Just Add Wonder

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth — Matthew 5:5

A sentiment of superiority keeps us cool and practical; the mere facts would make our knees knock under as with religious fear. — G.K. Chesterton from Heretics

I wonder, in reading through Heretics, about whom a Chesterton would write today. Mark Steyn, he of the sons of the prophets, speaks most often on politicians and popular culture figures — as if there is now any difference between politics and pop culture, which may be a good part of our problem. Chesterton safaried on an intellectual savannah trod by Shaws, Wells, and Orwells, to name but a few. I'm afraid he would hardly waste a round on the lock-step lemmings, swarming rodents, and shambling opossums that have inherited the plain today. Perhaps there are no Chestertons because there is no quarry worthy of such hunters. Did Nimrod stop to weep for himself when he saw the end of Smilodon?

Truly the old, bold socialists, eugenicists, and strong men who stalked under the noon sun are gone, replaced by careful and cowardly creatures of the night that scurry from shadow to shadow lest we see their true form. Apart from the insulated and the tenured like Peter Singer, few of the "pro-choice" advocates in our day admit that they long for a better race of men through more selective breeding, and, by the way, far fewer men for the most part. They have learned the chameleon trick of taking on the surrounding colors, especially the color of freedom, as they lurk and wait to strike. It's just me probably, but I'd rather take my chances face to face with the grinning tiger of the day than be struck by an ambushing death adder.

I can't say as I blame the skulkers, at least here in America. Coming out and saying that you are for de-populating the earth, turning North America into a theme park, and breeding slave races on the old government plantation probably isn't going to get you a whole lot of votes or funding for the U.S. Department of Indoctrination. Camouflage and stealth: it's not just for tanks and planes any more.

In Chesterton's day he could still talk about the "humility of the man of science", a phrase many of us find quaintly amusing. Even Chesterton was amused by it for he saw their day passing as surely and swiftly as those hunters with the Clovis point saw the passing of the giant ground sloth or the mastodon. Projecting forward, he could see the inevitably of rising pride and the creation of the lordly scientific priesthood who shake their big, rattling gourds at us in the Twenty-First Century of what is now called — so appropriately — the Common Era.

The path of devolution is always the same. First comes wonder with its beloved foster child, humility. Humility gives birth to discovery. Discovery always rebels against his parent, sows his wild oats, and reaps his bastard offspring, power. Power and pride form their unholy union from which comes their first-born, unintended consequences, then his twin brothers, death and destruction. A rebirth of discovery is always denied to power and pride. If we doubt God, He answers us thus. Still, the reign of power and pride may be long, counter-balanced as it is by God's grace in raising up children to humility from the very stones of the earth.

That's Chesterton's point in the opening quote: that merely looking at things as they are tends to make us more humble, to set ablaze our sophisticated cool. We humans are very good at thinking that a name for something is the same as an explanation. It's not the facts that poison humility; it is someone's interpretation of the facts. We could walk well on the stones in our path. It's the bumperstickers that trip us up.

I even miss the good old days when we thought science was impressively objective, isolated, and concerned only with discovery for discovery's sake. You know how it used to be in science fiction when the lone, eccentric genius created some grand new thing in his basement la-BORE-atory. The emotional humanist hero would come along to ejaculate, "But think what would happen if it fell into the wrong hands!" Yep, those days are long gone. Too many of our current heroes are Boromirs who see the power of darkness as a "gift" that they may conquer, only to become that which they vanquish.

Reading through the New Testament, everyone has come to the Beatitudes. To this day, every time I read through the Sermon on the Mount, I fight the same thought: He's got to be kidding. Jesus, I find myself saying, You can't be serious about this stuff. Anybody who tries to follow Christ's teaching here will be eaten alive in this world. If you are going to try this, your best bet is to go ahead and die young because otherwise you'll wind up living in a cardboard box and getting mugged on a daily basis. Shoot, they'll probably even take your cardboard box.

The better part of me says, though, that cynical-me is wrong. He meant what He said, and He meant for us to live it. He did not promise that it would be easy. There are snakes in the brush, and, while old Smiley is gone, there are still lions and tigers and bears, not to mention jackals aplenty. All that's missing are the meek — or as more modern translations sometimes say, the gentle.

