The Man Who Was Thursday and the Problem of Evil

The problem of evil presents a greater apologetic challenge to the Christian faith than any other. It is a hard thing to wrap your head around. How is it that God, who is by nature, all-good, all-powerful and all-knowing, could allow evil to exist in the world? It is pretty easy to affirm any two of those three characteristics at the same time and understand how evil exists.

Consider if God was only morally perfect and all-powerful, but He was not all-knowing. In that situation, evil could clearly exist, and perhaps God simply was not aware of it. That dodges the problem of evil.

If God was morally perfect and all-knowing but not omnipotent, He may know about evil and want to stop it, but it may be too strong. Again, that avoids the problem.

If God is all-knowing and omnipotent but not all-good, then there is no reason to expect that you might want to eliminate all evil. Without moral perfection, there would certainly be no expectation that he would eliminate evil and therefore no problem of evil.

The Christian faith cannot accept only two of those three characteristics though. Our God is indeed morally perfect, all-knowing and all-powerful. Therefore, we have to deal with the problem of evil. Other religions might not have to. When you think about the ancient Greeks, their pantheon of gods didn’t have any of these characteristics. Their gods did morally questionable things all the time, none of them were omnipotent as there always at war with each other and it was possible to deceive them implying they were not omniscient. Of course there is no problem of evil when you cannot expect your deities to do anything about evil.

The Christian faith must answer this question, and G.K. Chesterton attempted to do so at the end of The Man Who Was Thursday. If you haven’t read the book, here is a very brief summary that will contain spoilers. The protagonist, Syme, is an undercover detective who is assigned to infiltrate an anarchist conspiracy. He joins the group by unseating a fellow contender named Gregory and consequently embarks on a mission to prevent an assassination. Needless to say, he encounters multiple obstacles on this journey, and at the end of the story, it turns out that Sunday, the chief anarchist, is also the one who had originally assigned Syme to join the anarchists in the first place in order to take it down. I understand from people who know a lot more about Chesterton than I do that there is a great deal of discussion as to what Sunday really represents, but Syme asked him questions at the end of the book that sound an awful lot like Job speaking to God about why he had to go through so many difficult times. Sunday’s answer applies to the real world problem of evil as well.

The Argument 

Gregory begins the final dialogue by accusing Syme and Sunday of being too happy. “The unpardonable sin of the supreme power is that it is supreme. I do not curse you for being cruel. I do not curse you (though I might) for being kind. I curse you for being safe! You sit in your chairs of stone, and have never come down from them. You are the seven angels of heaven, and you have had no troubles. Oh, I could forgive you everything, you that rule mankind, if I could feel for once that you had suffered for one hour a real agony such as I—“[1]

This sounds very much like Satan’s accusation of Job. Of course it was easy for Job to be faithful because God had blessed him with family, wealth and general safety. We hear this accusation today as well. I have had people tell me that essentially they have personal disputes with God. They allege that God will a lot to answer for if He is real because of all the difficult situations they had to go through. That spirit of rebellion is embedded in this attack from Gregory.

The Third-Party Defense 

Syme immediately objects to this characterization and launches into a theodicy of his own. “Why does a dandelion have to fight the whole universe? For the same reason that I had to be alone in the dreadful Council of the Days. So that each thing that obeys law may have the glory and isolation of the anarchist. So that each man fighting for order may be as brave and good a man as the dynamiter. So that the real lie of Satan may be flung back in the face of this blasphemer, so that by tears and torture we may earn the right to say to this man, ‘You lie! No agonies can be too great to buy the right to say to this accuser, ‘We also have suffered.’”[2]

He hypothesizes that perhaps the reason for so much evil is that those who ultimately stand for what is right and need to be able to say that they did not receive any preferential treatment. Gregory is saying that Syme had an easy life, and he knows that that is untrue. This entire story documents the trials and tribulations Syme had to persevere through. Therefore, he supposes that perhaps the entire reason that he had to go through all of this suffering was so that he could stand up to the charge of Gregory. Gregory would not be the only one to lay claim to the virtues of bravery and courage because he was the anarchist. It would be problematic if the rebel was the only one who could espouse good virtues; those who embrace order necessarily needed to be able to lay claim to the same virtues.

At this point, everyone understands that Sunday was the architect behind everything that took place. As a result, all of the struggles that Syme had to handle were a direct consequence of the situation that Sunday had put him in. In terms of theodicy, this is quite a bit like the situation that some would say God is in. How is it the case that God could put people in situations that cause them so much pain? Syme’s response is quite similar to what has been referred to as a soul-making theodicy.

In other words, God allows trials to come into our lives because they help us develop into better people. There are virtues that can only be cultivated sometimes by experiencing difficulty. Consider the value of courage. It has no value if it is never tested in a situation where one would need it. We don’t know we have it until we actually need it. Consider the value of sympathy. We could never develop our sympathy if they were never other people that we had to be sympathetic towards, and the only reason they need sympathy is if there is some difficulty they are experiencing.

The Answer 

This idea of a soul-making theodicy is not Sunday’s response to the accusation. In fact, he never responds to Gregory’s charge whatsoever. His only response comes to a direct question from Syme when he is asked if he has ever suffered.

“As he gazed, the great face grew to an awful size, grew larger than the colossal mask of Memnon, which had made him scream as a child. It grew larger and larger, filling the whole sky; then everything went black. Only in the blackness before it entirely destroyed his brain he seemed to hear a distant voice saying a commonplace text that he had heard somewhere, ‘Can ye drink of the cup that I drink of?’”[3]

This reference directly ties to the narrative dictated in Mark 10:37-40 (NIV).

