Tag Archives: G.K. Chesterton

Imagination: Where Reality Ends

 

Reality is rationalism at work. A stove is hot, so we don’t touch it and teach our children to avoid it as well. We plan careers and investments (provided we have any extra money) on rational input. We make day-to-decisions on reality. A tornado advisory suggests we not plan a picnic today and we postpone it.

Rationalism fades when someone we love dies. Rationalism tells us that humans, like other creatures, die. We know this. Yet this rationalism goes only so far and not far enough. We want something more, not something that says reality is false—but something that takes over when reality doesn’t satisfy.

C.K. Chesterton talks of the truth in fairy tales in his Orthodoxy. No, we do not believe, literally, in little elves or fairy godmothers or trolls. It’s the truth embedded in the stories that calls us, a reality not evident in the material world. Sometimes our imagination, by its own weird reasoning, leads to answers unavailable in “reality.”

C.S. Lewis gave us his Narnia tales. One of my favorite characters is Puddleglum in The Silver Chair: Imprisoned by a witch, despairing of any change in their circumstances, Puddleglum and his friends are tempted by the witch to accept her view of things.

Puddleglum replies: “Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. . . . We’re just babies making up a game, if you’re right. Bur four babies playing a game can make a play world which licks your real world hollow. That’s why I’m going to stand by the play world.”

The point is that sometimes the “real” world is hollow. Something is missing, something we yearn for, a new order, when things like death are not denied but transformed. Why do we yearn for it if it is not there? Perhaps it is. Sometimes we do catch glimpses of a new order, when a wrong is righted because of the courage of one or a few people to act irrationally for interests other than their own. And sometimes we receive comfort from unexpected, irrational places.

Comfortable or Anxious Faith?

What exactly is faith? Throughout Christianity, its adherents have veered between a comfortable faith and an anxious one. When Christianity is the dominant religion, the majority of Christians accept their faith as a certainty. They are not threatened by other religions or contrary movements, and the culture around them breathes the Christian world view. Such was the case for American Christians throughout most of the twentieth century until the last decades.

But when Christianity is a minority religion, it is more likely to develop apologists, those who apply reasoning to persuade others of their faith. During the early centuries of the church, leaders like Augustine wrote “apologies” for the Christian faith. Apology in this sense doesn’t mean sorrow for a mistake, but a defense of a particular belief or way of life. The apologists of the early church did not assume a common acceptance of their faith. They understood that the Christian’s God was not universally acknowledged. They attempted to persuade, not to revive.

During the earlier days of our country, Christianity appeared a more emotional religion, with revivals and calls for repentance. Recently, however, Western Christians have become a minority faith. Thus, people like G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis created defenses of the Christian faith. In more recent times, other apologists have joined them. It is a time of ferment.