this is my first book toward accomplishing my 2020 vision! and this review has been a long time coming. i certainly won't pretend to be an expert at reviewing others' material, and especially when it comes to the works of G.K. Chesterton. really i feel thoroughly inadequate to even attempt to review his masterpiece, Orthodoxy, so my thoughts here will remain personal and brief.
admittedly, i've already begun to forget what i've read because i finished the book a couple of months ago, and although it's only a short book, it took me more than a few weeks to read. i could usually only keep my mind engaged long enough to wrestle through one chapter at a time (which meant that i had to renew it from the library and then finally had to resign myself to finishing the Kindle version on my iPod). that's how i found every chapter: each like an adventure all to itself. after a page or two into each of the beginning chapters i was left wondering how in the world the man had lost his train of thought, how in the world his current thought tied to the last, how in the world this proved his argument, and how in the world he would bring this one full circle. but i was delightfully rewarded each time for persevering (or should i say, suffering) through to the end of the chapter. in fact, sometimes it wasn't until the last paragraph that i would finally feel relief that i had just discovered the jewel we had labored to discover. and each jewel was a treasure unto itself. i couldn't help just taking a break and feeling like i had to discuss the exhilarating insight i had just received. so here i would like to thank my wife for persevering (no, truly this time, suffering) through this verbal processor's vain attempts at rehashing chesterton's philosophical construction. i know i certainly could not do justice to the beauty of his reasoning.
as each chapter was collected i beheld an awesome treasure. beautiful and breathtaking in it's fresh light, but more awesome for its simplicity. it was refreshing to find that as chesterton would take a philosophical spin that would supposedly topple the evangelical foundation he would instead land firmly and assuredly right where he had begun. he talked of the truth he was taught as a boy, and in his grown-up sophisticated thinking, he found that he could have simply trusted those Bible stories told to the simple minded. he says of this work that "it recounts my elephantine adventures in pursuit of the obvious." he had struck out on the endeavoring of declaring orthodoxy and instead discovered an orthodoxy he had already been taught!
"i am the man who with the utmost daring discovered what had been discovered before...I freely confess all the idiotic ambitions of the end of the nineteenth century. i did, like all other solemn little boys, try to be in advance of the age. like them i tried to be some ten minutes in advance of the truth. and i found that i was eighteen hundred years behind it...i have kept my truths: but i have discovered, not that they were not truths, but simply that they were not mind. when i fancied that i stood alone i was really in the ridiculous position of being backed up by all Christendom...i did try to be original; but i only succeeded in inventing all by myself an inferior copy of the existing traditions of civilized religion...i did try to found a heresy of my own; and when i had put the last touches to it, i discovered that it was orthodoxy."
i found them fitting words for myself. i will confess i have found myself tempted at times to be swayed by the seduction of the new and original. this book has reminded me that the lessons i learned on the flannelgraph in Sunday School are just as fresh and alive today as the first time i experienced them, and they can be trusted. the Truth revealed in God's Word will never be irrelevant or eradicated. it has and always will stand the test of time. and my soul would do well to feast upon the satisfying bread of the Bible.
isaiah 55:1-2,
"come, all you who are thirsty,
come to the waters;
and you who have no mone,
com, buy and eat!
come, buy wine and milk
without money and without cost.
why spend money on what it not bread,
and your labor on what does not satisfy?
listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,
and your soul will delight in the richest of fare."
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