“They replied, ‘Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory.’ ‘You don’t know what you are asking,’ Jesus said. ‘Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?’ ‘We can,’ they answered. Jesus said to them, ‘You will drink the cup I drink and be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with, but to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared.’”

The implication is obvious. Sunday does understand suffering, and anyone who is going to follow him had to be prepared to do the same. Much in the way that Jesus Christ understood human suffering, Sunday understood the suffering of Syme.

This doesn’t seem to be a straightforward affirmation of a soul-making theodicy though. Otherwise, he could have simply agreed that all of the suffering was to help Syme develop certain character traits. He only answers by asking a question. He asks if Syme can drink of the same cup that he did. That certainly points to the fact that anything that Syme had experienced up until that point was insufficient. He may have gone through suffering, but Sunday essentially challenges him by asking if he was prepared to do what Sunday himself had already done.

Is the Problem a Problem?

In this response lies the answer to the question of evil in the world. Has anyone ever experienced suffering in the way that Jesus Christ did on the cross? Has anyone had that experience of taking on all the sin of the world? The answer to those questions has to be negative. None of us have ever had the experience of being the morally perfect victim punished for a crime that we didn’t commit.

Therefore, we undoubtedly can drink our own cup that very well can be full of suffering, but our cup pales in comparison to the one that Jesus Himself handled for you and for me. What right do we have to than complain about anything? We can say that God doesn’t understand, but in reality, it is the other way around. Our human minds cannot comprehend the degree to which Jesus Christ suffered on the cross for each one of us. We cannot comprehend what it must have felt like to have the weight of all of the sin of all of humanity of all time on our shoulders.

Soul-making therefore doesn’t seem to be the chief way that Chesterton attempts to explain the problem of evil. If it was, then it seems like Sunday would have simply agreed with Syme and moved on. However, that was not how the answered the question. Instead, he treated him very much like God treated Job. Until you are in the position of God Himself, your perspective on suffering is insufficient. God never really told Job why everything was happening to him in the way that it did, but He practically reminded him that He was God and that should be enough.

The problem of evil is undoubtedly a problem for the Christian, but it is only a problem for those who are determined to understand every reason. Chesterton does not seem to be as concerned with providing some type of absolute reason. He doesn’t ultimately assume that God must be allowing things to happen for the development of one’s soul. He doesn’t want to put God in the box which is a theme that is prominent throughout all of Chesterton’s written work. He preferred to be in wonder of how God worked.

Interestingly, this is not the product of pure anti-intellectualism or something much more nefarious like that. Rather, Chesterton understood his place in the universe, and even when we think we understand God perfectly, we very well might not. Our conceptions can only put God in the box, so we do our best to understand all that we can, and from what I understand, Chesterton defends a variation of the free will defense in other works. However, that being said, humility is a large part of understanding the problem of evil. We try to understand why God might allow certain things to happen, and there’s nothing wrong with that. However, Chesterton’s corrective through The Man Who Was Thursday reminds us to focus on what is truly important. Our suffering pales in comparison to what God Himself willingly entered into, and that ought to tell us something about the problem of evil. God is with us even in the dark times and therefore the problem of evil fails based on the character of God.

[1] G.K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare (London: Penguin Books Ltd, 2011), 156, Kindle Edition.

[2] Ibid., 157.

[3] Ibid., 157-158.

Embracing Anarchy Is Easier Said Than Done

Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think that any society has ever existed in a state of pure anarchy. At least when I think about anarchy, I think about the absence of government. When I think about government, I think about an entity that organizes a group of people. When I think about a group of people, I can’t think of a group that has ever existed without some form of structure in place. Therefore, they have a government, however rudimentary, and they are not an anarchy.

Nevertheless, anarchy has been on my mind as of late because I just finished reading The Man Who Was Thursday by the one and only G.K. Chesterton. Quite early in the story, we are met with an undercover meeting of anarchists infiltrated by Syme, a detective and our protagonist. In order to foil an assassination plot the group was planning, Syme decides to try to find his way into the inner circle of the organization at large by becoming the leader in this local chapter.

In his appeal to the group, he presents himself as the true anarchist who is intellectually consistent unlike his chief opponent, Gregory. These are not, of course, his own personal positions, but he is trying to win the approval of this group to be elected into the inner circle, so he takes on this extreme position to attempt to win a leadership position. “Comrade Gregory has told us, in only too apologetic a tone, that we are not the enemies of society. But I say that we are the enemies of society, and so much the worse for society. We are the enemies of society, for society is the enemy of humanity, its oldest and its most pitiless enemy (hear, hear).”[1]

The language is a bit stronger than what I expressed in the first paragraph, but an anarchist has to be truly an enemy of society. After all, once there is a society, there is a structure that develops, and a structure means there is a government of some form. Therefore, the only way to avoid government altogether is to have no society.

However, Syme goes even further than just the rejection of society. Even the most basic human conventions have to go if one is to be a true anarchist. “I say that Comrade Gregory is unfit to be Thursday for all his amiable qualities. He is unfit to be Thursday because of his amiable qualities.”[2]

Just as a quick side note in case you have not read this book, Thursday is the title given to essentially the head of their local chapter who reports to a national committee that naturally has seven members with similar names. Yes, there is a certain irony to the fact that a group of anarchists essentially establishes in their own social structure with different levels of power and therefore government.

The Implications of Anarchy

Getting back to anarchy though, in order to actually follow this philosophy to its logical conclusion, one must reject any and all social conventions. Again, even the idea of being amiable necessitates a social convention, and that social convention imposes a structure on the individual which is expressly contrary to the principles of anarchy. Even something as simple as a personality trait that does not seek to actively destroy the structures that are in place is actually reinforcing them. Syme challenges this group of anarchists to actually live up to their name and actually live in active rebellion to everything.

