I have just completed The
Man who was Thursday. It was the first novel by G.K Chesterton that I have
ventured to read. Rest assured it did not disappoint. One reviewer summed
it up well when he said that this book is either comprised of the most nonsensical
witty banter or it is the profoundest of stories for all of humanity.
The book focused on a secret council of anarchists who throughout the story
discover the truth that they are all working undercover for the same character
named “Sunday”. The revelations that are worked through in this book brought up
a lot of interesting thoughts for me - the discreet battle between good and
evil and the disguises of each, the different aspects of chaos and order in
society and similarly the attractions and fears of anarchy and revolt against
governing authorities.
Anarchy has some obvious attractions. It empowers the individual to be,
to do, to believe what they choose. It is a sort of freedom that is felt as “glory
and isolation” in being one’s own authority. The danger associated with
anarchy (that is not often feared enough) directly corresponds to the potential
for evil that is in every individual, no matter how noble or just the revolt
may be.
It would appear from the bumper stickers and late night television shows
I’ve seen recently that our culture is working hard to foster a society devoid
of these pesky governing authorities. We know and have seen the corruptibility
of such powers - like the church, religion, government, even gender or family
roles. We want to live in a culture where an individual is free to believe whatever
he or she or “it” wants. My fear is that we have not yet considered the digression
of this way of thinking. Isn’t this the forerunner to individualistic entitlement?
Why are we shocked when someone takes entitlement to a horrifically evil
conclusion?
We are told sexuality is one of the areas in which we deserve to be
satisfied. We are justified in doing some pretty odd things as long as it turns
us on and gratifies us physically. Then we look on with apparent shock when
someone digresses this thinking into a power hungry sexual abuse tragedy like
the Sandusky scandal at Penn State.
We are told freedom of speech is a staple for this country. We can say
anything we want as long as we are not taking any physical action against
another person. So in a lot of ways, we are allowed, practically encouraged, to
breed small pockets of entrenched fear and hate for other people groups. Then we
are bewildered when we turn on the news and see a white supremacist band member
killed after he went into a Sikh Temple and opened fire.
We are becoming convinced that gender should have less meaning and that
the standards which men and women are held to should be the same. However, two
days after the Aurora movie theater shooting the top article on CNN.com was
about three men who “upheld the man code” by diving in front of their women
friends. So somehow the moment of utter chaos and evil snapped us back to
standards that are all of a sudden no longer disgraceful hindrances but
beautiful acts of valor.
I think it is fair to assume that we want freedom but we also want
safety. Does safety always include some sort of authority? Perhaps what we have
decided we need is something to set those curious lines, the lines between
being safe and being free, for us. If only we had an objective type of
governing authority, one that is not capable of prejudice in race, gender, or
religion. Maybe we should just have science, math and logic be our governing
authorities. These should work because they are non-partisan and objective,
right?
So what would it look like if we were governed by science? Instead of
holding Mr. Sandusky responsible for the abuse of children, perhaps we can find
that he had something known as Histrionic Disorder (defined by the American
Psychiatric Association as a personality disorder characterized by a pattern of
excessive emotionality and attention-seeking, including an excessive need for
approval and inappropriately seductive behavior). This way we can be assured he
wasn’t just a normal guy who was capable of doing some really bad things. We
can have a scientific explanation that shows he was a diseased outlier. We can
be assured that we have nothing to fear from a systemic standpoint.
Let’s also say that James Holmes (Aurora movie theater shooter) was one
of these crazies too. We can come up with a good scientific/medical term for
it, so that we know exactly why he did what he did, or at least that he was
incapable of adhering to our ethical paradigms. This way we will have no reason
to fear the way our society operates in its current condition.
Hmmm… but perhaps, this whole science thing isn’t giving enough respect
to the digression of perverse egoism that has flooded our culture. If we write
these men off as simply “bad eggs” than we don’t have to approach the difficult
task of recognizing the potential for evil in our own behavior.
Please understand that I am not advocating that school masters should go
back to spanking misbehaving children or that the Church should be allowed to
take offerings for made up ministries. But we need to be aware when we
eliminate all conscience-driven authorities, that's exactly what we have done.
Science is not capable of making ethical decisions.
In one of his other masterworks Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton describes
the Holy Church in an example that relates well to this argument.
“Catholic doctrine and discipline may be walls; but they are walls of a
playground. Christianity is the only frame which has preserved the pleasure of
paganism. We might fancy some children playing on the flat grassy top of some
tall island in the sea. So long as there was a wall round the cliff’s edge they
could fling themselves into every frantic game and make the place the noisiest
of nurseries. But the walls were knocked down, leaving the naked peril of the
precipice. They did not fall over; but when their friends returned to them they
were all huddled in terror in the center of the island; and their song had
ceased.”
And here is the freedom that Christianity can foster. Only with a
powerful but loving father is a child able to truly feel safe and to be free.
Loving so that the child knows the father has his best intentions in mind, and
powerful so that the child knows the father is truly capable of protecting. The
question then becomes the decision of the loving father to allow his children
to suffer. This was probably the most interesting part of the book. The
character “Sunday” is revealed as the source of both the peace and the peril
that the other characters go through.
Here is the main character’s description of encountering “Sunday”.
"When I see the horrible back, I am sure the noble face is but a
mask. When I see the face but for an instant, I know the back is only a
jest. Bad is so bad that we cannot but think good an accident; good is so good
that we feel certain that evil could be explained."
This is at the foundation of my faith. When I have gone through trials I
have thought good just the rare occurrence of something going right for me. But
when I have seen true goodness in my life, I have been assured that I am not
seeing the whole story. It is a sort of eager relief that comes in knowing
surely that there is a God and he loves me. What excitement awaits the deeper
understanding of this darker side of God, not evil but simply unknown. The
depth of his universe would make the suffering of his people “comparable to a
father playing hide and seek with his children.” I am astonished and eager,
awaiting the great magician, the loving father to reveal his undeniable mastery
of intermingled chaos and order.
Tim
Tim
