The Christian Imagination

There were many Christian scholars I was introduced to in college. It wasn’t until after college though, that I was introduced to the words of G.K. Chesterton, in James Bryan Smith’s biography of Rich Mullins.

I first read about Chesterton in The Christian Imagination. There I learned of the man who was a journalist and an apologist, while also a poet and an artist.

Orthodoxy is the most recognized work of Chesterton, wherein he gives his personal apologetic of the Christian faith. I finally picked up the book, and having read it, find it hard to describe. First published in 1948, he takes aim at many of the philosophies of the day, including modernism and determinism. He explored many philosophies, agreeing with them to varying degrees before finding them empty. In the end, he found that only Christian orthodoxy answered the riddle.

It’s hard to quote this book. It’s like a song that builds momentum to end in a crescendo. A single piece doesn’t tell the story. Nevertheless, I give you the following words from Chesterton:

The real problem is - Can the lion lie down with the lamb and still retain his royal ferocity? That is the problem the church attempted; that is the miracle she achieved. This is what I have called guessing the hidden eccentricities of life…Christian doctrine detected the oddities of life. It not only discovered the law, but it foresaw the exceptions. Those underrate Christianity who say that it discovered mercy; any one might discover mercy. In fact everyone did. But to discover a plan for being merciful and also severe - that was to anticipate a strange need of human nature….

This was the big fact about Christian ethics; the discovery of the new balance…Christianity was like a huge and ragged and romantic rock, which, though it sways on its pedestal at a touch, yet, because its exaggerated excresences exactly balance each other, is enthroned there for a thousand years…So in Christianity apparent accidents balanced….

It is exactly this which explains what is so inexplicable to all the modern critics of the history of Christianity. I mean the monstrous wars about small points of theology, the earthquakes of emotion about a gesture of a word. It was only a matter of an inch; but an inch is everything when you are balancing. The church could not afford to swerve a hair’s breadth on some things if she was to continue her great and daring experiment of the irregular equilibrium.

Here it is enough to notice that if some small mistake were made in doctrine, huge blunders might be made in human happiness. A sentence phrased wrong about the nature of symbolism would have broken all the best statues in Europe. A slip in definitions might stop all the dances…Doctrines had to be defined within strict limits, even in order that man might enjoy general human liberties. The church had to be careful, if only that the world might be careless.

This is the thrilling romance of orthodoxy. People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy. It was sanity: and to be sane is more dramatic than to be mad. It was the equilibrium of a man behind madly rushing horses, seeming to stoop this way and to sway that, yet in every attitude having the grace of statuary and the accuracy of arithmetic. The church in its early days went fierce and fast with any warhorse; yet it is utterly unhistoric to say that she merely went mad along one idea, like a vulgar fanaticism. She swerved to left and right, so exactly as to avoid enormous obstacles. She left on one hand the huge bulk of Arianism, buttressed by all the worldly powers to make Christianity too worldly. The next instant she was swerving to avoid an orientalism, which would have made it too unworldly. The orthodox church never took the tame course or accepted the conventions; the orthodox church was never respectable. It would have been easier to have accepted the earthly power of the Arians. It would have been easy, in the Calvinistic seventeenth century, to fall into the bottomless pit of predestination. It is easy to be a madman: it is easy to be a heretic. It is always easy to let the age have its head; the difficult thing is to keep one’s own…It is always simple to fall; there are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one stands. To have fallen into any one of the fads from Gnosticism to Christian Science would indeed have been obvious and tame. But to have avoided them all has been one whirling adventure; and in my vision the heavenly chariot flies thundering through the ages, the dull heresies sprawling and prostrate, the wild truth reeling but erect. (Chesterton, 145-150)

You can read Orthodoxy online, for free, at the Christian Classics Ethereal Libary.

Chesterton, G.K. Orthodoxy. Colorado Springs, CO: WaterBrook Press. 1994.

The following quote is from page 9 of Their Blood Cries Out: The Worldwide Tragedy of Modern Christians Who are Dying for Their Faith. It’s an excellent book on the Persecuted Church worldwide.

