Benedict Option, 2: A Domestic Monastery

Chapter 6 of Dreher's book is called "The Idea of a Christian Village." Here Dreher mostly looks beyond the walls of the church to the type of Christian community necessary to foster the type of spiritual formation we long both for our lives and the lives of our children. 

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.

The Dubious Reliability of Headlines

I used to be something of a news junkie. Let's just say that at previous jobs I had a lot of time on my hands but had to look like I was still being productive. I couldn't just pull out a book and start annotating so I read a ton of internet content. This was in a simpler time for the web (roughly 2007-2010, which feels like an eternity ago in internet time), but I still spent a good chunk of my time seething over the actions of others as reported to the various sources I consumed.

I don't read a lot of news today. Mostly I think it is garbage, even the stuff that isn't clearly fake. Here are two example from my reading in the past 24 hours.

The first comes from the sports site Deadspin which published the following article about Kansas coach Bill Self's response to the rape allegations in the players' dorm. Here is the article's title:

Bill Self Discusses "Distraction" Of "Very Serious Alleged Allegation" Of Rape At Men's Basketball Dorm

"Distraction" is in scare quotes. These players are "distracted" by the rape of a 16 year old girl. Boohoo for them. SMH, Self, I can't even with this.

Is this what the article states, though? Here is the Self quote in response, it is worth noting, to a journalist who asked if the accusation was a distraction.

It’s not a distraction, it’s a major distraction. Certainly, most importantly, in general, when you talk about distraction, you talk about how it affects us. But more importantly, there’s an obviously very serious alleged allegation that has been made. So that trumps figuring how to guard Monk or Fox to be real candid with you. It’s been a distraction and one that we’ll deal with and our players will deal with. It’s not what we want to do but it’s what’s required at this time.

Nowhere in that quote does he claim "distraction" with nefarious intent as the title so clearly implies. In fact, Self says the very opposite--finding out the truth is monumentally more important than figuring out who guards which Kentucky player. The headline makes Self look like a rape apologist, a single-minded basketball only automaton. But he's not. And I say this as anything but a Jayhawk enthusiast.

Here's another example that is perhaps more pernicious. This was a New York Times headline that blew up on my Twitter feed yesterday.

Trump Strategist Stephen Bannon Says Media Should ‘Keep Its Mouth Shut’

That's bad, right? Leave the press alone, you alt-right d-bag! Surely, though, the New York Times would never mislead its readers with a shoddy headline. Let's check, just to make sure.

WASHINGTON — Just days after President Trump spoke of a “running war’’ with the media, his chief White House strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, ratcheted up the attacks, arguing that news organizations had been “humiliated” by the election outcome and repeatedly describing the media as “the opposition party” of the current administration.

“The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while,” Mr. Bannon said in an interview on Wednesday.

Oh, so he didn't say anything like what the headline implied? That's strange. Bannon is only saying what the media should have figured out in early November: they do not have their finger on the pulse of America. Which, given the fact that no one saw a Trump election coming, ought to be pretty obvious.

But here's the thing. Very few people actually read past the headlines. NPR proved this a couple of years ago with their April Fools headline that literally said "Why Doesn't America Read Anymore?" The copy of the article openly admitted that this was an April Fool's joke but the Facebook comments people posted remained blissfully unaware of this fact. Many were the laments about the sad state of reading in America. I blame this in part on The Onion. I have a head stuffed full of headline titles from The Onion but I can't tell whether the article itself was any good.

The net effect is that we are all deceived as to what is true. Everything is spun. Everything is molded, curated, and crafted to fit the confirmation bias of whoever the target audience might be. There is no room for nuance, for difficult truth, for self-reflection. Those things don't yield clicks like the hyperbolic headlines do. 

The fact that the media doesn't get this strikes me as sad, until I realize that this is not what people demand from the media anymore. Those qualities above are just the ones we seem to have jettisoned in this age. The media reflects us, who we are today, and that is sad for all parties implicated.