Soul Survivor

Section Internet Links	Wayne's Notes	Jock"s Notes	Discussion Notes	Back to Index
Wayne. G. K. Chesterton (Chapter Three) It could be argued that people who read books are hiding from reality. They get lost in the world of the printed page in order to avoid real life. But it could also be argued, with equal credibility I believe, that many of us read in order to enhance our engagement with real life. I think Yancey falls into the second category. Sometimes, it is just not possible to gain from the people around us, many of whom we know and love, the insights that we desire. So, we resort to the world of reading. Then, hopefully, we can also engage others better. Yancey was growing very frustrated in his spiritual life because he just could not understand why there seemed to be so little connection between the Christian walk and the Christian talk. We are often like that, I suspect. We can be greatly impressed with the Christian ideals; especially as we read of them in the Bible, or hear them proclaimed. But we find it impossible to find people and churches that actually practice what they preach. Invariably, we come to a point where we are ready to give up on the church because we see so much hypocrisy practiced there. It is not humanity we despise, but we sure detest some people! Yancey claims (p. 45) that as a journalist he discovered other writers who could enlarge, rather than shrink life (not like those turkeys at his home church). Yancey did not want to give up on the Christian ideals which continued to mean a lot to him. He just could not put that together with the people he was living with in his local congregation. He therefore began a lifelong process, he says, of separating "church" from "God" and he began to scrutinize Jesus through the critical eyes of a journalist. That is when he discovered G.K. Chesterton, and his spiritual autobiography, Orthodoxy. Chesterton (1874-1936) appears on the scene of English journalism during a period when, for the first time in centuries, Catholics were once more recognized as respectable citizens in Britain after years of prejudice and persecution. One of the reasons for their recovered recognition was G.K. Chesterton. A convert from Anglicanism, he survived and thrived after the swim across the Roman Tiber, as they would say in those days. Chesterton was a man that could defend his faith with intelligence and wit - characteristics that even the most rigid Victorian Englishman could respect. He was one of many notables of that era, both lay and clergy, who grew dissatisfied with Anglicanism and returned to Rome. Chesterton, with his longtime friend Hilaire Belloc, formed an unique alliance as writers and tractarians - bringing an informed English Catholic perspective to pressing, current issues. Their books and newspaper articles addressed many subjects. There was, in fact, little about which they had no opinion. Of such pillars of the fifth estate it might be said they never had an unpublished idea and George Bernard Shaw applied the ingenious term "ChesterBelloc" to this writing team. Such diverse men as C.S. Lewis and Mahatma Gandhi were influenced by Chesterton and his writings that circled the globe at the height of the British Empire. Yancey says that thirty years after Chesterton's death, he discovered his writings, and that portly (300-400 pound) Englishman succeeded in resuscitating the faith of that skinny Southern American. "I see now that he helped awaken in me a sense of long-suppressed joy,"says Yancey (47). That is saying a lot, because fundamentalists have a tendency to be very serious indeed. 2. Ironically, it was in a bible college that Yancey first encountered the writings of Chesterton. While the affect of his religious upbringing had created low self esteem, so that he thought of himself as unlovable, it was actually in that school, which he viewed as a kind of asylum, that Yancey began to glimpse the light that moved him out of the clutches of a very sick religion. The beginning of his answer was to be discovered in the very midst of his mess. Yancey says that Chesterton helped him start dealing with two key religious questions questions. Why is there something rather than nothing? and Why is that something so beautiful and orderly? Chesterton was able to point to a Creator whose imprint could be found in the creation. Chesterton helped Yancey come to appreciate that it is often necessary to go through a depressive dark night of the soul before it is possible to experience light, and peace and joy in life. Chesterton also helped Yancey make friends with modern science, and Darwinian evolution as part of the ways of God. He could bring his faith with him as he encountered science. He did not have to view science as an adversary. Faith informs science as science informs faith. Yancey states: "For Chesterton, and also for me, the riddles of God proved more satisfying than the answers proposed without God. I too came to believe in the good things of this world, first revealed to me in music, romantic love, and nature, as relics of a wreck (but surviving goodness nonetheless) and as bright clues into the nature of reality shrouded in darkness." Chesterton helped Yancey to begin to appreciate, even from afar, when he was not yet able to fully appreciate it, that there could be joy in sexual pleasure and delight in basic human acts such as childbirth, play and artistic creation. "A good and loving God would naturally want God's creatures to appreciate delight, joy and personal fulfillment," he says. "The churches I had attended has stressed the dangers of pleasure so loudly that I missed any positive message. Guided by Chesterton, I came to see sex, money, power and sensory pleasures as God's good gifts." Rather than act defensively about the negative and excessive aspects of these realities, Yancey began to look for good in them first. "Chesterton restored to me a thirst for the exuberance that flows from a link to the God who dreamed up all the things that give me pleasure," says Yancey. I do not know if your spiritual journey bears any resemblance to Yancey, but I do know that he speaks to me. On the subject of exuberance, and what that can mean to a person who has felt the full impact of destructive legalism, loss of self-esteem and depression in