Although we do not live in an age of complete anarchy, this attitude of rebelling against any and all conventions is evident, especially in our approach to the humanities. We’re at a point right now it really does not matter all that much whether or not there is anything we can learn from Western civilization. Rather, because it smacks of any type of traditional, Judeo-Christian understanding, it must be torn down. It could even be something that most people would say is good like amiability, but because it is part of “the system,” we have to wreck it anyway. This anarchistic streak running through our culture cannot accept anything that remains because, in a rare move of intellectual consistency, they have to actively rebel against everything.

Of course, the ridiculous degree of irony is that these people really do not actually rebel against everything. There was an article in the Washington Post in January about anarchy. It was written by Jacqueline Jones and was titled, “‘Anarchist’ is often hurled as a slur. But can anarchists teach us something about democracy?” In this article, she traces the history of anarchism as a movement in America and contrasts it to what we understand as anarchism in 2018. However, I mention this article because I want to highlight this historical differentiation between different groups of anarchists.

“In Lucy Parsons’s time, anarchists divided themselves into three ever-squabbling groups. She represented those who held that trade unions were the building blocks of the good society — small groups of men and women who would cooperate (and not compete) with each other for the good of the whole. Other self-proclaimed anarchists were radical libertarians, contemptuous of all kinds of associations, even those that were voluntary. And a third group of anarchists favored a strong workers’ state, the kind that yielded totalitarian regimes such as the Soviet Union.”

Classifying Syme's Argument 

We can kind of see this division in Chesterton’s work as well, but only the second type can be seen as what I would call true anarchists. This is the type that Syme seems to be appealing to. He makes the radical claim that everything must be rejected. This division of anarchists in America wanted to even dissolve voluntary associations, so perhaps they went one step further than Syme because he was appealing to be a leader in a voluntary organization of like-minded political activists. Clearly he did not extend his anarchy to the extent that Jones describes some went to, but he is much more like that than the other two groups. There is never any kind of indication that Syme is a supporter or detractor of labor unions or a workers’ state, so even if it is not a perfect fit, the second group seems to be the most natural for his ideology anyway in this historical moment.

The question that we have to ask is whether or not this is the kind of world we want to live in, and I think that for most of us, the most natural answer would be negative. While there is obviously quite a bit of appeal to the absolute freedom of anarchy, it is important to remember that, in its most pure form, anarchy is the rejection of convention. In order to truly embrace this worldview, you cannot pick and choose the virtues that you want to keep. The other two groups mentioned by Jones were certainly inconsistent. They didn’t like the idea that the government had power for example, but they were more than happy to transition that power over to the labor unions or some conglomeration of the members of the proletariat. In a way, these types of anarchists would be more accurately described as Marxists. They supported the overthrow of the government, but they had another political vision that they were ready to put into action immediately. They were not so much anarchists in the pure sense as they were opponents of the status quo. They wanted to rebel against what was in place, but the rebellion was not grounded in the ultimate rejection of all authority. They just wanted different authority in place.

As a result, I would contend that many people who classify themselves as anarchists even in 2018 are unwilling to commit to the ideological consistency required by true anarchy. You may hate the government of the United States, but you probably have a vision that you would prefer. You are not just rejecting convention, but you are rejecting convention with the idea that the conventions should be replaced by something better. Or, you are rejecting some conventions, but there are other ones that you want to keep in place because they are convenient or preferable.

No True Anarchists 

That returns to my earlier statement that no one is actually a true anarchist, and I believe that because it seems to be the case that, as humans, we cannot get away from certain conventions no matter how hard we try. There seems to be something natural about different behaviors, and we can see that across time and culture. For example, essentially every great civilization in the history of the world embraced a prohibition on murder. A true anarchist ought to say that this is a societal convention and therefore should be rejected.

Across time and culture, there has been a commitment to private property. People have this idea that certain things belong to them, and they get upset when those things are taken away without compensation or some type of legitimate rationale. Again, a true anarchist ought to say that this idea of any type of ownership is a convention that ought to be done away with (some of them do actually embrace this I believe).

Or we can take the concept of community. There is a reason that humanity has traditionally organized itself into groups. We build towns and cities for a variety of reasons, but a major reason for their existence is this desire to be with other people. We are pro-social beings. The anarchist must reject the societal convention that it is a good thing to be social.

With all of these ideas, it is important to remember that the anarchist is not automatically affirming the opposite to that which they reject. After all, if the anarchist embraced being antisocial as a new convention, they have undermined the goal of rejecting convention. The true anarchist has to consistently reject everything and ultimately affirm nothing beyond the one solitary truth that every truth must be rejected.

This is the chief reason why no one can remain a true anarchist. It is very much like the reason that no one can remain a true subjectivist. The world that develops when we cannot affirm anything as true is not a world that anyone wants to live in. Anarchists cannot provide a consistent rationale for why the convention of not murdering should not be rejected. They have to reject that convention by virtue of being an anarchist, and any type of moral argument that they would attempt to make to justify not murdering someone else would fall flat because there is no foundation to build upon. If they affirm that one should not murder, they have therefore created a convention which, because of their own worldview, they have to automatically reject.

I know that this is not a rock-solid case against anarchism. I am making an argument to our shared humanity. As we discuss what type of world we ultimately want to live in, there are certain things that it seems natural to want to be a part of it. That collection of truths probably comes from our own experience partially. After observing communism as it was practiced in the Soviet Union and is currently practiced in China, if I was arguing for policies that would impact the country I live in, based on the evidence I have seen and the experience the world has with governments that embrace these concepts, I would reject communism. We certainly know what we like by seeing what works or what doesn’t work in the world.

