Our Lord says, \u201cIf you love me, keep my commandments.\u201d Which is fantastic for us not-very-in-tune-with-the-emotions kind of people. He does not say, \u201cif you love me you\u2019ll speak in tongues, you\u2019ll levitate, and you\u2019ll feel happy all the time,\u201d but rather that, if we love, we will obey. How like our God to give us something solid as tablets of stone, that only action admits love! But I think it is equally true that if we love ourselves<\/i> we\u2019ll keep His commandments.<\/p>\n
For even within the \u00a0things forbidden, great joy and freedom is revealed. A man is not to covet his own goods, but he is at full leave \u2013 and I believe even urged \u2013 to covet his own. To covet your neighbor\u2019s bed is to never sleep in it, and that\u2019s an unhappy state of affairs. But to covet your own bed is to appreciate it fully \u2013 laying down is a triumph. We have all these blessings, and it is great that we are thankful for them \u2013 our houses and cars and trees and trampolines \u2013 but better still that we really want them, that we do not take them for granted, but desire them with all of the joy of first\u00a0receiving\u00a0them. Thou shall not steal, that is true, but you are allowed to steal from yourself! For only when we realize that we don\u2019t deserve a mite of what we are given, and take it anyways, then we truly value it. Taking a book from your shelf should have all the exhilaration of stealing it from the school library, and even the very use of these glorious bodies should come with a breathless sort of \u201cI can\u2019t believe we just got away with that\u201d \u2013 for they are not ours to own. Why else would we steal time? Thou shall not commit adultery, but you shall commit it with your lawfully wedded spouse. It should not take too much imagination for any married couple to realize that they do not deserve each other, and thus sex should always be a love-affair, full of the awareness that it\u2019s all too good to be true \u2013 and yet it\u2019s true.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll let you all discover the rest. Just know this: living the life of a true Christian is scandalous.<\/span> It is outrageous as getting away with murder and as daring as a heist. The commandments are not chains, they are rules that make the game come to life. They are the voice in the playground that cries, \u201cthe ground is lava, everybody up!\u201d and makes the whole afternoon so much more interesting. I\u2019m at the point where I don\u2019t believe my thesis has been yet made clear enough. The\u2026commandments\u2026will\u2026make\u2026you\u2026happy. So live them joyfully, remembering that \u201cthe act of defending any one of the cardinal virtues these days has all the exhilaration of a vice.\u201d Speaking of G.K Chesterton, I\u2019d be a fool to deny that this post was inspired by Manalive, the second best book ever written, the handbook for romantics and the Bible for those seeking to live fully. \u201cThere is but one answer, and I am sorry if you don\u2019t like it. If Innocent is happy, it is because he IS innocent. If he can defy the conventions, it is just because he can keep the commandments. It is just because he does not want to kill but to excite to life that a pistol is still as exciting to him as it is to a schoolboy. It is just because he does not want to steal, because he does not covet his neighbour\u2019s goods, that he has captured the trick (oh, how we all long for it!), the trick of coveting his own goods. It is just because he does not want to commit adultery that he achieves the romance of sex; it is just because he loves one wife that he has a hundred honeymoons. If he had really murdered a man, if he had really deserted a woman, he would not be able to feel that a pistol or a love-letter was like a song\u2014 at least, not a comic song.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u201cDo not imagine, please, that any such attitude is easy to me or appeals in any particular way to my sympathies. I am an Irishman, and a certain sorrow is in my bones, bred either of the persecutions of my creed, or of my creed itself. Speaking singly, I feel as if man was tied to tragedy, and there was no way out of the trap of old age and doubt. But if there is a way out, then, by Christ and St. Patrick, this is the way out. If one could keep as happy as a child or a dog, it would be by being as innocent as a child, or as sinless as a dog. Barely and brutally to be good\u2014that may be the road, and he may have found it. Well, well, well, I see a look of skepticism on the face of my old friend Moses. Mr. Gould does not believe that being perfectly good in all respects would make a man merry.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u201cNo,\u201d said Gould, with an unusual and convincing gravity; \u201cI do not believe that being perfectly good in all respects would make a man merry.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u201cWell,\u201d said Michael quietly, \u201cwill you tell me one thing?\u00a0<\/span>Which of us has ever tried it?\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n For all the absolutely millions of acres of millions of things a man can do \u2013 from being joyful, to dancing, to learning to play the sitar, from reading the\u00a0dictionary\u00a0to blowing up his car \u2013 there are only ten forbidden. This is no strictness, these forbidden ten, but a generosity and an easiness so immense […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-98","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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