Orthodoxy

For my money, no other work exhibits the full power and impact of Chesterton’s wit, humor, gaiety, and sense of wonder than Orthodoxy.

Orthodoxy is straight-up unapologetic Christian apologetics, although it came into being in a circuitous manner. A few years before penning Orthodoxy, Chesterton published a collection of essays criticizing the philosophies of the great thinkers of his time, including his good friends George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells, along with other familiar names like Rudyard Kipling and Friedrich Nietzsche. He called this collection Heretics.

While lauded by some, Heretics was also criticized because it offered only a critique of certain popular and influential world views without offering a positive alternative. To rectify that omission, Chesterton set out to cobble together an articulation of his own world view, to define his own heresy as it were. He analogized this task to an adventurer setting sail into the unknown with hopes of discovering something new and exotic. Upon landing, he was shocked to realize that what he thought would be a new world was instead the very place he meant to depart. He discovered that the world view he was seeking already existed in Christianity.

Orthodoxy is not a long book (my copy is 170 pages), but it is a long read. Imagine 170 pages of profound quotes strung together without much filler, and you have a sense of what I mean. The beauty is that if you manage to get through Orthodoxy, you have been exposed to many of the main themes that Chesterton explores throughout all his writings, fiction and nonfiction alike. I examine just a sampling of them below.

"How much larger your life would be if your self could become smaller in it."

It’s safe to say that Chesterton would have little regard for social media influencers if he were alive today. By inflating our sense of self, we become locked into an ever-repeating loop, like an actor in a one-man show that plays over and over into infinity. In the effort to forever turn the spotlight of attention on himself, he is blind to the fact that the audience has left–he is playing to an audience of none. Ultimately, self-belief is a trait most common among the despondent and the insane. Sanity results from reason being tethered to a reality outside of ourselves.

"The things common to all men are more important than the things peculiar to any man."

Learn to see the wonder in the ordinary, and you will never lack for wonders. All the amazing and important matters in life are ordinary, and should be left to ordinary people to govern. The specialists of the world–the elite–should not be relied upon when it comes to common concerns. True strength of spirit is the ability to exult in the monotonous, the common place, the overlooked.

"The chief aim of [Christianity is] to give room for good things to run wild."

Life seems more logical and nature looks more exact than they really are. Where and when things turn illogical or inexact are the very places and times where Christianity does so as well. We are like children playing on top of steep cliff. Christianity acts like walls positioned at the precipice, allowing us to explore the whole area. Without those walls, we would avoid getting too close to the edge and leave many precarious places unexplored. When it is said that in the fullness of Christianity the lion will lie down with the lamb, it is assumed that the lion becomes lamb-like. What Christ’s Church seeks to achieve, however, is for the lion to retain its royal ferocity.

"Love is not blind ... love is bound; and the more it is bound the less it is blind."

The devotee is free to criticize just like the true believer is free to doubt. Criticism from someone obligated to remain faithful is rooted in desiring the ultimate good. If you are not free to doubt, then how good can your belief be? Only unbelievers are forbidden to doubt, for any doubt leaves open the possibility of belief. In this sense, one is more free to roam within the loving bonds of obligation than in the self-absorbed bondage of unbelief.

"Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to suit the vision."

Modern attempts to achieve utopian aims invariably devolve into altering our notion of what is ideal, rather than conforming the real to suit the ideal. But for an ideal to truly be an ideal, it must be fixed, that is to say unchanging. Just because we cannot achieve the ideal doesn’t mean the ideal isn’t valid or should be discarded. When the ideal is fixed, even failure is fruitful because we can determine how we fell short and learn from it. Without a fixed ideal, not only is progress subjectively meaningless, but all failures are useless and forgotten. The Christian approach to life is to be always dissatisfied with one’s work, yet always satisfied with working.

"Christianity is a sword which separates and sets free."

Love between souls requires that those souls be separate and distinct. Creating something means separating it from yourself. For God to create the universe and love His creation, He had to separate it from Himself. Christians must follow this example by learning to love the world through separating themselves from it. Separation from the world allows one to love it more fully. By upholding faith, the world is loved and renewed. In contrast, by seeking to destroy faith, faith survives but the world is destroyed.