life, I recommend a new book by Kay Redfield Jamison entitled: Exuberance - The Passion for Life. Jamison is probably the world's leading authority on mood disorders, especially manic depression. She teaches at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and visited our university campus this spring. She spoke of how she - herself, is a chronic sufferer from manic depression, and on lithium - has a philosophy that reframes the tiger in her own spirit by re-directing it into contructive intellectual searching, risk-taking, creativity and survival itself. She writes of the differences between exuberance and mania - the contagiousness of laughter, the giddiness of new love, and the intoxicating effects of music and of religious ecstacy. Like Chesterton and Yancey, I see in Jamison that the discovery of her salvation has to do with facing and working with, not rejecting, the shadow always lurking in one's life. 3. I think that one of Yancey's best lines in this chapter is found on pages 57-8 where he states that "the religious right calls for moral regeneration, and ordinary Christians point to temperance, industriousness and achievement as primary proofs of their faith. Could it be that Christians, eager to point out how good we are, neglect the basic fact that the gospel sounds like good news, only to bad people?" In other words, what has the gospel to say to people who, even without the church, are living seemingly moral, productive and decent lives? What does the gospel, shorn of its exclusivity have to say to most people today? The Christian ideal, says Chesterton in perhaps his most famous comment, has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried. The real question, says Chesterton, is not "Why is Christianity so bad when it claims to be so good?" but "Why are all humans so bad when they claim to be so good?" Here, Chesterton raises the question of original sin and challenges those who want only original blessing without original sin. Here is a question that could consume us for the rest of the course! We discover, by acknowledging who we are as individuals and as Christian community that we are indeed deeply flawed people, and there is no getting away from it. We need to acknowledge the reality of sin and evil in ourselves and in the world. For ultimately we are, as Christians, what is wrong with the world, says Yancey. It is not that we are the good people, and those outside our doors, the bad. It is, rather that some realize their flawed nature, and see the church as a place for helping them be better in spite of everything. "In the end, I did return home as the humbled prodigal to the very institution I had fled in pain and rebellion," says Yancey. There is no getting away from sin and evil, not even in the church. No even in me. But the Good News is that I do not have to be defined by my sinful, evil nature. I can accept another self-definition. One of faith, hope and love.

Jock. Hidden Treasures.- Tolstoy and Dostoevsky give Yancey and we readers a glimpse of the gospel that seems hidden to the theologians, so I have titled this section "Hidden Treasures". First, I'll take a few summary points from Yancey, and then look in a parallel direction for others who have found hidden treasure in the words of Jesus. Yancey says " When I noted the rift between the ideals of the gospel and the flaws of its followers, I was sorely tempted to abandon those ideals as hopelessly unattainable. Then I discovered Tolstoy. … I found in his novels, fables, and short stories a source of moral power." He then shares an astonishing question. "My deepest doubts about the faith can be summed up in a single question: Why doesn't it work? ... I have never met a serious follower of any religion who lacks appreciation for Jesus, but what about the church?" (p 119) "New Testament passages, most notably the Sermon on the Mount, spell out lofty ethical ideals. ... I have felt a constant, unresolvable tension over Christian failures." ... I found no way to address the cognitive dissonance that kept me in a state of spiritual restlessness until I came upon the writings of two nineteenth-centruy Russian novelists. My understanding of the tension between Christian ideals and reality now consists of part Tolstoy and part Dostoevsky." (p 121) "I claim these two Russians as my spiritual guides because they help answer my underlying doubts by throwing light on a central paradox of the Christian life. ... Tolstoy got it halfway right: anything that makes me feel comfort with God's moral standard, anything that makes me feel, "At last I have arrived," is a cruel deception. Dostoevsky got the other half right: anything that makes me feel discomfort with God's forgiving love is also a cruel deception." (p 144) Tolstoy was no saint, who having made a decision of commitment, went on to lead a life of self-sacrifice. Tolstoy was in constant conflict his whole life - he both made noble decisions and yet continued in the privilege of his class - thus creating a kind of moral chaos. He was a very bad example, and a very excellent writer. Possibly it was this personal agony that gave him the insight to write the novels that so well communicate the meanings of Jesus words. Tolstoy was no hypocrite - for he knew well his shortcomings. He could nobly give away his serfs because he understood Jesus to ask it, but not live up to the other admonitions as well. Well says Yancey, do we fare better at that? Tolstoy made an interesting observation about Christianity among the religions, observing that religion in general requires conformity and observance, whereas Jesus refused to "define a set of external rules". "A man who professes an external law is like someone standing in the light of a lantern fixed to a post. It is light all round him, but there is nowhere further for him to walk. A man who professes the teaching of Christ is like a man carrying a lantern before him on a long, or not so long, pole: the light is in front of him, always lighting up fresh ground and always encouraging him to walk further." … The Kingdom of God is Within You. Dostoevsky was no saint either, but out his life experience came to also illuminate the principles he found in the New Testament as few others have managed. Again this was communicated in novels and not theological