G. K. Chesterton as Marriage Counselor

I just discovered the "Marriages Restored" blog today. I haven't gotten too far into it but it appears to be a blog by a couple who had experienced infidelity. It appears that the wife is the one who committed the infidelity. This thing is terrific. I'm not real keen on some of their book recommendations - Brennan Manning, Henri Nouwen and folks like that - but other than that its great to see something like this in the blogosphere. It's great to see a testimony of how God can restore even the most troubling situation.

There's one entry called "Grieving the Loss of Your Affair Partner." In this entry, Ben, the husband talks about the fact that his wife experienced true grief over the loss of her affair partner. Wow, I had never thought about that. True, she sinned and has to be the one to repent, but this is a good example of the fact that it often takes awhile for our emotions to catch up with the truth.

I gotta say I admire Ben for realizing this - I know he's not playing Mr. Milquetoast here and acting like its no big deal, but he is dealing with the realities of sin. Sin isn't always resolved quickly and in a nice, neat little package. I gotta say I admire Ann for going through this. Alot of times the one who sinned has so much guilt over what they've done that they just run away. So, mucho praises to this couple.

Ben made a comment that I thought was enlightening:

Ann appreciated having fun. Like I said in the previous post I had become Mr. Serious Christian always seeking to be right and moral and forgetting about being dependent on God and having his lifegiving grace flow through me.

I love the part about being "Mr. Serious Christian." "Serious" Christians are terribly hard to live with (that's why we all want to be "Jolly" Christians - right?). This made me think of a few things I read in G. K. Chesterton's book Orthodoxy yesterday.

Chesterton was talking about the "maniac," or the "madman." Madmen and maniacs are very, very serious, and oh so logical.

It is the happy man who does the useless things; the sick man is not strong enough to be idle. It is exactly such careless and causeless actions that the madman could never understand; for the madman (like the determinist) generally sees too much cause in everything . . . If the madman could for an instance become careless, he would become sane. Everyone who has had the misfortune to talk with people in the heart or on the edge of mental disorder, knows that their most sinister quality is a horrible clarity of detail; a connecting of one thing with another in a map more elaborate than a maze. If you argue with a madman, it is extremely probable that you will get the worst of it; for in many ways his mind moves all the quicker for not being delayed by the things that go with good judgment. He is not hampered by a sense of humor or by charity, or by the dumb certainties of experience. He is the more logical for losing certain sane affections. Indeed, the common phrase for insanity is in this respect a misleading one. The madman is not the one who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.

I don't know if this was Ben's experience, but "super-duper-serious" Christians can often be like the madman. They aren't strong enough to be idle, they can never be careless about anything. They are not hampered by a sense of humor. Every innocuous action or idle word is loaded with spiritual weight. Life, death, morality and the future of Christendom hangs in the balance of every conversation, every TV show and every activity, and everything logically flows back to some Scriptural principle.

I should know - I've been there done that. At one point in my life I was so serious that I would never watch TV and would look down on you if you did. I was constantly evaluating every single one of my actions and your actions. Funny thing was, people weren't falling down and declaiming what a wonderful godly man I was - they were avoiding me. After awhile it finally sunk in that I didn't have many friends and even the friends I had didn't like me very much.

Truly, I do believe that all of life is to be lived "coram deo" - before the face of God and I do believe that our worldview impacts everything we do. Our worldview is like the floor of our house, it holds up all that we do. Everything we think or do in life is rooted in our worldview. However, it's ok to stand on the floor, eat on the floor, and lay on the floor without going into endless dissertations on the glories of the floor. The floor won't collapse if we eat a meal on it and fail to give proper credit to the floor.

Similarly, our faith won't collapse if we lighten up a bit. It looks like Ben came to realize this and his words and G. K.'s are a good reminder to us to not to get so serious that we become madmen - let's be Jolly instead!

Comments

[Julie Anne Fidler]

IF you don't mind my asking, what do you dislike about Brennan Manning? I think he is one of the best Christian writers out there. Just curious.

[David]

Julie Ann - there is alot to like about Brennan Manning - he's definitely charming and winsome. I copied out his little poem about Ragamuffins at the beginning of The Ragamuffing Gospel and loved it for years. However, in reading and listening to him recently I've grown very uncomfortable with him. I heard him speak in San Diego about the importance of knowing that you are loved by God and he spoke of the cross probably over a dozen times as evidence of God's love for you. He never spoke of the cross in reference to sin or atonement. Also, in the new book on Stories of Emergence, one of the writers speaks of a retreat he went on with Manning to help reconnect with God. Manning told him that he needed to leave everything that would distract him behind, in order to re-connect with God. Oh by the way, one of the things he needed to leave behind was his bible. Manning seems to be leaning toward universalism and he has a real disdain for those whom he thinks rely too heavily on the Bible as means of discerning God's will. One of Manning's mentors is Thomas Merton who is the worldwide leader in the attempted syncretism of Christianity with eastern religion.

Hre's a good article on Manning:

http://www.ankerberg.com/Articles/roman-catholicism/RC0301W2.htm

Hope that at least explains where I am coming from. Thanks for asking

[Ben]

Jolly: Ran across this today. I agree with you on Brennan Manning with regards here.
http://www.leannepayne.org/gaybishop/DangerOfGraceWithoutTruth.pdf

[Jeff Green]

Brilliant quote by Chesterton. This helps me express something I've noticed as a bad trait in myself and a correspondingly good trait in some people I admire... I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

Thanks for posting this.