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: Make the Most of the Things of Earth - We All Need Church History - Knowing Yourself in Spite of Technology

Three tools for inspiration to energize your mind for the week. Here's some help for enjoying the things in the world without loving God less, for taking an interest in church history, and for reconnecting your soul to God's gift of grace and mercy in spite of the distractions of so much useful technology.

Prior collections are tagged under Spiritual Coffee.

The Strange Brightness of the Things of Earth, Joe Rigney (Cities Church)
Rigney has brought a common dilemma of faith into clear focus: does enjoying things in the world subtract from our love for God, or can it help increase it? Should we be cautious and self-conscious about enjoying things too much? Rigney's writing and teaching is some of the most insightful work I've ever read or heard on this subject. Sermon transcript or audio at the link. This is part of a series, so you can look at the related sermons as well. Rigney also has a five-hour seminar available in audio here at the bottom under Media ("The Whole Earth Is Full of His Glory") that I strongly recommend for going deeper.

"Turn your eyes upon Jesus/Look full in his wonderful face/And the things of earth will grow strangely dim/In the light of his glory and grace.

"What is the song telling us? It tells us that earthly things may have some brightness; they may have some beauty. They may bring us some joy. But when Jesus shows up, that brightness grows dim in his light. That beauty fades in comparison to his wonderful face. In his presence is fullness of joy, and therefore the delight we had in earthly things is now dullness and dust."

"That tension comes into focus when we take the dimness of earthly things in the light of Jesus and set it alongside the hymn we just sang, “This Is My Father’s World.”

"This is my Father’s World/He shines in all that’s fair/In the rustling grass I hear him pass/He speaks to me everywhere. 

"What does this hymn teach? Not that earthly things grow dim, but that God shines in them. “He shines in all that’s fair.” They’re not dim; they’re bright with his brightness. They don’t go silent when God shows up; He speaks through them. And there’s the tension: which hymn is true?" 

13 Reasons We Need Church History, Matthew J. Hall (TGC)
Excellent thoughts on why church history has special value and importance for Christians, and how to study it wisely. Although Hall doesn't state this directly, there's a lot of encouragement here for all Christians that we should care about knowing our history, and we shouldn't think of it as a matter only for seminary students and scholars. 

"Throughout Scripture, rightly remembering is critical to faithfulness. As early as Eden, Eve listens to the serpent, succumbing to faulty interpretations of the past and of God’s revelation in particular.

"Throughout the Old Testament, God calls his people to recall and retell his gracious saving acts. Yet Israel repeatedly forgets, fails, and strays. The New Testament is also clear: Historical events are at the heart of the good news.

"Our mission is to recount that history and call the nations to repent and believe in the Christ. Even the development of post-apostolic doctrine involved history. The early church fathers and councils had to determine, for example, what it meant to say with historical confidence that Jesus was both God and man."

Habits of Mind in an Age of Distraction, Alan Jacobs (Comment Magazine)
The summer issue of Comment Magazine is available online now (free and simple registration required). It's hard to choose among the articles - the focus on how design and technology influence us and our faith is tackled in a diversity of forms. For an introduction, James K.A. Smith examines cutting-edge technological marvels against the potential to forget who we are (or what makes us human) in Our Built World. I chose Jacobs, however, because distraction and divided attention are major challenges for most of us. Having used social media and tech prolifically and personally himself, as well as questioned and criticized it, Jacobs speaks from real life with the benefit of examining himself and all of us against Christian thinking across several centuries. But what he grabs hold of here and leads us through is not a list of ways to tame technology; instead, it's a vital question of what happens when our perception of life and self goes wrong. Those who see only their own failures and imperfections and those who see only a world of outward problems in need of the right technological fix both suffer from a distorted view of the Gospel and self. Here is good medicine.

"So what do we do with the great majority of people for whom excessive self-examination is the last problem they're likely to face? I think this is one of the most important problems Christians—and especially pastors—face today."

