I An incredible book, but one many Christians won’t be willing to accept. Dreher claims that Christianity in the West is on the verge of collapse and I can’t say that I disagree. You see, even in the heart of some of the Bible Belt, where I live, it is completely normal to go to football games, basketball games, and baseball games, and be exposed to some pretty vulgar music (as in songs like ‘Big Poppa’ blaring over the speakers before the game, halftime, in between innings, etc) to make the experience more ‘entertaining’ (it also interrupts your conversations so you ‘might as well’ go grab some concessions). Why would I mention this first in my review? Because sadly, the fans sitting in the stands are usually chock full of Christians with their children, many of whom think it is all in good fun and are singing right along with it. We have come to think of this as normal things for a Christian to do since we have all given up the ‘cultural war’ and we have all willingly exposed our children (or know they are exposed to it at school and at friends’ homes) consistently to a diseased culture. Sadly, there are any number of Christian men coaching or in the stands who may be pastors or deacons in their church who do nothing but shrug their shoulders and sigh - if it even bothers them at all.
The problem for most Christians is that they don’t have a clue what is necessary to get themselves out of the aimless, lost, and perverted culture of the world and into a community of people who value and honor the things of Christ. One of the things that Dreher makes clear is that, for our kids’ faith and for the future of Christian community, Christian children need to be pulled out of public schools and either home-schooled or Christian Schooled (Dreher’s children go to a half day Classical Christian school which, to me, is absolutely ideal) with a Classical Education which uses a medieval structure called the Trivium. Dreher stresses that there is no middle ground here. However, most of us, as Christians, don’t want to hear this at all. We want to continue to plod along while our children adopt secular perspectives about life and modern sexual mores. So many of us as parents keep on swearing that if ‘this or that’ were to happen at our child’s school, that we would then pull them out. The problem is that most of us don’t really mean it. When something happens at our child’s school that is truly awful or when policy changes are put in place that reflect some extreme concessions to the liberal agenda, we just shrug and continue to insist that everything will be okay.
At the heart of Dreher’s book is his call for Christians to adopt a ‘monastic way of thinking’ about the Christian home and the Christian community. According to Dreher, the Christian life needs to be full of rituals, prayers, fasts, and feasts. One key theme is the need for our daily lives to have a ‘sense of the Divine Order’. I agree with this wholeheartedly. As western Christians, we think very shallowly about our time. We basically work way too much so we can have lots of money to be consumers, eat as quickly as possible (and with as little preparation time as possible), then we entertain ourselves as much as possible with sports and media, then we go to church on Sunday morning and think that everything is fine as long as we, at least believe that we are living just a little bit ‘cleaner’ than the rest of the world. Dreher calls it “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism”. MTP is defined by the belief that there is a Creator God who watches over us, that He wants us all to be good, nice, and fair to each other, that our purpose is to be happy and feel good about ourselves, that God is only needed when we go through difficulties, and that people go to Heaven when they die. Regardless of the fact that many churches will deny teaching MTP, the sad reality is that most Christian children and adults have somehow adopted this mindset. I don’t know how a society’s government can dictate what children are taught day in and day out for most of their youth, while also taking a good chunk of a parent’s daily responsibilities ‘away from them’ and produce a culture that Christians can expect to remain dedicated to a healthy perspective of family and faith. Dreher makes it clear that creating a healthy Christian culture has to be a very intentional act. You can’t just live your life as you wish and spread some Christianity over it from time to time. What Dreher suggests, on the other hand, is for Christians to adopt a much more disciplined concept of time. It isn’t just that he thinks Christians should be spending less (if not, none) time watching TV, playing video games, or on their phones, but that they should be filling that time in a much more intentional, consistent, and thoughtful way with the Christian's’ faith in Christ at the center of it all.
One thing that I would add to this conversation is that the Christian church’s adoption of ‘income tithing’ as the method by which it supports its ministry, in my personal view, a big contributor to the shallow, unhealthy Western mindset about church. The majority of Biblical references to the faithful giving ten percent of their income to the church are based on newer translations that have consistently changed references about giving based on ‘possessions’ or ‘prosperity’ to giving based on income (based on a fiat currency). I’m here to tell you that these two concepts are by no means identical. For a person to accumulate possessions and wealth (to be truly prosperous) requires some very capable Christian stewardship. For a person to garner a high wage requires absolutely no Christian stewardship. All it requires is a strong addiction to consumerism and a devotion to being a workaholic. For income-tithe collecting churches, they are more than happy to see women working and embracing a career (thus bringing in another tithable income) than staying home to homeschool or even help with a half-day Classical Christian School that is working towards the integration of faith, education, and community.
The Sequitur Classical Academy in Baton Rouge and the Saint Constantine School in Houston are given as examples of these kinds of schools by Dreher. The bottom line is that for Christians to maintain a proper perspective on sexuality (which is a sacred act which should potentially be able to fulfill the purpose of procreation AND pleasure equally), Christian women must be prepared to have more than 1 or 2 children that can easily be stuck in a school system enabling them to get themselves back in the workforce and back to their careers. Instead, mothers must be ready to see the rearing of children as a valid vocation. Churches that zealously collect income tithes cannot possibly be well served by women fulfilling this vocation. The two are simply at cross-purposes. On the other hand, possession-tithing, (to be clear - this is not one of Dreher’s ideas) which is based on the Fair Market Value of all someone’s possessions subtracted from the remaining principal owed on those possessions, then divided by 12 or 52 (depending on how frequently the tithe is paid), is a much better reflection of someone’s prosperity (and stewardship of their finances, family, and faith) than a person’s income. Even if Christians adopt the increasingly popular stance that tithing is simply not required of New Testament Christians, it may still be a healthier perspective on giving for the church than a strict adherence to the materialistic and consumeristic centered income tithe.
Let me finish by getting back getting back to my conclusion of Dreher’s ‘Benedict Option’. This book deserves a higher rating than it has at the time that I am writing this review. It is so much more original, well researched, and interesting than most of the feel good, MTP drivel being published by many Christian authors. At least a few of the people who gave this book a one or two star rating must have not bothered to read the book’s subtitle because they claimed that they thought this book would be about something else entirely. One has to doubt the sincerity and validity of such ratings. What this very well written book does is present Christians with some very hard decisions that need to be made as well as outlining some very good ideas about what direction our Christian culture needs to go in. It is a book that eloquently says many of the things that I have been thinking for the last decade about the crisis that Christianity is facing. Dreher, who is not too fond of Trump, is probably right in claiming that Trump may (emphasis on the conditional here) give Christians a brief respite in a nation that is becoming increasingly hostile to their ability to practice their religion and maintain their beliefs in the business world. Christians could very soon find themselves in a nation whose government and businesses are ready to put their plans to eradicate the Christian faith into high gear. A time is likely soon coming where more and more Christians will be forced to choose between their faith and their employment or even their lives. For those that want to come down on the side of Christianity, you absolutely, positively need to read this book.
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Top reviews from other countries
Stephanie Zee Fehler
a thoughtful look at what society is like right there
Reviewed in Canada on May 14, 2018
