Hidden Forces Podcast Summary
Episode: Living In Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age
Guest: Rod Dreher
Host: Demetri Kofinas
Date: March 10, 2025
Overview
In this deeply evocative episode, Demetri Kofinas welcomes Rod Dreher, renowned conservative writer and author of The Benedict Option, Live Not by Lies, and the new book Living in Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age. The main theme centers on the pursuit of enchantment, spiritual meaning, and the role of mystery in a disenchanted, often secular Western world. They delve into questions of the nature of existence, the power and limitations of rationality, the phenomenology of revelation, and the distinct contributions of Eastern and Western Christian traditions. Paranormal phenomena such as UAPs (UFOs) and exorcism are used as lenses to explore spiritual reality. The first hour lays philosophical and spiritual groundwork; the second (premium) hour promises to dive into the cultural and political consequences of these existential issues.
Key Discussion Points and Insights
Rod Dreher’s Background and Intellectual Journey
- [03:24] Rod shares his personal story: from a small Louisiana town, years of journalism in major American cities, the tragedy and fallout of family secrets, illness, and the role of literature (like Dante) in healing.
- His major works are summarized, with a focus on how each wrestles with being a faithful Christian in an increasingly post-Christian, postmodern world.
- Dreher discusses his move to Europe after personal crisis and divorce, and his ongoing work at a Budapest think tank.
“All of that just destroyed my marriage. My wife and I, now ex-wife, we fought the good fight... It just couldn’t be done in the end... I write books and I write a daily Substack. And the stuff that interests me more than anything is religion and its intersection with culture and politics...” — Rod Dreher [03:55]
The Disenchantment of the West and the Quest for Mystery
- [10:35] Dreher addresses the "iron cage of rationality" (citing Jeffrey Kripal), critiquing materialism and explaining how even many Christians live "disenchanted" lives.
- Anecdotes (including Carlos Eire’s They Flew) are used to illustrate the dismissal of non-materialist experiences (miracles, paranormal phenomena).
- [13:10] Dreher recounts "Nino’s story" — a Catholic lawyer who experienced UAP/paranormal phenomena — to challenge the listener’s presumptions about reality and spiritual experience.
“Nino said that when he was a teenager...saw a huge spaceship...later, a portal opened up in his apartment and two shimmering humanoid beings appeared... His wife saw them too. When he prayed, they went away.” — Rod Dreher [14:15]
- The point: modernity’s “psychological buffers” against the enchanted, spiritual worldview are eroding, and with them come both spiritual opportunity and risk.
Science, Revelation, and the Limits of Reason
- Both host and guest agree on the inadequacy of science for answering existential or ontological questions.
- Discussion of Iain McGilchrist’s left-brain/right-brain framework and Kierkegaard’s “truth is subjectivity” helps frame why empirical or propositional proof of existence/God is elusive or insufficient.
- [28:00] Notable allusion to the movie Contact to illustrate knowledge through intimate, experiential revelation rather than proof.
“You know, prove to me that you love your wife. Prove to me that you love your father. You can’t.” — Demetri Kofinas [28:49]
- Rod expands on this through the distinction between savoir and connaître (French, ‘to know a fact’ vs. ‘to know a person/experience’).
“Religion is primarily about connaître, knowing God in the connaître sense.” — Rod Dreher [29:00]
The Primacy of Revelation & Living the Faith
- Demetri shares his own story of suffering and health crises, arriving at the importance of revelatory rather than rational knowledge.
- Rod discusses an influential conversation with a Catholic priest (Monsignor Santos) whose mystical experiences and transformations were a key witness to the reality of revelation.
- [35:00-38:40] Dreher’s crisis over Catholic institutional betrayal (abuse scandal) and personal shift from a propositional, logic-based faith to one rooted in experience, humility, and spiritual practice after entering Eastern Orthodoxy.
“I cannot allow myself to be stuck in my left brain with my faith... be humble and realize that the way to know God... is not primarily through mastering propositional arguments, but by praying and going to liturgy and living the life...” — Rod Dreher [38:00]
East vs. West: Experience vs. Propositions
- Dreher describes the differences between Eastern and Western Christianity.
- [39:46-43:00] Orthodoxy emphasizes lived, experiential knowledge of God (the “nous”/noetic faculty, the heart) over intellectual mastery of doctrine.
- This is likened to “clearing the receiver” to experience God.
