Travis Mullen and Professor Robert Inchausti explore G.K. Chesterton's insights on how Christianity transcends cultural collapse and continually renews itself throughout history. They examine Chesterton's paradoxical understanding of orthodoxy as something exciting and revolutionary rather than stale or safe.
• Chesterton identified five historical periods when Christianity supposedly "died" but was actually being rediscovered beyond cultural constraints
• Current religious deconstruction often involves shedding cultural expressions (megachurches, corporate practices) rather than faith itself
• True orthodoxy is not a set of doctrinal checkboxes but a poetic, paradoxical vision that embraces mystery
• Freedom comes through tradition and ritual, not unfettered choice
• Humor serves as a spiritual weapon that opens doors to truth when serious arguments fail
• Chesterton's prophetic vision warned of soulless progress, technocratic control, cultural amnesia, and moral relativism
Join us next time as we continue exploring voices that help us find meaning in a fragmented world. Please leave a five-star review, subscribe, and share with anyone who might resonate with this conversation.
How G.K. Chesterton used paradox, playfulness, and holy laughter to dismantle the fashionable despair of his age—and why it still speaks to ours.
In a world where meaning is constantly taken apart and nothing is left standing, G.K. Chesterton didn’t just argue back—he laughed.This episode explores how Chesterton used humor, wit, and joyful defiance to challenge the creeping nihilism of his time—and how his insights prefigure today’s culture of deconstruction.Whether mocking the modern reduction of man to machinery or flipping fashionable philosophies on their heads, Chesterton didn’t retreat into cynicism—he charged into it with a joke and a hymn.For Chesterton, laughter wasn’t escape. It was resistance. It was sanity. And it was sacramental.
What if the death of religion is actually just the death of a particular cultural expression of it? G.K. Chesterton, the witty and profound British writer, observed that Christianity has "died" five times throughout Western history—yet each time, what actually died were just the cultural frameworks containing it.
Travis Mullen and Professor Robert Inchausti delve into Chesterton's remarkable insight that Christianity isn't tied to any particular cultural moment but transcends them all. As our contemporary religious landscape undergoes massive transformation, this perspective offers a refreshing way to understand deconstruction: many who believe they're rejecting Christianity might actually be shedding obsolete cultu
Contact: subversiveorthodoxy@gmail.com
Instagram: @subversiveorthodoxy
Host: Travis Mullen Instagram: @manartnation
Co-Host: Robert L. Inchausti, PhD, is Professor Emeritus of English at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, and is the author of numerous books, including Subversive Orthodoxy, Thomas Merton's American Prophecy, The Spitwad Sutras, and Breaking the Cultural Trance. He is, among other things, a Thomas Merton authority, and editor of the Merton books Echoing Silence, Seeds, and The Pocket Thomas Merton. He's a lover of the literature of those who challenge the status quo in various ways, thus, he has had a lifelong fascination with the Beats.
Book by Robert L. Inchausti "Subversive Orthodoxy: Outlaws, Revolutionaries, and Other Christians in Disguise" Published 2005, authorization by the author.
Intro & Outro Music by Noah Johnson & Chavez t
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Ah, so we have come to the end again, have we?
The end of reason, the end ofreligion, the end of man, the
end, it seems, of endings?
Very well, let us begin.
You say God is dead.
I've heard that obituary fivetimes already.
He died with the Caesars, theysaid.
He died with the monks.
(00:22):
He died with the cathedrals, hedied with the candles and the
plagues and the peasant saints.
He died again in the shadow ofthe guillotine and once more in
(00:42):
the smoke of your clever littlefactories.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
And'm your host, Travis Mullen, and I'm excited
to have you with us.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
This is a podcast about philosophy and meaning.
It is about how we as humanswithstand the challenges of our
cultures.
It is about the generalJudeo-Christian revelation of
God in the world and how thebloodiest century ever recorded
couldn't kill that revelation.
