I just finsihed reading “Manalive” by GK Chesterton for the first time. I say “for the first time” because, undoubtedly, I will read it again. The book follows the theme of much of Chesterton’s fiction: that it is a great thing to be alive. 

The protagonist, one “Innocent Smith,” is thought to be mad by anyone who happens to be around him for any short period of time. However, after spending some more time with him they begin to realize that he is the only sane person that they have ever met. 

Innocent Smith is charged, after a shooting incident, with multiple accounts of attempted murder, he is charged with burglarly and desertion of his wife and children, and he is charged with marital infidelity. Mr. Smith turns out to be “Innocent” of all charges, after being tried in the High Court of Beacon, which is something that he and the other people living in the Beacon boarding house made-up the day before.

What I want to focus on here is the point Chesteron makes about each household being a tiny kingdom; a kingdom with it’s own laws, regulations, court, royalty, money, and customs. And the fact that if any man truely loves his home, his wife, his children, etc., he must always be leaving them, if only to find them again; as if for the first time.

We all know that everyday, modern life can easily become boring and dull. We get into fixed routines of monotony and become, well, too comfortable. Smith realizes this. In one part of the book he leaves his wife and children, telling the Mrs. that, “I won’t stay here any longer. I’ve got another wife and much better children a long way from here. My other wife’s got redder hair than yours, and my other garden’s got a much finer situation; and I’m going off to them.” 

Smith proceeds to trek around the world looking for the house, and the family, that he just left. He ends up in France, Russia, and the United States meeting new people, reminising about his wife and children, and inspiring the strangers with his story. You see, Innocent Smith had never deserted his wife, nor cheated on her, he simply left her on several occassions only to find her again, sweep her off her feet agian, and propose marriage to her again. Since these acts happened at different times, in different place, on-lookers thought that Smith was a scoundrel. Of course, his wife played along, too, leaving the children with his aunt for a week or two in order to re-enact their love story. 

Smith, during his journey around the globe often recalls his house with the green lampost and the red pillar-box. He imagines that they have grown greener and redder in his absence, or at least in his memory.

Here are a couple of striking scenes from the book, Part 2, Chapter 3:

“`Science!’ cried the stranger. `There is only one good thing science ever discovered — a good thing, good tidings of great joy — that the world is round.’

“I told him with civility that his words conveyed no impression to my intelligence. `I mean,’ he said, `that going right round the world is the shortest way to where you are already.’

“`Is it not even shorter,’ I asked, `to stop where you are?’

“`No, no, no!’ he cried emphatically. `That way is long and very weary. At the end of the world, at the back of the dawn, I shall find the wife I really married and the house that is really mine. And that house will have a greener lamp-post and a redder pillar-box. Do you,’ he asked with a sudden intensity, `do you never want to rush out of your house in order to find it?’

“`My grandmother,’ I said in a low tone, `would have said that we were all in exile, and that no earthly house could cure the holy home-sickness that forbids us rest.’

“He was silent a long while, and watched a single eagle drift out beyond the Green Finger into the darkening void.

“Then he said, `I think your grandmother was right,’ and stood up leaning on his grassy pole. `I think that must be the reason,’ he said — `the secret of this life of man, so ecstatic and so unappeased. But I think there is more to be said. I think God has given us the love of special places, of a hearth and of a native land, for a good reason.’

“`I dare say,’ I said. `What reason?’

“`Because otherwise,’ he said, pointing his pole out at the sky and the abyss, `we might worship that.’

“`What do you mean?’ I demanded.

“`Eternity,’ he said in his harsh voice, `the largest of the idols — the mightiest of the rivals of God.’

“`You mean pantheism and infinity and all that,’ I suggested.

“`I mean,’ he said with increasing vehemence, `that if there be a house for me in heaven it will either have a green lamp-post and a hedge, or something quite as positive and personal as a green lamp-post and a hedge. I mean that God bade me love one spot and serve it, and do all things however wild in praise of it, so that this one spot might be a witness against all the infinities and the sophistries, that Paradise is somewhere and not anywhere, is something and not anything. And I would not be so very much surprised if the house in heaven had a real green lamp-post after all.’

This really explains one of the questions that troubled Chesterton in the days before his conversion to Christianity and the Catholic Church: “How is it that a man can feel homesick; even at home?” And, it also proves another of his points, that: “A thing can be too close to be seen.”

Smith had his home and his family, but surely he didn’t feel the butterflies in his stomach, when he looked at his wife, as powerful as he did upon seeing her for the first time. Aren’t we all guilty of becoming too well acquainted with our lives? Couldn’t we all profit from Smith’s philosophy?

As to every home being a kingdom, I’ll post a few clippings from Part One, Chapter 3:

“All next day at Beacon House there was a crazy sense that it was everybody’s birthday. It is the fashion to talk of institutions as cold and cramping things. The truth is that when people are in exceptionally high spirits, really wild with freedom and invention, they always must, and they always do, create institutions. When men are weary they fall into anarchy; but while they are gay and vigorous they invariably make rules. This, which is true of all the churches and republics of history, is also true of the most trivial parlour game or the most unsophisticated meadow romp. We are never free until some institution frees us; and liberty cannot exist till it is declared by authority.”

“But among the hilarious experiments of that holiday (which seemed more like a week’s holiday than a day’s) one experiment towers supreme, not because it was any sillier or more successful than the others, but because out of this particular folly flowed all of the odd events that were to follow. All the other practical jokes exploded of themselves, and left vacancy; all the other fictions returned upon themselves, and were finished like a song. But the string of solid and startling events– which were to include a hansom cab, a detective, a pistol, and a marriage licence–were all made primarily possible by the joke about the High Court of Beacon.

