Time for Benedict?
You may recall that last week in our Covenanter, I mentioned Rod Dreher’s recent book, The Benedict Option. Space and time prohibited me from giving it more than a passing reference, and on reflection, I was a little dismissive. Dreher’s work deserves better. His bracing analysis certainly belongs near the top of any booklist addressing the church’s response to our current, quite difficult cultural moment.
He begins, “Nothing changes a man’s outlook on life like having to think about the kind of world his children will inherit.” In our case, he says, “Western Civilization has lost its moorings.” I agree. Over the past forty years, we have witnessed a steady decline of Christianity and a steady increase in hostility to transitional values, all of which came to a head in 2015 with the Obergefell decision of the United States Supreme Court. The rout brought about by that ruling has been complete; the heroes have replaced the villains and vice versa.
As a result, not only have the LGBTQ+ sexual perversions become mainstream but now the traditional Christian position is regarded as perverse. Quoting David Gushee, a well-known ‘evangelical’ ethicist, who actually holds quite a progressive stance on gay issues, Dreher notes, “Neutrality is not an option . . . Neither is polite half-acceptance. Nor is avoiding the subject. Hide as you might, the issue will come and find you.” What this means for you and me is both simple and ominous: “Post-Obergefell, Christians who hold to the biblical teaching about sex and marriage have the same status in culture, and increasingly in law, as racists.”
In early church days, many Christians lost their lives because of their refusal to burn a pinch of incense to Caesar. Although we probably will not pay that price for our embrace of orthodoxy, it's not hard to see how we might lose our jobs, livelihood, and even our right to keep our children for holding fast to the traditional position.
The Benedict Option represents Dreher’s proposed response to the problem. More than that, he posits how we must train the next generation of Christians, our children, to respond to this issue. This systematic tutelage of our youth needs to be a noticeable focus of our efforts, for as one professor from a conservative evangelical college admitted sadly, “You would be surprised by how many of our students came here knowing next to nothing about the Bible.” Instead, in the words of Christian Smith’s well-worn observation, too many of our young people espouse the faith of moralistic (be a good person) therapeutic (the key goal in life is to be happy) deism (God is there to rescue you if you really get into trouble, but doesn’t need to be the sum and substance of your life; live for yourself).
Through this book, Dreher seeks to wake up the church and to encourage it to find strength for the battle while there is still time.
What does Dreher think we should do? In essence, he wants the Church to be the Church. He wants Christians to form themselves into small communities of committed discipleship-raising disciples who are equipped to stand against the false gospel of consumer capitalism, liberal individualism, and sexual hedonism.
His model for this is the Rule of St. Benedict, the intellectual underpinning of the Benedictine monastic movement that arose after the collapse of the Roman Empire in the 5th Century AD. Full disclosure, although I get and agree with most of his points, I have to confess that this ideological springboard bothers me a little. The Rule of St. Benedict and its monastic roots, founded as they were on a gnostic worldview and the asceticism that goes along with them, were fundamentally flawed and idealistic from the outset. Rules, even right rules, taken by themselves cannot give life. Only the gospel can do that, and I think Dreher gets that. But if you can get past the monkish rhetoric, Dreher makes a lot of sense.
As we enter the second quarter of the twenty-first century, the church needs to focus its efforts on raising disciples who are committed to raising families full of children who find the presence of God in the mundane details of everyday life, for whom God is the beginning and the end of every action, and who make space within their hearts and within their daily lives for the grace of God to take root. By contrast, too many Christians seem more concerned that their children attain the American Dream than they are to see them thriving in the grace of God. And while I don’t think that describes the majority of members at Christ Covenant, I think if we are all honest, we cherish the hope of a both/and proposition: can’t they have both the grace of God and the American dream?
Dreher’s point is that in a post-Obergefell world, the chances of having both are vanishing. Our children may well have to choose one or the other, but they probably won’t be able to have them both. I fear that he may be right, and when that choice is thrust upon our children, we need to prepare these young souls who are entrusted to our care to choose wisely. Even in the long-gone, old America, Christians always needed to bear in mind– there is something better than the American Dream and something much worse than losing it.
Throughout his book, Dreher sets forth a new vision for Christian politics, one that deliberately eschews faith in politicians to fix what sin has broken at the heart of America. In essence, both the problem and the answer lie in every American house, not in the White House. That is not to say that we should disengage from politics. But it does mean that we should probably question both the extent of and our expectations from such involvement.
He also talks about the importance of Christian community. It’s very hard to hold onto a Christian faith abstracted from the warmth of a loving Christian community. Dreher notes, “Though parental influence is critical, research shows that nothing forms a young person’s character like their peers. The culture of the group of which your child is a part of growing up will be the culture he or she adopts as their own.” His words represent a bracing challenge to us all to think through the educational choices that we make for our children. His words should challenge those of us who entrust our children to secular educational establishments. As Voddie Baucham once said, “If you send your children to Rome; don’t be surprised if they come back Romans.” Many argue that Christian children need to be in public education to be salt and light to the other kids. Yet as Dreher notes, “As popular culture continues its downward slide, however, this rationale begins to sound like a rationalization. It brings to mind a father who tosses his child into a whitewater river in hopes that she’ll save another drowning child.”
With that said, however, he also takes issue with the overly isolationist, smothering mindset of many homeschoolers (note however that homeschooling is an option which he and I clearly favor, especially through a child’s formative years). “We ought not to expect more from the family than it can possibly give . . . . It sometimes happens that mothers and fathers think they’re serving God by their austere discipline (of children) but in fact they are driving their children away from Him.” I agree with his concerns here, as well. While I loathe Hillary Clinton’s, family-sidelining, “It takes a village to raise a child” mindset, I do believe that it takes a Christian church/community to raise a child fully. Our children need to see their Christian peers normalizing the convictions of their parents in lives spent pursuing the Beautiful, the Good, and the True.
There is much more that could be said if time, space, and patience of my Saturday morning readers allowed. Mais non!
Suffice it to say that if you can get past his genuflecting to Roman Catholic monasticism, Dreher’s work is well worth a read. I agree wholeheartedly with the warp and woof of his concerns and with the gist of his proposed solution though I am trying hard to forget the image of tonsured monks, clad in itchy-scratchy brown woolen robes walking through the halls of Christ Covenant Church.
Humor aside, the key is this: Christ must be the first and the last of any option we select. Our battle is not to save, safeguard, or restore America the beautiful. Our battle is for the hearts, minds, and souls of our rising generation. Our goal must neither be their temporal security and prosperity nor even their eternal security. Our goal must be higher than man (no matter how dear and delightful those little men and women are). If we are to safeguard anything worth preserving, our goal must be the glory of God, the crown rights of the Lord Jesus Christ. We must seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, not as a means to an end, but as an end worth pursuing no matter what it means along the way. As your pastor, I see more than an inkling of this in all your souls, and it thrills mine to lean in each week with a sermon from God’s Holy Word. So forgetting what lies behind, let us all resolve to press on and lay hold of that for which Christ has made us His own. This is the only option that will pass the test not just of time but of eternity, and it will be the only truly enjoyable journey to take along the way (Westminster Catechism #1).