It's also about how thatrevelation, tossed aside as
archaic, outdated and obsolete,may be the very life-giving
(01:18):
power we need to resist thisdistracted techno state we're
living in full of anxiety,depression and teenage suicide
(01:57):
technostate we're living in fullup a little bit to the part
right before the ending on thelast episode where we were
talking about reading on page 16of Subversive Orthodoxy, where
he's talking about Chesterton.
So it's in the intro of thewhole book.
It's not in the Chesterton partand obviously Chesterton's so
(02:18):
important he made it to the verybeginning intro work on the
book introducing all 20 of thecharacters.
So I have thoroughly enjoyedChesterton.
He's extremely fun and funnyand witty and it just lightens
the mood.
It's really fun.
So hope you're enjoyingChesterton and I hope this makes
you want to read some of hisbooks if you haven't already.
(02:40):
I currently am in the middle ofwhat's Wrong with the world and
I did start orthodoxy a whileback and I'm going to get back
to it as well.
So here we go.
Okay, so this is on page 16 ofSubversive Orthodoxy Professor's
(03:01):
book, where he's this is notthe chapter.
If any of you are followingalong with the book, this isn't
in the chapter on Chesterton.
This is actually in theoriginal intro of the whole book
.
So I believe yeah.
Yeah, it's on like page two ofthe whole book, page 16 of the
intro, yeah, which is page twoof the actual book, of the text,
(03:22):
okay, as it starts to talk.
So I'm going to read twoparagraphs here, cause I feel I
feel like I underlined them all,I had all these notes and how
much it related to currentdeconstruction in our, in our
culture.
So, in other words, the historyof faith is really the story of
how the soul out distances itsown culture, bound rituals,
(03:45):
refurbishing itself from theinside out through the examples
of its prophets and saints, zenkoans.
Is that the right way to saythat?
Yeah, for example, are notepistemological riddles, as our
enlightenment philosophers mightdescribe them, but exemplary
forms of poetic revivification,like the Sermon on the Mount.
(04:06):
They preserved the spiritualcontent of a tradition by
challenging convention on theinvisible wings of metaphor.
In his book the Everlasting man, GK Chesterton describes the
power of orthodoxy to renewitself in a chapter titled Five
Deaths of the Faith.
Christianity, he tells us, wasnever really reborn because it
(04:28):
never really died.
The cultures it lived in died.
So Christianity wasrediscovered five times in the
history of the West, as onecultural epoch was superseded by
another.
This happened after the fall ofRome, then in the 12th century,
at the end of the feudal era,again when the medieval
synthesis gave way to thesecular energies of the
(04:49):
Renaissance.
Again when the Renaissance fellto the new rationalism of the
Enlightenment.
And yet again as Enlightenmentvalues have begun to dissolve
with the arrival of ourpost-industrial age.
In each instance, the end ofcivilization and death of God
were proclaimed.
But what was really dying was acomplex set of institutional
(05:10):
arrangements wedded toparticular cultural premises.
In each case, a new culturalage emerged, when Christianity
was rediscovered as somethingabove and beyond the culture
that claimed to embody it, aboveand beyond the culture that
claimed to embody it.
And so in my notes I had saidcurrent deconstruction is
actually the death of just aform the megachurch, the
(05:30):
satellite church, the corporatepractices of the church.
So these are the things peopleare shedding, thinking, they're
shedding Christianity, but theywill find that it did not die.
Only those forms died whichyeah, and chesterton's pointing
to a thread.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
You know that this is , and since chesterton's
probably happened five moretimes yeah in different contexts
, you know yeah, I, I thinksomewhere, somewhere, chesterton
says the corpse turned out tobe the coroner, the person
burying Christianity and seeingit as a relic was really burying
(06:16):
their old understanding ofChristianity, born of a previous
set of institutionalarrangements that no longer make
any sense.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
Yeah.
So, the words like constructsand theological infrastructure
come to mind.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Yes, and back when fundamentalists were living in a
culture where literal truth wasthe only truth, you know, a
culture where there weren'tthings like electricity, that
went in two, that had positiveand negative poles and went in
(06:57):
two directions at the same time,these scientific developments
enlarged the human imagination.