“Being Orthodox is not about mastering a set of facts...It’s about living it. It’s about absorbing knowledge through lived experience.” — Rod Dreher [40:20]
- Demetri draws analogies to meditation and the non-discursive awareness in other Eastern traditions.
Solipsism, Revelation, and the Centrality of Love
- Demetri shares an existential struggle (solipsism, epistemological limits) and how only revelation, not analysis, can break through.
- [45:37] The conversation turns to love as the central, irreducible truth revealed through suffering—love not as sentimentality, but agape, sacrificial love as defined by the Christian tradition.
“Somehow this presence or source energy... that we’ve been referring to as God... is somehow tied up in love. Not Eros... but love in the deepest sense... Does that resonate with you?” — Demetri Kofinas [45:22]
“He poured Himself out for us... Christ conquered death. I can only really understand love in a Christian framework because... it has to require sacrifice.” — Rod Dreher [47:00]
- Rod cites A Hidden Life and real-life stories of faith under totalitarianism as examples of how sacrificial love transforms human existence.
The Necessity of Suffering
- Dreher and Kofinas agree that suffering is central to spiritual growth, purification, and becoming fully human.
- References to Brave New World and Live Not by Lies underscore the perils of a pleasure-obsessed, suffering-averse society.
“A happy life is not a life without anxiety, without stress. But they don’t even understand that... It sounds like you’re fighting for your right to be unhappy.” — Rod Dreher [51:25]
“There is something about struggle and suffering and dealing with imperfection and pain that is required to make us fully human.” — Rod Dreher [54:08]
Notable Quotes & Timestamps
-
“We are so bound by an Enlightenment way of seeing the world... that we just push outside... anything that goes against materialism... Even a lot of Christians in the United States today... live a fundamentally disenchanted life.”
— Rod Dreher [10:50] -
“When you take down the psychological buffers that modernity has provided against the idea of the spiritual world, you can let God back in—but you also let in darker spirits.”
— Rod Dreher [07:37] -
“A medieval peasant would be better able psychologically to cope with the world that is fast moving towards us than an average modern person.”
— Rod Dreher, quoting a friend [17:18] -
“If English had better words to help us understand what it means to know, I think the problem and the solution to the problem would be clearer.”
— Rod Dreher [30:11] -
“You can only know that mystery through revelation... The only things you can know rather definitively... are things that can be revealed to you through revelatory experience. Through the authoritative experience and not through reason.”
— Demetri Kofinas [31:30] -
“I had always thought that my faith would be unassailable if I had all the logical arguments... It didn’t work out that way.”
— Rod Dreher [36:56] -
“Knowing about the faith and knowing God are two very different things.”
— Rod Dreher [40:24] -
“If you can do that in prison, having the hell beaten out of you by guards, then how much easier is it to do in everyday life... This is why when you believe that God is ultimately love, as I do as a Christian, you have to know that that love makes demands on you. And those demands are often sacrificial.”
— Rod Dreher [50:27]
Important Segment Timestamps
- [03:16]–[08:40] — Rod’s biography, search for enchantment, trilogy of books
- [10:35]–[19:00] — Challenge to materialism, UAPs/paranormal, “Nino’s story”
- [21:26]–[30:00] — Limits of science, narrative, revelation, and Contact movie story
- [32:38]–[39:12] — Faith, suffering, revelation, Dreher’s transition from Catholicism to Orthodoxy
- [39:46]–[43:36] — East vs. West Christianity, noetic knowledge
- [45:37]–[51:04] — The role and meaning of love, sacrifice, and stories from resistance and cinema
- [51:12]–[55:03] — Suffering’s necessity, Brave New World, real testimonies from post-Communist Easter Europe
Tone & Takeaways
The conversation is reflective, open, and respectful, blending philosophical rigor with testimony and narrative. Both host and guest oscillate comfortably between abstract metaphysical analysis and highly personal experience, inviting believers and skeptics alike to consider the role of mystery, revelation, and suffering in constructing a meaningful life. Dreher’s Orthodox Christian sensibility brings a distinctive flavor—insisting on the necessity of lived, noetic knowledge—as the pair face the daunting realities (and opportunities) of an age groping for a new sense of the sacred.
For Further Listening
To access the second hour—where they explore simulation theory, cultural politics, and Christian engagement in the modern world—listeners are directed to the Hidden Forces premium feed.