Christianity “Found Difficult and Left Untried”

Of course, I mean that Catholicism was not tried; plenty of Catholics were tried, and found guilty. My point is that the world did not tire of the church’s ideal, but of its reality. Monasteries were impugned not for the chastity of monks, but for the unchastity of monks. Christianity was unpopular not because of the humility, but of the arrogance of Christians. Certainly, if the church failed it was largely through the churchmen. … [T]he great ideals of the past failed not by being outlived (which must mean over-lived), but by not being lived enough. Mankind has not passed through the Middle Ages. Rather mankind has retreated from the Middle Ages in reaction and rout. The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried. (G. K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong with the World (1910), ch. 1.5)

Although this passage was written some years before Chesterton’s formal conversion to Catholicism, one can be very certain that at no point after his conversion would he have taken a single word back; most likely, he would have restated it in a different yet equally blunt way. He also knew the Church wasn’t established for the sake of the righteous, but for sinners (cf. Mark 2:17): “The Church is justified,” he would write in The Everlasting Man (1923), “not because her children do not sin, but because they do.” His point was that Christian hypocrisy made the Christian ideal appear unachievable and not worth attempting.

To read the body of Chesterton’s work is to get quick baby pictures of the monster ideologies that plague our culture — free-market capitalism, socialism, modernism, and progressivism — before they climbed out of their cribs to eat our souls. Taken a century ago, the baby pictures are a marvelous corrective to the temptation to blame everything on the Sixties (or any of the last five Presidents). However, the above passage reminds us that it more likely began five hundred years ago, with Martin Luther’s ninety-five theses, Henry VIII’s dynastic concerns, the trial of Galileo, and the widespread publication (thanks to the printing press) of classical literature.

I couldn’t help but think of the passage after this last couple of weeks, when orthodox Christians were not only handed defeat after defeat in the legal arena but also exposed to several episodes of “Christians Behaving Badly”: asserting white supremacy, demanding that gays be stoned, suggesting that dinosaurs and men coexisted … you get the picture. My poor old rickety card table couldn’t stand up to that much headdesking. Enjoy the First Amendment while we’ve still got it, folks; the clock is running on its expiration.

History is primarily story, the narrative we choose to impose upon the facts of the past, the creation of a cultural mythos. As the post-Christian West turns against us, however, even the facts are being rewritten; the twin mythoi of SCIENCE and PROGRESS strip Christians of all positive contributions to civilization, leaving only a hazy yet lasting impressionist picture of hatred, ignorance, and great art.

For a while, liberal Christians may continue to reimagine salvation history in order to package a more feminist and LGBT-friendly Jesus. Nevertheless, as Patrick J. Deneen put it, liberal Christianity is “fated to become liberalism simpliciter within a generation.” Orthodox Christianity, on the other hand, is fated to be marginalized, even ghettoized, and reduced to second-class citizenship.

And it’s hard not to conclude that we’ve brought it on ourselves. Not only for failing to live the Gospel message we preach, but also for allowing it to become so badly fragmented in the wake of the “Reformation” that we have no single, coherent message to live.

Christianity is hard to practice. It requires forgiving the unforgiveable; it requires loving the unlovable; it requires hoping in the midst of hopelessness; it requires giving to the undeserving (because to give to the deserving is not charity but rather justice). It requires avoiding not only sin itself but the “near occasion of sin”. It requires doing good for others because “faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead” (James 2:17). It requires us to try to “be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48).

No wonder people prefer to be “good enough”, to shoot blank pieces of paper and draw the bull’s-eyes around the bullet holes. You can’t fail when you set your own passing grade. But that’s not really trying.

The Christian goal is not to become “good enough”, but rather to become saints. Sanctification requires a radical openness to God’s Will, not merely a pro forma sacrifice at the altar of good behavior. We don’t seek to be passive recipients of God’s mercy, but rather active agents of it (“… not so much to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love”). Heaven, the intimate and eternal union with God, isn’t a prize to be earned with so many “brownie points”, but rather the end towards which we were all created and for which our radical openness prepares us.

One very hard fact to internalize is that we are sinners, too. We talk about “fraternal correction”, and “admonishing the sinner” as a spiritual work of mercy. But as often as we emphasize the Jesus who opened up a can of whup on the moneychangers in the Temple (Matthew 21:12-13), or St. Nicholas decking the heretic Arius (alas, probably apocryphal), we should more often recall the humility of the Egyptian monk who, when his fellow monk was expelled from the sanctuary for unchastity, left the church with him, explaining, “I’m a sinner, too.” Humility is a virtue easy to fake, but difficult to inculcate; and often left untried.

However, only humility makes that radical openness possible.

The point is not that Christians are forbidden to correct or admonish others, but rather that we don’t make ourselves holier by doing so, any more than talking about the diseases of others makes us healthier. And while we speak of the Church as a hospital for sinners, we don’t get healthier just by checking in, especially not on an outpatient basis. “For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get” (Matthew 7:2).

Parke Godwin adapted for her book Sherwood a story about a Saxon merchant who, under financial pressure, adopted the practices of his fellow businessmen: shaving coins, dishonest weights, and so forth. Later on, when he decided to change his life, he found that half a lifetime of habitually ingrained shady practices often undid what he was trying to do; if he gave £1 to feed the poor, he’d get £2 back on a grain deal, et cetera. The end of his story finds the dead merchant facing an angel, who, on consideration of his late conversion and honest efforts, writes in the dirt on his forehead, “INASMUCH”.

This was very much the point of Pope Francis’ over-reported and much-distorted quote: “If a person is gay and seeks the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge him?” At the end of the day, only God knows whose heart is hardened against Him. I do not defend anyone’s attempt to impose their morality on God; we don’t bargain with Him on equal terms. But we also don’t know how much change any given person is capable of.

We now live in what has reverted to mission territory; ironically, progressivism has regressed our culture to a moral state akin to pre-Christian paganism, except that the pagans of yore knew enough to connect sex and marriage with procreation. Personal witness is now more necessary than ever … remembering that the ancient Greek word for “witness” is martyr . The most compelling argument for Christianity is a Christian life authentically lived.

But while we Christians can elect ourselves heroes by standing against the cultural Zeitgeist, we can’t make ourselves saints: that must be done in an unequal partnership with God. Humble pie is going to be an ever-increasing part of our diet from here on out. Let’s develop a taste for it early, remembering we can lose Heaven just like anyone else (cf. 1 Corinthians 10:11-12; 2 Timothy 2:11-13).

And may the Lord write upon our foreheads “INASMUCH”.