If we want our children to “be born into strong extended families, to know and love and be loved by their great-grandparents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and a legion of cousins,” as Isker says, our axe at the foot of Donar’s Oak will first need to be sharpened with the impenetrable steel of Christian love for our families. This love, once acted out, will then disperse into our communities like dropping a rock in a pond. 

My commute to work is approximately 40 miles. Every weekday morning, I pass a billboard that reads “See The Good” in big white letters. Before reading The Boniface Option this billboard would elicit a flicker of romanticism. Though soon after passing the billboard that flicker of romanticism becomes superseded by a reactionary wrench from my insides, “Hell—What ‘good’ is there to see? Educational predators are likely foaming at the mouth for the soul of my coming daughter, our dollar has quickly been leached, and The Lord knows that Whitehouse bureaucrats will continue to punch down at my kind any chance they get. What will come for us in the next 10 years? What a joke.” The sign doesn’t exactly improve my drive.
These thoughts and others like it eliminate any possibility that the sign brightens my morning more than the millisecond of gnostic romanticism. I think my reaction to the billboard is par for the course of any politically conscious evangelical. But now, after reading The Boniface Option, I do not fall prey to the brief romanticism and let down the billboard imposes on me during my morning commute. I now immediately view it with disgust. I now burn at it through the windshield, and I see the billboard is an analgesic aphorism that encourages turning a blind eye to a reality that is turned upside down and hung up gutted. It is a literary opiate that dampens the urge we should all have, and that which The Boniface Option recovers: a hatred for evil.
Removing The Shades
Andrew Isker opens Part 1 of his book by telling the story of the book’s namesake, Saint Boniface’s God-aided takedown of Donar’s Oak. I am sure American Reformer readers and adjacents are familiar with the story. Thus, I won’t retell it here. Moreover, a retelling would rob future readers of Isker’s inspiring rendition of Saint Boniface. Isker also lays the foundation of his argument as to why a retreatist Benedict Option is no longer feasible. Perhaps Rod Dreher’s thesis could have worked in The Neutral World. But by Isker’s lights, “Trashworld” will not allow for such an option. It’s a category error. Trashworld (Isker’s categorization of our current society) is not like the European Dark Ages that gave birth to Benedict’s monastic isolation.
Isker calls the reader to reality:
“Ours is a society that went from a space-faring people two generations ago to one that cannot even keep air-craft carriers from destroying themselves while at the port. …and we have to go out of our way to pass laws to keep teachers from grooming our children into having their genitalia removed. …rather than being sacked by Goths, we have been consumed internally by an insane and suicidal death cult.”
Those who have identified Isker as an extremist a priori, will charge that he employs emotional rhetoric to convince his readers, without substantiating the claims he makes. But is this actually the case? Consider that the shrine of Moloch has never been supplied with its preferred kindling before like it has now in recent history. And, if you dare to utter that child sacrifice is murder, losing your job is in the cards. Those working in pregnancy crisis centers also need to be aware they may receive a Molotov cocktail on a whim, too. Christian parents should probably look into the sitting superintendent of their school district as well. In August, a Virginia superintendent released a statement in response to recent anti-grooming policies, in which she said: “I want to be clear that FCPS remains committed to an inclusive and affirming learning environment for each and every student and staff member including those who are transgender or gender expansive.” Indeed, Isker is not being flamboyant. The man is only telling the truth, and writing to remove the shades over the reader’s eyes that have more than likely been placed there by complacency and desensitization, or worse, intentionally by invisible actors.
Husqvarna Rampage
The rest of Part 1 presents various sprouts of Donar’s Oak. Isker proceeds to dismember them in a mead-fueled frenzy armed with nothing less than a 60” diesel Husqvarna chainsaw. The Trashworld social ordering, transgenderism, feminism, and the pseudo-human bugmen way of “life” all suffer a charge that is easy to resonate with: they are fake. By fake, Isker means they distort the created order in which God has fashioned nature. Such is undeniably true on empirical and theological grounds. Isolation is undeniably anti-human; look at how the COVID lockdowns waged psychological damage on thousands of Americans. Men are not women. Look at the injustice being done to schoolgirls. Feminism is poison. Feminism is a causal factor in birthing the monstrosity which is OnlyFans. And the bugmen way of living is meant for hive-minded arthropods. We must learn to hate these sprouts of Donar’s Oak if we love anything at all that is true, good, and beautiful. Big Eva and Thirdwayist types will object to Isker’s use—integration!—of the hateful emotion. Though Isker orients this hate towards righteous ends: “Hate what is evil, cling to what is good.” (Romans 12:9).
In Part 1, the third chapter of The Boniface Option is my favorite, “Atomized Man.” I grew up a military brat. I never really associated with a geographic region by necessity. It was difficult to answer the natural question, “Where are you from?” I didn’t even know what the question was asking, much less how to answer it. Most military kids answer this question with the last duty station they were sent off to. I was a nomad in my boyhood. My father—an extremely successful colonel—has now retired in Russellville, TN after serving over 35 years. He owns 82 acres in the foothills of the Smokys. Now when I answer this question, I say I’m from Russellville, because this is where my family is and our land is. I yearn to make it back up to those green hills and forests after completion of my PhD. I no longer fear the question like I did when I was a boy. I love answering it.
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When your trials and temptations come, don’t let Satan and his schemes have your ear. Don’t assume that God’s sovereignty over all things means that temptation is from him. Rather, in your suffering, remember that he’s a good and perfect Father. He’s the giver of every good thing you might lose, and he’s the giver of every comfort or pleasure you might crave. And better than any of his other gifts, he holds out himself, the gift that surpasses every other one.

