Why You Should Let G.K. Chesterton Baptize Your Christian Mind

If the title seems a bit irreverent, I hope you'll forgive me for quoting C.S. Lewis. Lewis said that what Chesterton did for him was to baptize his intellect much the same way George MacDonald had baptized his imagination. In other words, Chesterton persuaded a young and atheistic Lewis of the rationality and sensibility of Christianity. It would be some years before Lewis fully converted to Christianity, helped largely by J.R.R. Tolkien, but Chesterton's book The Everlasting Man was one of the most significant steps forward. (Here is more on that story.)

Yet that is only a fraction of what Chesterton accomplished. My prayer is that I can persuade you to increase your joy and encouragement by seeing what Chesterton has to offer every Christian.

Image: goodreads.com
http://ow.ly/BrM2301gLHo

G.K. Chesterton died 80 years ago today, but in life he was one of the towering intellects of the 20th century. There are certain Christians that virtually every believer feels they should know something about: Augustine, Martin Luther, John Wesley, John Bunyan, Charles Spurgeon, C.S. Lewis, etc. Chesterton definitely qualifies. He contributed his reason and wit to almost every possible subject that a Christian might encounter. He wrote dozens of books applying Christian truth and reason to the problems of culture and society, addressing everything from materialism and secularism to the culture of death and the disintegration of marriage. He was not trained as a theologian, yet wrote on theology with a brilliance and perceptiveness that stunned professional scholars. His biography of St. Thomas Aquinas was called perhaps the best book ever written on Thomas by Etienne Gilson (himself probably the most significant Thomist scholar of the 20th century).

He debated George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells on philosophy, reason, science, and culture - but they were also his friends. Indeed, Chesterton had a gift for being on good terms with almost anybody, and an irrepressible joviality and cheerfulness that make his writing delightful to read. He wrote biographies of Charles Dickens and Robert Louis Stevenson and more. He published a newspaper column for decades as well as his own newspaper. He wrote poetry. He wrote plays. He wrote detective stories that rivaled the Sherlock Holmes tales in popularity. He wrote on history and literature. He debated Clarence Darrow on evolution in New York City in 1931 after the Scopes Trial publicity. Several commentators believed Chesterton won the debate.

On top of all that, Chesterton was a tireless defender of the common man, and skewered political systems and social agendas that pretended to be progressive but in effect really hindered or oppressed the average person. He was relentless in holding ideas and people accountable to plain common sense, and showing how even the most sophisticated rhetoric often fell down when exposed to it. In the conclusion to his book What's Wrong With The World, he gives perhaps the most powerful and thundering defense I've ever heard for why government social engineering must give way before the basic virtue of individual human dignity. Chesterton was not about to tolerate for one minute any social scheme or government plan that made the man (usually the poor man) merely an object manipulated by the state.

As a Christian, you can probably find something Chesterton wrote that speaks to anything in your life. One of the remarkable resources to help you do just that is the American Chesterton Society. They have put an enormous variety of Chesterton's work online and indexed and explained it so that you can pick and choose where to start and what to explore. The Society is really responsible for much of the availability of some of Chesterton's work today, and is a very precious tool.

The American Chesterton Society's "Discover Chesterton" page gives a brief overview of the diversity of his work, and links broken down by category for a sampling of his most interesting writing in each area:

• Chesterton 101
• Chesterton in Brief
• Chesterton's Selected Works

o    The Critic

o    The Detective

o    The Distributist

o    The Essayist

o    The Historian

o    The Philosopher

o    The Poet

o    The Theologian

Additionally, they have 94 lectures covering both the major works and a generous variety of his other writings. I shared earlier today some other suggestions and an article for getting started with Chesterton. I hope these links will be a doorway to delight and inspiration for you.

As a post-script, the book I treasure most is Orthodoxy, Chesterton's spiritual autobiography. Although it may not be the most accessible place for some people to start, once you are ready for it, what awaits you is a story of enchantment that unfolds Christianity like a fairy tale - and demonstrates why only Christianity makes sense of the world. This is the story of how Chesterton discovered through his own ponderings about life, and his own experiments in searching for truth, beauty, and reason, the great story of Christianity and how it made sense of everything in life. The difficulty people encounter in reading it is that Chesterton uses metaphor and imagery very heavily, and some of it can require a lot of careful thought and imagination in order for the concepts and arguments to come through clearly. It is well worth the investment, but working up to it by getting used to Chesterton's style may be helpful.

Happy reading.

Spiritual Coffee: Why Read Chesterton? - Challenging Hollywood for Despising Disabilities - How to Spend Your Life on What Matters Most

Here are the top three things that impressed me as worth your thoughts and reflection from the past couple of days. I put some extra thought into summarizing and quoting some of the main ideas and gems because these topics were so interesting. There were several more I came across while out of town, which I'll catch up on posting later this week. In the meantime, past collections of useful links are under Spiritual Coffee.

