Thursday, January 28, 2016
Wednesday, January 27, 2016
The sky is falling, and Rod Dreher is selling Benedict Option shelters
Fresh from a feverish week of market-making by seamlessly pureeing everything from Donald Trump to Pope Francis (visually presented as always in a Dreher post as a sappy, goggle-eyed Fred Flintstone) canoodling with Lutherans to the ravages of the Reformation itself into a foaming smoothie of existential angst, our very own Christian Offer Shlomi leaves us with
Time indeed. Just look at this chart:
Fortunately, there's an app for that. We'll get to that in a minute.
I wonder how many Christian marks for Rod Dreher's Benedict Option™ ever really realize how perfectly identical his marketing pitch is to the frenzied hawking of precious metals during typical stock market volatility - like, well, like the market we're experiencing right now.
What should you do when you're feeling a financial panic? Why, something radically different, definitely involving a vehicle even its vendor doesn't fully understand, right?
Of course you should. So why shouldn't you handle your faith the same way, with the same emotional, bolt-directly-into-a-door-jamb response?
Of course you should. Absolutely. What if night were to fall on you and your family before you did?
Now, I know what you're thinking, faithful EQE reader. You believe I pulled this next image just above from a Monty Python skit, right? Nuh-huh. I pulled it from here, from an adoration of a re-enactment of a period before the sacred was supposedly driven from our world.
Fortunately, as I mentioned above, you can re-enact putting the sacred back into your life by doing as your pitchman would like you to do, by committing yourself right now to buy his not yet outlined, not yet researched, not yet written, not yet contracted Benedict Option book so that you can learn what its author hasn't yet either discovered or attempted, how to re-enact your living as if you had been born in a different time and place, within an entirely different physical and historical cultural matrix, complete with entirely different views of everything from the nature of stuff itself to your own natural place in the order of things.
Speaking of your own natural place in the order of things - sorry. Not everyone gets to be the nobleman and own the land, you know. This whole liberty thing is still some years out.
You have to walk behind the horse and give your lord - not your Lord, your lord - a good chunk of what you spend your entire nasty, brutish, and short life producing. And you'll want to have lots of children, not necessarily because you value life, but because you'll bury three out of five and you'll still need a couple to survive as your pension.
Wait...what am I saying? Of course you get to be the lord of the manor. Everyone does. Because this is nostalgic historical re-enacting, the SCCA: the Society for Creative Christian Anachronism, and, like the children of Lake Wobegon, everyone automatically gets to simultaneously be above average.
Better known as Rod Dreher's Benedict Option™.
If you do, you'll automatically become simultaneously above average and re-sacramentalized, too. Charts don't lie.
Still, you'd better not delay. Night is falling, and no one's lived through sunset before.
Act now - BenOperators are standing by.
We live in a society unmoored from our past, our future, our God, and each other. And nobody really knows what to do about it. God knows our institutions do not. But I think most people sense, deep down, that this can’t last.
Red skies indeed. Night is falling. Time to shelter.
Time indeed. Just look at this chart:
 |
| Act now - BenOperators are standing by. |
I wonder how many Christian marks for Rod Dreher's Benedict Option™ ever really realize how perfectly identical his marketing pitch is to the frenzied hawking of precious metals during typical stock market volatility - like, well, like the market we're experiencing right now.
What should you do when you're feeling a financial panic? Why, something radically different, definitely involving a vehicle even its vendor doesn't fully understand, right?
Of course you should. So why shouldn't you handle your faith the same way, with the same emotional, bolt-directly-into-a-door-jamb response?
Of course you should. Absolutely. What if night were to fall on you and your family before you did?
 |
| You made the right decision, neighbor! You're certainly BenOpping now. |
Now, I know what you're thinking, faithful EQE reader. You believe I pulled this next image just above from a Monty Python skit, right? Nuh-huh. I pulled it from here, from an adoration of a re-enactment of a period before the sacred was supposedly driven from our world.
Fortunately, as I mentioned above, you can re-enact putting the sacred back into your life by doing as your pitchman would like you to do, by committing yourself right now to buy his not yet outlined, not yet researched, not yet written, not yet contracted Benedict Option book so that you can learn what its author hasn't yet either discovered or attempted, how to re-enact your living as if you had been born in a different time and place, within an entirely different physical and historical cultural matrix, complete with entirely different views of everything from the nature of stuff itself to your own natural place in the order of things.
Speaking of your own natural place in the order of things - sorry. Not everyone gets to be the nobleman and own the land, you know. This whole liberty thing is still some years out.
You have to walk behind the horse and give your lord - not your Lord, your lord - a good chunk of what you spend your entire nasty, brutish, and short life producing. And you'll want to have lots of children, not necessarily because you value life, but because you'll bury three out of five and you'll still need a couple to survive as your pension.
Wait...what am I saying? Of course you get to be the lord of the manor. Everyone does. Because this is nostalgic historical re-enacting, the SCCA: the Society for Creative Christian Anachronism, and, like the children of Lake Wobegon, everyone automatically gets to simultaneously be above average.
Better known as Rod Dreher's Benedict Option™.
If you do, you'll automatically become simultaneously above average and re-sacramentalized, too. Charts don't lie.
Still, you'd better not delay. Night is falling, and no one's lived through sunset before.
Act now - BenOperators are standing by.