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: Truth Doesn't Divide, Unbelief Does - Helping Women Cherish Being a Weaker Vessel - Novels for a Christian Mind

Here's the best of what I've seen recently for building up your mind in Christ and refreshing your heart. Prior roundups are under Spiritual Coffee.

Division Begins with the Departure from the Truth, Jared C. Wilson (For the Church)

Most of us in the Church have been battered and browbeaten with the modern myth that anyone who insists upon something as true is divisive and disruptive. When a person wants to go their own way, those of us who try to call them back are labeled judgmental and closed-minded. Wilson does a very concise and clear job of demonstrating that it is actually the person who has chosen to depart from what we shared as a belief who is being stubborn and closed-minded. Most orthodox creeds and statements of doctrine were created in response to someone abandoning truth for what is deceptive and misleading. They were reactions to the stubbornness of error and rebellion. This is a welcome reset of our perspective, reminding us we don't cause division and conflict just by remaining true to what we believe.

Fragile, Honored, Undaunted: Women as the Weaker Vessel, Abigail Dodds (Desiring God)

"Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered." (1 Peter 3:7).

This verse provokes so many emotional reactions from both men and women. In our age, obsessed with independence and autonomy, the idea of being weak carries with it the implication that you aren't able to assert yourself independently and be free of social stereotypes imposed on you by tradition and culture. No one wants to be weak. I know women struggle over understanding this comparison between men and women, and I know men who struggle with wanting to explain it away out of sympathy and support. Yet it's a teaching of the Bible, and that means that there is something good for us here that we shouldn't miss. We hide from it or dismiss it at our peril, because every time people try to ignore or defy what God has designed and force things into roles and shapes they weren't meant to have, tragedy follows.

Abigail paints a beautiful portrait of the strength and preciousness that coexist with fragility and weakness, illustrating that being weaker does not mean inferior or less capable. The excerpts below speak for themselves - and have a lot to say to both men and women. Although I'm not a woman, I've been married to one for 16 years and I am very familiar with how she has pondered and wrestled through verses like this. She commended this post as among the most helpful things she has read on this verse, and I am grateful to have words like this with which to encourage her. 

"It helps to first acknowledge that what God says through Peter is true. We are weaker, or we could use the synonym fragile. Not stupider. Not less human. Not incapable of reason or achievement. Not emotionally broken. Not more sinful. And not even without great strength, as the Scriptures testify. But weaker. And yet many of us are, or have been at some point, uncomfortable with this because it’s inimical to the spirit of the age and it feels like an offense to our pride. So much so that we may stubbornly spurn 1 Peter’s verity, even as we take every precaution when walking alone in a dark alley.

"Our weakness — the fact that no matter how much time I spent in the gym, I’d likely never be able to overpower an average-sized man or beat him in an arm-wrestling match — is not a sign of something gone wrong. It is to be handled with care, because in it resides exquisite beauties, abilities, and feminine strengths — like the beautiful strength of thick beveled glass."

12 Recent Novels for your Summer Pleasure, Byron Borger (Hearts and Minds Books)

I include this because it is a great joy to discover fiction that brings truth to life with creativity and wisdom, and also because Byron Borger is a voice you should know if you love books. He reviews them often on his Booknotes blog, and his depth of knowledge is astounding. If you're looking for a guide to uncharted wonders and rare jewels in Christian literature and non-fiction, this is your guy. This is the kind of bookstore you wish you could go around the corner to every week. (The one that particularly intrigued me from this list of novels is the sixth one, This Is Why I Came.)

Every year, Byron and his wife Beth put together a remarkable portable bookstore for the Christian Legal Society National Conference, filling a gallery with hundreds of handpicked selections in every imaginable category a Christian may want. Take one look at the organization and care in arranging a room that size with so many useful titles, and you'll know why their experience and knowledge of books is so valuable.