Why You Should Read G.K. Chesterton (Even When It's Hard), Matt Nelson (Word on Fire blog)
This is the 80th anniversary of Chesterton's death in 1936. Matt Nelson has a nice and simple set of reasons that Chesterton is desirable reading for anyone (especially any Christian), and some good suggestions for how to stick to it even when he may be difficult to grasp. He also links to the American Chesterton Society, which is a goldmine of resources and help for finding a place to start with Chesterton and understanding his ideas. Here are two suggestions of my own for enjoying Chesterton without getting discouraged:
1) There is a sensory expansion that comes by reading Chesterton. You don't have to "get" everything he is saying in order to grow in your awareness. Like learning to recognize certain scents or colors by experience, you can learn to see wisdom even without fully understanding the logic behind it. Chesterton has an extraordinary gift for turning the world around you into a painting or a fairy tale so that you simply see with different eyes. Some of this is just absorbed from spending time in his mind, so that you begin to notice things you didn't observe before. There is even more value, and some protection, in understanding the logic as well, but it's surely worthwhile to get the wisdom even if the logic trails along afterwards. You have to start seeing before you can understand. I wouldn't say this about any writer, but knowing there's so much solidity and brilliance to Chesterton's thinking makes me very comfortable telling people: "Yes, this is definitely the fountain you want to drink from. Trust me on this one."
2) My second encouragement is to simply enjoy Chesterton. Don't feel pressured to work through the meaning of every single thing he is saying. Feel free to just delight in his prose and wit and the wonder of his imagination. He is a giant among storytellers, so by all means just sit and listen to the story. Chesterton's work often refreshes your soul even when you don't work your way through the intellectual ideas, simply because he pours beauty and wonder out of his pen into everything he writes. On some occasions the best use of a work of art is just to admire it and be moved by it, instead of trying to understand it. Feel free to take what comes freely from Chesterton, and at other times ponder over the parts that make you think. Both are full of grace and truth.

[Nelson:] Nonetheless remembering that “angels can fly because they take themselves lightly”, this larger than life apostle of common sense also took himself lightly because he took his faith seriously. He came to know God but he came to know himself better; which made him a better man. He was—to summarize—a joyfully serious thinker and wordsmith whom people loved (and love).Chestertonian scholar, Dale Ahlquist, writes:“There’s a goodness that just exuded from him...The biographical accounts of Chesterton always portray him as being very joyful, and humble, and good, so that everyone was just drawn to that, including his intellectual and philosophical enemies. The people who violently disagreed with Chesterton on the issues were drawn to him as a person because of his charity.” 

Remember that good physical nutrition presupposes “good chewing” to ensure good digestion. Good intellectual nutrition thus also presupposes “good chewing” to ensure good digestion. Chesterton’s words are like steak, not pudding. Hard work will make your head work, and reading Chesterton is hard head work. Hard work in a Culture Of Convenience might seem inconvenient, but adventuring with Chesterton is worth the rigour. As Chesterton himself says:“An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.” (from “On Running After Ones Hat”)

Would Hollywood Want the Disabled Dead? - John Knight (Desiring God)
Me Before You: Dear Hollywood, Why Do You Want Me Dead? - Ella Frech (Aleteia)
The movie Me Before You, recently released, tells a disappointing and all too familiar tale of a person with a disability who is surrounded by friends who help him make the 'courageous' choice to destroy himself to escape being disabled. Ella Frech, an 11-year-old girl who is paralyzed and in a wheelchair, wrote the most stunningly insightful rebuke of Hollywood's obsession with portraying disabled people as better off dead. Her courage and bluntness, as well as her peace of mind with her life and her clear understanding that there's nothing "wrong" with her, are magnificent. John Knight has some great observations to go along with it, but Ella Frech definitely steals the show here.

"You sit there with your able bodies, and look at people in chairs and think you feel pity for our sad little lives, but the truth is you’re afraid. You don’t want to imagine that you might be one of us one day. You think you can be perfect, and think you’d rather die than have parts that don’t work right. I think that’s sad."

"While you’re sitting in your offices crying about the bravery of this guy who kills himself and leaves everyone else to mourn him, which seems pretty selfish to me, I’m going to be out living the amazing life you didn’t even bother to know was possible. I have friends, and go on sleep-overs, and live a regular life. A life that doesn’t make me want to die. It makes me happy that it’s mine." 

"This could have been a great movie. It could have been the love story of two people and one of them just happens to use a chair. It happens all the time. The people in love don’t think about the chair. It’s the other people who think it’s a big deal."

"You may not believe in God. You don’t have to, and I can’t make you. But I do, and because of that I believe in the value of all people. I believe we are all made in his image and likeness. That’s why I believe all people are worth something. If you believe that people only get their value from each other, then people can take that away. But if our value comes from God, then nobody has the right to say someone who walks is worth more than someone who doesn’t." 

[John Knight:]

Just as interesting are some comments on her article and other articles with the same viewpoint. While the comments for Ella were mostly supportive (who is going to directly attack such an articulate young girl, especially one with a disability?), even her article generated comments that sought to “correct” her perspective. These comments generally fall into one of two camps:

§           * She isn’t qualified to speak on the subject because she has not read the book or watched the movie.

§          * She misses the point about the movie. It isn’t about disability but about “choice.”