Spiritual Coffee: Safeguarding Church and Family Culture - Who Is David French? - Know Jonathan Edwards in 30 Minutes

Some evening fuel for thought, or a head start on your morning coffee time.
Prior roundups of current links for feeding the Christian mind under Spiritual Coffee.

Carl Trueman Adopts Rod Dreher's Benedict Option ("Eating Locusts Will Be (Benedict) Optional"),

Carl R. Trueman (First Things)
Rod Dreher has been known for the past two years for the idea of "the Benedict Option," which essentially argues that the Church at this cultural crossroads needs to focus on preserving Christian culture in our churches and families and communities rather than putting all our attention into trying to change the wider culture of the world. Dreher has observed that while we were trying to change the culture in society, we lost track of preserving the unique culture of the Church. Now we're in danger of losing that altogether in the next generations. I think Dreher is right, and the Church needs to hear this, so it's encouraging to see more theologians and scholars affirm this. The namesake for his idea comes from the Order of St. Benedict, and the fact that much of the learning and history and philosophy of the world was preserved through the Middle Ages by monks living in private Christian communities. Dreher doesn't advocate for monasticism itself, but he has some really good points about how we should learn from that concept and apply it to safeguarding Christian community and beliefs.

If you want to read more from Dreher on the Benedict Option, here and here are some good pieces to give you the overview. If you prefer video, then use this.
And if you really want to dig into all his historical and anecdotal examples, this is long but very thoroughly explained.

It's not the only thing the Church should focus on, but I think Dreher is spot on that we have failed to realize we aren't preserving a separate and unique culture and community in the Church. We've been so busy trying to shape the wider culture that we lost track of safeguarding and passing on a uniquely Christian culture in the Church, and largely failed to pass Christian faith and teaching in a coherent form on to the next generation. Moreover, we aren't on the offensive against culture now. We're on defense. We need to give great attention to preserving what is Christian in our lives and churches so it doesn't get pushed out by social pressure, because that's what is most likely to happen if we keep trying to wage a culture war the same way and don't re-examine what's happened to our churches.

Who Is David French? And Why Is He Running?, Denny Burk
This is worth reading not just because David French's third-party candidacy is intriguing, but much more because what Burk shares about French's past words and character is a tremendous demonstration of Christian character and faith put to the test under the harshest conditions. Bookmark this for raising your kids to be men and women who take courage in the Lord and honor Him with all their hearts.

Edwards on the Christian Life: Alive to the Beauty of God, Dane Ortlund (Equipping You in Grace - servantsofgrace.org)
Want to understand what makes Jonathan Edwards such an important Christian theologian, and how some of his remarkable ideas energize faith and the fruit of the spirit in Christian living? Dane Ortlund has got you covered in this podcast. Ortlund is the vice president of Bible publishing at Crossway, and author of several books including Edwards on the Christian Life.

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.”

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)

Soak In the Wisdom and Joy of C.S. Lewis This Weekend

I hope the last few posts have persuaded you that you need to read The Weight of Glory. The full insights of Lewis's sermon can't be appreciated just from the parts I have quoted. The flow of his argument is brilliant and reading the 10 pages all the way through is an experience of wonder.

There is another feast available this weekend for those who have delighted in the wisdom and the brilliance of C.S. Lewis's thinking. The Desiring God conference for 2013 is entitled: The Romantic Rationalist: God, Life, and Imagination in the Work of C.S. Lewis. From Friday, September 27 through Sunday, September 29, desiringgod.org will be live-streaming the talks and messages from the conference for anyone who wants to watch them for free. After the conference, usually within a week or less, they will all be available online at desiringgod.org to watch or download (still for free).

In advance of the conference, John Piper has put together a free e-book summarizing the influence C.S. Lewis has had on his life and Christian thinking, including helping him behold the wonder of God in Creation and the romance and poetry of life. The title is Alive to Wonder. You can download it here as a PDF or for Kindle, Nook, etc.