian life outside of a confessional liturgical church, most everything is "in there",  it just doesn't have 2000 years of interaction between Christ and his Bride, the Church. 

For anyone reading this that is secular but questioning, I recommend "The Reason For God". 

For someone who is struggling to meet some standard of "a Christian life" without the Sacraments, I would suggest "Has American Christianity Failed". 

On page 101 Warren tellingly says "you are a spirit that resides in a body".  The old Cartesian duality. 

Jesus always was and is fully God. In the Incarnation he became fully man as well. When we are Baptized we receive the Holy Spirit. We are flesh and spirit united, which is why we need the physical sacraments, confession/absolution, and holy preaching to grow in Christ. Exactly how our body and spirit are separated at death and reunited at the Resurrection is a mystery, like the "how" of the Trinity. We know through the gift of faith. 

John 14:26 "But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name,will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you."

Can sinful man without the Holy Spirit "decide" to "believe"? That is the foundational belief of Anabaptists, of which Rick Warren is one. 

Given that many in my family share that belief, as well as many I consider as fellow Christians, I sincerely hope so.  One of my many failings is "worship of knowledge". As I have matured I realize there is grave peril there, especially the thought that given what I see as "correct knowledge", I can judge. 

I can't! I believe that Christ is merciful, and although he declares the gate is narrow, he does not say HOW narrow. All earthly churches are flawed, and Warren is clear on that truth. 

A lot of the book is really about "building numbers" which he clearly has in his Saddleback church, recently thrown out of the Southern Baptist denomination for ordaining women. (I'm with the Baptists on that).

Our world is sorely in need of a "second Reformation" where THE CHURCH can have a third millennium "Council of Nicea".  Although America deserves to be treated as Sodom and Gomorrah,  or worse, I pray: 

Lord, Have Mercy

Christ, Have Mercy

Lord, Have Mercy