REFLECTIONS
GK CHESTERTON
At those rare times when I’m feeling intellectually snobbish, or at least smug, I turn to GK Chesterton (d. 1936).
In my humble estimation, he is the greatest thinker and most provocative writer in modern times, perhaps in all times.
He challenges us with ethical, theological, moral, philosophical, and commonsensical what-ifers.
He constantly takes a truth and turns it on its head to get our attention. In fact, this is a legitimate description of paradox.
Paradox is the brand name of Chesterton’s writings. Paradox is the sometimes gentle, sometimes hammering presentation of his views and opinions on about everything there is to comment on.
For example, “Education is the period during which you are being instructed by somebody you do not know, about something you do not want to know.”
Could there ever be a more succinct description of the impersonalism of modern education, especially so-called higher education?
And even on “lower” levels of education, how often are students informed as to why they should want to learn such and such a subject?
Isn’t more like, “It’s here. Memorize it. Spew it back in tests. And we’ll all be happy!”
How often are students ever asked what they might be interested in learning?
All these questions and examples are summed up in Chesterton’s short, incisive dictum quoted above.
Chesterton used paradoxes, as I have said, to stand truth on its head to attract attention to it. We tend to bypass the truths of the gospel, for example, because we are so hospitable to the so-called truths of our culture which for the most part are just egocentric subversions of eternal truth and a flighty denial of the gospel.
For example, instead of saying, “We are a pilgrim people, just passing through,”
a bromide we have heard so often it just doesn’t have that much of an impact, GKC wrote, “How can we contrive to be at once astonished at the world and yet at home in it?”
No less a great orator and prolific writer than Archbishop Fulton Sheen paid obeisance to, was captivated by and imitated in his own unique and creative way the stalwart and most persuasive GKC.
For example, Chesterton wrote a book entitled, The Everlasting Man. Sheen wrote a book entitled The Eternal Galilean.
Sheen had his own share of paradoxes that certainly made his charm so magnetic on television.
For example, “Adversity is the prosperity of the great.” And, “Some never look up until they are flat on their backs.”
When it comes to developing awareness, consciousness, amazement, wonder, GKC has this pithy advice, worth pondering for many long hours: “Stare at the familiar until it becomes strange.”
He wrote on one occasion that “we should endeavor to wonder at the permanent thing not the mere exception. We should be startled by the sun not the eclipse. We should wonder less at the earthquake and more at the earth.”
His brief book on Thomas Aquinas has been hailed by theologians and philosophers as one of, if not the best summations of scholastic philosophy ever written.
It is said that he went to the library, paged through several volumes on scholastic philosophy, of which Thomas Aquinas was the most extraordinary proponent, then came home and dictated this classic, Saint Thomas Aquinas, to his secretary, much as Aquinas dictated to three or four stenographers at the same time.
His insight into Francis of Assisi cannot be equaled by any of the innumerable volumes written about that saint mainly because of the contrary paradoxes he used to characterize this most simple yet most complicated saint.
We can only wish he had written about more saints.
What about this parodox of his? “A person who has faith must be prepared not only to be a martyr but to be a fool.”
In other words, there are those, for example, who will tell us we are foolish for coming to church or spending efforts to protest abortion or giving of our time to help those “lazy” people on welfare. Sometimes a once-and-done martyrdom seems more inviting than the daily ridicule we might have to endure for trying to live our faith to the fullest.
Early on Chesterton discovered that the key to truth is paradox.
And the greatest paradox of all is Jesus Christ: God and man. As he says, not half god and half man like a centaur, not neither god or man like an elf, but true God and true man, the most wondrous paradox of human history.
If you have never read Chesterton, now, on the 70th anniversary of his death, might be the most advantageous time to begin.
You can begin with the two books on the saints which I mentioned above and go from there.
Meanwhile, you can spend your time doing what GKC suggests: Stare at the familiar until it becomes strange.