“It had originated, not with Innocent Smith, but with Michael Moon. He was in a strange glow and pressure of spirits, and talked incessantly; yet he had never been more sarcastic, and even inhuman. He used his old useless knowledge as a barrister to talk entertainingly of a tribunal that was a parody on the pompous anomalies of English law. The High Court of Beacon, he declared, was a splendid example of our free and sensible constitution. It had been founded by King John in defiance of the Magna Carta, and now held absolute power over windmills, wine and spirit licences, ladies traveling in Turkey, revision of sentences for dog-stealing and parricide, as well as anything whatever that happened in the town of Market Bosworth. The whole hundred and nine seneschals of the High Court of Beacon met once in every four centuries; but in the intervals (as Mr. Moon explained) the whole powers of the institution were vested in Mrs. Duke. Tossed about among the rest of the company, however, the High Court did not retain its historical and legal seriousness, but was used somewhat unscrupulously in a riot of domestic detail. If somebody spilt the Worcester Sauce on the tablecloth, he was quite sure it was a rite without which the sittings and findings of the Court would be invalid; or if somebody wanted a window to remain shut, he would suddenly remember that none but the third son of the lord of the manor of Penge had the right to open it. They even went to the length of making arrests and conducting criminal inquiries. The proposed trial of Moses Gould for patriotism was rather above the heads of the company, especially of the criminal; but the trial of Inglewood on a charge of photographic libel, and his triumphant acquittal upon a plea of insanity, were admitted to be in the best tradition of the Court. But when Smith was in wild spirits he grew more and more serious, not more and more flippant like Michael Moon. This proposal of a private court of justice, which Moon had thrown off with the detachment of a political humourist, Smith really caught hold of with the eagerness of an abstract philosopher. It was by far the best thing they could do, he declared, to claim sovereign powers even for the individual household.

“You believe in Home Rule for Ireland; I believe in Home Rule for homes,” he cried eagerly to Michael. “It would be better if every father COULD kill his son, as with the old Romans; it would be better, because nobody would be killed. Let’s issue a Declaration of Independence from Beacon House. We could grow enough greens in that garden to support us, and when the tax-collector comes let’s tell him we’re self-supporting, and play on him with the hose. …Well, perhaps, as you say, we couldn’t very well have a hose, as that comes from the main; but we could sink a well in this chalk, and a lot could be done with water-jugs… Let this really be Beacon House. Let’s light a bonfire of independence on the roof, and see house after house answering it across the valley of the Thames! Let us begin the League of the Free Families! Away with Local Government! A fig for Local Patriotism! Let every house be a sovereign state as this is, and judge its own children by its own law, as we do by the Court of Beacon. Let us cut the painter, and begin to be happy together, as if we were on a desert island.”

“I know that desert island,” said Michael Moon; “it only exists in the `Swiss Family Robinson.’ A man feels a strange desire for some sort of vegetable milk, and crash comes down some unexpected cocoa-nut from some undiscovered monkey. A literary man feels inclined to pen a sonnet, and at once an officious porcupine rushes out of a thicket and shoots out one of his quills.”

“Don’t you say a word against the `Swiss Family Robinson,’” cried Innocent with great warmth. “It mayn’t be exact science, but it’s dead accurate philosophy. When you’re really shipwrecked, you do really find what you want. When you’re really on a desert island, you never find it a desert. If we were really besieged in this garden, we’d find a hundred English birds and English berries that we never knew were here. If we were snowed up in this room, we’d be the better for reading scores of books in that bookcase that we don’t even know are there; we’d have talks with each other, good, terrible talks, that we shall go to the grave without guessing; we’d find materials for everything– christening, marriage, or funeral; yes, even for a coronation– if we didn’t decide to be a republic.”

“A coronation on `Swiss Family’ lines, I suppose,” said Michael, laughing. “Oh, I know you would find everything in that atmosphere. If we wanted such a simple thing, for instance, as a Coronation Canopy, we should walk down beyond the geraniums and find the Canopy Tree in full bloom. If we wanted such a trifle as a crown of gold, why, we should be digging up dandelions, and we should find a gold mine under the lawn. And when we wanted oil for the ceremony, why I suppose a great storm would wash everything on shore, and we should find there was a Whale on the premises.”

“And so there IS a whale on the premises for all you know,” asseverated Smith, striking the table with passion. “I bet you’ve never examined the premises! I bet you’ve never been round at the back as I was this morning– for I found the very thing you say could only grow on a tree. There’s an old sort of square tent up against the dustbin; it’s got three holes in the canvas, and a pole’s broken, so it’s not much good as a tent, but as a Canopy–” And his voice quite failed him to express its shining adequacy; then he went on with controversial eagerness: “You see I take every challenge as you make it. I believe every blessed thing you say couldn’t be here has been here all the time. You say you want a whale washed up for oil. Why, there’s oil in that cruet-stand at your elbow; and I don’t believe anybody has touched it or thought of it for years. And as for your gold crown, we’re none of us wealthy here, but we could collect enough ten-shilling bits from our own pockets to string round a man’s head for half an hour; or one of Miss Hunt’s gold bangles is nearly big enough to–”

“The good-humoured Rosamund was almost choking with laughter. “All is not gold that glitters,” she said, “and besides–”

“What a mistake that is!” cried Innocent Smith, leaping up in great excitement. “All is gold that glitters– especially now we are a Sovereign State. What’s the good of a Sovereign State if you can’t define a sovereign? We can make anything a precious metal, as men could in the morning of the world. They didn’t choose gold because it was rare; your scientists can tell you twenty sorts of slime much rarer. They chose gold because it was bright–because it was a hard thing to find, but pretty when you’ve found it. You can’t fight with golden swords or eat golden biscuits; you can only look at it–an you can look at it out here.”

