Risen Hope

Chapter 5: The Flag of the World

In this chapter, Chesterton makes his first encounter with Christianity as he sifts through and attempts to understand the world. At this point in his investigative journey he begins to see a half-buried parallel of his views to those of Christianity; he is beginning to see evidence that the path he is walking on is well-tread.

Up to this point he has been talking and making distinctions about the optimist and the pessimist. Then he writes this gem of a paragraph:

No one doubts that an ordinary man can get on with this world: but we demand not strength enough to get on with it, but strength enough to get it on. Can he hate it enough to change it, and yet love it enough to think it worth changing? Can he look up at its colossal good without once feeling acquiescence? Can he look up at its colossal evil without once feeling despair? Can he, in short, be at once not only a pessimist and an optimist, but a fanatical pessimist and a fanatical optimist? Is he enough of a pagan to die for the world, and enough of a Christian to die to it? In this combination, I maintain, it is the rational optimist who fails, the irrational optimist who succeeds. He is ready to smash the whole universe for the sake of itself.

Chesterton has spent a little time discussing how loyalty comes before admiration; how one belongs to something before asking if it is a nice thing to belong to; how we can feel at once both at home and homeless in the same place.

This seems to echo that wise philosopher Paul of Tarsus who wrote these seemingly paradoxical statements:

“And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” ~ Romans 12:2a (NASB)

“For though I am free from all men, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I may win more. To the Jews I became as a Jew, so that I might win Jews; to those who are under the Law, as under the Law though not being myself under the Law, so that I might win those who are under the Law; to those who are without law, as without law, though not being without the law of God but under the law of Christ, so that I might win those who are without law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak; I have become all things to all men, so that I may by all means save some.” ~ 1 Corinthians 9:19-22 (NASB)

Previous posts from The Gospel Coalition (GC) and Mere Orthodoxy (MO) in this series:

1. Orthodoxy – G.K. Chesterton – Introduction (GC)
2. Orthodoxy – G.K. Chesterton – Chapter 1 (MO)
3. Orthodoxy – G.K. Chesterton – Chapters 2 & 3 (GC)
4. Orthodoxy – G.K. Chesterton – Chapters 4 & 5 (MO)

Previous posts from Risen Hope in this series:

1. Orthodoxy – G.K. Chesterton – Part 1
2. Orthodoxy – G.K. Chesterton – Part 2
3. Orthodoxy – G.K. Chesterton – Part 3
4. Orthodoxy – G.K. Chesterton – Part 4a

Admittedly, I’m behind in last weeks reading, but I did manage to make two passes through “The Ethics of Elfland” (this means I will post up the remainder of this post on Monday). For the longest time, since my first encounter with Orthodoxy many years back, this has been one of my all-time favorite chapters of any book I have read. I’m sure my love of it is more simplistic and shallow than others. As with swimming, if my feet can’t touch the bottom while my head is out of the water, I get uneasy quickly.

Chapter 4: The Ethics of Elfland

Let’s begin, I love the juxtaposition of fairy land against our everyday world. Fairy land seems to be an echo from earlier chapters in that it continues to reverberate reason and wonder, while the everyday world has little to do with wonder. There is reason in the necessary things of elfland and wonder in everything else. But in the everyday world, we have taken the reasonableness of the necessary things and attempted to apply them unnaturally to everything else. We have taken the one single idea and reapplied it to everything we see and know (like the madman). Elfland makes a visible distinction between the two realms and yet they co-exist harmoniously; Everyday land lauds the one to the demise of the other.

Chesterton draws a distinction between necessity and possibility and I think his distinction between the two ideas is a good one to maintain. Everyday land seeks to remove the possible so that all is necessary and determined. Elfland sees them co-existing together.

Further, Chesterton paints a wonderful image of how repetition speaks to vitality and life and contrasts this with variance and how that depicts a wearing down and dying. He reminds us of how we have grown old due to sin while the Father is younger than us. Chesterton hits on a rather paradoxical idea. Sin sets decay in motion and with it brings death. Time existed before sin, but decay was not part of time. The wearing down and wearing out does not occur for the sinless and pure – God is eternally young though God existed from eternity. We age and grow old and die. Though, being finite, we are infinitely younger than an infinite God, we are also far older than He precisely because of sin.

I would love to hear your thoughts. If you have been reading Orthodoxy – bravo! If you haven’t started, then I would encourage you to do so and join in on the conversation – it is a good one.

Previous posts from The Gospel Coalition (GC) and Mere Orthodoxy (MO) in this series:

1. Orthodoxy – G.K. Chesterton – Introduction (GC)
2. Orthodoxy – G.K. Chesterton – Chapter 1 (MO)
3. Orthodoxy – G.K. Chesterton – Chapters 2 & 3 (GC)
4. Orthodoxy – G.K. Chesterton – Chapters 4 & 5 (MO)

Previous posts from Risen Hope in this series:

1. Orthodoxy – G.K. Chesterton – Part 1
2. Orthodoxy – G.K. Chesterton – Part 2
3. Orthodoxy – G.K. Chesterton – Part 3

Chapter 2: The Maniac

In this chapter, Chesterton talks about what makes the madman mad. It is not due to too much imagination or flights of fancy, rather it is due to too much reason and not enough mystery.

The madman latches on to one single, simple idea and then attempts to explain the entire cosmos through the lens of that one idea. Everything else becomes subject to it in seeing, understanding, and explaining. Chesterton labels this first madman as the materialist.

But as Chesterton points out, the individual who does this shrinks the entire cosmos down to the size that his head can fit in, but nothing more. Its ultimate failure is not what it explains, but what it fails to explain.

