Common Sense 101

Jesus teaches us, “I tell you truly, anyone who will not receive the Kingdom of God like a little child, will never enter it.” There is a challenge with Chesterton. The challenge is this: we have to adjust our whole way of thinking when we read him. We are not used to thinking in the language he uses. But if we can learn to think his thoughts with him, he can reawaken in us that sense of wonder that will enable us to become like little children. And we can step closer to the Kingdom of God.

There is indeed something that children seem to grasp about eternal life that the rest of us have lost. They have abounding vitality; they are in spirit, fierce and free, and yet, as Chesterton says, they want things repeated and unchanged, “they always say, ‘Do it again’; and the grown-up person does it until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again’ to the sun; and every evening, ‘Do it again’ to the moon.”

World without end. Amen

Excerpted from Dale Ahlquist’s Common sense 101; Lessons from G.K. Chesterton, which I am enjoying and will be revisiting here throughout the weekend.

I also like this bit. Read it recalling that Chesterton was a journalist, and an excellent and prolific one, though he called himself “monstrously lazy.”

Chesterton’s objection to the press is not that it is exaggerative or overemotional or illiterate, or any of that. His only objection to ti s that it tells lies. And this is a real problem. What can we do about it?

We do not need a censorship of the press. We have a censorship by the press.

It is not we who silence the press. It is the press that silences us. It is not a case of the Commonwealth settling how much the editors shall say; it is a case of the editors settling how much the Commonwealth shall know. If we attack the press, we shall be rebelling, not repressing.