“With one of his incalculable motions he sprang back and burst open the doors into the garden. At the same time also, with one of his gestures that never seemed at the instant so unconventional as they were, he stretched out his hand to Mary Gray, and led her out on to the lawn as if for a dance.

“The French windows, thus flung open, let in an evening even lovelier than that of the day before. The west was swimming with sanguine colours, and a sort of sleepy flame lay along the lawn. The twisted shadows of the one or two garden trees showed upon this sheen, not gray or black, as in common daylight, but like arabesques written in vivid violet ink on some page of Eastern gold. The sunset was one of those festive and yet mysterious conflagrations in which common things by their colours remind us of costly or curious things. The slates upon the sloping roof burned like the plumes of a vast peacock, in every mysterious blend of blue and green. The red-brown bricks of the wall glowed with all the October tints of strong ruby and tawny wines. The sun seemed to set each object alight with a different coloured flame, like a man lighting fireworks; and even Innocent’s hair, which was of a rather colourless fairness, seemed to have a flame of pagan gold on it as he strode across the lawn towards the one tall ridge of rockery.

“What would be the good of gold,” he was saying, “if it did not glitter? Why should we care for a black sovereign any more than for a black sun at noon? A black button would do just as well. Don’t you see that everything in this garden looks like a jewel? And will you kindly tell me what the deuce is the good of a jewel except that it looks like a jewel? Leave off buying and selling, and start looking! Open your eyes, and you’ll wake up in the New Jerusalem.

“All is gold that glitters–
Tree and tower of brass;
Rolls the golden evening air
Down the golden grass.
Kick the cry to Jericho,
How yellow mud is sold,
All is gold that glitters,
For the glitter is the gold.”

“And who wrote that?” asked Rosamund, amused.

“No one will ever write it,” answered Smith, and cleared the rockery with a flying leap.”

I really can’t add much to that. Home rule for homes… what an interesting idea. Sounds as plain as common sense to me. Of course, GK Chesterton was an advocate not of capitalism, communism, or socialism. He was an advocate of Distributism, also known as Distributive Justice. You can Google those terms to learn more about the sanity, common sense, and pleasure of those simple and holy ideals.

Every home a castle and every man a King; now there’s the CHANGE WE NEED, Mr. Obama. 

Chesterton wrote elsewhere that, “It is the immediate business of every man to make his home and his surroundings as symbolic to his own mind as possible.” So set back, close your eyes, and think about what you would name your kingdom. Decide on the name, shape, and material of your kingdom’s money. And please realize that no matter how small your kingdom is, it is by far too large a land to rule. 

When you wake in the morning, when you say your morning prayers, imagine the angels in heaven reporting your status to the Father by saying, “Man found alive, with two legs.” Then read this great book!

 

LaZ

 ”Bishop” Robinson of the Episcopal Church has been picked by Obama to offer a prayer at his inauguration. Robinson is an openly homosexual man who was elevated to the level of bishop in New Hampshire after leaving his wife and children. President-Elect Obama has also chosen Protestant Pastor Rick Warren to pray during the ceremonies. As of right now there will be no prayers offered by Catholic or Jewish clergy.

In a recent NPR radio interview, “Bishop” Robinson made the following statements: (emphasis added)

Robinson: I have actually read back over the inaugural prayers of the last 30 or 40 years and frankly I’ve been shocked at how aggressively Christian they are. And my intention is not to invoke the name of Jesus but to make this a prayer for Christians and non-Christians alike. Although I hold the scripture to be the word of God, those scriptures are holy to me and Jews and Christians, but to many other faith traditions they have their own sacred texts. And so rather than insert that and really exclude them from the prayer by doing so, I want this to be a prayer to the god of our many understandings and a prayer that all people of faith can join me in.

Host: The god of many understandings?

Robinson: “Yes. I was treated for alcoholism three years ago and grateful to be sober today. And one of the things that I’ve learned in 12 step programs is this phrase, ‘the god of my understanding’. It allows people to pray to a God of really many understandings. And let’s face it, each one of us has a different understanding of God. No one of us can fully understand God or else God wouldn’t be God.”

Actually, Mr. Robinson, praying to a “God of my understanding” sounds almost exactly like man making God in his own image. Mr. Robinson has apparently built a god to his liking. Whatever else this is, it isn’t Christianity. No wonder so many Episcopalians are coming home to the Catholic Church.

Of course, many of God’s ways and much of the Trinity will remain a mystery to human understanding. Yet we can understand what God has Divinely Revealed to us through Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition. This fact eliminates and nullifies Robinson’s comments that “each one of us has a different understanding of God. No one of us can fully understand God or else God wouldn’t be God.” 

A God that we imagine, apart from the Truth that we know of Him, is a fickle god of our own making. In short, a god of my understanding is a false idol. A God who is completely unknowable to us certainly isn’t “Our Father,” it certainly isn’t YAHWEH, thus Robinson’s god of many understandings isn’t the God of the Scriptures. A man cannot have a relationship with an “understanding.” A man can only have a relationship with a Person.

Since the God of Christianity has revealed Himself through Divine Revelation, and since those revelations do not fit with Robinson’s homosexuality, he has built a god for himself; a god as fragile as he is.

