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Enjoying God Blog

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Let me reiterate what I said in advance of two books on my list.

[I need to preface my list of the next two books with a word of caution. It may seem strange to refer to “best” books those with which I have substantial disagreement. But they are so important, fascinating, informative, and challenging that I simply couldn’t ignore them. So, please be aware that by citing them among the best books of the year I am not endorsing everything (or even the majority) of what they say.]

(2) Living in Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age, by Rod Dreher (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2024), 272pp.

This book is simultaneously both fascinating and frustrating. I truly enjoyed it and felt challenged by much of what Dreher has written, at the same time I disagreed with several aspects of his theology. Dreher converted to Eastern Orthodoxy in 2006 and this book is a reflection of his spiritual journey. It could also be seen as an apologetic for EO.

The inside dust cover provides this helpful summary of what Dreher says:

“In Living in Wonder, thought leader, cultural critic, and New York Times bestselling author Rod Dreher shows you how to encounter and embrace the strangeness of the world as it really is – ‘enchanted.’ Dreher brings together history, cultural anthropology, neuro-science, and practices and perspectives of the ancient church to show you – no matter your religious affiliation – how to reconnect with the natural world and the great tradition of Christianity so you can relate to the world with more depth and connection, and navigate an increasingly strange future.

He shares credible stories of miracles, reports of demons, and rumors of the numinous and outbreaks of awe to offer hope, as well as a guide for discerning and defending the truth in a dangerous and spiritually dark culture.”

There so many ways to describe Dreher’s thesis that we could easily get lost in the trees and miss the forest to which he points us. His emphasis is that our world has been reduced to matter, to material reality, and nothing beyond. This has led to what he calls “disenchantment.” Dreher contends that God’s power and beauty and the truth about his nature permeates the natural world and serves as a sacrament, of sorts, by which he makes himself known and enters our lives. Perhaps the most helpful approach is to single out several statements that together summarize his approach.

“This is a book about living in a world filled with mystery. It is about learning to open our eyes to the reality of the world of spirit and how it interacts with matter” (3).

To call our world “enchanted,” says Dreher, “is to refer to the widespread belief that, in the words of an Orthodox prayer, God is everywhere present and fills all things” (8).

“If the cosmos is constructed the way the ancient church taught, then heaven and earth interpenetrate each other, participate in each other’s life. The sacred is not inserted from outside, like an injection from the wells of paradise; it is already here, waiting to be revealed” (10).

“When scholars speak of the world as ‘disenchanted,’ they mean that in modern times, with the advance of science and secularism, people no longer perceive the presence of spiritual things as they once did” (20).

What Dreher opposes is a strictly materialistic view of reality. Indeed, “the universe and everything in it is sacramental – it is a symbol of a spiritual reality that both points to transcendent reality and participates in it. . . To call the cosmos sacramental means that, in a mysterious way, all created things bear divine power and participate in the life of God” (23).

In saying this, Dreher is not advocating for pantheism (everything is God and God is everything) but his own version of panentheism (God is in everything and everything is in God). He favors Orthodoxy which “teaches that God is separate from his creation but also interpenetrates it with his energies, or his force” (222-23).

Enchantment “is the belief that all life has ultimate, transcendent meaning, given to us by God, and that we can live in palpable, participatory relationship to that meaning” (65).

Disenchantment “is the evaporation of a sense of the supernatural within the world, and its replacement with a belief, sometimes unacknowledged, that this world is all there is” (74).

Dreher has a fascinating chapter on UFO’s. He seems to agree with those who “do not believe that they [UFO’s] are aliens from other planets. Rather, most appear to think that they are discarnate higher intelligences from other dimensions of reality” (111). Without endorsing it as literally true, it is entirely possible, says Dreher, “that UFO’s are the form demons take to prepare the world for a false religion” (135).

His chapter on prayer is likewise challenging. “To pray in a mode that seeks enchantment is to pray with the awareness that you have an active relationship with God and that prayer is a channel of life-changing grace” (158). His commitment to Orthodoxy is especially seen in his chapter on beauty. “Icons,” says Dreher, “are simply paint on a board, but they are also windows into heaven. Orthodox Christianity regards them as teachers who draw us to God by their beauty. . . Metaphysical realities are hard for finite humans to grasp, which is why God reveals himself to us in metaphors and symbols” (172). In his chapter on Signs and Wonders, Dreher cites in detail several credible (and a few less so) stories of miracles, dreams, visions, angelic encounters, and healings.

I do think that Dreher unfairly dismisses the Reformation and its response to Catholicism. “Both Catholicism and Protestantism – in the West, at least – are marooned primarily in the head and are futilely trying to think their way out of the civilizational shipwreck of the modern West” (222).

He cites Jonathan Pageau’s thought that “everything in the visible world is a symbol of the unseen world, in that it is metaphysically grounded in God’s being” (231). I can agree with that, but more because I find its greatest Protestant advocate in Jonathan Edwards (1703-58). The latter’s treatise, “Images and Shadows of Divine Things”, is an attempt to demonstrate “that all ‘outward’ and created things are specifically designated by God to ‘represent spiritual things’” (Wallace E. Anderson, editor’s introduction to Edwards’ “Images and Shadows of Divine Things,” [Yale University Press, 7). “For Edwards, the end of creation was God’s communication of himself – and thereby of his glory – to the understanding and will of his creatures. The universe itself was part of that divine communication, an act performed every moment by the power of the sovereign God” (Ibid., 9). Building on Edwards’ theology is the excellent book by Gerald McDermott, Everyday Glory: The Revelation of God in all of Reality (Baker: 2018), 212pp. One should also consult Andrew Wilson, God of All Things: Rediscovering the Sacred in an Everyday World (Zondervan, 2021), 207pp. My point in citing Edward, McDermott, and Wilson is simply to point out that seeing the world as “enchanted” is not exclusive to Eastern Orthodoxy. It also has a rich heritage in the best of Protestant theology.

If you choose to divine into Dreher’s book (and I encourage everyone to do so), you should not expect to like or agree with everything he says. His perspective on God and salvation is decidedly that of Eastern Orthodoxy. One thing that stood out to me is the virtual absence of biblical teaching on conviction of sin, repentance, justification by faith alone in Christ alone (and for those of you who know something about EO, you will understand what I mean), and the substitutionary, propitiatory sufferings of Christ on the cross. Rarely, if at all, does Dreher conceive of salvation as deliverance from the wrath and justice of God.

So, in the final analysis, my response to this book is a mixture of enjoyment and disagreement. I am thoroughly Protestant and do not find in EO anything that would draw me away from the Reformed tradition in which I was raised and educated. But I do promise that if you choose to engage with Dreher, you will be challenged and charmed by his perspective on life and God.

 

1 Comment

I have had God speak to me in my ministry, and it has been ''chapter and verse'' from my Bible.!!!..so, for now 43 years, He has spoken to me...when He speaks, you KNOW IT AND YOU NEVER FORGET IT !!!,,So, I could not read any book that says otherwise...!!!

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