So why wouldn't it enlarge yourunderstanding of your Bible and
your faith?
Why would the faith then becomethe old world critique of the
(07:19):
new, when it's really your faithis bigger than the world you
lived in?
That's all it means.
It doesn't mean that the worldchanged and is no longer
believing what your literalismtaught you.
It's that literalism is nowexposed as just being one tool
(07:41):
that was limited and notinclusive enough.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
So that means that it isn't that the fashions of the
day are more inclusive than whatthey replace.
It's like the fashions of theday are just insufficient to the
(08:08):
transcendental truth of thefaith in a different way than
the fundamentals Right.
So it's like it's theunderstanding of the faith I
think we talked about it I thinkit was with Kierkegaard that
(08:29):
the idea that the truth wasabsolutely paradoxically
teleologically placed.
And what did it mean to beabsolutely paradoxically
teleologically placed?
It meant to be placed outsidethe absolutes of your cultural
era and culture and time, yeah,where all the constants are way
(08:54):
bigger than 100 years.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Yes, yeah, you could live within your cultural
framework and all of thoseconstants, assumptions, premises
, premises, mental, theological,worldview, infrastructure could
all be 40 years old yeahexactly, but there is a there,
there are.
There are not constructs.
There's actual constants thatare 3 000 years old yes, yes,
(09:19):
that's what he's saying, yeah uh, one thing, one thing
chesterton said that relates towhat you're saying is uh, on
progress, he says and and relatethis to church or theology or
anything.
Yeah, he says progress shouldmean that we are always changing
the world to fit the vision,but instead we're always
changing the vision to fit theworld yeah, yeah.
(09:41):
So we're adapting to theworld's cultural movements
rather than changing our worldto fit the real vision.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
The long constants of the world.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Yeah, and you just have to live long enough to see
a few cultures rise and fall.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
A few cycles.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
A few civilizations rise and fall, things that seem
sort of you know that would lastforever.
I guess the Roman Empire, youknow was one that people thought
would never die.
And then they had the GreatDeath, which they thought was,
(10:21):
you know, the end of the end ofcivilization.
But it turned out that it was acyclical change into a new
civilization that the people whowere raised in the old couldn't
see until much later, or, if atall, never in their lifetime.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Much later or, if at all, never in their lifetime.
Yeah, and this also, I think,triggers the best quote of
Chesterton which I've known inmy life was from my college
pastor, brett, who likes ourpodcast.
Yeah, he said Brett taught methat Chesterton and said the
(11:07):
Christian ideal has not beenbeen tried and found wanting.
It has been found difficult andleft untried.
Yeah, and that's from.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
What's wrong with the world yeah, that's good because
again, it's that, it's thathumility, you know it.
It isn't.
People haven't tried, you knowthey, uh, my ancestors probably
tried, they just weren't verygood at it and I'm not very good
at it, and who am I to sort ofsay they had the wrong religion?
(11:34):
or they had the wrong ideology.
No, it wasn't about that.
It was about they worked withwhat they had and they weren't
all that great at it, and thatshould make us more grateful for
what we have and what they wereable to do, not bitter or
nihilistic that the world isgoing to hell in a handbasket.
(11:55):
You know, there have been greatmysteries and graces in
everybody's lives and theyhaven't been accidents.
They're part of creation andgrace.
And that's why Chesterton said,you know, he went from a cynic
to a believer because he movedfrom looking at the dark side to
(12:17):
looking at the joy and thegrace as a story that he hadn't
paid attention to right.
And so he thought that his agewas particularly overly rational
(12:41):
and underappreciate, had notenough gratitude for existence,
but very intelligent andrational in terms of critique,
and that's okay.
But it isn't healthy forsocieties, both economically and
(13:06):
psychologically from his pointof view.
So Christianity and plus hethought that Christianity had
the other virtue of being trueand that its truth was confirmed
in its survival from all thesedifferent epics that died.