However, if Robinson believes in the Holy Scriptures, as he claims, he should know that his prayer will not be heard by God since he is intentionally not directing his prayer to Him. So, why even pray? Why not give everyone a high-five or a stiff pat on the back? Why not sing a few feel-good songs or do some interpretive dance? What does he expect to accomplish with this prayer?

Anyone with any level of common sense left in them can see the folly of Robinson’s thought and his lack of theology. It is madness.

*As a final  note, Robinson may call himself a bishop, he may be called a bishop by others, but he is NOT a bishop in the Christian Church. He is playing make believe here, too, just like he’s going to play make believe with his prayer. The Episcopal “Church” doesn’t have valid bishops, a valid priesthood, or a real Eucharist.  

Join me in prayers for Mr. Robinson, President-Elect Obama, Rick Warren, and everyone else in our country. Ask, as is asked at every Holy Mass, that God look not on our sins, but on the faith of His Church.

In Jesus name, my God, have mercy; on us and on the whole world.

In Nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.

Amen.

Please visit www.CatholicsComeHome.org, the website is incredibly well done. While you’re there make sure to watch the videos. They are airing as commercials all over the nation on television and radio (minus the video, of course.)

And come home to the Catholic Church.

Laz.

The Giant: Barack Obama, President-Elect of the United States of America

Able to Leap Tall Buildings in a Single Election.

The Weapon: Change – (a simple catch-word or something worse?)

The Trouble: Ultra-Liberal Political Leanings and the Power to Enforce Them.

The good news first: The United States of America has come a very long way in a very short time. The people have spoken and they have spoken clearly, “We Love Barack Obama.” Electing a black man for the highest office in the land seemed, to many people, to be only a dream. Well, dreams really do come true, and not only at Disney World. Barack has won the highest office in the land and I congratulate him, the entire African-American population, and all the many fine men and women who fought for civil rights in this country.

The bad news next: The United States of America has come a very long way in a very short time. While it is certainly a great thing to see an African-American individual get elected to the highest civil office in the free world, the rest of the long way America has come is largely, well, the wrong way. We have traversed every hill, we’ve tramped through every valley, we’ve swam the oceans and rode the winds, only to find that we had no idea where we were going. And we weren’t sure that, when we finally reached our destination, that we ever wanted to be there (or Here) to begin with. Plus, I forgot my jacket.

“Progress is a comparative of which we have not settled the superlative.” – GK Chesterton

We are without doubt a nation of progressives, but what are we progressing toward?

Obama has assured us that we need a change, but a change to what?

I heard pre-campaign whispers that Barack Obama was a socialist. Those whispers turned to screams during the campaigns and have now become a staple of conservative radio shows. I don’t know if Obama is a socialist or not. Frankly I don’t care. Whatever he is, he certainly isn’t a Catholic. Neither is Biden.

I’m enough of a democrat to always be swept up by the winds of change. I’m enough of a republican to fear things getting any worse than they are. But Obama seems to be a strict liberal, in the sad, modern sense of the term, and to him any change is a change for the better.

“The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected.” – GK Chesterton

I’m not going to jump on any political bandwagons, especially late in the game, because it is a perfect fact that the rich and powerful own the media and they determine what we see and hear on television and in the papers. I believe that Barack Obama cannot be as bad as many conservative media outlets make him out to be.

I believe that he is worse. He is a man. And men- when they desire power, when they desire to leave their mark- are capable of far greater evil than any media seer could envision. It is the chief fault of the proud and the powerful that they are not proud enough, or that they are proud of the wrong things. Misplaced pride is a beacon of evil that shines across human history. Hitler was proud of his heritage, but not his human heritage. He was proud to be a German but not proud enough to be a Man. The same could be said for Stalin, the Caesars, etc.

Man, when he is supremely proud of himself, is a ticking time-bomb. He will say and do anything for the simple and prideful privilege of being able to say that he did it.  Of course Barack Obama doesn’t want to see an increase in abortions across our country, no half-sane person does. But if an increase in abortions can be attributed to him, well, that is a small price to pay to see his name in the history books. Even infamy is a goal of the proud.

Gay marriage is a lie and a superstition. There is simply no such thing. Marriage, by definition, involves two people of opposite sexes. They might as well call the union of a man and a man an “elephant,” or a “mountain,” or “The Louisiana Purchase”. Whatever they call it, short of calling it what it is, it is certainly not it’s name. This accident of words has caused many well-meaning people, including Obama, to equate the issue with civil rights.

That sex, hand holding in public, vows, dinner reservations, a male, and a female are seen together regularly and have been placed under the holy and terrible title of marriage is easily understandable. One may even call the thing marriage if you take out the dinners and the hand holding. In our society we like words that serve as utilities and words that are interchangable. Thus when someone, instead of taking out the dinner, removes the spouse and inserts a fellow woman or man they mistakenly believe that the same thing exists. But it does not. By removing the man or the woman they have removed the marriage. It is like removing the food from the plate and calling it dinner. Whatever it is called is exactly what it isn’t. 

This sad fact is easily seen elsewhere in our modern world. What gets passed off as art is often completely unartistic. What some call poetry is often unmetered and unrhyming. What sells as music is really not. You see my point. 

Civil rights were certainly rights, and definitively civil. That a black man or a woman has some say in an election, some seat on a bus, some chair in a lecture hall is common sense. The men who prevented this from happening were only as well-meaning as Mr. Obama. It is a sad fact that it took so much time and so much violence for common sense to prevail. 

