Our last episode of Mere Fidelity for a few months is devoted to a discussion of the book of the hour, The Benedict Option, with its author, Rod Dreher. We explore the questions of how the Church should relate to society in a post-Christian Western context.
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I’m not exactly a pacifist, but I was astounded at Dreher’s admission of the friend who, as a doctor, would not want his children to go to medical school etc. I think to myself, this is exactly the problem with the modern military. How can Christians in good conscience go (or, even worse, send their children) into an institution that annihilates one’s identity, rebuild people into tools of the government, who is to function as a living weapon. As an enlisted man, you do not have a choice which orders to follow or which not to follow, and you’d have to hope to God that your commanding officer doesn’t put you in an impossible situation. And this is assuming a sterilized environment of decision, which doesn’t exist, and thus does not take into account the perverse, sexually immoral, brutal peer pressure that constantly shapes one’s conscience and ability to act.
Many typical American evangelicals are happy to see their children fight and kill (and hopefully not die) for their country, but turn away, with a kind of civilized disdain, for those fanatics who would willingly die for Christ. Hauerwas has built a cottage industry on this point, so I won’t belabor it. Christians have willingly sent their children to be catechized by the state for generations, we have to recognize the root problem before we recoil before the perverse legislation of gender confusion.
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