What verses do you reach for most often when you pause to give thanks to God?
Maybe you’re bowing over a home-cooked meal after an especially long and frustrating day. Maybe God came through in a moment of more acute desperation or need — at the office, with the kids, over the family budget. Maybe you and your friends got to do that thing you love to do together (but rarely get the chance to anymore). Maybe you simply felt the warmth of the sun on your skin after a week of overcast skies. And you know that meal, that friend, that sun is from God, and so you want to thank him. What verses come to mind?
One comes to mind for me, one I’ve leaned on countless times in prayer:
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. (James 1:17)
It’s a heart-warming, soul-stirring perspective: Every good thing you have, you have from God. In just a few words, James pulls every conceivable blessing — from the smallest snacks or shortest conversations to the weightier gifts of children, churches, homes, and health — all under the brilliant umbrella of the Father’s love.
Recently, though, as I slowly read through James again, I stumbled over the familiar verse because of the verse immediately before it. What would you expect to read before such an immense statement of God’s lavish generosity? Probably not this:
Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above . . . (James 1:16–17)
Don’t be Deceived?
What could be deceiving about a cherished truth like this? To understand the deception at work among these good and perfect gifts (and the real power of the verse), we have to follow the thread back to the previous paragraph.
Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him. (James 1:12)
The apostle James writes to a suffering people, a people bearing heavy trials. He begins his letter, “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds” (James 1:2). He says that because some were tempted to grumble and despair. They wanted to give up. They also started pointing fingers at God. As James writes in verses 13–14,
Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.
While God stands over all that transpires, and sovereignly works all things for the good of those who love him, no one can ever say that temptations come from him. He never devises evil. He’s not trying to make you stumble, but holding out his hand to keep you upright.
No, temptations arise from our own desires, which gets to a second problem James addresses in his letter: the problem of worldliness. Christians were growing faint under painful opposition. They were also giving in to sinful, fleshly desires (James 4:1–3). They were seeking comfort and relief in indulgence. They had formed an adulterous friendship with the world (James 4:4). So, James says to the church,
Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above . . . (James 1:16–17)
What might suffering people hear in such a warning?
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Admit your fears to God and others. I don’t know all the reasons why the Lord allows us to suffer. I do know that He uses our pain to conform us to Christ. Confessing our fears gives people the opportunity to pray for us and encourage us to keep our eyes on Jesus, not our suffering. It allows us to bear one another’s burdens and fulfill the law of Christ (Gal. 6:2).

“I see a spot we need to keep an eye on.” Cancer. It wasn’t a diagnosis that I ever expected to hear as a young man about to start a family. Immediately, my mind filled with questions: How will I tell my wife? How will she manage if I die? What will the treatment cost? Am I ready to die?
There were no words in the immediate aftermath. It helped that the cancer with which I’d been diagnosed has a 95 percent cure rate, but I’d be lying if I said that eliminated my worries. A 95 percent cure rate isn’t a 100 percent cure rate. Would I be part of the “unlucky” few? How would it be possible to maintain a straight face and tell my wife that “everything’s going to be all right” when I had no control over that? Sometimes things don’t turn out all right—at least in the short term.
As scary as that moment was, it pales in comparison to what I felt when I heard the news my wife and I received just after our fourth child was born a little over two years ago. “Your son has Pfeiffer syndrome, a rare genetic disease that affects one in one hundred thousand people. We don’t know what this means for him yet. He will certainly have developmental delays, but his prognosis could be anything from a normal life to severe mental and physical limitations to death.” I’m paraphrasing a bit here, for the doctors did not say things so matter-of-factly. But it was the most frightening moment of my life. How were we ever going to handle this?
People die every day. Babies, teenagers, young mothers, middle-age fathers, the elderly—death is no respecter of persons. It’s not exactly true that the only sure things in life are death and taxes. You can avoid taxes. If you’re willing to put up with jail time, you need not pay the tax man. Death, on the other hand, is certain. Apart from those who are living when the Savior returns to consummate His kingdom, no one gets out of this world alive. And long before we breathe our last, all of us are going to face disease and watch friends and family suffer, or even suffer ourselves. Right now, as I am updating this article, the whole world is dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. Death and disease are very much on everyone’s mind.
Why do we fear death so much? For non-Christians, the answer is easy. No matter how they suppress the truth in unrighteousness, whether by atheism, agnosticism, or false religion, they can’t escape their God-given awareness that they’ve broken His law and deserve hell.
Christians also fear death and disease. Of course, we know that we’re not supposed to, and we’d never tell anyone that we harbor such fears. Certainly, we know all the right things to say about death: God is sovereign. He has a good purpose in my pain.
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