Religion as the opiate lithium of the Working Boy

On the eve of the birthday of Jesus Christ Our Lord and Savior it probably really is fitting if still ironic that our Working Boy in this almost perfect post to that end uses his unique gift for words to explain over and over again the absolutely wrong way to relate to Christianity and to God: as a mental patient undergoing psychological therapy.

The evidence for Dreher's fundamental misunderstanding here isn't to be had legalistically in any particular lines or paragraphs this time, which is why I'm not excerpting any and why in this case, seriously, you really do need to read the whole thing.

Instead, this time the evidence is to be found in the whole, what the Germans refer to as gestalt. As exquisitely laid out throughout the entire post, Dreher simply reveals no grasp at all that religion in general and Christianity in particular has any role other than setting the disordered psyche right again.

There isn't any "spiritual sickness" at play here, at least none distinguishable from psychological woes, no independently spiritual crises of faith itself, certainly no objective demonic possession. For Dreher, then, God and Christianity, particularly through the sled work prescribed by his Orthodoxy therapist, thus becomes the apotheotic nostrum - the ultimate cure for what ails ya, a way to generate a virtual private psychological Innernet network wormhole through the ordinary psychological storms of everyday life in the world outside, the sort others routinely master but which will always threaten to consume him.

(There is, of course, a Hail Mary insanity plea to be raised: that Dreher has deliberately sculpted this heartfelt post in the way he has solely to promote sales of his forthcoming God-through-Dante-as-salving-self-help-book. Not really sure how that helps.)

In Dreher's particular case his psychological disorder begins and, frankly, will probably never end with his fraught relationship with his family and the community of his birth. As he makes abundantly and tragically clear in every line in this Christmas post, though, he seeks relief from his torment in religious process as psychological therapy with exactly the same immature confusion in which an adolescent pursues love through sex.

Maybe there's a moment somewhere over the years where Dreher has sought to serve God rather than vice versa, endlessly pursuing Him as prescription or therapist in one utilitarian form or another. Show me.

Unlike Ambien, God, even through Orthodoxy, isn't supposed to be the cure for what ails ya, Rod. And while both religion and sex can be mistakenly utilized as therapy, it's ultimately an immature perversion of both to do so. And, finally, no, Dante's Commedia is not the ultimate self-help book, a High (Falutin') Medieval Italian Brodo di Pollo per L'anima.

Or at least until now it was never, ever supposed to be.