Both assertions are absurd. The one who has lived the life doesn’t need to read another book, or watch another movie, to comment on how the culture treats her.

And, of course, the movie is about disability. The whole “choice” argument made by the right-to-die movement is clearly discriminatory against disability. Even the hashtag for the movie (#liveboldly) applies to the lead character who is not disabled, while the one with the disability only gets to die boldly. At least they didn’t have to make up the organization that kills him — that one really exists in Switzerland.

How to Avoid the Worst Form of Failure, Tim Challies (Challies.com)

[Also includes a link to video/audio of his presentation at a Ligonier conference.]
Everyone struggles to keep their time focused on the most valuable tasks instead of the ones that draw away our attention. Smaller, or simpler, or more pleasant tasks that are less important are constantly luring us away from what really matters most. So any help in keeping our discipline is welcome. The quotes below capture why this is such a wise piece of advice. Challies zeroes in on the core of what makes the difference between a productive, or important, task vs. what makes some things less worthy of our time.

Of course, his advice is a general rule of thumb, and sometimes the opposite will be true. But the value of a concept like this is that when we're struggling to decide where our focus should be, it will steer us right most of the time and save us wasted time going in circles or in the wrong direction. That's worth accepting the necessary footnote of figuring out when to make exceptions. 

"Don’t we all live with this fear that we will succeed at the lesser things in life while failing at the greater things? It’s not like those lesser things are always bad things. Some of them are actually very good. It’s just that they are, by definition, lesser things. They are not the matters of first importance. There is an order to life and we all know that sometimes those lesser things can look so attractive. They can be so distracting. They can keep us from giving attention to the things that matter far more." 

"We are so tempted to throw away all the big things to succeed at the lesser things. But we can’t deny it: Succeeding at lesser things at the cost of the greater things is the worst form of failure." 

"The art of productivity is the art of succeeding at things that matter. At its best, productivity is ensuring that you succeed at the things that matter most. It is meant to ensure that you don’t look back over your life someday and realize you’ve only succeeded at the fleeting things, the minor things, the things that just don’t matter." 

"I believe we can read through the Bible and see something like this: Productivity is effectively stewarding your gifts, talents, time, energy, and enthusiasm for the good of others and the glory of God. What matters most in life, what matters most in the universe, what matters most to God, is the glory of God. God calls us to bring glory to him in every way we can in every area of life and especially by doing good to others (see, for example, Matthew 5:16). We do good to others and God gets the glory. That means that the greater things in life are the things we do for others, not the things we do for ourselves. The greater things in life are the things meant to benefit other people. The lesser things are the things meant to benefit ourselves."

Seven Pearls of Wisdom from Chesterton's Father Brown

I came across The COMPLETE Father Brown Mysteries on Kindle, containing basically everything Chesterton wrote involving Father Brown, for $0.99. There are a number of versions out there labeled as The Complete Father Brown Mysteries, but which actually only contain the first two volumes GKC wrote. (He wrote five.) The one I linked above is really complete, containing all the stories. [There is also a 24-story collection of Father Brown mysteries (thus incomplete) for $0.99 for Kindle which has links to an audio recording of each story and an image gallery. These are in the public domain, so you may be able to track down audio on the Web anyway, but for $0.99 it would save you trouble.]

I’ve written about why these stories are priceless, especially for Christians, here and here. In honor of this latest opportunity, I’m posting seven examples of the brilliance and wit of Chesterton’s little priest detective (avoiding spoilers of the solutions).

Part of the charm and genius of these mysteries is how often they reveal and revolve around genuine spiritual truths. This is entertainment that also forms a Christian mind and teaches wisdom. Quite a few of the tales turn on the fact that outward appearances of respectability may make one person seem above suspicion and another quite guilty. Yet when the emotions and character are examined, it makes perfect sense that even the most honorable appearances can be misleading, while the poorest appearances may cover an honest heart and sincere intentions.

“Have you ever noticed this — that people never answer what you say? They answer what you mean — or what they think you mean. Suppose one lady says to another in a country house, ‘Is anybody staying with you?’ the lady doesn’t answer ‘Yes; the butler, the three footmen, the parlourmaid, and so on,’ though the parlourmaid may be in the room, or the butler behind her chair. She says ‘There is nobody staying with us,’ meaning nobody of the sort you mean. But suppose a doctor inquiring into an epidemic asks, ‘Who is staying in the house?’ then the lady will remember the butler, the parlourmaid, and the rest. All language is used like that; you never get a question answered literally, even when you get it answered truly."

“The Invisible Man” from The Innocence of Father Brown

"Men may keep a sort of level of good, but no man has ever been able to keep on one level of evil. That road goes down and down. The kind man drinks and turns cruel; the frank man kills and lies about it."

“The Flying Stars” from The Innocence of Father Brown

“Don’t say anything! Oh, don’t say anything,” cried the atheist cobbler, dancing about in an ecstasy of admiration of the English legal system. For no man is such a legalist as the good Secularist.

