Ah! So the Benedict Option is...Oh...

...I tell everybody I can that yes, the Benedict Option is simply the church doing what it ought to have been doing all along, but hasn’t been,...

Oh. Well...

Still, who better to instruct the church - which church? why, any church - how to do what it ought to have been doing all along, but hasn’t been than lifelong religious buffet nibbler Rod Dreher?

But to find out how to fix your broken church and maybe even remove that stubborn hard water residue you're going to have to wait until next year when the cure is finally bottled and for sale.

The essential additive without which your church cannot function properly

This will give you ample time to resolve in advance the obvious ethical dilemma which will confront you at that time: give that $20 which can only be spent once to a person in need who is not Rod Dreher, or give that $20 which can only be spent once to a person in need who is Rod Dreher.

If you give your $20 which can only be spent once to a person in need who is not Rod Dreher, you obviously risk cultivating in that person a dependency on handouts over personal industry.

On the other hand, if you give your $20 which can only be spent once to a person in need who is Rod Dreher, you obviously risk cultivating in that person a dependency on handouts over personal industry, for example the industry of having made any effort at all over the prior ten years to think about, midwife, shape, create, critique, test, re-examine, and in any other conceivable way produce anything remotely resembling substantial content to back the hollow marketing phrase "Benedict Option" prior to having finally landed a book contract and being forced to dash out the needed filler for it over the space of a few months.

Still, if God can create the earth in seven days, why can't the next best thing for your church, Rod Dreher, invent the Benedict Option out of whole cloth in just seven months to meet a contract deadline?

Boy, tough call on that $20, I know.

Hey...here's an idea. Maybe just give it directly to your church.They've been invested in this whole Christian thing quite a bit longer and view it through a lens somewhat larger than merely hustling a book contract.

UPDATE (as they say): I'm tacking this on here because it's not enough to fill a post of its own, but mainly because it's the essential question implicit in this post itself.

Why is the Benedict Option for sale?

Why is, according to its inventor, Rod Dreher, the only remaining hope for orthodox Christianity being peddled as just another market commodity, like a  Hula Hoop, a pack of condoms, or a six pack of light beer?

Because it is for sale. According to Rod, he put the finishing touches on the only definitive prescription to save orthodox Christianity last night.

But it's not as if Rod and his family would starve if this one salvic treatise  were simply given to the faithful like Christ's sermons themselves. Rod gets paid round the clock for his writing.

So if the Benedict Option is the only real hope for millions of Christians, why is it being strategically priced and peddled the way Martin Skreli hustled Daraprim?

But if its just another Dreher book meant to keep its author in wine and oysters, how important can it really be?

Huh?

In today's output, Dreher offers an early peek into the Benedict Option book, using his standby mechanism of a quote from an alleged reader:

Millenials are like the Bynars from one of the early episodes of Star Trek: the Next Generation.  They are so merged in with their technology that one does not know where the human begins or ends and where the technology is.  Their memories, both short and long term, have been altered.  They have no idea of what community is because in the real world it does not exist.  And changing genders is part of high tech.  Shape shifting is part of this generation.  Look at the popular media.  If you don't like who you are, you can change yourself by being a super hero, or zombie, or become something else.  So, in a way it is not surprising that this is happening.  Alot of the changes in society are here because of technology and how it has become a master over us.

To which Dreher adds this analysis (emphasis added):

I think this is true.  The Technology chapter of The Benedict Option explores this insight.

He thinks what is true?  That "alot of the changes in society are here because of technology and how it has become a master over us", say, as opposed to our human nature that has persisted since the Fall?  Or is he agreeing that millennials "are so merged in with their technology" that they don't know "where the human begins or ends and where the technology is"?  If so, someone's been hiding bad sci-fi inside their MacIntyre so the Mrs. doesn't yell at him to get off his duff.

Anyhow,  if you can figure out what this is about, please enlighten.  To the extent it makes any sense (not much), it's patently false.  In any case, the "Technology chapter" ought to be a doozy.