Living in Wonder Quotes

“Hannah Arendt taught that by far the most important factor in creating a totalitarian society—one built on a political ideology that serves as an ersatz religion—is mass loneliness and alienation. This is how the enchantments of technology can have profoundly destructive political consequences.”
― Rod Dreher, Living in Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age

“In the post-Christian world, people—especially young people—are not looking for powerful exegesis of papal encyclicals, erudite sermons about the mechanics of salvation, five killer apologetic arguments to use against atheists, or any other canned strategy. They want to know whether life has any”
― Rod Dreher, Living in Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age

“For all its gifts, science alone can’t offer any of us a reason to live, or the patterns by which we must live, if we are to flourish.”
― Rod Dreher, Living in Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age

“The kind of attention that leads to flow is a paradoxical mix of engaged disengagement. That is, you have to be focused enough—internally calm enough—to relax your focus and simply be present in the moment. If you are doing this at prayer, you have to be consciously waiting for God while at the same time not thinking too precisely about him, so as to inadvertently close yourself off to his movements. It’s not easy to do, especially in the busy modern world. Yet when you are in a flow state, you are in experiential touch with ultimate reality.”
― Rod Dreher, Living in Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age

“Open-mindedness can be a facade over a refusal to give up control.”
― Rod Dreher, Living in Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age

“Transgender ideology is an attempt to destroy the image of God within us,” Jonah says. “The distinction between men and women, and the metaphysical implications of correct relationship between masculinity and femininity, are key to correct theological understanding. Destroy this boundary and many others will follow,”
― Rod Dreher, Living in Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age

“In the first of two interviews, I asked Jonah how the general cultural orientation toward openness and curiosity today leaves people vulnerable to the demonic. The danger, he replied, is “seeing curiosity and openness as virtuous apart from a grounding in a deeper commitment to truth.”
― Rod Dreher, Living in Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age

“Only the return of strong religion—one that makes demands, offers compelling explanations to the problems of death and suffering, and gives worshipers a visceral sense of connecting to the living God—has any hope of competing in the post-Christian marketplace.”
― Rod Dreher, Living in Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age

“I never came into the church as a person who was being taught. I came in on my knees. That is the only way in. When people start praying, they need truths; that’s all. You don’t come into the church by ideas and concepts, and you cannot leave by mere disagreement. It has to be a loss of faith, a loss of participation. You can tell when people leave the church: they have quit praying.”12”
― Rod Dreher, Living in Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age

“If you have faith in God, and if you have a ritual that ties you together, and if you have a sense of love and respect for the natural world, and if you have a community, then you can live reasonably well, as well as any human can live,” he says. “Not that you’re going to be able to avoid pain and suffering. Nobody can escape that. But you can escape this alienation and loneliness, and this slavery to technology that we’ve created.”
― Rod Dreher, Living in Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age