The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation

by Rod Dreher

“Male and female he made them,” says Genesis, revealing that complementarity is written into the nature of reality.

There can be no peace between Christianity and the Sexual Revolution, because they are radically opposed.

“The death of a culture begins when its normative institutions fail to communicate ideals in ways that remain inwardly compelling,” Rieff writes.

Unbridled erotic passion creates chaos and disintegration. Eros that submits to Christ bears fruit in the gift of children, stable families, and communities.

The source of all disorder is loving finite things more than the infinite God.

Neil Postman counseled a strategy of resistance, saying that “a resistance fighter understands that technology must never be accepted as part of the natural order of things.”

Love is not romantic ecstasy. It has to be a kind of love that has been honed and intensified through regular prayer, fasting, and repentance and, for many Christians, through receiving the holy sacraments. And it must be a love that has been refined through suffering. There is no other way.

If you recognize that He is the Lord of all, you will order your life in a radically different way.”

We have to go forward in confidence that the little things we do might, in time, grow into mighty works, he explained. It’s all up to God. All we can do is our very best to serve him.

“stagger onward rejoicing.”