If you haven’t read The Benedict Option by Rod Dreher, I encourage you to pick up a copy. It’s one of the best books out there about the state of Christianity in this culture and era we’re living in. It points out things that are so important for us to keep in mind if we want to survive and live for the Lord as we journey further into these last days.
According to Dreher, we are now living in a post-Christian era. This is something I myself have been saying for the last decade. We have become so removed from Biblical culture. Life is not the same as it was 50 or 60 years ago. We cannot simply live in the mainstream of Western society and expect our faith and the faith of our families to survive.
As Dreher says, we “have to choose to make a decisive leap into a truly countercultural way of living Christianity.” He continues, saying, “If we want to survive, we have to return to the roots of our faith, both in thought and in practice. We are going to have to learn habits of the heart forgotten by believers in the West. We are going to have to change our lives, and our approach to life, in radical ways. In short, we are going to have to be the church, without compromise, no matter what it costs.”
The Benedict Option is about looking at the first 300-400 years of the Church in order to find “new ways to live in community.” Rod Dreher the author talks about the idea that learning what it means to know God and be His is like a little child learning how to speak. It comes from being part of a community. He shares several examples of people choosing to leave their suburbs and nice communities and move to homes not far from places of worship. Like Orthodox Jews, their lives now revolve around their faith in God.
In these small communities, the people stick together in spite of difficulties and God uses their lives to influence those around them. When we learn to live as the people of God, people are drawn to us because they see Him in us.
I hope you will take the time to read The Benedict Option for yourself. It is so vital for the future of the people of God that we understand where we are in society in these days and have the courage to be different.
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Thank you for this recommendation! I’ve read through the first couple of chapters, and Rob Dreher does a fantastic job of outlining how we got to where we are today. I am looking forward to reading the rest.