Reader Sean writes:

I’m a reformedish evangelical who has been reading about the Benedict Option with interest for a while. One thing that concerns me is the response of some evangelicals to the Benedict Option when they basically reply that “this is what we’ve been doing for years.” There is some truth to that, but I think we need to take a deeper look at ourselves, our lives, and our culture before we say we conclude we’re already doing this sufficiently.

Carl Trueman wrote an interesting piece in First Things (https://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2015/07/the-calvary-option) where he basically implied that the goals of the Ben Op are already realized in his congregation. And the description he provides of life in his congregation is great, but I think it is FAR from normative. The average evangelical Christian in America, even in good churches, even among reformed congregations, etc., could benefit from something like the intentional withdrawal from life as we know it that is advocated in the Benedict Option. I know I could.

I think what such naysayers mean is that serious Christians are already living as Christians in the world. This is true. But I still suspect that we are blind or de-sensitized to our excessive accommodation to the world, in our case American culture. How much do we take part in the rampant consumerism of America? How much media do we devour every day? And how many of our beliefs are shaped there? Aren’t many of our lives and desires excessively individualistic? Don’t many of us want a much deeper community than we experience in our current church lives? James K.A. Smith writes of cultural liturgies, and these often shape us much more than we realize.

A few areas we seem particularly vulnerable are in raising/teaching/shaping children, especially where said children have constant media input via tv and internet, and media/peer influence via smartphones, social networking, etc., and all the more so for kids in public schools. Another concern is the relative comfort many have through their jobs, which are part of an economy which is, at best, apathetic to Christian beliefs and values. Patrick Deneen’s article The Power Elite is quite worthwhile. (https://www.firstthings.com/article/2015/06/the-power-elite)

Thanks for this. It’s important. I will be spending this afternoon with Marvin and Susan Olasky, who are stopping by on their way home to Texas. Marvin would like to discuss the Benedict Option. I’m excited by the chance to sit down with one of the leading voices for Reformed Christianity and talk through these ideas. I am also very pleased to hear more voices from the small-o orthodox Christian world engaging the conversation about the Benedict Option, even critically (and Marvin has been critical, for sure, but in a way I find constructive, and therefore helpful).

I can look at my own life and see where we are falling short, and in particular, where I, as a husband and father, am falling short in raising resilient children, children who will be prepared to live faithfully in a post-Christian world. There is room for reform in every community, in every household, in every heart.