However, as a Christian, there is a deeper level of significance to our humanity. We believe that we are designed in the image of God and therefore, although we are in active rebellion due to our sin nature, when we recognize that which is good, we are recognizing something that is objectively good. Therefore, when thinking about the kind of world that we want, there are some things that seem to be consistent with my humanity like charity, love and mercy that ought to be a part of that world as well. Yes, I have experienced them, but as a Christian, their fundamental value goes beyond that type of utilitarian conception.

It is not just what works, but it is a discussion of what has actually been embedded in the heart of humanity. It is our desire for these goods even if we don’t necessarily know why or where they come from that has established the convention that Lewis calls the Tao in The Abolition of Man. There are these conventions that humanity gravitates towards even if they do not acknowledge the God who put that attraction there. It fundamentally goes against our human nature to fully embrace true anarchism, and that is why no one is ever going to entirely embrace this worldview and radically oppose all convention. At most, they will argue for the replacement of one convention with another, but that is not actually anarchism. Syme and some groups of anarchists in American history have come close to ideological purity, but Chesterton’s insights and historical evidence shows the ultimate shortcomings.

[1] G.K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare (London: Penguin Books Ltd, 2011), 24, Kindle Edition.

[2] Ibid., 25.

Why Progressivism Fails

I live in Vermont, and if there is one word that you could use to describe a vast majority of our political environment, it would be progressive. Spurred on by the incredible success of our Senator Bernie Sanders in his 2016 Presidential campaign, I have noticed that this adjective has become even more prominent in our local politics than it was before, or maybe I am just noticing it more than I ever did before.

Whichever is actually the case, I started thinking about this idea of progress and what truly makes one progressive. G.K. Chesterton had a very specific understanding of the idea of progress in Orthodoxy that I think most people would agree with on a fundamental level. “Progress should mean that we are always walking towards the New Jerusalem.”[1] Of course, many of us may disagree on what the New Jerusalem actually looks like, but when we think about the idea of progress in itself, there is the inherent idea that we are moving towards something desirable. When you read the platform of the progressive party in my state, it begins by saying, “The Vermont Progressive Party offers this platform to preserve and sustain democracy, guarantee inalienable rights, and promote the general welfare of the citizens of the State of Vermont.”

Common Ground

This statement implies a few things. First, we are not to this ideal place yet. After all, why would such a party exist if we had already arrived at the destination? They understand that there is still work to be done. However, the second thing we have to notice is that there is a target this political party is aiming towards. In this first sentence, they have three main areas that they want to focus on. There is a standard that would constitute what democracy actually is, and that is what they are trying to preserve and sustain for example. Finally, the third thing we have to notice is that the standard is indeed a good thing to achieve. The Vermont Progressive Party is obviously pushing for ideas that they believe are good. That is why they made them their target.

You can apply this concept to anything that claims to be progressive, and I think you are going to find these common threads that fit perfectly with Chesterton’s definition. We have a starting point that is not ideal, we have a destination we want to get to, and that destination is a good thing.

The Debate

The contention naturally comes down to whose vision of the New Jerusalem is the one that is worth pursuing. Chesterton also pointed out something very important to remember about this idea of being progressive. “Progress is a metaphor from merely walking along a road— very likely the wrong road.”[2] You can make progress down any road, but no one is saying that it is the right direction. I can make progress towards Florida by jumping on I-95 South, but if I am actually supposed to get to Montréal, that progress is in the wrong direction even if it does meet all of the criteria for progress. I am moving in a direction toward a target, and I believe it is good, but it might not be the right target if that isn’t where I am supposed to end up.

The problem in that situation is that I have changed the target. I wanted to go to Florida, so I moved on a road to go in that direction. However, it was not the right target. In the words of Chesterton, “Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to suit the vision. Progress does mean (just now) that we are always changing the vision.”[3] We cannot change the vision to what we want, or we are going to miss out on what is actually good. We will see what is good in our own eyes, but it may not be what is objectively and ultimately good and true.

Therefore, one always has to ask the relevant questions about any movement that brands itself as progressive: you are making progress, but are you making progress in the right direction, and how do you know that you are? What standards are you measuring yourself against that demonstrates that you are making progress on the right road?

Chesterton preferred the term "reform" to the term "progress" because it provides a very important differentiation. “But reform is a metaphor for reasonable and determined men: it means that we see a certain thing out of shape and we mean to put it into shape. And we know what shape.”[4] This feels a lot like the above definition for progress. We know that the situation we’re in is not ideal, and we have a target that we believe is good. However, we know what shape we want to put it into. We have an objective vision of what is good. Then, we can clearly measure whether or not any progress we are making is in the right direction. That is the process of reform. It is progress with an objective purpose.

That seems to be the critical flaw in a variety of progressive movements. Defining that objective purpose is very difficult. Even the statement above from my own state’s political party sounds objective in theory, but finding that underlying purpose as to why these things are fundamentally good or right is hard. Ideas fall in and out of fashion so quickly, that there is often times not any opportunity for these thoughts to take root. As Chesterton recognized, “As long as the vision of heaven is always changing, the vision of earth will be exactly the same. No ideal will remain long enough to be realized, or even partly realized. The modern young man will never change his environment; for he will always change his mind.”[5]

If the vision keeps changing, it is hard to move towards that objective reality. I think that many of the progressives I know would vigorously disagree with me here and claim their ideological purity for the past fifty years, but in my experience, very few political parties are ideologically where they were even just five years ago. After all, consider the impact that Senator Sanders had on the Democratic Party platform in 2016. According to Washington Post writer James Downie, “Overall, this would be the most progressive Democratic platform in history.” In an introduction to a series of essays on progressivism, the Center for American Progress speaks about the myriad of causes that have been embraced by progressives through history. “Progressivism was built on a vibrant grassroots foundation, from the Social Gospel and labor movements to women’s suffrage and civil rights to environmentalism, antiwar activism, and gay rights.”