GK CHESTERTON
At those rare times when I’m feeling intellectually snobbish, or at least smug, I turn to GK Chesterton (d. 1936).
In my humble estimation, he is the greatest thinker and most provocative writer in modern times, perhaps in all times.
He challenges us with ethical, theological, moral, philosophical, and commonsensical what-ifers.
He constantly takes a truth and turns it on its head to get our attention. In fact, this is a legitimate description of paradox.
Paradox is the brand name of Chesterton’s writings. Paradox is the sometimes gentle, sometimes hammering presentation of his views and opinions on about everything there is to comment on.
For example, “Education is the period during which you are being instructed by somebody you do not know, about something you do not want to know.”
Could there ever be a more succinct description of the impersonalism of modern education, especially so-called higher education?
And even on “lower” levels of education, how often are students informed as to why they should want to learn such and such a subject?
Isn’t more like, “It’s here. Memorize it. Spew it back in tests. And we’ll all be happy!”
How often are students ever asked what they might be interested in learning?
All these questions and examples are summed up in Chesterton’s short, incisive dictum quoted above.
Chesterton used paradoxes, as I have said, to stand truth on its head to attract attention to it. We tend to bypass the truths of the gospel, for example, because we are so hospitable to the so-called truths of our culture which for the most part are just egocentric subversions of eternal truth and a flighty denial of the gospel.
For example, instead of saying, “We are a pilgrim people, just passing through,”
a bromide we have heard so often it just doesn’t have that much of an impact, GKC wrote, “How can we contrive to be at once astonished at the world and yet at home in it?”
No less a great orator and prolific writer than Archbishop Fulton Sheen paid obeisance to, was captivated by and imitated in his own unique and creative way the stalwart and most persuasive GKC.
For example, Chesterton wrote a book entitled, The Everlasting Man. Sheen wrote a book entitled The Eternal Galilean.
Sheen had his own share of paradoxes that certainly made his charm so magnetic on television.
For example, “Adversity is the prosperity of the great.” And, “Some never look up until they are flat on their backs.”
When it comes to developing awareness, consciousness, amazement, wonder, GKC has this pithy advice, worth pondering for many long hours: “Stare at the familiar until it becomes strange.”
He wrote on one occasion that “we should endeavor to wonder at the permanent thing not the mere exception. We should be startled by the sun not the eclipse. We should wonder less at the earthquake and more at the earth.”
His brief book on Thomas Aquinas has been hailed by theologians and philosophers as one of, if not the best summations of scholastic philosophy ever written.
It is said that he went to the library, paged through several volumes on scholastic philosophy, of which Thomas Aquinas was the most extraordinary proponent, then came home and dictated this classic, Saint Thomas Aquinas, to his secretary, much as Aquinas dictated to three or four stenographers at the same time.
His insight into Francis of Assisi cannot be equaled by any of the innumerable volumes written about that saint mainly because of the contrary paradoxes he used to characterize this most simple yet most complicated saint.
We can only wish he had written about more saints.
What about this parodox of his? “A person who has faith must be prepared not only to be a martyr but to be a fool.”
In other words, there are those, for example, who will tell us we are foolish for coming to church or spending efforts to protest abortion or giving of our time to help those “lazy” people on welfare. Sometimes a once-and-done martyrdom seems more inviting than the daily ridicule we might have to endure for trying to live our faith to the fullest.
Early on Chesterton discovered that the key to truth is paradox.
And the greatest paradox of all is Jesus Christ: God and man. As he says, not half god and half man like a centaur, not neither god or man like an elf, but true God and true man, the most wondrous paradox of human history.
If you have never read Chesterton, now, on the 70th anniversary of his death, might be the most advantageous time to begin.
You can begin with the two books on the saints which I mentioned above and go from there.
Meanwhile, you can spend your time doing what GKC suggests: Stare at the familiar until it becomes strange.
posted by The Ronald | 8:26 AM
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