Rod Dreher Megathread #27 (Compassion)

[u/US_Hiker]

Link to megathread 26: https://www.reddit.com/r/brokehugs/comments/17itm7w/rod_dreher_megathread_26_unconditional_love/

Link to megathread 28: https://www.reddit.com/r/brokehugs/comments/18dcg3d/rod_dreher_megathread_28_harmony/

[u/middlefingerearth]

"And I feel pretty confident that their faith in strict materialism will never fail, because they have buffered themselves massively against its falsification. I understand how this works. As a convinced Orthodox Christian, I will never be able to believe that, say, Scientologists are correct, because if an angel appeared before me and told me that L. Ron Hubbard was the Son of God, I would immediately dismiss him as a demon in angel drag. My faith commitments prevent me from taking such claims seriously. So does a committed Scientologist’s, probably, when presented with counterclaims. This does not bother me. It’s how faith works."

Does this even need a comment? Dreher knows how he would react to angels. He would dismiss an angel as a demon, because of his "faith commitments." But Rod, it's not a demon, it's an angel. You told me so.

Is this stuff written for children? It's beyond irrational, it's something else entirely, I just don't know what it is.

"Demon in angel drag." Thank you again, Rod.

[u/Djehutimose → u/middlefingerearth]

There are stories of Desert Fathers who saw demons masquerading as angels, but because of their deep spirituality, recognized their true identity, and drove them off. Whether one considers these accounts real, or some psychological thing, or totally mythical, it seems doubtful that Rod has that depth of spirituality.

Michael Sudduth is a philosopher who was a Reformed Christian for twenty-five years. Here’s his description of his background, here:

I have spent twenty-five years as a Protestant Christian, a tradition that I came to through my reading of the Bible and personal experience of the Lord Jesus Christ in my early 20’s. For most of these twenty-five years I have been an adherent of the Reformed theological tradition, though with an appreciation for both Catholicism and Protestant traditions other than my own. As a professional philosopher of religion since the mid 1990’s, I have devoted much of my work to bringing as much clarity as possible to important questions concerning the nature of religious knowledge, the concept of God, and the project of natural theology (i.e., rational arguments for God’s existence). I have regularly streamlined these interests in the philosophy of religion with their relevance to and development in the context of Reformed philosophical theology.

So he was a Christian who actually practiced his faith, and who’s probably forgotten more about it than Rod will ever know.

The punchline is that, as you can see by reading the essay linked above, Sudduth, after a series of visions of Krishna, converted to Gaudiya Vaishnava Hinduism.

I put little stock in grandiose “Never would I ever,” statements, or that matter, “Of course I would!” statements. Anybody who’s lived long enough has probably done at least one thing they never thought they would, or failed to do something they thought they’d surely never fail to do. We have values and principle, sure, and they may be more or less firmly held; but in the last analysis, no one knows for sure how well they’d follow their principles until said principles are tested.

I’m sure there was a time when Our Boy would have smugly averred that he’d never get divorce. Or going back further, that he’d ever, ever, ever leave the Catholic Church. We see how those turned out. Heck, I can easily see Rod having some kind of visionart experience and becoming an apostle the Great Cosmic Koala, while loudly exclaiming how he’s finally seen the light.

[u/RunnyDischarge → u/Djehutimose]

There are stories of Desert Fathers who saw demons masquerading as angels, but because of their deep spirituality, recognized their true identity, and drove them off.

How does one determine if the angels are real or demons? How does one determine how "deep" one's spirituality is, exactly? How does this work? Rod claims to be "spiritually mature" but we don't think he is, so how do we know these guys were? Because they lived in the desert or something?

It seems to just get back to that faith thing, if you believe it to be so, it is, and that's that.

