Like many, I’ve followed with fascination the quibbles surrounding Rod Dreher’s much discussed Benedict Option. On the one hand, I’m quite sympathetic to the Benedict Option. Dreher has kindly quoted my writing while discussing the BenOp, and I found James K.A. Smith’s WaPo review uncharitable. On the other hand, I do have concerns that the BenOp may be used by believers as an excuse to evade the call to bring all spheres of life under the good rule of King Jesus. There’s always the temptation to become a shining city in a valley.
In the end, it seems to me that both perspectives—the missional mindedness of Smith and the ecclesial base-shoring of Dreher—are two emphases the church needs, and needs to hold together. Balancing such tensions is part and parcel of mature Christian thinking (take the tension between common grace and the antithesis, for example). Of course, striking such balances isn’t a new challenge. In his classic Old Testament Ethics for the People of God, Christopher Wright shows how the Prophet Daniel similarly held two seemingly imossible realities together: serving the city while rebuking the city. Says Wright:
“Another good example of the normative stature of the covenant law even in a pagan situation would be Daniel again. Living at a time when his people were an oppressed minority, he had visions of the empire as essentially ‘beastly’ in character. In other words, like Jeremiah, he was fully aware of the state as ultimately an enemy of God, indeed a kind of God-surrogate, destined for God’s final destruction. Nevertheless, he not only chose to serve the state at the civil-political level, but also took the opportunity to challenge that state in the name of the ‘God of heaven’ to mend its ways in line with a paradigm of justice derived from Sinai (4:27).
The subtlety and mature balance of Daniel’s stance is remarkable. Knowing that it was God himself who had given Nebuchadnezzar all authority and dominion, he nevertheless did not feel bound to obey him in every particular but set limits on the extent of his submission to the state. His understanding of divine appointment of human authority did not make him a passive pawn of the state. But on the other hand, knowing that Babylon was one of the ‘beasts’ of his visions, an agent of evil and destruction with spiritual dimensions, he nevertheless continued his daily political duty at the office desk (8:27), maintaining his integrity and his witness at the top level of national life. His understanding of satanic influence on human powers did not make him an escapist from political involvement. Christians need a similarly balanced understanding of their political and social responsibilities within states that may not acknowledge God but are still part of God’s world.”
