Rod Dreher's Benedict Option values

Think of it: these Pentecostals were better off in the USSR than in America, because American freedom led to extreme decadence.

The Benedict Option solution to the decadence of freedom

UPDATE (as they say): If you ever wondered how, in addition to putting a strikingly incomprehensible image from Shutterstock into every post, Rod Dreher makes the robot brains of search engines believe he's written something long and profound, here's one way he goes about the stretch:

UPDATE 2: Reader Pikkumatti writes in the comments

It takes a special kind of sick bastard to publicly state, from the comfort and safety of his own leisurely life, that it is harder for Christians to live in the best place and time in history for the pursuit of freedom and virtue, than under one of the most murderous and soul-deadening regimes in history. This is an insult to all of us, and to the heroes who suffered through the Soviet regime. Dreher would better spend his time reading Gulag Archipelago than on his self-promoting booklist that he'll likely use to pump out yet another trite autobiography.

A recent homily made the point that, if you think it's hard to evangelize here in today's culture, imagine how much easier you have it than the early Christians in Rome did, yet they built the Church anyway.

And it is especially odd for someone who trumpets his religion at every opportunity to mislead on the nature of sin. The mere lack of opportunity to commit a particular sin does not necessarily make one virtuous.

UPDATE 3: Another reader, also named Pikkumatti, adds:

Here's how Christians in the Soviet Union were "better off" than they are in the US today:

The punishment for being a Christian in the Soviet Union was just as severe as the punishment for murder. There were two groups of laws under which believers were prosecuted. The first was for religious activity specifically, such as breaking one of the anti-religious laws. The second was for political or civil crimes, in­cluding “parasitism,” “hooliganism,” “slandering the Soviet system,” and “anti-Soviet propaganda.” Christians had to endure frequent searches and fines, harassment that was made serious by repetition and by the low incomes of those harassed. They were of­ten fired from their jobs, demoted to menial positions, and exiled or banished, usually to northeastern Russia. Those who were arrested could be held up to one year before a trial as the State “gathered evidence.” They waited in overcrowded cells infested with rats, lice, and bedbugs, sometimes in filthy water up to their ankles. Many Christians endured interrogations and torture by the KGB, including threats of castration, the elec­tric chair, prison, confinement to a psychiatric hospi­tal, and harm of family members.

Yes, that piece recounts stories of the Christian heroes who persevered in their faith while in the Gulag, whether they survived or not. But as I said, it is an insult of the highest order to those heroes and to Americans who built and maintained this Nation to assert that "Pentecostals were better off in the USSR than in America".

UPDATE 4: An additional comment adds this useful point:

And might I add, there is a special lack of self-awareness for someone who constantly tells his readers about the most minute details of his own medical issues (along with a reference here and there to his Ambien use) to state:

We have worked so hard as a culture to minimize pain, and to train ourselves to think of comfort and pleasure as our birthright, that we have left ourselves and our children vulnerable to this addiction. This false religion of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism is part of the package.

Dreher has truly been blessed to have lived without severe physical pain (certainly if he had, we would have read about it ad nauseam by now), or to have someone close to him in severe physical pain (sorry, Ruthie). Regardless of the cause, whether cancer, debilitating back pain, pain from major surgery, you name it -- pain relief is a blessing and a mercy to those who suffer. Yet Dreher feels free to insinuate that there is moral weakness in those who treat pain (and, by implication, those who seek relief from pain) is another brutal insult.