If the term “evolution” may be used, it was a slow and steady evolution of the social ideals of times past that eventually saw the fruition of these rights. It was the voices of men like Martin Luther King who guided the unravelling of the folds to their proper ends. But this is precisely where gay marriage goes off chart.

That black men should be granted the same respect as white men in the 1900’s was natural enough. That men should stop sleeping with women, having families and instead begin to sleep with each other and have civil unions is not natural at all. The evolutionary chain breaks between the two ideas. 

Mr. Obama will probably never read this blog. But if he does I would only say that he is degrading and dragging through the mud the good names of heroes like Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks when he compares them with the activists for gay rights. King and Parks fought for a cause; a natural, common sensical, and worthy cause. The modern activists are fighting against all causes. They would turn the entire world upside down in the name of “equal rights” when they do have equal rights but desire the unequivocal.

Obama has a lot to think about. I can only imagine that due to his mental exerssion he has somehow over-looked this accident of words known as “gay marriage”. (Which I now prefer to call “The Annexation of Puerto Rico” or “Going Green”.) 

Moving on, finally, Obama seems to imagine a government larger even than this one; a government with it’s hands in all possible pots and it’s irons in all serviceable fires. The FBI may now seize our computers and tap our phone lines if they suspect us of terrorism. Soon they may be allowed to seize our children because we tell them that Catholicism is real and “Going Green” isn’t. A large government isn’t democratic, but to my mind our nation stopped being a democracy a long time before Obama was elected.

I don’t believe, like some of my fundamentalist Protestant friends, that Barack Obama is the anti-Christ. Rather, I believe he is the anti-Democrat, the anti-Liberal (in the truer sense of the term), and even the anti-Idealist. It will be sometime in the future- probably when Obama is mid-term and setting high in his perch above the free world- that he will realize, with a shock, exactly how much power he has. And it will be then that his pride will combine with his power into an unholy alliance against the common folk of this nation. 

While the blissfully ignorant people of our land- people like me- are busy living our lives and paying our debts to capitalism Mr. Obama will be in Washington DC signing the laws that will kill whatever is Christian in our society. Not because he is anti-Christ, but because he is pro-Progressive; thus all change is a change for freedom to his mind. Even if he is changing the very things that make this democracy democratic. Even if he changes the very things that make this nation American.

No, I think Barack Obama is a good man. He is certainly a well-meaning man. He is a liberal and a democrat. I can say all of this because somehow all that was ever English about our “english” is now lost in the translating.

Indeed this nation was once liberal and even gay. If the symbol for time and recycling, in all it’s forms, is the serpent with it’s tail in it’s mouth- often called the “infinity” symbol- I believe it is very fitting to our present situation. Things that were once good, and liberal, and gay, and well-meaning once upon a time have been looping the loop of infinity. They were once used as the tools that “crushed the serpents head” and now they are only the filth that passes from his intestines.  

 

GK Chesterton appeared at least twice in recent editions of The Wall Street Journal. Here are the articles if you’d like to read them.

Article about “The Man Who Was Thursday”

Article that mentions Chesterton and quotes from “Orthodoxy”.

The best book on Christian Apologetics has yet to be written. “Orthodoxy” by GK Chesterton holds the number 2 position. Followed by Chesterton’s “The Everlasting Man” and CS Lewis’ “Mere Christianity”. Rounding out the top five is Lewis’ “The Problem of Pain”. Other excellent titles include the great books by Peter Kreeft, Scott Hahn, Cardinal Newman, Josh Mcdowell, etc. etc. Of course, this is just my opinion. You may write your’s in the comments section; or on your own blog.

The best book on Christian Apologetics has never been written, because the best books on Christian Apologetics would be a Scratch-and-Sniff book. It would be full of flavors, aromas, textures, pictures, cartoons, pyrotechnics, cuddle-fish, crocodiles, elves, oak trees, blades of grass, stars, microphones, internal combustion engines, elk, dogs, cats, clouds, angels, and the like.

Actually, Orthodoxy IS the best book on Christian Apologetics, because the more I think about the other, it seems less and less like a book at all. Systematic arguments and Biblical exegesis can only get someone so far. People’s eyes and ears and imaginations are the real tools of the trade.  Which is why Orthodoxy IS Number One on the list. It’s not an Apologetics book either. Orthodoxy is a sweeping philosophy of the world and the most sane way to view it. So, Orthodoxy isn’t really a book, either.

Chesterton wrote in Orthodoxy,

 “When once one believes in a creed, one is proud of its complexity, as scientists are proud of the complexity of science. It shows how rich it is in discoveries. If it is right at all, it is a compliment to say that it’s elaborately right. A stick might fit a hole or a stone a hollow by accident. But a key and a lock are both complex. And if a key fits a lock, you know it is the right key. 

But this involved accuracy of the thing makes it very difficult to do what I now have to do, to describe this accumulation of truth.It is very hard for a man to defend anything of which he is entirely convinced. It is comparatively easy when he is only partially convinced. He is partially convinced because he has found this or that proof of the thing, and he can expound it. But a man is not really convinced of a philosophic theory when he finds that something proves it. He is only really convinced when he finds that everything proves it. And the more converging reasons he finds pointing to this conviction, the more bewildered he is if asked suddenly to sum them up. Thus, if one asked an ordinary intelligent man, on the spur of the moment, “Why do you prefer civilization to savagery?” he would look wildly round at object after object, and would only be able to answer vaguely, “Why, there is that bookcase . . . and the coals in the coal-scuttle . . . and pianos . . . and policemen.” The whole case for civilization is that the case for it is complex. It has done so many things. But that very multiplicity of proof which ought to make reply overwhelming makes reply impossible. 

