Rod Dreher asks…

Last updated on: December 31, 2014 at 2:36 pm by Mark Shea

Rod Dreher asks… 2014-12-31T14:36:52-07:00 Mark Shea

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What I make of this.

Speaking only as a first impression, I’d say that it demonstrates that Americans are in the grip of a particular sort of heresy that I would call the Schism of Truth and Love. Like all such heresies, it takes crucial aspects of the Faith that cannot be separated and then suppresses one in favor of the other. So just as ancient Docetists pitted Christ’s deity against his humanity, and Arians pitted the Father against the Son, and Calvinists pitted God’s sovereignty against human free will, so this schism pits love against truth.

Paul tells us to “speak the truth in love”. As a general rule, we seem to find that hard to do. We tend to act as though truth has to be nasty and divisive and insulting, while love has to be indifferentist, conciliatory and non-confrontational. So we wind up where we are, with the backlashes and backlashes against backlashes on the one hand, and the formless Moralistic Therapeutic Deism on the other. Christianity, in that case, resolves into those who are obsessed with beating people over the head with TRVTH (and this often curdles into a politicized theology which holds that Opposition to Abortion Taketh Away the Sins of the World) or it becomes mere “faith communities” celebrating our usness.

And, as American Grace points out, it results in a rising generation which sees little connection between their lives and the barking yellers on the one hand and the bland communitarianism on the other.

I don’t think it has to be that way. Chesterton saw no contradiction between loving the Truth who is Jesus and the Dickensian absurdity who was his neighbor. At the end of the day, it seems to me that the prescription American Grace is looking for is “love God” and “love your neighbor”.

For the Christian who is big on whacking his neighbor with TRVTH and who regards love as touchy feely Kumbaya Catholicism (or whatever flavor of Christianity he is), the contempt for love that is often at work in such personalities will need to be squarely confronted with the same courage he is constantly demanding of those he abuses with his polarizing dogmatism.

For the Christian who is big on formless communitarianism and full of fear of dogmatic Christianity, the contempt for theological rigor and seriousness that is often at work in such personalities will need to be squarely confronted with the same courage he is constantly demanding of those he dismisses with unthinking indifferentism.

Or so it seems to me.

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