Spiritual Coffee: Power of Christian Narrative in Fantasy - Against the Myth of Progress and Historical Pessimism - Glorifying God as a Generalist

I really enjoyed today's collection of links. I hope that you will as well. Taken together, these three pieces restore some of the excitement and wonder in exploring God's Creation and the endless possibilities of discovery in the Christian mind and imagination. There is even now a great portion of beauty and glory awaiting us.
(Click on Spiritual Coffee for earlier collections of links.)

James Stoddard's Interior Castle, David Randall (First Things)

The quoted section below is enough to excite interest, especially for those who enjoy C.S. Lewis's fiction or The Lord of the Rings. I usually get the most enduring and satisfying enjoyment out of stories that have a great layer of truth underneath them. When you piece together the fantastic and unusual elements of a story and find they reveal a mystery about reality, you gain something personal and permanent. It is always a delight to discover beauty, but to discover something that is both beautiful and true is priceless.

"James Stoddard ought to be famous for his Evenmere trilogy—The High House (1998), The False House (2000, revised 2015), and Evenmere (2015). He isn’t, unfortunately. The High House received the Compton Crook Award for best fantasy by a new novelist, but The False House and Evenmere haven’t gotten much notice. But the three books are wonderfully written fantasy, and Stoddard is nearly as good as C. S. Lewis at recapitulating aspects of the Christian myth. He isn’t just trying to be another Lewis, either. Stoddard’s trilogy does something new and nifty: It is an argument in fiction that narrative is at the center of Christian theology—that the universe is narrative, that Christ is its sacred narrator, and that narrative is the means by which mankind can understand God. Stoddard’s sustained invention and stylish prose are enough by themselves to earn him a place in the mainstream fantasy canon. But his shift of emphasis from Christian myth to Christian narrative makes his trilogy a major work of Christian fantasy."

[I also find this description of the worldview of the villains to be brilliant. The deception that mankind can achieve a perfect world lies behind virtually all modern false ideologies (and the next link from Al Mohler happens to show what it's like for those ideologies to crash down).]

"The books’ villains are the Society of Anarchists, who are ruthlessly dedicated to establishing a perfect world."

Christ’s Exaltation: The Ground of Our Hope, Albert Mohler (Ligonier)
A succinct picture of Christ's reign and how it provides us confidence both now and for the future, contrasted with the hopelessness of faith in "progress" or perfection of humanity and its disillusioned counterpart, historical pessimism.

"'The twentieth century, it is safe to say, has made us all into deep historical pessimists.' So observed Francis Fukuyama in his seminal 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man. What happened? The nineteenth century’s humanistic faith in inevitable moral progress was destroyed on the battlefields of two cataclysmic world wars and in the unprecedented murderous cruelty of Hitler’s gas chambers, Stalin’s gulags, and Pol Pot’s Cambodian killing fields. History seemed to point, not to a golden age of moral progress and enlightenment, but toward an age of unspeakable cruelty backed by technological developments that would stagger the moral imagination.

"Fukuyama demonstrated the failure of historical 'faiths' such as Marxism, with its confidence in the ultimate victory of the proletariat through class struggle and revolution. His analysis of modern historical pessimism was correct, at least in this respect, for secular myths did not fare well in the twentieth century, and most contemporary Americans look to the future with a mixed sense of unease and uncertainty.

"The Christian worldview stands in stark contrast both to the humanistic idea of progress and to modern secular pessimism."

How to Glorify God by Being a Generalist, Joe Carter (TGC)

Probably fascinating for anyone who is curious how people like Justin Taylor, Russell Moore, Tim Challies, and departed heroes like Chuck Colson manage to have such diverse knowledge and insight into so many subjects. Carter is careful to say he can only describe his own experience, and that it may not be a calling that applies to many people. Particularly interesting are his conclusions that generalism is artistic, generalism is a personal act of worship to God, and generalism is not primarily pursued for the sake of imparting knowledge to others (although that is a valuable byproduct) but for the sake of beholding the majesty of God in greater and wider detail. The highest reward is a private moment of awe and wonder between the generalist and the Lord.

This line is also helpful and practical for those of us who get stalled out trying to find the perfect way to do things: "sometimes you have to use whatever method works for your personality, even if it’s less than ideal."