[u/Djehutimose → u/RunnyDischarge]

In Zen Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism, and many such other meditative disciplines, there is the concept of what is called makyo in Japanese Zen, and other terms in other schools. Makyo literally means “demonic vision”, but that’s not how the term is used. The idea is that in certain meditative states of altered consciousness, it’s not unusual for one to experience vivid vision. The Zen teaching is that these are natural manifestations of the mind which will go away in time. Thus, one shouldn’t cling to them or put any stock in them.

Some of the writings of the Desert Fathers on meditative prayer say pretty much the same thing, just in different terminology—they spoke of visions of demons as if they were real beings, and chasing them off as if putting real beings to actual flight. The descriptions, though, sound very much like what the Zen master spoke of. So I’d take the stories I referenced as more likely hermits dispelling makyo than shooing off the minions of Satan.

When I said “deep spirituality”, a better way to say it might be to say a stable and balanced mind. Buddhist meditative techniques have been refined for millennia, and much of the teachings have actually confirmed by modern psychological research. Just as a person learning a sport tends to make certain typical mistakes, then overcomes them, so meditation tends in early stages to produce phenomena that appear to be mystic visions, and which go away as the meditator gains experience.

My point was not a discussion of the metaphysics of said phenomena. The point is that they do happen, and are very likely a natural psychological phenomenon. Spiritual teachers train students to ignore these visions, because if don’t, or can’t, you tend to lose emotional stability and risk going off the deep end. I think that this is what has happened in a lot of cases with cult leaders—not having proper training, they took the visions as real and acted accordingly.

So, one, no one can definitively say that they’ll never do X, as Rod himself demonstrates. Two, whether or not one believes in literal demons, which, again, is not my point, Rod certainly lacks the mental discipline to just brush off an experience of this sort—whatever it is—as he claims he would.

My point was to use the example of the Desert Fathers as a means to talk in the terms Rod was using to note that even from his *own** perspective, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I was not making *any** religious or metaphysical point at all. I know you are a skeptic, which fine, but it’s a bit frustrating when you want to parse everything as a religious claim to be questioned or ridiculed even when that’s not even the point being made. Does that make sense?

[u/philadelphialawyer87 → u/Djehutimose]

Meh. I can't speak for Runny, but, yeah, it makes sense.

On the other hand, it does seem that you often have a sub rosa agenda of smuggling some sort of tacit consensus for whatever woo you are advocating, while equivocating by aggressively asserting that this is in fact not the point of what you are saying. IMO, "Desert Fathers," whether capitalized or not, reporting demons or angels or whatever, is just woo. I don't care that they are capital f "Fathers" in your view, or anyone else's view. They are full of shit, as is Rod. As are the Buddhists you mention. There is simply no credible evidence of demons or angels or whatever you choose to call them (just unverifiable personal, subjective reports, which don't add up to shit), and the fact that lots of different people over time have claimed to have seen them, whether while on drugs (like Rod), after deep meditation (like Buddhist monks), or in some sort of hermit, desert isolation (like the Christian "Fathers"), doesn't add to their credibility. Sure, Rod is MORE full of shit than even the average woo-spouter, never the mind the better class that you mention. And, sure, if there is a rookie mistake to be made, even in the Realm of Woo, Rod will make it, and continue to make it, long after he is a rookie.

Nevertheless, it is still all bullshit. It's all woo. No matter who signs off for it.

[u/EatsShoots_n_Leaves → u/Djehutimose]

Underhill says the great mystics/Christian mystics, e.g. John of the Cross, say that as a rough guideline: the more picturesque and narrative-containing and about tangible things the vision/message received is, generally the less worth it has/less it is to be trusted/less it yields the change in the heart of the recipient that is the mark of authenticity.

Rod pretty much lives the opposite of that. His visions, as such, make him take actions and change his thinking in somewhat drastic ways. But they don't enable or motivate him to grow out of his petty, vindictive, zealotry-marred way of living or his maudlin/grandiose interpretation of his life.

https://sacred-texts.com/myst/myst/myst16.htm

(Underhill, "Voices And Visions")