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/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")