I come back to the same question about the progressive movement in general. They continually are changing the direction, so how are they making progress toward any type of vision of their own New Jerusalem, whatever that may look like? Being a progressive prior to 2008 would have looked a lot different than what progressive looks like today. Going way back to 1920 and many of the Social Gospel activists, they would have never imagined what the progressive movement would look like nearly 100 years later. Because it is a human-defined measure of what progress really is, it is no surprise that we see it move further left, further right, up or down. I would be willing to bet that even though the article I referenced above from the Center for American Progress tries to bring together the unifying themes of the progressive movement over time, there would be significant differences. That’s natural, and I understand why that happens, but it is a clear illustration of Chesterton’s point. Without a point that is fixed, progress is extraordinarily hard to measure. Without that objective reality, how do we know that we are headed down the right road? Or what if everything changes polarity and being progressive meant moving one direction, but ten years later, being progressive meant walking back all of that initial progress?

But Couldn't Morality Evolve?

Chesterton realized that some would respond to this charge by saying that morality is simply evolutionary. We get better at being good as time marches forward. We are increasingly moral in 2018, and that is why we reject things that perhaps our ancestors were okay with hundreds of years ago. We become more enlightened, and the world becomes a better place. That is perhaps why progressives 100 years ago might be different than progressives today. The spirit is the same, but the target is different because we have a better understanding of morality today than we did back then.

Unfortunately, this fails to meet the first test of a permanent standard. “A splendid and insane Russian sect ran about taking all the cattle out of all the carts. How can I pluck up courage to take the horse out of my hansom-cab, when I do not know whether my evolutionary watch is only a little fast or the cabman’s a little slow?”[6] If morality is evolutionary, then it is unreasonable for me to expect everyone to move at the same speed. Something that may have been right for me centuries ago is not right anymore, but that brings us back to the question of what type of progress are ultimately making? We are moving in a direction, but without some type of transcendent standard we are moving towards that goes beyond our man-made ideas, the pendulum of progress may undo all the work people have done for generations before for good or evil.

The Christian Reformer 

Chesterton would suggest, and I would agree with him, that any ideology, political or otherwise, that fails to reckon with this necessity of an objective standard for morality is bound to fail. In that way, the Christian is both the ultimate progressive, but more than that, the Christian is the ultimate reformer. Yes, we intend to make progress. We intend to make the world a better place. Where there is evil, we seek to demolish that stronghold. We attempt to come alongside those who are in difficult situations like the orphan and the widow to provide assistance. We advocate for life from conception to the grave.

We do all of this because the standard has not changed. Yes, Christians have had many shortcomings over the past few millennia. There are blemishes and wounds that we have caused because we are individuals with free will who use that free will wrongly. I don’t deny that.

However, God’s standard has not changed, so we attempt to reform our world. We know the shape the world ought to be, and we do our best to help it conform to that shape. The Christian has not only the desire to see progress but the bearing to know which direction to move in. This is something that any secular organization, I would certainly not limit this to progressive political parties, is going to struggle with. They are not going to be able to provide the fixed, objective point that will help them determine when progress is actually progress toward their specific New Jerusalem and not just movement for the sake of movement in any direction the wind blows. Chesterton realized, “So it does not matter (comparatively speaking) how often humanity fails to imitate its ideal; for then all its old failures are fruitful. But it does frightfully matter how often humanity changes its ideal; for then all its old failures are fruitless.”[7]

[1] G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2009), 159, Kindle Edition.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid., 162.

[6] Ibid., 164.

[7] Ibid., 163.

Being on the Wrong Side of History Is Irrelevant

If there is one thing you don’t want to do in 2018, it is end up on the wrong side of history. Although the term itself seems to be used rather loosely, the general idea is that there are some things that are right while others are wrong, and you better be sure that you affirm what you should affirm and shun what you ought to shun. However, its usage remains ambiguous and its application can either be based on wrong opinions or wrong facts.

For example, in 2014, President Obama indicated that Russia was going to be on the wrong side of history for invading Crimea according to Ben Yagoda of Slate. Matthew Avery Sutton wrote in The Guardian that because of the approach he took to discussing racial issues, Billy Graham was on the wrong side of history. In each of these two stories, the commentators are explaining why Russia or Billy Graham did things that will be evaluated as wrong when historians look back from the future. The judgments that will be made regarding these situations will show them as wanting. They may cite examples and facts to explain why their opinion on the legacy of these people turned out a certain way, but there are legitimately two sides to these types of debates.

In 2015, Linton Weeks posted a list on NPR entitled, “5 Statements On The Wrong Side Of History.” This list is slightly different because it does not make judgments about things that will be perceived as wrong in the future. It speaks about things that are factually wrong and not open for debate. For example, one statement on the wrong side of history was given by the owner of the Green River Republican, Otis White, in 1946. He said, “Man is not going to fly to the moon or invade any other planets.” There’s no interpretation as to whether or not Mr. White is on the right side of history or the wrong side of history. His prediction about the future was factually wrong.

Therefore, when we talk about being on the wrong side of history, we have to understand what we are actually talking about. Are we talking about someone who we judge to have taken the wrong position in hindsight, or are we talking about someone who made a prediction that turned out to be wrong in the future?

Let’s take the example of Russia. In 2014, President Obama made the judgment that the decision Russia made was going to turn out to be on the wrong side of history. The Russian officials who made that decision clearly made the judgment that they believed they were going to on the right side of history and made the right decision. There is clearly a moral judgment that is being made in this scenario. It is right or wrong to invade Crimea, and President Obama was claiming that in the future, the judgment of history would not be kind to the Russians.

