I bought G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy after last weekending listening to a lecture on it. I don't really know what I expected starting to read this book. The lecture was quite good, but having picked up this book and read the opening couple of chapters, I am quickly becoming a fan of Chesterton. Who would have guessed that he wrote this over 100 years ago, it is just as practical and applicable to today's society. Let us dig into some quotes.
The second chapter starts out with a conversation he had with his publisher. The publisher believes that if a man believes in himself he will do just fine. And I love the response. He basically tells the publisher that he knows where he can find people that believe in themselves, they are in the insane asylum. They truly believe they are a cup or king, and no amount of arguing with them will convince them otherwise. We have made a world where most of us are taught to believe in our selves, we have exchanged
God's truth for a lie and worshipped and served the creation rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. (Roman's 1:25). We have been taught to worship the parts as if they were the whole. That's not to say that we should never believe in ourselves, I don't think, I think it is to remember the Truth, and our place in it. For the Truth shall set us free, the lies, shall bind us up.
When Christendom has been shattered (which he would say it has been), all the sins and "vices" are let loose to do evil, but worse he says.
"The virtues are let loose also (when religion is shattered); and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage (than vices)...The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wondering alone." We see this all the time in our society. We try to keep Christianity out of the public world and we wonder why the world is falling apart. We see people wanting to help, but in their eagerness to help they avoid the truth and end up doing more harm then good. We see the Christians trying to spread the truth of the Gospel, but it has a hole in it (Richard Sterns has a good book by this title). They try to spread the truth without any love, or mercy and end up spreading hate and contempt. They teach Christ gets you into heaven, but doesn't/shouldn't change your life.
"A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed." He then goes on to mention that we are
"on the road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table." Has he been sitting in classrooms around the country? Where some kids are taught that it doesn't matter what your answer is to the multiplication problem, it just matters that you all agree (not every school, but some schools). Has relativism been so prevalent for so long? If it feels good do it (doesn't matter what the truth says). There are absolutely no absolute truths, what is true for me may not be true for someone else. These are things people say, today, and this is the very thing Chesterton is trying to combat here in Orthodoxy. We are supposed to keep truth in its place, truth by definition has to be true always, otherwise it was never true. If we won the game, that is the truth and it cannot be taken from us. Ever. It doesn't change the next day when the loosing team decides to say that they won. Can you imagine a group building a boat and they all come to a consensus that it will float, even though it has more holes than Swiss cheese? That is crazy, but we wouldn't want to hurt their feelings with the truth.
(In defense of organized religion)
"Man, by a blind instinct, knew that if once things were wildly questioned, reason could be questioned first...In so far as religion is gone, reason is going." This may be the weakest quote I have chosen, however, I think that it is true. We live in the information age, but not the reasonable age. We do things that are politically correct, not because they are the right thing, but because no one should get offended. Reason has been thrown out along with religion in the marketplace of ideas. We do things that aren't going to hurt someone in the short term, even though they may be deadly (at least really damaging) in the long term.
"Akin to these, is the false theory of progress, which maintains that we alter the test instead of trying to pass the test." I love this quote so much. How often do we see this in our society. Kids pushed to the next grade, even though they have no mastery of the last grade. Kids are failing to graduate, so let us lessen the standard, and not worry about teaching them better. After all, taxpayers want to see high graduation rates, it doesn't matter that those that graduate can't balance a checkbook or do anything.
These great quotes are just in the first three chapters, which is all the further I am at this point.