“The Hammer of God” from The Innocence of Father Brown

On the reliability of determining truth or lies by measuring the pulse:

“What sentimentalists men of science are!” exclaimed Father Brown, “and how much more sentimental must American men of science be! Who but a Yankee would think of proving anything from heart-throbs? Why, they must be as sentimental as a man who thinks a woman is in love with him if she blushes. That’s a test from the circulation of the blood, discovered by the immortal Harvey; and a jolly rotten test, too.”

“The Mistake of the Machine” from The Wisdom of Father Brown

"And if you don’t know that I would grind all the Gothic arches in the world to powder to save the sanity of a single human soul, you don’t know so much about my religion as you think you do."

“The Doom of the Darnaways” from The Incredulity of Father Brown

“What we all dread most,” said the priest in a low voice, “is a maze with no centre. That is why atheism is only a nightmare.”

“The Head of Caesar” from The Wisdom of Father Brown

‘Oh, I am sick of his holy pictures and statues!’ she said, turning her head away. ‘Why don’t they defend themselves, if they are what you say they are? But rioters can knock off the Blessed Virgin’s head and nothing happens to them. Oh, what’s the good? You can’t blame us, you daren’t blame us, if we’ve found out that Man is stronger than God.’ ‘Surely,’ said Father Brown very gently, ‘it is not generous to make even God’s patience with us a point against Him.’

“The Insoluble Problem” from The Scandal of Father Brown

Chesterton on Achieving Balance So Good Things Can Run Wild

Another observation by G.K. Chesterton that relates to the theme of the last two posts on freedom and self-control is his conclusion that the only way to give any good thing its full strength is to put it in tension with other good things that balance out or, more precisely, oppose its excesses. Let any one good thing have its full head of steam without any other virtues to hold it in tension, and it will turn into a monster. But if you put all the virtues to work counter-balancing each other, they can all run free together. Here is a very concise set of quotes from his spiritual autobiography Orthodoxy to show what he means. I posted a more lengthy excerpt a few years ago at this link. (n.b. for links to book titles (in italics), I've started using the Goodreads quotes pages for each title because you get the book information and you often also get a great selection of the best quoted passages.)

"Paganism declared that virtue was in a balance; Christianity declared it was in a conflict: the collision of two passions apparently opposite. Of course they were not really inconsistent; but they were such that it was hard to hold simultaneously.

"And the more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild.

"This was the big fact about Christian ethics; the discovery of the new balance. Paganism had been like a pillar of marble, upright because proportioned with symmetry. Christianity was like a huge and ragged and romantic rock, which, though it sways on its pedestal at a touch, yet, because its exaggerated excrescences exactly balance each other, is enthroned there for a thousand years.

"it is exactly this which explains what is so inexplicable to all the modern critics of the history of Christianity. I mean the monstrous wars about small points of theology, the earthquakes of emotion about a gesture or a word. It was only a matter of an inch; but an inch is everything when you are balancing. The Church could not afford to swerve a hair's breadth on some things if she was to continue her great and daring experiment of the irregular equilibrium. Once let one idea become less powerful and some other idea would become too powerful. It was no flock of sheep the Christian shepherd was leading, but a herd of bulls and tigers, of terrible ideals and devouring doctrines, each one of them strong enough to turn to a false religion and lay waste the world. Remember that the Church went in specifically for dangerous ideas; she was a lion tamer. The idea of birth through a Holy Spirit, of the death of a divine being, of the forgiveness of sins, or the fulfillment of prophecies, are ideas which, any one can see, need but a touch to turn them into something blasphemous or ferocious. ...if some small mistake were made in doctrine, huge blunders might be made in human happiness." Orthodoxy, pp. 99-107 (Ignatius Press edition; 1995).

 

For practical guidance in how to handle the good things of life without letting them get out of control and derail each other, the most groundbreaking and helpful recent work is Joe Rigney's The Things of Earth. You can listen to the lectures “The Whole Earth Is Full of His Glory” on which the book is based or download them for free at his faculty page here at Bethlehem College & Seminary.

Limitations and Discipline Are Not the Enemy of Freedom: They Make It Possible

On Sunday I shared Chesterton's reflection on why a world with no limits is not romantic or wonderful, but formless and dull. People commonly think that to realize their ideal satisfaction, they need to be free of all limits. Tim Keller has observed with concern that the only heroic narrative we have left in our culture today is the theme of the individual breaking free from all traditions and external constraints in order to find his or her true identity. (Video here with Keller and Russell Moore analyzing the modern sense of identity.) Is that freedom? Only if you use the word in its most generic sense. Having no limitations placed on you means you are "free" from limitations being placed on you. But are you free to be yourself?

The truth is that in order to become anything, you need something to shape and define you. Freedom from all limitations means freedom from all definition. It's formlessness. Being completely spontaneous and unbound from moment to moment in any direction the mind desires may seem liberating, but it actually limits you in an entirely different way: it keeps you from becoming anything more than a formless creature following one instinct after another. The freedom we actually want is better understood as fully experiencing the fulfillment of a worthy desire. You could use the word “free” to describe both states, but in the one you are free to be nothing, without purpose or definition, and in the other you are free to experience something transcendent. That word is exactly what we are aiming for in our real desire for freedom: we don’t actually want to erase all limits, and be formless; we want to transcend limitations that hold us back from experiencing the extraordinary.