There is, therefore, about all complete conviction a kind of huge helplessness.”

The ever-humble giant failed to note, though, that Orthodoxy IS entirely-convincing. The scope of Chesterton’s masterwork emcompasses Orthodox Christianity as a whole, and deals with it from every angle. CS Lewis’ book “Mere Christianity” is a fantastic book, but it would not have been possible without Orthodoxy. Once a man reads Chesterton he realizes that GK’s influence is felt in nearly all the pages of Lewis.

So, if you want my answer to the question, “What is the best book on Christian Apologetics?” I’d say Orthodoxy, hands down.

Because:

1. Orthodoxy is MORE than a book.
2. Orthodoxy is the most fun a man can have reading a book.
3. Orthodoxy is Scratch-and-Sniff Apologetics. It takes dogmas and doctrines and puts them into practical use; uses that a man can see in the streets, in the forrests, and inside the foreign and untamed lands on his heart.

There has fallen on earth for a token
A god too great for the sky.
He has burst out of all things and broken
The bounds of eternity:
Into time and the terminal land
He has strayed like a thief or a lover,
For the wine of the world brims over,
Its splendour is spilt on the sand.

Who is proud when the heavens are humble,
Who mounts if the mountains fall,
If the fixed stars topple and tumble
And a deluge of love drowns all-
Who rears up his head for a crown,
Who holds up his will for a warrant,
Who strives with the starry torrent,
When all that is good goes down?

For in dread of such falling and failing
The fallen angels fell
Inverted in insolence, scaling
The hanging mountain of hell:
But unmeasured of plummet and rod
Too deep for their sight to scan,
Outrushing the fall of man
Is the height of the fall of God.

Glory to God in the Lowest
The spout of the stars in spate-
Where thunderbolt thinks to be slowest
And the lightning fears to be late:
As men dive for sunken gem
Pursuing, we hunt and hound it,
The fallen star has found it
In the cavern of Bethlehem.

The following is an essay from “All Things Considered” by GK Chesterton on the subject of Christmas.

There is no more dangerous or disgusting habit than that of celebrating Christmas before it comes, as I am doing in this article. It is the very essence of a festival that it breaks upon one brilliantly and abruptly, that at one moment the great day is not and the next moment the great day is. Up to a certain specific instant you are feeling ordinary and sad; for it is only Wednesday. At the next moment your heart leaps up and your soul and body dance together like lovers; for in one burst and blaze it has become Thursday. I am assuming (of course) that you are a worshipper of Thor, and that you celebrate his day once a week, possibly with human sacrifice. If, on the other hand, you are a modern Christian Englishman, you hail (of course) with the same explosion of gaiety the appearance of the English Sunday. But I say that whatever the day is that is to you festive or symbolic, it is essential that there should be a quite clear black line between it and the time going before. And all the old wholesome customs in connection with Christmas were to the effect that one should not touch or see or know or speak of something before the actual coming of Christmas Day. Thus, for instance, children were never given their presents until the actual coming of the appointed hour. The presents were kept tied up in brown-paper parcels, out of which an arm of a doll or the leg of a donkey sometimes accidentally stuck. I wish this principle were adopted in respect of modern Christmas ceremonies and publications. Especially it ought to be observed in connection with what are called the Christmas numbers of magazines. The editors of the magazines bring out their Christmas numbers so long before the time that the reader is more likely to be still lamenting for the turkey of last year than to have seriously settled down to a solid anticipation of the turkey which is to come. Christmas numbers of magazines ought to be tied up in brown paper and kept for Christmas Day. On consideration, I should favour the editors being tied up in brown paper. Whether the leg or arm of an editor should ever be allowed to protrude I leave to individual choice.

Of course, all this secrecy about Christmas is merely sentimental and ceremonial; if you do not like what is sentimental and ceremonial, do not celebrate Christmas at all. You will not be punished if you don’t; also, since we are no longer ruled by those sturdy Puritans who won for us civil and religious liberty, you will not even be punished if you do. But I cannot understand why any one should bother about a ceremonial except ceremonially. If a thing only exists in order to be graceful, do it gracefully or do not do it. If a thing only exists as something professing to be solemn, do it solemnly or do not do it. There is no sense in doing it slouchingly; nor is there even any liberty. I can understand the man who takes off his hat to a lady because it is the customary symbol. I can understand him, I say; in fact, I know him quite intimately. I can also understand the man who refuses to take off his hat to a lady, like the old Quakers, because he thinks that a symbol is superstition. But what point would there be in so performing an arbitrary form of respect that it was not a form of respect? We respect the gentleman who takes off his hat to the lady; we respect the fanatic who will not take off his hat to the lady. But what should we think of the man who kept his hands in his pockets and asked the lady to take his hat off for him because he felt tired?

This is combining insolence and superstition; and the modern world is full of the strange combination. There is no mark of the immense weak-mindedness of modernity that is more striking than this general disposition to keep up old forms, but to keep them up informally and feebly. Why take something which was only meant to be respectful and preserve it disrespectfully? Why take something which you could easily abolish as a superstition and carefully perpetuate it as a bore? There have been many instances of this half-witted compromise. Was it not true, for instance, that the other day some mad American was trying to buy Glastonbury Abbey and transfer it stone by stone to America? Such things are not only illogical, but idiotic. There is no particular reason why a pushing American financier should pay respect to Glastonbury Abbey at all. But if he is to pay respect to Glastonbury Abbey, he must pay respect to Glastonbury. If it is a matter of sentiment, why should he spoil the scene? If it is not a matter of sentiment, why should he ever have visited the scene? To call this kind of thing Vandalism is a very inadequate and unfair description. The Vandals were very sensible people. They did not believe in a religion, and so they insulted it; they did not see any use for certain buildings, and so they knocked them down. But they were not such fools as to encumber their march with the fragments of the edifice they had themselves spoilt. They were at least superior to the modern American mode of reasoning. They did not desecrate the stones because they held them sacred.