One thing we can say is that the assault on Christians is a fundamental part of the assault on human freedom itself. Many Christians are leading democracy and human-rights activists. They are also in the forefront of economic development. But perhaps more important than what they do is who they are. While usually loyal citizens, they embody an attachment to “another King,” a loyalty to a standard of spiritual allegiance apart from the political order. This fact itself denies that the state is the all encompassing or ultimate arbiter of human life. Regardless of how the relation between God and Caesar has been expressed, it now at least means that, contra to Romans and modern totalitarians, Caesar is not God. This confession, however mute, sticks in the craw of every authoritarian regime and draws their angry and bloody response.

They quote above really drove home to me how significant it is to believe in another King. That belief in another King also implies there are laws apart from what a ruler or governing body say they are. There is an absolute truth other than what the state says is true.

Let me know if you have any thoughts or feedback.

How does one build community within a church body? How do we learn to trust one another? How can we get beyond the surface?

Some of the ways our church seeks to build community is through small groups, dinner clubs, a luncheon between services once-a-month, and a break between services. Recently, we’ve been serving outside our church more often, which part of the goal to build our internal community by serving others.

Serving others outside our church, together, can be fun sometimes, but it can also be challenging, uncomfortable, eye-opening, and heart-breaking. While we do need places that are safe, we also need places that take us out of our comfort zone. Some of the most meaningful friendships in my life were developed when we served together in situations where we had to lean on each other -and- God because we needed to. So often, it is easy to stay a safe distance from others, even those in our church. Yet, moments of conflict and uncomfortable situations present an opportunity for more depth and trust.

Serving others also makes us think of others, and reminds us that we can benefit others. While that sounds simple enough, I’ve had plenty of times of discouragement in my life, and in those times, it’s tempting to be self-absorbed and forget what I can contribute to the lives of others.

So, with these things in mind, we have:
Put together roadtrips to hand out homeless gear to Missouri and Denver
Partnered with a few local service agencies
Volunteered together for Make A Difference Day
Joined a local nonprofit volunteer coordinator group
A planned service project over spring break through Denver Urban Ministries
The beginnings of a service group where we get together and volunteer most weeks

I’ll elaborate more on some of these in future posts, and will include what we’ve learned. If you have any suggestions to offer or questions, please join the discussion.

Palmer suggests that the church should become a kind of “halfway house between the comforts of private life and the challenges of diversity” (Palmer, 1981:28) The idea of intentional “halfway houses” where both the marginalized and church members come together as strangers has great potential for reuniting church and mission and for encouraging mutual transformation. Implicit in the idea of a halfway house is that the parties meet with the understanding that the place belongs to neither. The halfway house by its name is neither here nor there. God is the host.

…As people come together in hospitality, all parties must enter as learners (Van Engen, 1994:123-124). The risk for people who leave one community to go into another is that they will arrive as adults and not as children. They will come to offer service. They already know what to do. I really wonder whether anyone can commit themselves in a community if they do not first live a period of childhood there (Vanier, 1979:28).

The above is quoted from a chapter written by Kathryn Mowry in God So Loves the City. In context, it’s talking about what it means to welcome the stranger into our midst.

Can church on a Sunday morning be a neutral place? Should it be? I could argue that making a Sunday service too seeker sensitive can also make it less compelling. Worshipping God in community can affect both heart and mind. Hearing the good news can breath life into an empty soul. The author doesn’t appear to be talking about the music and sermon though, but about the body of Christ, and how we welcome people as a community. Therein lies the challenge. Can we be who we are, and also welcome strangers as they are?

Our church meets on Sunday mornings in a non-profit coffee house. The other 6 days of the week it’s open to the public. It’s a third place outside work and home where people gather, all sorts of people. While our staff and most of our volunteers are Christian, we are in many respects neutral. Many know we are church-affiliated, and we don’t hide that. For some, we are too Christian. For others, we are not overtly Christian enough. Still, we meet many strangers, and at times, we look around in surprise at the diversity of people sipping coffee in our community living room.

Mowry’s words remind me that God is the host, and while I have lived a period of childhood there, I wonder if it has become too familiar, and if I need to become a learner once again.

Palmer, Parker. The Company of Strangers: Christians & the Renewal of America’s Public Life. New York: Crossroad. 1981.
Vanier, Jean. Community and Growth. New York: Paulist Press, 1979.
Van Engen, Charles and Jude Tiersma eds. God So Loves the City. Monrovia, CA: MARC, 1994.