In defense of everything else

Amy and I are reading the spiritual autobiography of GK Chesterton, Orthodoxy, together this March.

Chapter 1 is titled "In defense of everything else" and it's pretty short. A few quotations will serve to give you a picture of what Chesterton had in mind when he wrote this book.

I have attempted in a vague and personal way, in a set of mental pictures rather than in a series of deductions, to state the philosophy in which I have come to believe.

I wish to set forth my faith as particularly answering this double spiritual need, the need for that mixture of the familiar and the unfamiliar which Christendom has rightly named romance.

…the general proposition that we need this life of practical romance; the combination of something that is strange with something that is secure.

One searches for truth, but it may be that one pursues instinctively the more extraordinary truths.

It recounts my elephantine adventures in pursuit of the obvious.

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.

These essays are concerned only to discuss the actual fact that the central Christian theology (sufficiently summarised in the Apostles’ Creed) is the best root of energy and sound ethics.

This is not an ecclesiastical treatise but a sort of slovenly autobiography.

From this chapter, it is apparent to me that this book will have something in common with CS Lewis’s Surprised by Joy. It is written in a style that does not necessarily fit with my extremely analytical mind, and it contains some lovely big words that will content my mind while they challenge my brain. Just what I need to stretch me!

[Image source koorong.com.]