In the case of Mr. White and interplanetary travel, there were clearly people at his time who would have presented the opposite case and believed that going to the moon was a real possibility. They obviously turned out to be right, but it is not a moral question. There is no ethical judgment made on the character of Mr. White. He may have been wrong, but we could never say that he was unethical or immoral. He was factually wrong. It is fundamentally different than the first question.

For our discussion today, we are going to be focusing on the first scenario where something is judge to be morally or ethically wrong in hindsight. It seems that speaking about being on the wrong side of history typically refers to this first case. Being factually wrong is of course unfortunate, but it is not a question of moral judgment. Given the judgmental tone that most people utilize when they speak about someone being on the wrong side of history, discussing the idea of moral judgment seems to be the more relevant issue of the day.

Will the Future Be Better Than the Past?

The fundamental problem with this concept of being on the wrong side of history is that it makes the assumption that in the future, moral judgment will be purer than it is right now. Those historians in the future who are looking back on us right now will come to the determination through their application of their own superior moral code that we were wrong while other people were right. This progressive view of the evolution of morality was strongly criticized by G.K. Chesterton in Orthodoxy.

Chesterton wrote, “If the standard changes, how can there be improvement, which implies a standard?”[1] This may seem to be extraordinarily basic. It is obviously difficult to evaluate how far you have progressed if there is no standard that you are progressing towards. If I know it is 100 miles until I get to my hotel for the night, the only way I’m going to be able to tell how far I have gone is by realizing how far I have left to go. I am measuring my progress against the 100 miles I have to go until I get to my hotel.

In the same way, morality is only relevant if there is a standard. If it is right to be kind to my neighbor, then if I am kind to my neighbor six out of seven mornings in this week, I can celebrate how much kinder I was than last week when I only said hello three mornings. The standard is to always be kind, and I can tell how well I conform to that standard.

If there was no standard, however, that I should be kind, I would have no idea if I am improving my behavior. Without the standard, or if the standard changed, I would have no idea if I was doing better and making progress or if I was going in the absolute wrong direction.

Being on the wrong side of history then seems to imply that those in the future are going to judge that certain perspectives were right while other perspectives were wrong with an evolved code. President Obama is making the assumption that in the future, the historians will (shockingly) come to the consensus that his perspective was right while the Russians were wrong. I happen to agree with the President that the Russians were wrong, but it really does not matter all that much to me whether or not they are on the wrong side of history. They are on the wrong side of right now, and the wrong side of right now is the same as it was in the past and the same as it will be in the future. This phrase implies an evolution of morality that there is a perpetual enlightenment and a perpetual increase in moral understanding.

The Necessity of Objective Truth

Chesterton additionally spoke about essentially calling a spade a spade in terms of moral teaching, and I think this straightforwardness is desperately lacking in our world today. “Every day one comes across somebody who says that of course his view may not be the right one. Of course his view must be the right one, or it is not his view. We are on the road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table.”[2]

We embrace particular views because we find them to be right. Unfortunately, we are quick to affirm that our perspective may be wrong, and we don’t have the intestinal fortitude to stick with things that we know are true. Of course, I’m not talking about being absolutely closed off to anything new. However, when you have found truth, and there is no doubt in your mind that it is indeed actual truth like the multiplication tables, Chesterton is advising that you do not have to be modest anymore. You can affirm truth, and you can claim that you have found truth. This claim should be done carefully, thoughtfully and supported by the testimony of reason and reality, but in terms of our individual views, it is important to remember that we can find truth.

This is important to remember because, if we are going to say someone is going to be on the wrong side of history, we need that truth and that standard to exist. Otherwise, how can we possibly determine which side of history is right and right side is wrong? As Chesterton quipped, “The theory of a complete change of standards in human history does not merely deprive us of the pleasure of honouring our fathers; it deprives us even of the more modern and aristocratic pleasure of despising them.”[3] The idea of progress is fine, but if our moral judgment is ultimately dependent on the fact that they are going to be shown to be on the wrong side of history in the future, the question is why are they not on the wrong side of right now?

Of course, there is some kind of poetic aesthetic to utilizing a phrase claiming that someone will be on the wrong side of history, but it ultimately is a meaningless phrase. It is empty and devoid of meaning because it is ultimately redundant. Chesterton clearly illustrates that there must be some type of standard, and that standard is not going to change. Perhaps we may become more aware of the standard and realize our own shortcomings. We might become more aligned with that which is right. I think about the blemish of racism on our society. I will not say that America is perfect by any means, but it is hard to deny that we have improved since the time of the Civil War. We are not where we ought to be, but I would contend that American society is better at loving our neighbor then we were at that time when we justified enslaving our neighbor. The rightness of loving our neighbor has always been the same since the beginning of time, and we have progressed towards practicing that more successfully despite our shortcomings which remain tragically evident.

The Modern Dilemma

This is, of course, the tension of 21st-century America because we want to say that we have abandoned the standards. We want to say that we have thrown off the shackles of objective morality, and the evidence of our moral progress is the fact that we have made progress in areas of race relations for example. The standards are different today, so those people in the past were on the wrong side of history, and with our modern understanding and our rebellion against the standards those people held back then, we are much better than they were.

To this modern revolutionary, Chesterton would contend, “Therefore the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything.”[4] We say that racism is wrong, but we reject the idea that there is anything like objective truth. We claim a contradiction because we want to take credit for the progress we’ve made. They thought it was right, but now they are on the wrong side of history, and we know better because we moderns have a better sense of morality. Rather than comparing how well we conform to the standard of actual right and wrong, we create the standard of how well we conform to the image that we want to say we conform to.

