He begins in an interesting, and perhaps counterintuitive, place: the family. One of the faults of conservative evangelicalism, at least as I've seen it, is the often insular view of the family we are tempted to hold. I've known parents who won't let their kids play a sport because they are concerned about allowing any other influencer into their children's lives. And while a myopic view of formation as family alone is wrong, it is undeniable that the family is of monumental importance for shaping the life of everyone in what Edmund Burke called the "little platoons." Therefore, it is an ultimately appropriate place to begin the chapter. Our greater life in the broader Christian community will emanate out from the life we live in our homes.
Here is how the section of the chapter on family, "Turn Your Home into a Domestic Monastery," begins:
Just as the monastery's life is oriented toward God, so must the family home be. Every Christian family likes to think they put God first, but this is not always how we live. (I plead guilty.) If we are the abbot and abbess of our domestic monastery, we will see to it that our family's life is structured in such a way as to make the mission of knowing and serving God clear to all its members.
The negation at the beginning is important. Most Christian families would say that "God comes first in this family," but when this claim is weighed in the scales it is often found wanting. We just need to acknowledge this. Such a claim is not something confirmed verbally but something borne out in our practices in the world and within our home. Are we bearing this out in the way we orient our home life?
But the affirmation is even more important: we are the abbots and abbesses of our houses. This is an ultimately positive view of what goes on within the home. In this role it is incumbent upon us to structure the lives of our families in a way that makes our familial mission clear. This instantly reminded me of Martin Luther's famous "priesthood of all believers" claim. As parents we are not merely passive vehicles in the formation of our children, but clergymen and women within our homes. How differently such a vision would shape our lives together. The practical applications abound. I will end with the one given by Dreher.
Dreher's concluding paragraph for this short section keeps the metaphor of the home-as-monastery intact. He advises:
A monastery keeps outside its walls people and things that are inimical to its purpose, which is to form its members in Christ. For families, this means strictly limiting media, especially television and online media, both to keep unsuitable content out and to prevent dependence on electronic media. (emphasis mine)
I love the double edge of Dreher's reasoning: we don't limit media consumption simply because there is unsuitable content involved. This as a sole standard lets parents off the hook. And I often hear modest content used as justification. "Well, they're not watching Game of Thrones so it's fine. This show is about pirates, and stuff. It's a cartoon, chill out. Daddy needs some me-time." However, according to Dreher we don't merely limit for considerations of content; we also limit our media consumption because we want to prevent dependence on electronic media. This is every bit as important to the actual content of what we watch or allow our children to watch.
Sometimes I feel like I bash on media and technology too often. I know my students get tired of hearing it from me. But then I think about how deeply addictive and worldview shaping my average student's consumption of media is and I just stop caring. The media we consume shapes us. The media we implicitly or explicitly endorse within our homes shapes our children. That's the content angle. But the way we lean on media to provide a break or quiet the kids down for a few minutes shows our dependence on a very capricious god. Which might in the end be an even bigger problem. Every time we lazy out and hand over the iPad or let Netflix cycle through episodes while we do our own thing we are willfully abdicating our influence over our children. We are training them to go to the glowing screen for relief and joy. We are selling out the job we've been given for 22 minutes of free time (that, using myself as a case study, most of us squander).
If we want our homes to be different, we need to conceive of our task in a different way.
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