Monday, January 22, 2018
584 - Are You Sure About That?
Spirituality Column #584
January 23, 2018
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary
Are You Sure About
That?
By Bob Walters
“Materialists and
madmen never have doubts.” – G.K. Chesterton, “Orthodoxy”
If only
Chesterton could peek into this world of 2018 one hundred and ten years after
he wrote those words. He’d find a world
not so new, just one that proved his point.
Chesterton
had a lot of good points in his 1908 classic, Orthodoxy, a relatively short book in which he describes his
Christian faith. The book was gestated
as a counterpoint to his earlier work, Heresy,
which described what was wrong with other religions. Picking up a public challenge – Chesterton
was a noted British philosopher, author, and columnist – he wrote Orthodoxy to say what was right with
Christianity.
Orthodoxy – my paperback copy is 168
pages, well-worn, and heavily-underlined – is a book I pull off the shelf and
re-read every couple of years. Chesterton’s
understanding of Christ is certainly illuminating but his understanding of
humanity truly masterful. And let’s be
clear, it is important never to split those two up – Christ and humanity –
because when you lose one you lose them both.
And in many
modern precincts, we have lost them both, owing to the ferocious obeisance most
of society assigns to the ascendant, virulent, absolutist-though-hollow virus
of secular “faith” and its accommodation – mistake really – of personal “If it
feels good, do it” freedom over right behavior, civil responsibility, and
sacrificial love.
Christians are properly free to debate
and even doubt many aspects of their Christian walk – especially the part that
involves their own behavior, choices, love, obedience, discipline, etc. But it is not proper to doubt the righteous
love of God, the truth of Jesus Christ, the accuracy of scripture, and the
stirrings of the Holy Spirit.
A century ago Chesterton put it
this way: “A man was meant to be doubtful about himself but undoubting about
the truth; this has been exactly reversed. … The part he doubts is exactly the
part he ought not doubt – the Divine Reason.”
Welcome to 2018, G.K. We still celebrate ourselves, not God.
Granted, we all struggle with
exactly which spirit is stirring us. But
the Christian spirit affirms loving others and sharing with others, hence the
perpetual importance of church fellowship and also of evangelizing – sharing Jesus
– with non-believers. We Christians are
sinners like everybody else, but unlike everybody else our joy is in freely
sharing Christ’s love with others we seek and encounter. God is glorified in our love, not in our mere
freedom. If I love only myself and my freedom,
I will likely harm others. It is using
our freedom to love God and protect others that is the proof of Jesus Christ.
Chesterton quips that man is the
only truly “wild beast” because he/she is the only animal capable of acting
both rationally and against its own nature.
Our truest, best nature, we discover – doubts and all – is best served within
the love of God and the commandments of Jesus. The Bible is a comprehensive book on just that subject.
Sadly and revealingly, our growing
secular culture tolerates no doubts about its artistic, moral, and sexual
freedoms. But the truth is … it could
use a few.
Walters
(rlwcom@aol.com) isn’t reading Orthodoxy at the moment;
just thinking about how very unalike were the weekend’s Right to Life and
Women’s March rallies.
0 comments:
Post a Comment