Here’s an example: Anyone who has tried to be a painter or a writer and given up on it has typically quit for the same reason: once that first burst of enthusiastic liberation at getting the thoughts down on the page or the colors and forms dashed onto the canvas has run its course, they discovered that the rest was real work. Starting to write is liberating. Trying to finish any writing so that it is actually clear, compelling, and concise is agony. Refining and editing and revising and reworking your words takes far longer than the rush of creativity. But only a very rare genius ever writes anything of great importance without seeing that process through. There is no getting around the fact that doing something really meaningful and powerful requires tremendous discipline and a relentless focus on one thing to the exclusion of other emotions and desires. If you jot down some thoughts one day, and then tomorrow you are preoccupied by others, and the next day you want to follow an entirely new train of thought, you might have some good blog posts. But you will never write a book or even an acceptable article for a magazine or journal.

Yet, if you read biographies or interviews of really significant artists or writers, you consistently see that they felt absolutely bound and constrained by the vision of what they were trying to create until they finally achieved it. The only way they found freedom and satisfaction was to limit and discipline themselves carefully enough to go all the way to the goal. Genuine freedom comes from focusing your life diligently on what is really valuable and worthy. Simply being “free” to follow your emotions and ideas wherever they lead you at any given moment may feel liberating, but it leaves you with even greater limitations. The person who refuses to restrain and discipline his or her desires ends up building nothing of significance, and is therefore limited by being mediocre and unformed. Only the person who restrains himself or herself with disciplined focus on a goal will know the freedom of running at top speed without gasping for breath, or flying an airplane, or scuba diving through a reef.

 

We often have the illusion that great athletes or artists are driven to their goals by tremendous passion, as if passion alone filled their sails and carried them surging forward to the prize. In reality, it is passion for a goal that drives them to dedicate themselves to incredible discipline. Many days they wake up and have no desire at all to do the day’s work toward that goal. Their passion motivates them to persevere, but it’s the disciplined perseverance that achieves their desire. We see the moments of glory when they perform and they look liberating, as if the person we’re watching has transcended limitations and boundaries. But if you watch the whole process from beginning to end you would see very careful limitations and boundaries maintained every day for months and years in order to have those moments of liberating freedom.

The application of this is that we should only want to be free of the wrong limits. The idea that we should reject all limits, including all religious and traditional norms and standards, results only in formlessness and mediocrity. It is a foolish attempt at self-expression that results ultimately in the self being vague and chaotic. In order to truly be yourself, you have to discover what is most worthy for you to become, and accept and maintain all the limits and boundaries that will help you achieve that. For the Christian, it is clear that the greatest glory and joy possible is to be formed into the image of Christ and to enter into the joy of God's presence forever. (Phil. 1:21-23; Romans 8:16-25; Psalm 16:11). Anything less is a shallow goal. So Paul says: "Rather train yourself for godliness; for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come." (1 Timothy 4:7-8).

But to receive the rewards of pursuing God, you have to accept the limits that keep you from slipping in the opposite direction. You can't go both ways at the same time. "Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? ... For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification." (Romans 6:16, 19). Each leads you in a different direction. To experience the extraordinary, you must be mastered by the desire to know God. If you pursue anything else, you become a slave to that instead.  "They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption. For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved." (2 Peter 2:19).

If you try to find freedom in sin, sin will enslave you. (Romans 6:12; John 8:34). Sin never becomes the servant of your desires. It always grips hold of you and tries to become the master. Accept the limits that bring you eternal freedom, instead of the illusion of freedom that only enslaves you to mediocre passions.

Freedom Is Impossible Without Limitations (Chesterton)

You can check the tag Sunday Salt for a compilation of reflections and wisdom posted to this blog from significant Christians of past centuries.

G.K. Chesterton was unquestionably one of the most brilliant men of the 20th century, a fact even his ideological opponents like George Bernard Shaw insisted upon. One of the most precious things about his mind was his ability to see paradox (two things that appear to contradict each other, but actually don't) as a window onto truth. He was able to reveal how our understanding of reality and truth is often hindered by simplistic assumptions. And he often demonstrated how the objections of even the most sophisticated and educated people to Christianity were a result of such simplistic assumptions. This is one example of how he demonstrates that true freedom actually requires some limitations - some definition - in order to be able to go along freely.

Moderns ... imagine that romance would exist most perfectly in a complete state of what they call liberty. They think that if a man makes a gesture it would be a startling and romantic matter that the sun should fall from the sky.

But the startling and romantic thing about the sun is that it does not fall from the sky. They are seeking under every shape and form a world where there are no limitations -- that is, a world where there are no outlines; that is, a world where there are no shapes. There is nothing baser than that infinity. They say they wish to be as strong as the universe, but they really wish the whole universe as weak as themselves. Chesterton, Heretics (1905).

