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Rod Dreher Examines Our Need for Wonder and Works

October 17, 2024

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It’s easy to think some aspects of our present culture are the way they always have been and the rest is a result of unmitigated progress, that our culture has reached a kind of pinnacle. The fact that you, someone I have likely never met, are using a phone, computer, or tablet to read my reflection on a book I, in turn, read on an electronic device—actually two, my phone and Kindle—marks leaps and bounds in technological advancement in my lifetime alone. 

And yet we all know that while our devices are clever, most of the people around us are unhappy, to say the least. Statistics need not be restated here; we have all read them and, worse, seen them come to life (or some semblance of it) in our communities, perhaps even our own homes. Many people have asked the same questions in many different ways: How did we get here? And is there hope of turning it around?

Every age is a mixture of steps taken forward and back—some farther forward or farther back than others. To call this out can make one seem a Debbie Downer, if not an alarmist, but at some point, it needs to be done out of love for the people in the midst of such a culture. Conservative (and sometimes controversial) commentator Rod Dreher’s soon-to-be-released book Living in Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age examines that existential footwork with the intention of revealing where contemporary Western culture has stumbled and fallen, showing how we can regain our footing, and reminding us where our ultimate destination ought to be. 

Readers may be familiar with Dreher’s work at The American Conservative or on Substack. Bishop Barron has written about and commented on Dreher’s previous book The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation. My experience with Dreher amounts to listening to Bishop Barron’s commentary; the present book is my first foray into reading Dreher’s work.

“A Christianity that places mystery, wonder, and awe in the center of its worship and spiritual disciplines is a Christianity that can endure what is to come.”

Understanding Where We’ve Been

The book opens with an abridged and thus simplified history of Western cultural thought that simultaneously brought me back to my high school history classes and challenged the viewpoint I learned there by comparing such with the perspectives of other cultures. “The point is that we err in assuming that we modern Westerners uniquely possess the capabilities of seeing with clarity and accuracy and that anyone whose perceptions differ can only be fools or frauds,” Dreher writes. He is not suggesting we rewrite history, as recent trends have advocated; instead he means to challenge the pride inherent in our common way of seeing. “To open one’s mind to the possibility of enchantment is, in fact, a reasonable thing to do,” he writes.

This does not mean that we need to throw out everything we know about the world, our culture, or ourselves. It does mean that if we’ve found something lacking in the way we’re living, it’s not absurd to consider other options. Dreher quotes G.K. Chesterton elsewhere, but here I recall a line from Orthodoxy: “Mysticism keeps men sane.” 

Getting Comfortable with a New Vocabulary

Even with that preparation, some of the terms Dreher uses—enchantment, mystic, numinous—can be tough for a willing contemporary mind to take. To discuss the supernatural requires recognition of good and evil, and evil closer to home than we’d like to believe. On one hand, we’ve all heard some variation of the phrase that the devil’s greatest trick is convincing people that he doesn’t exist. On the other, frank discussions of the occult, aliens, and deeper looks into the minds behind AI can read like conspiracy theories. It all seems so far-fetched. 

Then again, we can’t risk succumbing to the temptations of a relativistic society either, downplaying what frightens us with the line that things aren’t that bad. In the end, I acknowledge powerful demonic forces exist in our world, while I admit to putting the chapter on UFOs down late in the evening, preferring to pick it back up in the light of day. 

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Dreher acknowledges the obstacles to openness to the topics he presents. He accounts for his own stages of disbelief, and consistently engages the voices and research of others more expert in these fields. Perhaps those with a mostly evidence-driven mentality—a large part of Dreher’s intended audience—would appreciate a deeper bibliography here; then again, the need to reestablish what one finds to be sufficient proof to allow for belief may render a deeper dive unnecessary. 

But Is Seeing Believing?

Most of the conversions in early Christianity were the result of witnessing miracles and signs, not of engaging in theological discussions. And to become a Christian in that time meant more than a change in mindset; it meant, as Dreher puts it, “radically revising not only your sense of reality but your relationship to your society.” Incredible things continue to happen all around us, but we have lost the ability to recognize and respond to them. That’s what we need to get back—not just the recognition but the response as well. Dreher writes, “The thing is, enchantment that doesn’t compel you to change your life is not enchantment at all.”

No one factor is to blame for how we lost the ability to wonder; rather, Dreher argues that a host of circumstances have led to “deeper and richer dimensions of our lives [being] obscured in modern times, because we have forgotten how to see the world as it really is.” All of us have been influenced by shifts in the kinds of knowing our culture has prioritized, the ways in which global economics have developed, and the repercussions of major events like the Reformation. Each of us will find some of these factors to be more significant in our own lives than others. 

We Need Wonder and Works

How we get back to seeing and living in wonder, however, is something Dreher believes is a much narrower path. The book’s title, to my mind, doesn’t betray the necessary emphasis he puts on prayer, sacrifice, and works. This is what I find most compelling about Dreher’s argument: He doesn’t stop with radically shifting one’s mindset and taking on whatever form of spirituality a reader feels called to. 

It cannot be said often enough: mystical experience alone cannot suffice. This is the error that many charismatic Christians make: they take experience as authoritative. But mystical experience can only be interpreted within a doctrinal frame based on Scripture and authoritative church teaching.

Incredible things continue to happen all around us, but we have lost the ability to recognize and respond to them.

He emphasizes age-old religious traditions (to a certain degree, Catholic, but more emphatically, Orthodox, his own professed creed) grounded in the reality of humans having bodies, minds, and souls, all of which need to be active. “A Christianity that places mystery, wonder, and awe in the center of its worship and spiritual disciplines is a Christianity that can endure what is to come,” he writes. 

He not only recommends prayer, but insists upon acknowledging the connection of our minds and bodies, whether in a breathing pattern or the act of bowing. If these things seem small or insignificant, consider that in Dreher’s model—which is not really his model at all, but the model of the Church Fathers—they are but one element of a program that integrates and engages the whole person. 

We are made in the image and likeness of God, who gave us intellect and reason, senses and faith and more, all of which are aimed at knowledge and contemplation of his love. As a culture, we have resisted and denied his invitation for far too long, but it doesn’t have to stay that way. “None of us knows if a miracle awaits us,” Dreher writes, “but we have the responsibility to prepare ourselves for that possibility.”