We take care of ourselves, vigorously avoiding pain, rewarding ourselves with pleasure. Thanks to this thorough cultural training, we often approach the church with the same self-protective posture. Faced with failures, hypocrisies, and faithlessness in the church, we fall back on the modern strategy we've learned so well: we simply keep our distance.

R. R. Reno, however, warns against this aloof ecclesiology. He argues that the post-modern Western church is indeed in ruins and that to be in the church is to embrace a "broken way of life." Reno's passionate call for Christians to "suffer divine things" also provides a message of hope: through intimate loyalty to the church, daily prayer, and serious reengagement with Scripture, we can dwell in and with the living Christ. We can abandon the "temptations of distance" and embrace the "imperatives of intimacy."