(13:29):
And then Christianityreappeared in a new guise, where
all things are made new again,and that means that all the old
explanations go but the faithand God and the eternal are back
(13:51):
.
You know, they never left.
They just became obscured therefor a while because we thought
AI was the answer to no.
It was a replacement for havinga soul and being human.
(14:12):
It's going to save us fromourselves and for Chesterton,
that artificial intelligence isreally real.
Stupidity is basically what itis Not seeing yourself in your
(14:33):
context, thinking your contextis absolute.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
And Kierkegaard was very good.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
That was the existential insight.
Very good, that was theexistential insight.
You know, context is verydeterminative of human thought
and understanding and experience.
But context is not absolute andthat gives room for faith and
(15:04):
also for spirituality.
That puts them in.
I think the Buddhists talkabout the two truths, the
eternal and the relative.
And the worldly and thefashionable is the relative.
But where's the eternal?
Well, maybe universalscientific laws, but they get
turned over every 10 years.
(15:25):
So where's the eternal?
That becomes the question uh,that, uh, faith answered that,
um, rationality didn't so, um,we're coming into about the last
bit of our podcast.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
We're going to focus in on a couple of his books and
some of his themes now from theprofessor here.
So one is let's talk aboutorthodoxy because that to you it
meant a lot to you in thedefinition of orthodoxy for your
book Subversive Orthodoxy, andalso it's a type of orthodoxy
(16:03):
that he's talking about in hisbook that really appeals to you
and also sets kind of a generoustable.
We're not talking about GreekOrthodox or Russian Orthodox
specifically, or we're not incontext of the book Subversive
Orthodoxy or our podcast.
We're not talking aboutspecifically technical Christian
(16:23):
Orthodoxy theologicalstatements, but rather, as we
said in the intro of the podcast, like a general revelation kind
of aspect.
But there's more to it that hetalked about and that you
resonated with.
So let's talk about that.
I'll first read two of hisquotes from the book.
Number one is from chaptereight, the romance of orthodoxy.
(16:49):
He says this is a thrillingromance of orthodoxy.
People have fallen into afoolish habit of speaking of
orthodoxy as something heavy,humdrum and safe.
But there was never anything soperilous or so exciting as
orthodoxy, and that wassomething we had read in a
previous episode as well.
That quote, and then elsewherehe says orthodoxy chapter uh six
(17:11):
.
In the paradoxes ofchristianity chapter he says um,
the church is a lion tamer.
It has kept the wild animals ofthe cosmos at bay by refusing
to be swallowed by any of them.
It has been the only thing thathas.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
Yes, yes, the slaves to fashion which are really for
(18:11):
him.
The aristocratic classes arethe ones that are more slaves to
contemporary fashions, both indress and in ideas, than even
the working class, and thatorthodoxy is a kind of escape
from the orthodoxy.
Well, let's say it's escapedfrom the tribal faiths and cults
and values of the age that youwere just sort of born into,
like the trends of the day.
The trends of the day, and Ithink I mentioned that quote
before that he said there'snothing more demeaning than
(18:32):
being a slave to the trends ofyour day.
Well, how do you get out of thetrends of your day?
How do you get into freedom ofthought?
Well, for him, there was oneplace you can go, and that was
Christianity, and especiallyOrthodox Christianity, not some
sort of cult of extreme ideas.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
The.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
Orthodoxy, the Christian Orthodoxy he's talking
about, isn't a set of doctrinalcheckboxes that you check off
and that makes you a member ofthe cult.
It's more of a paradoxicalvision of reality that's poetic
and that seizes upon the mysteryof human experience, which is
(19:21):
not.
That experience is a mysterybecause it's unknown.
It's because experience is kindof a daily mystic experience
where you can fall into yourlove for your wife or your child
, and it has an infinite space.
(19:42):
It doesn't stop, and so it's amystery because you're wondering
how you could be inside thisexperience.
Nature is the same way.
The ocean they're mysteries,but they're not unknowns,
whereas for science andrationality, mystery is an
(20:02):
unknown and the idea is to solveit.