Another instance of the same illogicality I observed the other day at some kind of “At Home.” I saw what appeared to be a human being dressed in a black evening-coat, black dress-waistcoat, and black dress-trousers, but with a shirt-front made of Jaegar wool. What can be the sense of this sort of thing? If a man thinks hygiene more important than convention (a selfish and heathen view, for the beasts that perish are more hygienic than man, and man is only above them because he is more conventional), if, I say, a man thinks that hygiene is more important than convention, what on earth is there to oblige him to wear a shirt-front at all? But to take a costume of which the only conceivable cause or advantage is that it is a sort of uniform, and then not wear it in the uniform way—this is to be neither a Bohemian nor a gentleman. It is a foolish affectation, I think, in an English officer of the Life Guards never to wear his uniform if he can help it. But it would be more foolish still if he showed himself about town in a scarlet coat and a Jaeger breast-plate. It is the custom nowadays to have Ritual Commissions and Ritual Reports to make rather unmeaning compromises in the ceremonial of the Church of England. So perhaps we shall have an ecclesiastical compromise by which all the Bishops shall wear Jaeger copes and Jaeger mitres. Similarly the King might insist on having a Jaeger crown. But I do not think he will, for he understands the logic of the matter better than that. The modern monarch, like a reasonable fellow, wears his crown as seldom as he can; but if he does it at all, then the only point of a crown is that it is a crown. So let me assure the unknown gentleman in the woollen vesture that the only point of a white shirt-front is that it is a white shirt-front. Stiffness may be its impossible defect; but it is certainly its only possible merit.

Let us be consistent, therefore, about Christmas, and either keep customs or not keep them. If you do not like sentiment and symbolism, you do not like Christmas; go away and celebrate something else; I should suggest the birthday of Mr. McCabe. No doubt you could have a sort of scientific Christmas with a hygienic pudding and highly instructive presents stuffed into a Jaeger stocking; go and have it then. If you like those things, doubtless you are a good sort of fellow, and your intentions are excellent. I have no doubt that you are really interested in humanity; but I cannot think that humanity will ever be much interested in you. Humanity is unhygienic from its very nature and beginning. It is so much an exception in Nature that the laws of Nature really mean nothing to it. Now Christmas is attacked also on the humanitarian ground. Ouida called it a feast of slaughter and gluttony. Mr. Shaw suggested that it was invented by poulterers. That should be considered before it becomes more considerable.

I do not know whether an animal killed at Christmas has had a better or a worse time than it would have had if there had been no Christmas or no Christmas dinners. But I do know that the fighting and suffering brotherhood to which I belong and owe everything, Mankind, would have a much worse time if there were no such thing as Christmas or Christmas dinners. Whether the turkey which Scrooge gave to Bob Cratchit had experienced a lovelier or more melancholy career than that of less attractive turkeys is a subject upon which I cannot even conjecture. But that Scrooge was better for giving the turkey and Cratchit happier for getting it I know as two facts, as I know that I have two feet. What life and death may be to a turkey is not my business; but the soul of Scrooge and the body of Cratchit are my business. Nothing shall induce me to darken human homes, to destroy human festivities, to insult human gifts and human benefactions for the sake of some hypothetical knowledge which Nature curtained from our eyes. We men and women are all in the same boat, upon a stormy sea. We owe to each other a terrible and tragic loyalty. If we catch sharks for food, let them be killed most mercifully; let any one who likes love the sharks, and pet the sharks, and tie ribbons round their necks and give them sugar and teach them to dance. But if once a man suggests that a shark is to be valued against a sailor, or that the poor shark might be permitted to bite off a nigger’s leg occasionally; then I would court-martial the man—he is a traitor to the ship.

And while I take this view of humanitarianism of the anti-Christmas kind, it is cogent to say that I am a strong anti-vivisectionist. That is, if there is any vivisection, I am against it. I am against the cutting-up of conscious dogs for the same reason that I am in favour of the eating of dead turkeys. The connection may not be obvious; but that is because of the strangely unhealthy condition of modern thought. I am against cruel vivisection as I am against a cruel anti-Christmas asceticism, because they both involve the upsetting of existing fellowships and the shocking of normal good feelings for the sake of something that is intellectual, fanciful, and remote. It is not a human thing, it is not a humane thing, when you see a poor woman staring hungrily at a bloater, to think, not of the obvious feelings of the woman, but of the unimaginable feelings of the deceased bloater. Similarly, it is not human, it is not humane, when you look at a dog to think about what theoretic discoveries you might possibly make if you were allowed to bore a hole in his head. Both the humanitarians’ fancy about the feelings concealed inside the bloater, and the vivisectionists’ fancy about the knowledge concealed inside the dog, are unhealthy fancies, because they upset a human sanity that is certain for the sake of something that is of necessity uncertain. The vivisectionist, for the sake of doing something that may or may not be useful, does something that certainly is horrible. The anti-Christmas humanitarian, in seeking to have a sympathy with a turkey which no man can have with a turkey, loses the sympathy he has already with the happiness of millions of the poor.