The meek are ones strong enough to be gentle, brave enough to fear, and bold enough to be humble. They inherit the earth because those who reject meekness reject man and his abode along with it. We'll inherit what we appreciate — that is, what gains value for us, or that to which we give or add value. We wonder at ourselves, at the cosmos, at the Creator. The legitimate explanations of science only serve to deepen our wonder, to add even more value to that which we have been given.

The world will always prefer the giants who look from a distance with disdain down upon the meek and — don't miss it — the lowly. They are impressed by his man-made armor of snark, his heavy weapons of vulgarity and mockery. They see no vulnerability and gather fearlessly in his wake.

Across the way comes one of those hillbillies, some kid just in from herding sheep and goats. Perhaps the crowd behind the giant smells the intruder before they see him, for indeed he must smell like sheep. They see him pause and stoop at the brook to pick up five stones cut out from the mountain and polished smooth without hands.

The humble shepherd looks up at the giant. He doesn't seem to see the armor or the shield or the spear. He looks the giant in the eye and sees the bare seat of his opponent's thoughts. The hillbilly says, "He's so big! How can I miss?"

Squirrel!

Then we will no longer be little children, tossed by the waves and blown around by every wind of teaching, by human cunning with cleverness in the techniques of deceit. But speaking the truth in love, let us grow in every way into Him who is the head — Christ. From Him the whole body, fitted and knit together by every supporting ligament, promotes the growth of the body for building up itself in love by the proper working of each individual part. — Ephesians 4:14-16

His head, however, was by no means cherubic in the sense of being without a body. On the contrary, on his vast shoulders and shape generally gigantesque, his head looked oddly and unnaturally small. This gave rise to a scientific theory (which his conduct fully supported) that he was an idiot. "Manalive" — G.K. Chesterton

On the high, dry ridges of the Central Plateau in the heart of summer, last fall's leaves are an unavoidable crunch and crackle underfoot. I was fascinated by the thought that skilled woodsmen like Kenton, Boone, Crockett, or their native counterparts could move in absolute silence. After much effort and experimentation, I concluded that the woods those worthy souls moved in were pine. My endeavors, though, were not entirely in vain. I learned that there is a rhythm to advancement under the worst of conditions, that the very nature of a hardwood forest floor is a camouflage of sorts. I learned that the way to a relative silence was to move slowly. This is no sidewalk and I'm not so much going somewhere as being somewhere. What I'm hunting is a lot more likely to come to me than I am to find it.

Hunting truth is the same way. In fact, I'm not sure that stalking squirrels isn't as much a hunt for truth as reading Ephesians or Aristotle.

The "winds of teaching" — now there's a complicating factor. Is that stirring of the leaves a six-point buck? Is that bouncing branch a bushy-tail? Or, is it just the wind? I could say the more teaching the less truth, but a wise and silent hunter can detect the true from the false. Again, it is the rhythm or perhaps the aroma of it.

For a time I thought I had a "sixth sense" when it came to finding deer. I would be moving along, and I would suddenly think that a deer was close at hand. Almost invariably when I had that spidey-sense alarm, I would jump one or more, or they would walk out in front of me. One day I was walking slowly with the wind in my face up a steep hill. I caught a whiff of something. It turns out my sixth sense was just the subliminal work of one of the original five.

Just because our ancestors had their noses full of tobacco and woodsmoke — not to mention less pleasant scents, doesn't mean that our modern, more open olfactory organs lack discernment — once we get away from the smell of exhausts for a day or two. So, too, if the Church at various points along its path of growth was dulled in its senses, it doesn't mean it will not regain them — sharper and more discerning than ever.

The Body of Christ is growing, from the Head to the Head, and we are growing together. More and more we see ourselves in unity. I'm not a Roman Catholic, but when someone attacks the Pope, I am attacked. I've never had my left foot say "Thank God it wasn't me" when I stubbed a toe on the right foot. In Christ, the pain of one is the pain of all, and it is the Head who understands that pain most thoroughly, communicating it to the other parts that appropriate action might be taken.

What is true of our pain is true of our joy. We all dance together or we don't dance at all.