So, like star trek, you knowtheir.
Their greatest vision is to gowhere no man has gone before and
to seek the unknown, not toappreciate it, but to come to
know it.
So it's no longer a mystery toconquer it, to conquer it.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
So, in a sense, in a sense, what he's part of, how
he's saying that christianity is, um, it's a, it's a, it's a way
of seeing the world, a way ofbeing in the world.
That is different is that he'ssaying that you're familiar with
mystery.
Yes, rather than trying tosolve everything in a way that
maddens you and makes you insane.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
Yes, it's the joyful humility that allows you to live
comfortably and joyfully inmystery.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
In an infinite world.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
In an infinite world, and it's not and it isn't your
job to predict things andcontrol things.
In fact, it's your job not tobe center stage and not to
predict and control things.
God does that.
Your job is to feel the graceand the love and pass on the
(21:22):
vision of daily mystic living inChrist, and that is a whole
joyful thing that he found.
And so then, when he gets intothese public arguments with
George Bernard Shaw and HG Wells, these powerful intellectuals,
(21:45):
many of whom were troubled humanbeings who were carrying the
world on their shoulders,Because, if the socialist
revolution fails, I will havefailed England, but that is not
the life I'm living or the worldthat I'm living as a
(22:07):
human being, following my faithin the God that Christ revealed
to me, which is open to joyfulhumility and peace of mind, and
that becomes his counter storyto the heroic, the new version
(22:32):
of the heroic quest, which iswhatever that generation finds
epic, like mountain climbing orcross-country racing or whatever
.
Whatever becomes the uh, the uhheroic story.
(22:53):
Um, and then there's the,there's the counter story of the
, there's the christian story,which is well, the, the, the
hero is the guy who gave himself, and the poor are the
inheritors of the earth, and thepoor in spirit are the ones who
(23:16):
live closest to the mystery andthose kinds of Christian
paradoxes that turn out to alsoteach you how to live with
social paradoxes.
And the other thing that wedidn't talk about, which, well,
probably we'll talk about it ina second, with orthodoxy, is
(23:38):
this, this way of living, thisembrace of mystery is, you know,
I don't know if it's for us thebest word, you know, because we
think of mystery as things thatshould be revealed, revealed,
(24:09):
and the truth is the revealingbehind a mystery.
But for, for chesterton, truthis really the reality of the
mystery, um, and living in itand with it in, not in
intellectual freedom where thereare no rules, uh, but in in
terms of a dance, a relationshipto things that have a structure
(24:30):
, and a set of relationships andconventions that help you find
your place in the scheme ofthings, without immediately
reaching out for certainty,power or some sort of absolute
um, I think I think I just madea connection of what you're
(24:52):
saying as far as adifferentiation between a
mystery, the way we might thinkof it, and the mystery of what
he means.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
like in a scientific or empiricist mindset you might
think mystery, well that's just,that's just unknown, that's
just unknown.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
So like blank you're looking at something blank yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
But what we mean is, or what orthodoxy would mean,
according to Chesterton, is youknow, give an example of like
the Trinity, so you have the.
The scientists go.
Well, that's meaningless, thatdoesn't make sense.
But what he's saying is no,it's the truth.
Now, live in the mystery of it,cause you don't get to, you
don't get to solve for zero,like you don't get to, you don't
(25:34):
get to, you are not infiniteenough to make this equation
work for your brain.
And that's not to say that.
It's not that it doesn't have amath equation, it may, but it's
to say you get to humble human,you get to live in this
equation.
That's called mystery.
That is a truth that you don'tget to fully understand, rather
(25:56):
than you thinking, oh, thatdoesn't make sense, so it's not
true.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Right, right, that is nothing, you know.
That is nothing you know.
Well, you know, it's thoseparadoxes that our language, our
(26:22):
culture and our brain evolutionisn't prepared yet to reveal to
us.
Like you know, we know thatsometimes our best friend is
also our best enemy, our frenemy.
But how is that so?
What does that mean?