"What if we generalists are beckoned to seek knowledge not as a means for some other end but simply as an act of performance before our Creator? This is not to say that the knowledge gained cannot be used for practical purposes or in service of our neighbor. But viewing knowledge-seeking as a performative act done for God and before God frees us to treat it as a form of ongoing artistic worship. Just as David performed for God with leaping and dancing (2 Sam. 6:16) we are free to seek truth, knowledge, and understanding in a variety of areas as a way of glorifying him." [On Sincerity:] "'By validity I mean whether an artist is honest to himself and to his world-view,' Schaeffer says, 'or whether he makes his art only for money or for the sake of being accepted.' If it’s to glorify God as a work of art, generalism cannot be pursued as a means of impressing others with our erudition. For the Christian generalist, the pursuit of knowledge is a performance for God, not an act of pedantry to impress our peers. The validity comes in performing not for the applause of others but for the approval of our divine patron."

"What turns generalism into an art (or at least one major “style” of art) is “sublime pattern-matching,” seeing the interconnectedness of God’s creation in a way that impresses our minds with a sense of awe and veneration of his grandeur and power. 

"God takes delight not in the discovery of the patterns of his revelation (which, of course, he already knows) but with the way that the process leads us to childlike worship. It is the process that leads us to continuously repeat the prayer of the 17th-century astronomer Johannes Kepler: “O, Almighty God, I am thinking Thy thoughts after Thee!” It’s the pursuit of knowledge and discovery as a way to glorify our Redeemer by becoming increasingly enchanted by his majesty." “What is elementary, worldly wisdom?” Charles Munger asked. “Well, the first rule is that you can't really know anything if you just remember isolated facts and try and bang 'em back. If the facts don't hang together on a latticework of theory, you don't have them in a usable form.”

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

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)

Imagination Serves God... if It Is Shaped by God

The imagination sometimes gets overlooked as a tool of faith. Some people see the imagination as a tool of fantasy and daydreaming, something that people use to escape from the really important business of life. Others may be put off by the association of imagination and "imaginary," as if talking about using the imagination about God somehow implies He isn't real. But the fact is that without imagination, we can't really encounter God.

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the people of old received their commendation. By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible. (Hebrews 11:1-3 ESV)

the conviction of things not seen. That sure sounds like a job for imagination.

There are many other good examples in Scripture: “The imagination is a necessary component for reading fiction books, non-fiction books, and, of course, for reading the Bible. God’s book engages our imaginations by the parables of Jesus, the poetry of the Psalms, the adages of the Proverbs, and, of course, the apocalyptic language of the prophets. But what makes human imagination even more incredible is how we experience in our minds things we did not, have not, or cannot experience ourselves. The book of Revelation is one example.” (Tony Reinke, Dragons and Holiness). In the past several months, I have noticed some exceptionally good articles on DesiringGod.org by various authors examining the imagination at work in faith. Here's my quick summary connecting the dots.

Imagining for Good or for Evil

Like anything else, the imagination can be misused. Bryce Young captured both sides well a few days ago in a thoughtful post: Imagine Your Way to Joy. He starts out by confronting "an often-overlooked aspect of sin: the power of imagination." Young observes: "For sin to be accepted, approved, and even celebrated in our own minds, it must first be nourished by something stronger than just our senses. The seeds of sin, though sown in the flesh, are protected and watered by our imaginations. Sin is supplemented by story, an alternative narrative — an imaginative world in which sin does not afflict the conscience as easily because in that world, wickedness credibly plays the part of virtue."

Imagination allows us to construct an "alternate reality" where we rearrange what is right and wrong so that we can justify our desires. In our minds, we can bend the rules until the wrong direction seems natural and right. Have you ever noticed how most people who are caught up in some sin will rationalize it by saying they think God understands? In their minds, they can imagine God's reaction to be anything they want. And conveniently, they usually imagine His reaction supports what they feel and desire.