Good and Dumb

I am thinking about starting a new political party or at least coming up with a new tag or identifier for freedom lovers. I can’t really call myself conservative because things are going to have to change. The terms independent and libertarian have some baggage, and Republican is buried under a pile of moving vans. Classical Liberal is what we are but that often requires some explanation. I thought about naming it after some great historical figure representative of our views. G. K. Chesterton comes to mind. We could call ourselves Chestertons, Chestertonians, Chesters, or Men with Chests. At this point, though, I am leaning toward someone more modern: Kirk, Hayek, Reagan, Buckley. Nope, Buckley is out. Chris has ruined it. How about Mark Steyn?

What do you think of the Steyn-Way Party? Our logo could be Uncle Sam seated at an upright piano with the Constitution in front of him like sheet music. Our motto? “Play it again, Sam.”

I guess my blog is mostly religious because what I most like to do is take a verse or two or three and figure out how they apply to me. This week I am very tired and more than a little irritable, and, as much as I hate to admit it, I don’t feel like praying. I haven’t been this tired since I made $48 one day hauling hay back in 1972. They paid us two cents a bale. I hauled from eight o’clock in the morning until one o’clock the next morning. We loaded and unloaded 2400 bales of hay, none of which grew under our feet. I was bucking and doing a good deal of the stacking from the ground, and because I could throw higher than anyone else, I handled every single one of those bales when we put them in the barn. And I would have gone back the next day – I was young then and could recover more quickly – if it hadn’t been for the chicken. But that is another story and I want to talk about the fallacy of “the best and brightest”.

Sarah Palin is not one of the best and brightest. I don’t know what her plans are, and, at this point I really don’t care. I hope she capitalizes on all the flak she’s taken with a book deal or something and salts away a few cool million soon-to-be-monopoly-money dollars, but if she doesn’t want to run for public office anymore, that’s up to her. That’s the thing about America. We don’t need any Special Person to be president, governor, senator, speaker of the house, or speaker for the dead. We have a system that could be run by almost any fool. Unfortunately, it is mostly run by lawyers instead.

Now there are unquestionably good lawyers, just as there are Major League powerhitters that aren’t on steroids – hmmm, OK, maybe – just as there are adult film stars who aren’t riddled with STD’s. Forget it. The point is that being a lawyer doesn’t make you a bad person, but it doesn’t make you a good choice for governing the country either. In fact, when you think about it, having lawyers make laws is kind of like having Scooby-Do in charge of the Scooby Snacks, or having Shaggy hold the chocolate éclairs, or having a drug addict in charge of the pharmacy.

At the federal level the America system should be almost a turnkey operation. We were given a republic – if we could keep it. It was never the founders’ intent that we should turn it into a meritocracy, plutocracy, oligarchy, aristocracy, celebocracy, or even a bozo-ocracy. The questions are simple. Is it in the Constitution? Yes or no. Is it any of the federal government’s business? Yes or no. Is doing nothing worse than creating more government bureaucracy? Yes or no. If all the answers are ‘Yes’, do the absolute minimum necessary. This does not require great intellect but good judgment. It doesn’t take a genius. All it takes is honesty, integrity, and a modicum of common sense. The problem is that all the honesty, integrity, and common sense within confines of Washington, D.C., would fit into a flea’s navel with room left over for Al Franken’s sense self-importance and Al Gore’s carbon footprint.

We can argue about how intelligent Barack Obama and his cohorts actually are, but that misses the point. Our government is not about how smart people are but how good they are. Forget the clever. Clods will do fine if they are honest clods.

This is why Republicans are so much more susceptible when their integrity is questioned. Those who vote for Democrats have bought the lie of elitism and the idea that the “best and brightest” should go into government work and “run things” for us. Character is secondary if considered at all. Republican voters still – whether they think of it consciously or not – realize that character is the only thing that matters. If a man will lie to his wife, he will lie to us. If a person’s word is no good, the person is no good. A dishonest man is dishonest – shocking, I know -- and has no place in government.