Take just one example from real life. Many people imagine that the idea of romance necessarily suggests the complete liberty to follow your emotions for another person wherever they lead, and never to restrain them. But it is surely true that the more romantic thing is for love to last, to stay true to another person and to be constant and unbreakable through every test and trial. The most romantic love is one that does not permit itself to change. The least romantic thing of all is for a person's professions of love for you to simply vanish tomorrow or the next day because a new feeling has swept them away in a different direction. Being unstable and constantly carried along by every impulse is not the same thing as being free.

Why Christians Need Heroes to Imitate

The point of the Christian life is to become like Jesus. Paul said that the "work of ministry" is "for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ ... we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ[.]" (Ephesians 4:12-15). God's plan from eternity was to prepare for every Christian "to be conformed to the image of his Son[.]” (Romans 8:29).

So as far as who we should admire and imitate, the obvious answer is Jesus Himself. Why should we imitate anyone else? Our goal according to God's Word is to follow Jesus step for step. “Whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.” (1 John 2:6). There is no one more important to imitate than Jesus Christ. But then no less a preacher than Paul the Apostle himself told his flock: "Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ." (1 Cor. 11:1). Why not simply say imitate Christ? In the same letter he said:

For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel. I urge you, then, be imitators of me. That is why I sent you Timothy, my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, to remind you of my ways in Christ, as I teach them everywhere in every church. (1 Cor. 4:15-17)

This is so important to Paul that he sent Timothy to them just for that reason, so that they would be reminded of Paul's ways in Christ and imitate them - not simply to remember and imitate Christ. Paul isn't alone. The author of Hebrews says the same about other leaders of the church. "Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith." (Heb. 13:7).

 

The Scriptures actually urge us to observe faithful Christian leaders and imitate the pattern of their behavior and faith. We are supposed to find heroes to admire. John Piper, a man who certainly goes to great pains to focus on exalting God and drawing our attention to Jesus, still suggests that if more of us picked heroes to follow, we may be more bold and serious about our faith: "I think one reason we settle for such ordinary 'soap opera' lives is because we have no heroes. Nobody’s picture is pinned on our wall to spur us on to greatness. The Bible teaches us to have heroes." (Every Hero Gets Hiccups). Piper has invested in this by researching and preaching biographical messages of 27 great Christians you can watch or listen to here for free. This is one way I discovered some of my heroes of the faith.

 

We often don't see Jesus clearly, even when we set our hearts to follow Him. We have difficulty relating to His perfection across the canyon of our imperfections. Finding someone who has seen Jesus more clearly than you do is a way to connect to Jesus. We do this all the time with pastors, following where they have gone ahead in the Scriptures or their faith. The same encouragement comes from seeing how other imperfect people gained confidence in God and discovered intimate communion with Him. Experiencing how they grew into the stature of Christ in spite of fears, doubts, mistakes, sins, and confusion gives us courage and hope. It helps show us the way ahead.

 

I have been massively supported and strengthened in my faith by how C.S. Lewis wrestled with the perplexities and pain of life and made sense of them in Christ. I have seen more glorious and beautiful truths about the sheer logic and common sense of Christianity because of the brilliance and wit of G.K. Chesterton than I could have ever understood on my own. Our eyes should always be fixed ahead, looking intently for Jesus Himself, but our own Hebrews 11 hall of heroes spurs us on and guards us against getting lost.

 

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. (Hebrews 12:1-3)

Why Chesterton Chose a Priest to Be a Detective - Father Brown's Reason and Religion

There's an interesting and thoughtful take here from Dr. Mitchell Kalpakgian on how Chesterton had Father Brown employ spiritual rationality (retaining a healthy balance of reason and common sense right alongside his very deep convictions about the supernatural - in fact, retaining it because of them) to solve crimes, along with a Christian insight into human nature and human depravity. 

One of the delightful treasures about Father Brown is the story of how Chesterton got this idea of creating him. Chesterton had been visiting a friend, father John O'Connor, and he was repeatedly stunned by how broad and deep the priest's knowledge of human depravity proved to be. It had been no surprise to him that the Church would know a good deal more than him about good, but that it also knew a good deal more about evil was a shock. After one such meeting, Chesterton overheard a couple of young men saying to one another that they felt it wasn't right for a man to be like that priest and shut himself up all cloistered and cut off from life, that it created a naiveté and ignorance of the world. This was Chesterton's reaction to this irony:

To me, still almost shivering with the appallingly practical facts of which the priest had warned me, this comment came with such a colossal and crushing irony, that I nearly burst into a loud harsh laugh in the drawing-room. For I knew perfectly well that, as regards all the solid Satanism which the priest knew and warred against with all his life, these two Cambridge gentlemen (luckily for them) knew about as much of real evil as two babies in the same perambulator.

To this broad experience of the fallen human heart and its consequences, Chesterton added a deep conviction about reason and common sense. He exploded the shallow myth that a churchman must be a bit weak in reason and somewhat gullible simply because he happens to believe in miracles and the supernatural. Chesterton rather proved that point himself in his life: even his atheist friends like George Bernard Shaw considered the Catholic writer to be one of the towering intellects of the 20th century. In his first Father Brown story, The Blue Cross, his priest-detective defends reason against a tall impostor posing as another priest:

   The taller priest nodded his bowed head and said:

   "Ah, yes, these modern infidels appeal to their reason; but who can look at those millions of worlds and not feel that there may well be wonderful universes above us where reason is utterly unreasonable?"