It is not uncommon nowadays for the insane extremes in reality to meet. Thus I have always felt that brutal Imperialism and Tolstoian non-resistance were not only not opposite, but were the same thing. They are the same contemptible thought that conquest cannot be resisted, looked at from the two standpoints of the conqueror and the conquered. Thus again teetotalism and the really degraded gin-selling and dram-drinking have exactly the same moral philosophy. They are both based on the idea that fermented liquor is not a drink, but a drug. But I am specially certain that the extreme of vegetarian humanity is, as I have said, akin to the extreme of scientific cruelty—they both permit a dubious speculation to interfere with their ordinary charity. The sound moral rule in such matters as vivisection always presents itself to me in this way. There is no ethical necessity more essential and vital than this: that casuistical exceptions, though admitted, should be admitted as exceptions. And it follows from this, I think, that, though we may do a horrid thing in a horrid situation, we must be quite certain that we actually and already are in that situation. Thus, all sane moralists admit that one may sometimes tell a lie; but no sane moralist would approve of telling a little boy to practise telling lies, in case he might one day have to tell a justifiable one. Thus, morality has often justified shooting a robber or a burglar. But it would not justify going into the village Sunday school and shooting all the little boys who looked as if they might grow up into burglars. The need may arise; but the need must have arisen. It seems to me quite clear that if you step across this limit you step off a precipice.

Now, whether torturing an animal is or is not an immoral thing, it is, at least, a dreadful thing. It belongs to the order of exceptional and even desperate acts. Except for some extraordinary reason I would not grievously hurt an animal; with an extraordinary reason I would grievously hurt him. If (for example) a mad elephant were pursuing me and my family, and I could only shoot him so that he would die in agony, he would have to die in agony. But the elephant would be there. I would not do it to a hypothetical elephant. Now, it always seems to me that this is the weak point in the ordinary vivisectionist argument, “Suppose your wife were dying.” Vivisection is not done by a man whose wife is dying. If it were it might be lifted to the level of the moment, as would be lying or stealing bread, or any other ugly action. But this ugly action is done in cold blood, at leisure, by men who are not sure that it will be of any use to anybody—men of whom the most that can be said is that they may conceivably make the beginnings of some discovery which may perhaps save the life of some one else’s wife in some remote future. That is too cold and distant to rob an act of its immediate horror. That is like training the child to tell lies for the sake of some great dilemma that may never come to him. You are doing a cruel thing, but not with enough passion to make it a kindly one.

So much for why I am an anti-vivisectionist; and I should like to say, in conclusion, that all other anti-vivisectionists of my acquaintance weaken their case infinitely by forming this attack on a scientific speciality in which the human heart is commonly on their side, with attacks upon universal human customs in which the human heart is not at all on their side. I have heard humanitarians, for instance, speak of vivisection and field sports as if they were the same kind of thing. The difference seems to me simple and enormous. In sport a man goes into a wood and mixes with the existing life of that wood; becomes a destroyer only in the simple and healthy sense in which all the creatures are destroyers; becomes for one moment to them what they are to him—another animal. In vivisection a man takes a simpler creature and subjects it to subtleties which no one but man could inflict on him, and for which man is therefore gravely and terribly responsible.

Meanwhile, it remains true that I shall eat a great deal of turkey this Christmas; and it is not in the least true (as the vegetarians say) that I shall do it because I do not realise what I am doing, or because I do what I know is wrong, or that I do it with shame or doubt or a fundamental unrest of conscience. In one sense I know quite well what I am doing; in another sense I know quite well that I know not what I do. Scrooge and the Cratchits and I are, as I have said, all in one boat; the turkey and I are, to say the most of it, ships that pass in the night, and greet each other in passing. I wish him well; but it is really practically impossible to discover whether I treat him well. I can avoid, and I do avoid with horror, all special and artificial tormenting of him, sticking pins in him for fun or sticking knives in him for scientific investigation. But whether by feeding him slowly and killing him quickly for the needs of my brethren, I have improved in his own solemn eyes his own strange and separate destiny, whether I have made him in the sight of God a slave or a martyr, or one whom the gods love and who die young—that is far more removed from my possibilities of knowledge than the most abstruse intricacies of mysticism or theology. A turkey is more occult and awful than all the angels and archangels. In so far as God has partly revealed to us an angelic world, he has partly told us what an angel means. But God has never told us what a turkey means. And if you go and stare at a live turkey for an hour or two, you will find by the end of it that the enigma has rather increased than diminished.

“The great majority of people will go on observing forms that
cannot be explained; they will keep Christmas Day with Christmas
gifts and Christmas benedictions; they will continue to do it;
and some day suddenly wake up and discover why.”

- G.K. Chesterton

There fared a mother driven forth
Out of an inn to roam;
In the place where she was homeless
All men are at home.
The crazy stable close at hand,
With shaking timber and shifting sand,
Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand
Than the square stones of Rome.

For men are homesick in their homes,
And strangers under the sun,
And they lay their heads in a foreign land
Whenever the day is done.

Here we have battle and blazing eyes,
And chance and honour and high surprise,
But our homes are under miraculous skies
Where the yule tale was begun.

A child in a foul stable,
Where the beasts feed and foam;
Only where He was homeless
Are you and I at home;
We have hands that fashion and heads that know,
But our hearts we lost—how long ago!
In a place no chart nor ship can show
Under the sky’s dome.

This world is wild as an old wife’s tale,
And strange the plain things are,
The earth is enough and the air is enough
For our wonder and our war;
But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings
And our peace is put in impossible things
Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings
Round an incredible star.

To an open house in the evening
Home shall all men come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home.