Insights from G. K. Chesterton
by Teri Ong
We once asked a friend what he was doing since his retirement. He had been very active in promoting the Christian worldview in a variety of arenas, had published a number of books, and spoke regularly to numerous church and civic groups. However, when we asked him this question, he replied, “God told me to sit down and shut up.” I am not sure how God convinced him of that directive. That is between him and God. But one thing I know; too many Christians sit quietly on their hands in some little corner, intimidated by the name-calling of the intolerant people who would obliterate all Biblical thought and influence in society.
For centuries, dictatorial rulers in many countries and cultures have tried to suppress dissenting voices in many cruel and wicked ways. “Bloody Mary” put to death between 200 and 300 people, many of them by burning at the stake, for such crimes as teaching Scripture verses to their children or owning a Bible in English. Over 20,000 French Protestants, known as Huguenots, were martyred on one day– St. Bartholomew’s Day– by the king’s armies. Russian gulags, work camps and prisons, were filled with those who stood against the cruel, atheistic communist regime in the first half of the 20th century. In various Asian countries today, dissenters are “disappeared.” No one may know what has really happened to them, but it is not likely a joyful way to be silenced.
There are now places in North America and in the U.S.A. where certain kinds of words are banned, where saying them may get you a fine or get you put in jail, and I am not talking about profanity in public. And there are many more places where all words and any words may be declared to be hostile “micro-aggressions” by a person or group that wants to exercise ultimate power over others– the power to obliterate certain ideas by obliterating certain words.
The internet is a combination blessing and curse. The internet has given almost anyone on earth the ability to publish words, with the potential of reaching almost any other person on earth. One curse is that this “free” medium is so expansive that worthy ideas are like an eye-dropper of solution squirted into the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Another curse is that the rich and powerful people, who have dangled inexpensive publishing before our eyes, can snatch it away at their own caprice. If by chance, your idea is not in concord with the powers that patrol and control their vast ocean, you will be quickly sucked up and put down a dark drain hole, never to be troublesome again.
G.K. Chesterton, in his essay “The Eternal Revolution,” wrote that humans are hardly ever troubled by old tyrannies. “As a fact, men have almost always suffered under new tyrannies.” (p. 269) In his day, the daily newspapers were to society what the internet is to us now. If the following statement was true of the age of newspapers, it is exponentially so in the age of the internet. Chesterton wrote:
“So again, we have almost up to the last instant trusted the newspapers as organs of public opinion. Just recently, some of us have seen (not slowly, but with a start) that they are obviously nothing of the kind. They are, by nature of the case, the hobbies of a few rich men… It will not be necessary for any one to fight again against the censorship of the press. We have a censorship by the press.” (p. 269) [emphasis is mine]
If you happen to be reading this on-line, and not on a hard copy that I handed to you myself, it means that this blog managed to slip through. We have heard of many good people, even good high-profile people, who have sought to publish and broadcast worthy ideas, who have been summarily suspended or permanently removed from one or more of the major internet platforms. This can be done to anyone who runs afoul of the political correctness police, who make their black lists in some think tank funded by shadowy billionaires. It is 21st century “censorship by the press.”
Chesterton was astounded at the “swiftness with which popular systems become oppressive.” He further wrote, “The newspaper started to tell the truth now exists to prevent the truth from being told.” What would he think about “swiftness” in our present culture? As in the recent case of the Covington, Kentucky school boys, a lie is a hundred times around the globe before the truth can be uncovered. And why? Because the lie was “politically correct” and the truth was inconvenient to the agenda of the media moguls.
Sadly, however, it is not some outside entity that “censors” many believers. Chesterton, in his introduction to Orthodoxy, observed,
“The old restriction meant that only the orthodox were allowed to discuss religion. Modern liberty means that nobody is allowed to discuss it. Good taste, the last and vilest of human superstitions, has succeeded in silencing us where all the rest have failed.” (p.3)
In this climate, should we give in? Should we sit down and shut up? Chesterton didn’t think so. In his poem “Vulgarized,” he wrote that he was willing to be “One witness before all men given.” He was willing to “shout my love [for God] to every star, With lungs to make a poor maid’s name [Mary] Deafen the iron ears of war.” He was willing to stand “where these subtle cowards crowd” and “…speak of love, that the four corners of the world should hear it and take heed thereof.”
He begins the poem by challenging the popular view that something as sacred as our religious beliefs and relationship to God should just be kept to one’s self.
All round they murmur: “O profane,
Keep thy heart’s secret hid as gold”;
But I, by God, would sooner be
Some knight in shattering wars of old.
In the final stanza, he challenges fellow Christians to think and to speak boldly, as he does.
… by God, is it not time
Some of Love’s chosen broke the girth,
And told the good all men have known
Since the first morning of the earth? (p. 316)
Even if my words are “disappeared,” or if my voice is drowned in the vastness of the sea, I will not shut up until God tells me to, because if we are silent, the very stones will have to cry out. They will be crying out for justice, truth, mercy, godly wisdom– in other words, for God Himself. And they will be crying out against the silent. (Luke 19:40)
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references:
Chesterton, G. K. Heretics/Orthodox. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2000. (“The Eternal Revolution,” pg. 257-276)
Chesterton, G. K. Stories, Essays, and Poems. London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1941. (“Vulgarized,” p. 316)