   "No," said the other priest; "reason is always reasonable, even in the last limbo, in the lost borderland of things. I know that people charge the Church with lowering reason, but it is just the other way. Alone on earth, the Church makes reason really supreme. Alone on earth, the Church affirms that God himself is bound by reason."

   The other priest raised his austere face to the spangled sky and said:

   "Yet who knows if in that infinite universe—?"

   "Only infinite physically," said the little priest, turning sharply in his seat, "not infinite in the sense of escaping from the laws of truth."

As the impostor reveals himself, demanding the priest surrender a holy relic he wants to steal, an exchange takes place where the priest one-ups the thief each time in criminal tricks:

   "How in blazes do you know all these horrors?" cried Flambeau.

   The shadow of a smile crossed the round, simple face of his clerical opponent.

   "Oh, by being a celibate simpleton, I suppose," he said. "Has it never struck you that a man who does next to nothing but hear men's real sins is not likely to be wholly unaware of human evil? But, as a matter of fact, another part of my trade, too, made me sure you weren't a priest."

   "What?" asked the thief, almost gaping.

   "You attacked reason," said Father Brown. "It's bad theology."

Chesterton wrote some 52 short stories featuring his "dumpy little priest" detective, and for a time in the early 20th Century, Father Brown was nearly as popular as Sherlock Holmes. Part of this charm was due to the very different style and reasoning Chesterton employed in the stories. Father Brown knew what was in his own heart, as a human being corrupted by sin, and therefore he was in a position to deduce the desires, motives, and passions that tempted other men and women to commit crimes. I would be remiss if I didn't give you a link to where Father Brown himself explains his method of solving crimes, but this commentary captures the contrast well:

Father Brown was inspired in part by Chesterton’s good friend Father John O’Connor, a priest in Yorkshire. The central idea was that no other figure was better suited for solving crimes. In one story, the cornered murderer, having listened to Father Brown’s explanation of how he worked out the sinister truth, cries out: ‘How do you know all this? Are you a devil?’

‘I am a man,’ replies Father Brown, ‘and therefore have all devils in my heart.’ ...

The great pleasure of Father Brown is that he represents a step away from the icy inductive logic of Sherlock Holmes. There are still clues, though they do not just stand there as facts; it is how they are interpreted that counts. And the interpretations are frequently paradoxical. On the other side of Father Brown are the sleuths of Agatha Christie — Marple and Poirot — who, while understanding crimes of passion, have nothing in the way of passion themselves. Conversely, Father Brown has an innate, unstoppable optimism; whatever one’s beliefs or non-beliefs, as a narrative device it is very clever.

Sinclair McKay, Bring back Father Brown (The Spectator: Dec. 14, 2009). 

Christianity, Superstition & Gullibility (G.K. Chesterton)

As only Chesterton can say it. Believing in something supernatural is no reason at all to take other supernatural or spiritual ideas at face value without careful scrutiny. The Christian is in an excellent position to resist superstition and gullibility precisely because he is acquainted with something truly spiritual and supernatural.

"'I should hardly have thought, sir,' he said, 'that you had any quarrel with mystical explanations.'

'On the contrary,' replied Father Brown, blinking amiably at him.

'That's just why I can quarrel with 'em. Any sham lawyer could bamboozle me, but he couldn't bamboozle you; because you're a lawyer yourself. ... It's just because I have picked up a little about mystics that I have no use for mystagogues."

The Arrow of Heaven, in The Incredulity of Father Brown, 1926

"'Besides, you have no business to be an unbeliever. You ought to stand for all the things these stupid people call superstitions. Come now, don't you think there's a lot in those old wives' tales about luck and charms and so on, silver bullets included? What do you say about them as a Catholic?'

'I say I'm an agnostic,' replied Father Brown, smiling.

'Nonsense,' said Aylmer impatiently. 'It's your business to believe things.'

'Well, I do believe some things, of course,' conceded Father Brown; 'and therefore, of course, I don't believe other things.'

The Dagger with Wings, in The Incredulity of Father Brown, 1926

"'You see, it doesn't quite do for a man in my position to joke about miracles.'

'But it was you who said it was a miracle,' said Alboin, staring.

'I'm so sorry,' said Father Brown; 'I'm afraid there's some mistake. I don't think I ever said it was a miracle. All I said was that it might happen. What you said was that it couldn't happen, because it would be a miracle if it did. And then it did. And so you said it was a miracle. But I never said a word about miracles or magic, or anything of the sort from beginning to end.'

'But I thought you believed in miracles,' broke out the secretary.

'Yes,' answered Father Brown, 'I believe in miracles. I believe in man-eating tigers, but I don't see them running about everywhere. If I want any miracles, I know where to get them.'"