exegesis. Not remarkable says Yancey when you consider how Jesus himself spoke in stories to make his best points. Anyone who has faced death comes away with a different attitude about life - always affirming and positive. Many ancient societies developed rituals to give the candidate a quasi-death experience, because on the other side of such an experience there was no longer any fear. Our own society has some few pale imitations of this tradition - from soldiers to masons. So it is interesting to learn that Dostoevsky's live changing event was a mock execution, followed by exiled punishment. The hero must off to the desert of course. And the gift on his way to exile was a New Testament. That this framed his second life, is not remarkable, but the illumination of character that enabled him like Tolstoy to show in story what forgiveness and other virtues entailed was a better lesson than any philosophical admonition could ever be. Even the disparate and evil characters he was imprisoned with did not give him a cynical view, but only allowed the excellent characterizations we find in his later novels. "Love every leaf, every ray of light. Love the animals, love the plants, love each separate thing! Loving all, you will perceive the mystery of God in all." There are 2 authors I'd like to point out on this theme of "Hidden Treasure", One is Joseph Campbell, the Scholar of Mythology and the other is Northrop Frye, the professor and literary critic. For they also speak to the mystery we are exploring, namely the apparent conflict and contradiction of word and deed. Campbell was brought to general attention when Bill Moyers interviewed him in the famous TV documentary series on PBS "The Power of Myth". In these interviews, a lives work was reviewed, with a sensitivity that took a most dusty subject and imbued it with life. The word myth had up till then been synonymous with "lie" or at least "legend", but what we all heard was "fairy-tale". A significant part of the theological work of the twentieth century was concerned with finding out that part of our religious heritage and especially scriptures was historically true. For we thought then, that things that were not true were lies, and if our forebears had included lies in our scriptures, then a serious thing was upon us indeed. That instinct that first understood that the story of Noah was not history but story, was rather embarrassed to call it so. And many still lack the courage to consider the same differences in the New Testament. But Campbell turns our shame into understanding when he shows us that since humankind first remembered its story, the stories have been more the same than different. In finding the same myths the world over, and in exploring the meaning of myth, he shows us the place and the power of myth. All peoples have considered death. All have stories to show us how to live. Myth we are told is a story too important to be merely true. In our myths and stories is much "Hidden Treasure". And that is why Yancey has experienced with the 2 Russian novelists, an insight into his faith that is greater than what he had heard from the pulpit of his youth. "The myths are metaphorical of spiritual potentiality in the human being, and the same powers that animate our life animate the life of the world. But also there are myths and gods that have to do with specific societies or the patron deities of the society. In other words, there are two totally different orders of mythology. There is the mythology that relates you to your nature and to the natural world, of which you're a part. And there is the mythology that is strictly sociological, linking you to a particular society.. You are not simply a natural man, you are a member of a particular group." … (p 28 The Power of Myth) *In the Great Code - The Bible and Literature Penguin 1990, Northrop Frye makes a remarkable claim. He says that we have so long been with the Bible, that we cannot disclaim it. That it is pervasive in our society in its influence. As the argument is made and the points illustrated, the work becomes rather similar to a theological work - which the author laughs at himself for, he being as secular an advocate as he can imagine. But the point is made and taken. From a different tack than Campbell he sees the bible as myth, but more. "And yet, while reading Biblical myth poetically is a more liberal exercise than reading it as factual history, trying to reduce the Bible entirely to the hypotehetical basis of poetry clearly will not do. … There are and remain two aspects of myth: one is its story-structure, which attaches it to literature, the other is its social function as concerned knowledge, what it is important for a society to know. We now have to consider this second aspect of myth, remembering that just as the poetic aspect had already developed toward literature by Biblical times, so the functional aspect had developed toward historical and political thought." (p47 ibid). Yancey mentions Alexander Solzhenitsyn as another Russian Christian, and his comment in light of the 60 million lost in the gulags of injustice that "Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened." But I recall in the essay appended to Gulag Archipelego called "The Soul and Barbed Wire" how Solzhenitsyn wept over his country - a country that had come to punish its most sensitive and best citizens, and to reward those who lied and cheated and falsely accused others. But we have a miracle in progress in Russia today, not the least of which at the beginning was the abolition of the Gulag System. Surely it is partly due to the "hidden treasure" of the Christian ethic embodied in the respected literature of Russia including Tolstoy and Dostoevsky that survived when the official church in the Soviet years was mocked and dismanteled.
Discussion A couple of ideas came up that might be further developed in the end session. Lila mentioned that we have all experienced mentoring in the office environment, and that it seems a hit and miss affair. Noel made the observation that in another of Yancey's books, *What's so amazing about grace?" that an intriguing observation was made. It was that the distinguishing thing about christianity among the world religions was Grace.

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