Ultimately, in order to say that someone is on the wrong side of history, this modern, revolutionary understanding must be true. We need to embrace subjective morality, and we need to believe that through the evolution of morality itself, even though things might have been believed to be right in the past, they are not right anymore.

It requires the absolute rejection of any type of objective standard because if there is such a thing as objective truth, then being on the wrong side of history is irrelevant. Historical judgment does not matter. You are on the wrong side of right and wrong from the beginning to the end regardless of what the historians say in 50 years. There is not a separate set of criteria for being right in the past but wrong now. Even if we align with the objective standard more genuinely than we did in our history, this is not because our moral sense has evolved. We recognize human fallenness, and we recognize that we do not live the way we ought to all the time. Our mission is to continue to become conformed to the image of Jesus Christ, and in doing so, we line up with that standard that is the same forever, the Alpha and the Omega.

[1] G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2009), 57, Kindle Edition.

[2] Ibid., 52.

[3] Ibid., 58.

[4] Ibid., 66.

Why Social Media Shrinks Our World

In our modern age of social media, you can learn a lot about someone without ever really meeting them. The minute someone accepts my friend request, they can learn some highly personal and controversial things about me. They immediately have the ability to know that I am Christian, I do not identify with either major political party and one of my favorite songs is Africa by Toto. This type of introduction is much more personal than any other method of meeting someone in the past. Fifty years ago, I might go to a dinner party and meet someone that I had never encountered before. Unless it was a highly specific setting for a specific purpose, the first thing I learned about that person would probably not be their deepest convictions and allegiances. We would probably start by talking about our families, sports, the weather or how we unfortunately got invited to this dinner party that we felt obligated to attend. We would have a tendency to start with pretty basic information, and as our relationship became more developed, we might then advance to more serious topics. Once we understood, based on the direction the conversation was heading in, that we were in the presence of friends, we might be willing to touch on more difficult issues because we understood that it was safe to discuss difficult topics with nice people.

Advancing to that stage of the conversation did not mean that we always agreed. In fact, we might say to our spouse on the way home, “I met John. He was a really nice guy, but I can’t believe that he supported that candidate last election.” In this rather simple exchange, there are a few important features. First, we had a personal connection with John. We got along good enough to have our conversation and advance to a level where we introduced a controversial topic. The connection came prior to the controversial topic. Second, we are quite aware that we might meet John again. After all, we apparently have a mutual friend who invited us to this dinner party. There might be more dinner parties, barbecues or picnics in the future, and we might see John again. Like it or not, he is a member of our community, and we understood that there were areas of divergence. We understood that we didn’t agree on everything, but we simultaneously understood that we might have to see him again.

Check My Profile 

Compare that to social media. You see my Facebook profile, and you might know very little about me to begin with, but all of a sudden you know an awful lot about me. There are some things about me you might not like. You might have very strong antagonism towards Africa, and you might determine that we cannot be friends if that is representative of my taste in music. Never mind that we might get along very well as friends, but you know my highly personal taste in music, and you might write me off as one of “those people who like retro music.” You know you can’t be friends with one of those types of people.

You might be reading this article, and you might think of times that maybe you have done this in your own lives. I know I often times catch myself thinking, “I met this person, and we got along really good. However, if I only knew them by their Facebook profile, I don’t think I would like them very much at all. We’re just too different and have nothing in common.”

The difference is that, like my example of the dinner party, I have met these people in real life, and I know we are friends. I know that we have things in common. I know that when we were first introduced, we didn’t talk about anything controversial, but we became friends because of baseball or a love of history. I know there are differences, but I still consider them my friends because I know the bigger picture of that person’s personality. I know they are not just what articles or memes they share on their Facebook profile. They are much larger in my mind than the limited scope of their Facebook profile.

However, let’s advance this argument one step further because it is relevant in our age of social media. We tend to get kind of uptight about things that people post on their pages. However, we get uptight often times these people that we barely know. We have all of this controversial knowledge about them, but, in our world of social media, we often times don’t really know them. That causes us to write people off really quickly. If we only know them based on their social media presence, we are going to start writing them off, ignoring them and instead gravitating towards our own safe echo chambers. Because we have no relationship with these people beyond social media, we reject them as one of “those people” and instead listen to the voices that we prefer to listen to. We need to comfort our delicate ears.

Is it any surprise then that we have such a culture of toxic discourse? We establish no relationship with other people yet expect to be able to be able to civilly discuss difficult topics. That’s tough. We then might still try to discuss difficult topics with people we hardly know, and because there is no relationship to fall back on that reminds us that we actually like some of these people, we lump them all into a highly stereotyped and artificial group of “those people” who we subsequently isolate, stigmatize and ultimately ignore. We deny that their views have any value, and we continue to embrace our squad online because we can. On Facebook, it is really easy for me to block people I don’t like and highlight those I do. It is a large world, but I actually built myself a prison that makes this large world smaller than the world I would encounter if I just went and talk to my coworkers in the office.

I write this in 2018 in the midst of my own technocentric culture, but I also write this with full recognition that I am not the first one to recognize that when I try to make my own world bigger, all I really succeed in doing is finding excuses to justify why I am actually going to make my world smaller. I say that I want to encounter people of all different types and ideologies, but I am actually looking for people who are fundamentally more or less like me.

G.K. Chesterton's Remedy

G.K. Chesterton may be best known for his masterpiece, Orthodoxy, but some of you might not realize that this masterwork was actually written as a sequel to an earlier book. Heretics presents a collection of essays in which Chesterton, to put it rather crudely, demolishes many of the most popular ideologies of his day. George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells and Rudyard Kipling are just a few of the intellectuals who present arguments that Chesterton evaluates and ultimately dismantles with his own blend of wit and simplicity.