Government does not require the best and brightest. Why do we think that all the best should be going to law school or medical school or business school? If you’re so damn smart, why don’t you produce something instead of talking about something? Of course, we do need legal experts and advocates, and we all want a really good attorney when we need one. Some people go into the legal profession because their gifts lead them that way. I have a cousin like that who is a corporate lawyer. Perhaps Obama became a lawyer because he was genuinely interested in helping people fight the system. That would be the system with thousands of often conflicting and contradictory laws created by lawyers. Again, we have left the keys to the evidence locker with the cocaine addict.

Those who most often vote Republican may instinctively recognize that this country cannot exist with only lawyers, doctors, and financiers. Somebody somewhere has to make something. We need farms and mines and factories. Somebody has to create and innovate. Somebody has to add value. The founders and their spiritual descendants, the Steyn-Ways, view government as a peaceful, predictable structure within which the individual can pursue their dreams and goals and adventures rather than government being the driving force of society.

Similarly, government service should not be viewed as a career but a temporary sacrifice, just as many young men and women enter the military solely to serve their nation for a few years then move on. Since we have far too many entrenched politicians who refuse to voluntarily move on, we need to encourage them by enacting term limits on all elected offices, as well as lifetime limits on the number of years a person can serve in total. We don’t need experienced law-makers or representatives who “know their way around” any more than we need really-really smart people making our choices for us. Why? Because “they” should not be making MY choices! They should not be deciding how many cars to build or what kind to build or how many miles they should get per gallon. Yes, if that were necessary, we would want the smartest people making those decisions. But it is not necessary. In fact it is already being done by a sort of non-governmental entity. It’s a little thing we like to call “the free market” where we make our own decisions.

So, next time you go into the voting booth, I encourage you to vote for the men and women who are good, honest, and righteous even if they don’t look as good or sound as slick or even seem as clever as their opponents. Vote for the people who offer to term-limit themselves, and if they fail to carry through, give them a hand by voting them out. I don’t want to be governed by the elite but by the law, that is, the Constitution.

Rejecting Elemental Deception

Be careful that no one takes you captive through philosophy or empty deceit based on human tradition, based on the elemental forces of this world, and not on Christ. Colossians 2:8

I know I have spent (probably way too) much time arguing about empty deceits. That is a good description of most of what passes for human knowledge. It keeps the grant money rolling in but it is of little value otherwise. People who desperately want to be materialists are never content in their desperation. Say what they will, they want to pull us down in the darkness with them. You sometimes wonder if misery loves company or if they are just afraid of being alone in the dark.

It is rather like talking to a man who has fallen into a sinkhole. You offer to throw him a line but he insists that the only proper course of action is for you to jump down into the hole with him.

Sorry. I’ve been there and I didn’t care for the view.

I am reminded of a G. K. Chesterton quote, “I am quite ready to respect another man's faith; but it is too much to ask that I should respect his doubt, his worldly hesitations and fictions, his political bargain and make-believe.”

For in Him the entire fullness of God’s nature dwells bodily, and you have been filled by Him, who is the head over every ruler and authority Colossian 2:9,10

I can learn a lot by studying the “elemental forces of the world” about how things work, but I cannot learn why things work. The materialist thinks that the only question is how, or rather he only asks how because to ask why is too disturbing.

If I want to understand the material world, I need to know something about the Creator. All of the nature of God was poured into Christ -- and I understand that well enough. What is harder to grasp is that I have been filled by Him.

This is the very purpose of the Gospel – Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection – that we should be restored and partake of the Divine nature. I heard someone protesting the other day about the statement that “God wants to replicate Himself on the earth”. I don’t know what the particular speaker being criticized meant by that. It certainly has the new-agey faux-christian sound to it. Yet I use that phrase, or a similar one, as a convenience.

The Father replicates His nature in His children. What a surprise. That does not mean we are God (though Jesus did quote the Psalm as saying “you are gods”). It does mean that we are carriers of the Holy Ghost bringing the wisdom and power of God into contact with the people we meet and the situations we encounter.

Consider this: our old human nature was subservient to the rule and authority, one might say, of the physical world. The old man is bound and controlled by the gods of forces. When we put on Christ, when we are filled with His nature, the rule and authority of elemental forces are thrown off. Now, instead of being subject to the world’s control, we are submitted to Christ to whom the rulers and authorities of the world are subject. While that is a revelation of a present reality, it is also the promise of a greater manifestation that awaits us.