‘Pink Christianity’
Whatever Benedict Option communities end up being as we pass through all this, they are going to have to bear witness to suffering and loss, in a way we [in the West] have not had to do for a great long time. As you talk about the Ben Op, I think you might draw on what you have learned from Dante about how to bear suffering in a Christian way. We are going to have to be patient for a restoration of justice, and develop the kind of faith and understanding required for that.
The Benedict Option has to be about what discipleship looks like and must contain in this present reality. It can’t be simply about Christian survival within the liberal order. That in itself concedes too much. Has to come from a renewed quest for God and the nature of man in the ruins of this civilization – and that that quest is going to require specific forms and practices.
.. Among the many things Dante taught me in my own difficult, unfixable situation here was how to bear it like a Christian, and how to turn that suffering into an occasion of grace and conversion. The key was not simply that Dante taught me the skills for enduring the situation, but more than that, he taught me how to embrace it as an opportunity to become more Christ-like. It was hard road to walk, and required a lot of dying to self and self-righteousness, and meant that I had to reconcile myself to the fact that things were never going to be just in this world.
.. This illness is endemic not only of our times, but began immediately. As soon as Christianity came to be, there were both zealous Christians and lazy Christians.
.. But those who were among the Christians simply by chance either renounced Christ, or, as many philosophers or scholars, did not want to change themselves to conform to Christian teaching. They instead wanted to change Christian teaching to suit themselves.
That is how the first heresies arose among the Gnostics.
.. Many today want the Church to be a “Church of good people.” But the Church is a hospital.