He understood the value of first of all developing relationships with people before advancing to more controversial topics. For example, in the opening chapter of Heretics, he provides his evaluation of Shaw. “I am not concerned with Mr. Bernard Shaw as one of the most brilliant and one of the most honest men alive; I am concerned with him as a Heretic—that is to say, a man whose philosophy is quite solid, quite coherent, and quite wrong.”[1] He understood that he didn’t have to reject Shaw as a person, and he apparently had some relationship with him on a friendly level. He just happened to find his philosophy far off base. In fact, he had a similar thing to say about Kipling. “I am not concerned with Mr. Rudyard Kipling as a vivid artist or a vigorous personality; I am concerned with him as a Heretic—that is to say, a man whose view of things has the hardihood to differ from mine.”[2] He admired Kipling’s writing and personality, but his view of the world was simply incorrect.

We seem to be losing this capacity in modern society, and I think that a large reason why is because it is so easy to find other people who share our opinions. We don’t want to go through the difficulties of actually having friends who might be different than we are, so we go to Facebook and follow Occupy Democrats or Breitbart. Our preconceived notions are not going to be challenged there since they may already align with our political ideologies.

However, in these groups we create, we might have members from all over the country or all over the world. We can say that we have a diverse group of friends, but that diversity is largely a myth. They may be diverse in just about every way except for ideologically. They may look different, speak different languages or have different hometowns, but in these groups we create, they are largely ideologically uniform. A Republican from Alaska is probably going to be a lot more ideologically like a Republican from Georgia than he is like his Democratic neighbor in Anchorage. However, in just about every other way, the two Alaskans are going to be much more alike than the Republican in Georgia. They are just not going to realize that because they have already built boundaries on ideology that divide neighbor from neighbor.

Chesterton realized this as well in his essay, “On Certain Modern Writers and the Institution of the Family.” He understood that communities are things that bring together different people who have to somehow figure out how to get along despite those differences. He wrote, “There is one advantage, however, in the small state, the city, or the village, which only the wilfully blind can overlook. The man who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world. He knows much more of the fierce varieties and uncompromising divergences of men. The reason is obvious. In a large community we can choose our companions. In a small community our companions are chosen for us.”[3]

As an illustration of this type of microcosm, I could go to my office of approximately fifty people and find people who voted for Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, Gary Johnson or other third-party candidates. How do I know this? I have had these conversations with my coworkers. We have built relationships through working together where we have the appropriate level of familiarity to sometimes talk about difficult things. I feel comfortable talking to them, and they feel comfortable talking to me. Because we have to coexist in our small office community, we have experienced the benefit of a larger world that Chesterton mentions. I’m not in my own echo chamber of Christian conservatives. I’m hearing why some people might have chosen to vote for someone else. I’m hearing why some people might not want to go to church. I’m hearing why some people feel that they are spiritual but not religious. I have a larger world because of these people I interact with on a daily basis, but we were not put in this community by choice. In this small community, we were brought together by virtue of employment, but it is quite a bit like moving into a neighborhood where you don’t know anybody. As Chesterton wrote later in the same essay, “A big society exists in order to form cliques. A big society is a society for the promotion of narrowness. It is a machinery for the purpose of guarding the solitary and sensitive individual from all experience of the bitter and bracing human compromises.”[4]

This may sound troubling for many people out there today. This isn’t safe. This isn’t the type of world where I can be comfortable in my own ideas. That is true. There are threats that inherently accompany having your ideology challenged. You might learn that you have something wrong. You might have a misunderstanding or a weak point in your own worldview. That is going to be exposed in this type of environment where you’re actually in the larger world of the small community.

However, as Christians specifically but really as human beings in general, if truth is important,  coming to a better understanding of truth is valuable no matter how uncomfortable it is. As Christians, we believe that Jesus Christ is the Truth, and if our mission is to continually draw closer to him, then if we have something wrong (based on our own fallibility rather than God’s), it is good to experience that discomfort. It helps us draw closer to Truth which is indeed Jesus Christ.

And, as Chesterton would point out in his direct rebuttal to the philosophy of Kipling, the only way to truly learn something about a particular culture is to spend time there and become a part of it. You are not going to learn anything by going through and browsing. Just like you cannot learn everything you need to know about someone from a Facebook profile, you cannot learn everything by being a tourist. “He has been to England a great many times; he has stopped there for long visits. But he does not belong to it, or to any place; and the proof of it is this, that he thinks of England as a place. The moment we are rooted in a place, the place vanishes.”[5]

Some Practical Conclusions

In our age of social media, it is far too common for us to “visit” other people. We look at someone’s Facebook profile, and we never really get to know them. We make instant judgments about what they must be like because of what they post or share. However, in my experience, there is something to be said for easing into relationships with people. Before diving into the most difficult topics with people we hardly know, how about we try to get to know them first? By doing that, we’re going to make people much larger than they are on their Facebook profile, and that is a good thing because, as Chesterton pointed out, you are probably going to find a larger world in your workplace then you will by retreating into a shriveled echo chamber that you have created with people who think just like you online.

This is a frightening prospect, but if we are truly committed to pursuing Truth, which as Christians we ought to be, this is part of the mission we ought to be on. Yes, we’re going to find a lot that is objectionable and have to be very careful to guard our own hearts because we certainly do not want to fall away from our faith, but if we are truly going to be the light of the world, then the people around us need to see us.

[1] G. K. Chesterton, Heretics (New York: John Lane Company, 1919), 6, Kindle Edition.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid., 77.

[4] Ibid., 78.

[5] Ibid., 18.