But imagination can also get you out of trouble too. When you feel a strong temptation or desire for something, and at the moment it seems like you couldn't possibly be content or satisfied without giving in, imagination allows you to experience the feelings that will come with standing firm and keeping faithful to God. At the moment, the self-denial seems painful, but later on you will be grateful for having stayed true to the Lord, and the blessings of a clean conscience will seem very sweet. But you don't feel that in the moment of great temptation - and so you need imagination to remind you what those rewards of faithfulness feel like. Young concludes:

From all this, you might begin to think that we should suppress imaginative activity. Imagination may appear to be a distraction from the pursuit of truth, or worse, a misleading trail away from it. Fidelity to reason alone, unpolluted by creations of the imagination, may appear a much safer stewardship of our cognitive capabilities.

However, dismissing the imagination from the Christian life will neither save us from sin nor help us grow in righteousness. In fact, all hope of putting off the old man and putting on the new rests in a God-given, Christ-purchased, Spirit-empowered redemption of the imagination. ...

By using the imagination to envision the possibilities of our faithful service to God, we also find help in fighting our sins. The problem is that we are far too easily pleased with the imaginary worlds in which our sins find shelter. The glorious stories that act out God’s purposes will always be more beautiful than the stories we throw together to explain away our sins. So, we kill sin by expending imaginative effort to envision the superior delight and beauty of God’s stories over the twisted, ugly plots we write to justify evil. 

The imaginary life we build up around some desires can be overpowering and very hard to give up. Even when we are convinced that we need to do that, and we direct our imagination to consider the glory and joy of pursing God instead, there is normally a gap between breaking off from the pleasure of deceitful sin and actually experiencing the satisfaction that comes from embracing God. For that, I strongly recommend Breaking Free from the Spell of Fantasy, an article from several months ago that left a strong impression on me.

Letting God Shape Your Imagination

Our imagination is a powerful weapon and tool, but it has to have something reliable to guide it. And that something is not going to be found within ourselves. I recalled Jon Bloom's description in an August post:

Everything God creates is good (Genesis 1:31). But we must take this in large measure on faith because under the curse of the fall, our fallen perceptions often don’t see it. And our fallen natures often don’t believe it. We are disordered and pathologically self-centered. We are out of sync.

The only things fallen humans tend to believe are good are those that sate our appetites, increase our personal prestige, align with our preferences, pleasantly interest us, operate within our desired timetable, and are convenient and comfortable. In the scope of the created universe, these add up to only a very few things. (Let Good Things Run Wild)

When our imaginations are used to make sin seem normal or okay, they aren't doing it on their own. They are conspiring with our hearts, which desire things they shouldn't. Then the imagination tries to serve the desires of the heart by creating an illusionary world in which fulfilling those desires seems good or even inevitable. Jon Bloom summed it up perfectly in another post: "Our hearts were never designed to be followed, but to be led."

Bloom's description that follows, on how our hearts should be led, is excellent, and his points apply to the imagination as well: let your imagination be used and used freely, but let it be directed and shaped by God. Your imagination can be a slave to your desires or it can serve God by shaping your heart and desires. Let the Scriptures and the life of Jesus define the nature of your invisible world.

If we make our hearts gods and ask them to lead us, they will lead us to narcissistic misery and ultimately damnation. They cannot save us, because what’s wrong with our hearts is the heart of our problem. But if our hearts believe in God, as they are designed to, then God saves us (Hebrews 7:25) and leads our hearts to exceeding joy (Psalm 43:4).

Therefore, don’t believe in your heart; direct your heart to believe in God. Don’t follow your heart; follow Jesus. Note that Jesus did not say to his disciples, “Let not your hearts be troubled, just believe in your hearts.” He said, “Let not your hearts be troubled, believe in God; believe also in me” (John 14:1).

So though your heart will try to shepherd you today, do not follow it. It is not a shepherd. It is a pompous sheep that, due to remaining sin, has some wolf-like qualities. Don’t follow it, and be careful even listening to it. Remember, your heart only tells you what you want, not where you should go. So only listen to it to note what it’s telling you about what you want, and then take your wants, both good and evil, to Jesus as requests and confessions.

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).