The Miracle of Moon Crescent, in The Incredulity of Father Brown, 1926

"It's part of something I've noticed more and more in the modern world, appearing in all sorts of newspaper rumours and conversational catchwords; something that's arbitrary without being authoritative. People readily swallow the untested claims of this, that, or the other. It's drowning all your old rationalism and scepticism, it's coming in like a sea; and the name of it is superstition.' He stood up abruptly, his face heavy with a sort of frown, and went on talking almost as if he were alone. 'It's the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense and can't see things as they are. Anything that anybody talks about, and says there's a good deal in it, extends itself indefinitely like a vista in a nightmare. And a dog is an omen, and a cat is a mystery, and a pig is a mascot, and a beetle is a scarab, calling up all the menagerie of polytheism from Egypt and old India[.]"

The Oracle of the Dog, in The Incredulity of Father Brown, 1926

Father Brown's friend Professor Openshaw, after the priest debunked the fear and mystery surrounding a book which appeared to make anyone who opened its pages vanish:

"'But you must admit the accumulation of incidents was rather formidable. Did you never feel just a momentary awe of the awful volume?'

'Oh, that,' said Father Brown. 'I opened it as soon as I saw it lying there. It's all blank pages. You see, I am not superstitious.'"

The Blast of the Book, in The Scandal of Father Brown, 1935

Sunday Salt: G.K. Chesterton on the Tension of Virtues

This week's Sunday Salt seemed to be an appropriate follow-up to last week (C.S. Lewis on how each emotion is right at some time and wrong at another). Today's passage is from G.K. Chesterton, from his amazing and brilliant book Orthodoxy. It is the story of how Chesterton discovered through his own ponderings about life, and his own experiments in searching for truth, beauty, and reason, the great story of Christianity and how it made sense of everything in life. Chesterton was one of the intellectual giants of the 20th century, and this is one of his greatest works. I'll share more about it in the future. What follows is an outline in quotations of how Chesterton realized that the tension of two powerful and often conflicting emotions or virtues, and the way Christianity seeks to keep them both powerful and yet both in proper balance, explains some fascinating things about Christian doctrine - and why doctrine is so desperately important.

"Paganism declared that virtue was in a balance; Christianity declared it was in a conflict: the collision of two passions apparently opposite. Of course they were not really inconsistent; but they were such that it was hard to hold simultaneously. ...

And now I began to find that this duplex passion was the Christian key to ethics everywhere. Everywhere the creed made a moderation out of the still crash of two impetuous emotions. Take, for instance, the matter of modesty, of the balance between mere pride and mere prostration. The average pagan, like the average agnostic, would merely say that he was content with himself, but not insolently self-satisfied, that there were many better and many worse, that his deserts were limited, but he would see that he got them. In short, he would walk with his head in the air; but not necessarily with his nose in the air. This is a manly and rational position, but it is open to the objection... [that being] a mixture of two things, it is a dilution of two things; neither is present in its full strength or contributes its full colour. This proper pride does not lift the heart like the tongue of trumpets; you cannot go glad in crimson and gold for this. On the other hand, this mild rationalist modesty does not cleanse the soul with fire and make it clear like crystal; it does not (like a strict and searching humility) make a man as a little child, who can sit at the feet of the grass. It does not make him look up and see marvels; for Alice must grow small if she is to be Alice in Wonderland. Thus it loses both the poetry of being proud and the poetry of being humble. Christianity sought by this same strange expedient to save both of them." Orthodoxy, pp. 99-100 (Ignatius Press edition; 1995).

"And the more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild." p. 102

"This was the big fact about Christian ethics; the discovery of the new balance. Paganism had been like a pillar of marble, upright because proportioned with symmetry. Christianity was like a huge and ragged and romantic rock, which, though it sways on its pedestal at a touch, yet, because its exaggerated excrescences exactly balance each other, is enthroned there for a thousand years. ... So in Christendom apparent accidents balanced. Becket wore a hair shirt under his gold and crimson, and there is much to be said for the combination; for Becket got the benefit of the hair shirt while the people in the street got the benefit of the crimson and gold. ...

Last and most important, it is exactly this which explains what is so inexplicable to all the modern critics of the history of Christianity. I mean the monstrous wars about small points of theology, the earthquakes of emotion about a gesture or a word. It was only a matter of an inch; but an inch is everything when you are balancing. The Church could not afford to swerve a hair's breadth on some things if she was to continue her great and daring experiment of the irregular equilibrium. Once let one idea become less powerful and some other idea would become too powerful. It was no flock of sheep the Christian shepherd was leading, but a herd of bulls and tigers, of terrible ideals and devouring doctrines, each one of them strong enough to turn to a false religion and lay waste the world. Remember that the Church went in specifically for dangerous ideas; she was a lion tamer. The idea of birth through a Holy Spirit, of the death of a divine being, of the forgiveness of sins, or the fulfillment of prophecies, are ideas which, any one can see, need but a touch to turn them into something blasphemous or ferocious. ...if some small mistake were made in doctrine, huge blunders might be made in human happiness. A sentence phrased wrong about the nature of symbolism would have broken all the best statues in Europe. ... Doctrines had to be defined within strict limits, even in order that man might enjoy general human liberties. The Church had to be careful, if only that the world might be careless." pp. 105-07