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.

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