Understanding Rome is the True Viable Option
I was channel surfing a bit today, and came across a C-SPAN recording of Rod Dreher's acceptance of an award by some conservative group for best book of some kind. I thought I'd look in and see what Mr. Dreher would say about what he calls "The Benedict Option."
A while back I'd read a bit on it, and I reviewed some remarks about it, and of course I sat for a few minutes watching Dreher tell us precisely what this option is. Sure enough, it isn't much. All he does is overwhelm us with pithy declarations imploring us to behave more Christianly in a culture that reviles Christianism.
Sounds a lot like the Catholicist Nation.
The Catholicist Nation is the place where people can be very religious -- even very very Christianly religious -- yet still be light years away from what Jesus tells us about Himself and ourselves so we may have genuine spiritual contentment in any circumstance. Dreher merely bleats "Be like the Christians of old and do those wholesome former things and you'll be bold and brave and..." And yeah.
Be a Catholicist.
I know this because he said something very typical of Catholicist thinking in his address to the conservative club gathering shown there on the television. After that there wasn't much more for him to say because it was ultimately all pointless plap. The same stuff Catholicists have been blithering since Augustine.
It was something along these lines, but his words were pretty much, "Protestants, Catholics, and Eastern Orthodox must join together and..." you know, do all these splendid things he says we should do.
That's the dead giveaway -- and by dead I do mean dead. You can do a whole bunch of delightfully religious things but if you don't have Christ, you don't have life.
And Rome does not have Christ.
Please know that I don't have anything against Rome itself. Rome is the present manifestation of Cain's legacy to crack heads of sinners in need of salvation -- those who refuse to make Christ their atonement and righteousness. The Roman Catholic Church is the ecclesiastical manifestation of Caesar's duties under Cain's charge to prosecute with the most extreme prejudice evildoers who interminably draw themselves under his authoritative jurisdiction.
Dreher is just a smart-sounding stooge doing the work of Rome's militant units insisting that people continue to labor under the misapprehension that followers of Christ and souls lost in the grip of Roman religious, political, and commercial ritual are the same. I don't have anything against Dreher, I feel badly for him -- all he knows is what Cain's academia and media have pounded into his psyche completely outside God's presence: that anyone who appears to be Christian doing Christian things is a Christian and let's all get together and take care of business together -- perhaps even start a revolution, a Benedictine revolution! ::Woo-hoo::!
Please don't get me wrong, followers of Christ are asked to love those souls with as much passion as Christ did. But saying we're all just mild-mannered Christians who need to do more of this thing or that thing the Jesuits want us to do is just committing millions of celebrants of his book to a path that leads to Hell.
The real option is for people to see Rome for what it is, refrain from censuring it or challenging it or remonstrating against it, but rather come out of it and dwell richly and joyfully in the Kingdom. Understand and know Christ as He Himself says in the ninth chapter of Jeremiah's book, and from there you may proficiently minister to those captivated by Rome, or anyone for that matter, in order that they may have life.
___
A while back I'd read a bit on it, and I reviewed some remarks about it, and of course I sat for a few minutes watching Dreher tell us precisely what this option is. Sure enough, it isn't much. All he does is overwhelm us with pithy declarations imploring us to behave more Christianly in a culture that reviles Christianism.
Sounds a lot like the Catholicist Nation.
The Catholicist Nation is the place where people can be very religious -- even very very Christianly religious -- yet still be light years away from what Jesus tells us about Himself and ourselves so we may have genuine spiritual contentment in any circumstance. Dreher merely bleats "Be like the Christians of old and do those wholesome former things and you'll be bold and brave and..." And yeah.
Be a Catholicist.
I know this because he said something very typical of Catholicist thinking in his address to the conservative club gathering shown there on the television. After that there wasn't much more for him to say because it was ultimately all pointless plap. The same stuff Catholicists have been blithering since Augustine.
It was something along these lines, but his words were pretty much, "Protestants, Catholics, and Eastern Orthodox must join together and..." you know, do all these splendid things he says we should do.
That's the dead giveaway -- and by dead I do mean dead. You can do a whole bunch of delightfully religious things but if you don't have Christ, you don't have life.
And Rome does not have Christ.
Please know that I don't have anything against Rome itself. Rome is the present manifestation of Cain's legacy to crack heads of sinners in need of salvation -- those who refuse to make Christ their atonement and righteousness. The Roman Catholic Church is the ecclesiastical manifestation of Caesar's duties under Cain's charge to prosecute with the most extreme prejudice evildoers who interminably draw themselves under his authoritative jurisdiction.
Dreher is just a smart-sounding stooge doing the work of Rome's militant units insisting that people continue to labor under the misapprehension that followers of Christ and souls lost in the grip of Roman religious, political, and commercial ritual are the same. I don't have anything against Dreher, I feel badly for him -- all he knows is what Cain's academia and media have pounded into his psyche completely outside God's presence: that anyone who appears to be Christian doing Christian things is a Christian and let's all get together and take care of business together -- perhaps even start a revolution, a Benedictine revolution! ::Woo-hoo::!
Please don't get me wrong, followers of Christ are asked to love those souls with as much passion as Christ did. But saying we're all just mild-mannered Christians who need to do more of this thing or that thing the Jesuits want us to do is just committing millions of celebrants of his book to a path that leads to Hell.
The real option is for people to see Rome for what it is, refrain from censuring it or challenging it or remonstrating against it, but rather come out of it and dwell richly and joyfully in the Kingdom. Understand and know Christ as He Himself says in the ninth chapter of Jeremiah's book, and from there you may proficiently minister to those captivated by Rome, or anyone for that matter, in order that they may have life.
___
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