Taken further, at least the madman above starts with a concept outside himself. Chesterton fears for the madman who is even more limiting and starts from within himself (the person who believes in himself). Why is this worse? Because while the first madman is allowed to believe in a world full of objects external to him, the second madman who begins with himself makes a mythology of everything external to himself.

The sanest man is the one who can accept a cosmos that is broad enough to allow for mystery, while still using reason to understand it, but not understanding all of it. An individual who can hold both the material and the immaterial as viable explanations.

Chapter 3: The Suicide of Thought

Chesterton now takes on the limits of the will (action). This, as Chesterton states, is the “narrowest groove” a person can find themselves in.

To take a particular action means to forego all other options that one could have chosen to take. For instance, when a man marries a woman, he foregoes all other women. When an individual engages in a particular activity, it is to the sacrifice of all other activities at that time.

What one chooses to do at any given moment carries with it a multitude of options that are not being acted upon. This, Chesterton finds as significant. The anarchist wants complete freedom from rules and restrictions, but it is the limitations set by those rules that really allows for true freedom.

A painter is limited by the frame and it is a welcomed limitation. To free a painting from its frame is to destroy art. If an artist wishes to be free of limits and wants to paint a short-necked giraffe, he may choose to do so, but the painting will be of anything but a giraffe. Why? Because a giraffe is limited by its long-neck. The same may be said of the camel. One may wish to free the camel of its hump, but only succeed in freeing the camel from being a camel. One may wish to free a triangle from its three-sides, but to do so destroys the triangle.

If we look at this in modern terms, one may wish to “free” marriage by redefining what it means, but to do so destroys what it actually is.

Previous posts from The Gospel Coalition (GC) and Mere Orthodoxy (MO) in this series:

1. Orthodoxy – G.K. Chesterton – Introduction (GC)
2. Orthodoxy – G.K. Chesterton – Chapter 1 (MO)
3. Orthodoxy – G.K. Chesterton – Chapters 2 & 3 (GC)

Previous posts from Risen Hope in this series:

1. Orthodoxy – G.K. Chesterton – Part 1
2. Orthodoxy – G.K. Chesterton – Part 2

Chapter 1: The Introduction in Defence of Everything New

Chesterton begins this wonderful little book with a discussion of holding on to both wonder and familiarity at the same time.

First he provides his motivation for writing this book. It is a way for him, in a series of “mental pictures,” to describe that particular philosophy that he has come to believe. As he points it, it is not his philosophy since he did not make, but rather “God and humanity made it; and it made [him].”

And just as promised, Chesterton delights us with a story; a mental picture. It is one of an English yachtsmen who sets off for adventure in discovery of new lands. And when he finds it, as he sets off to stake his claim, he realizes that he hasn’t discovered anything new at all, but instead he finds himself in his old land.

For Chesterton this provides immense joy and comfort. The ability to still find wonder and discovery without the bother of leaving home. This becomes his metaphor for the way in which he discovered the Christian faith. He thought he was going against the grain, an original, cutting a new path, hot on the pursuit of truth only to discover that what he ended up finding had been founded 1800 years earlier and he had all of Christendom behind him.

Chesterton closes out this chapter with this poignant paragraph:

I did strain my voice with a painfully juvenile exaggeration in uttering my truths. And I was punished in the fittest and funniest way, for I have kept my truths: but I have discovered, not that they were not truths, but simply that they were not mine. When I fancied that I stood alone I was really in the ridiculous position of being backed up by all Christendom. It may be, Heaven forgive me, that I did try to be original; but I only succeeded in inventing all by myself and inferior copy of the existing traditions of civilized religion. The man from the yacht thought he was the first to find England; I thought I was the first to find Europe. I did try to found a heresy of my own; and when I had put the last touches to it, I discovered that it was orthodoxy.

Have you ever found yourself in a similar situation? Believing you had discovered something new and unique only to find out that you were the last in a long line of adventurers?

To join in on the online discussion of this book over the next several weeks, navigate on over to the Mere Orthodoxy blog and dive right in. We might just discover some new wonders while searching for new lands and end up discovering we never left our own backyard.

Previous posts in this series:

1. Orthodoxy – G.K. Chesterton – Part 1

You can also see my initial contribution in the comments section here.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (May 29, 1874 – June 14, 1936) was as prolific a writer as there ever was. He wrote approximately 69 books along with countless articles and journals, along with engaging in newspaper and public debates. He was a fierce defender of the Christian faith and yet close friends with George Bernard Shaw and Bertrand Russell. He had a wit, a warmth, and a depth about him that seems to be lacking in Christianity and Christians today.

Over at the Gospel Coalition they are starting a community read-thru of his brilliant book Orthodoxy. I fell in love with this book a number of years ago and I attempt to read through it once a year if I have the time. I have not been able to read it this year yet, but I do plan on joining this group and doing so now. The book is full of insight and charm along with GKC’s usual literary nuggets of wisdom and wit.

I would strongly encourage you to join in the conversation if you are so inclined. There is currently a free copy of the Kindle version of Orthodoxy available through Amazon and they provide free-readers for you computer and certain mobile devices if you do not already own a Kindle. Even though they began this journey two days ago (August 7, 2013), there is still time to jump in. We will not begin reading until next Wednesday.

I hope to see you in the conversation.

You can learn more about G.K. Chesterton at the following sites below:

1. The American Chesterton Society
2. Mere Orthodoxy (a blog – not necessarily about Chesterton, but they take their cues from Lewis and GCK about how Christians ought to engage our current culture – think of this as Chesterton in 21st century practice)
3. Wikipedia Entry