Am I just someone who flips?
Well, it's part of the mysteryof friendship that makes
friendship a source ofcontemplation and revelation.
(26:44):
That's what it is Like lookingat the ocean and trying to
figure out you know why thatback and forth movement is so
reassuring and at the same timeso mysterious beauty and
possibility in things that ascientist or rationalist might
(27:11):
reduce to a complex set ofrelationships to allow for
prediction and control.
But that's just part of thehuman experience.
That's not all of it, nor is iteven the best of it.
And Chesterton found that inChristianity and became probably
(27:37):
the most popular apologist of20th century, far more popular
and probably far more longerlasting I mean I think he still
has contemporary significancethan somebody like Billy Graham
who saw it as partly a, you know, crowd control and numbers game
(27:59):
and PR Not that he was entirelythat, but a lot of it ended up
being that, whereas withChesterton it's sort of like his
faith and his belief in thepower of paradox to transcend
(28:24):
the human pride keeps him in thegame, in the conversation, in a
way that and kirkagard in thegame and in the conversation
regarding human condition uh farlonger than some of those uh
cold war apologetics yeah, umone one quote about him is that
(28:46):
he was a prophet who saw themodern world coming before it
arrived.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
Um, he warned of soulless progress, technocratic
control, cultural amnesia, moralrelativism.
He predicted the rise of biggovernment and big business and
the breakdown of the family, andthe dangers of a society that
forgets beauty and wonder yeahum.
Did you see that in um?
Did you feel that in each ofhis books, or is that coming
(29:13):
through in certain books?
Do you think?
Speaker 2 (29:16):
well, um, the uh, I.
I love that book, orthodoxy, um, and, and there are some
chapters in there I forget whatchapter it is where he describes
pragmatism and it's arationalist.
(29:51):
To undo rationalism it's sortof like, well, I'm not going to
get to the absolute becauseeverything is tied to practical
ends in the real world.
So if I could just say thatthese ideas work and that's what
makes them true, then I'm bothbeing a realist and a
(30:14):
rationalist at the same time.
And Chesterton sort of says,well, that's very clever, but it
doesn't really work.
There's a more inclusiveunderstanding of life, that of
all classes and intellects andtimes and places.
And if it doesn't show up inyour time and space, well, it
(31:00):
isn't necessarily because it'snot true, it's because the world
you live in doesn't have thecapacity to register it.
Because you're, you're apragmatist.
Now you're not.
You're not a person with a soul, and and the soul, that that's
the other thing.
Yeah, you said that theabsolute of having a soul, you
(31:21):
know, uh, has become problematicfor modern people.
You'll say you know, my soultells me that this is not good.
And they'll say, well, what doyou mean?
Speaker 1 (31:34):
soul Can you define a soul.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
And then you say well , I think the first person to
talk about soul is Heraclitus,and he never defined it.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
But in his world.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
It helped him live in harmony with a changing reality
.
What does your negation of theidea of the soul do for you?
Make it clearer that you can bea pragmatist or a scientist
without self-doubt.
That's a dubious achievement,right yeah, the Esquire magazine
used to every year have thedubious achievement, right yeah,
(32:07):
the Esquire magazine used toevery year have the dubious
achievement awards and theywould give out, like you know,
there'd be like 50 differentpeople that they would give the
dubious achievement award andthey were always things kind of
like that, you know, likeproving that God didn't exist by
(32:27):
counting the number of I don'tknow hamburgers in a restaurant,
or something.
Or these world records, youknow, that are just these silly
things that nobody had everthought to do before and so now
make it into the Guinness Bookof World Records, that nobody
had ever thought to do before,and so now make it into the
(32:48):
Guinness Book of World Records.
And the fun of that littlesatire was to show, you know,
looking back in history, youknow there were a lot of dubious
achievements.
And looking back in our ownlives, we have a lot of dubious
achievements, and it isn'tbecause we're bad people or that
we're pursuing, we're doing thebest we can at pursuing the
(33:10):
justice that we seek.
It's just as Chesterton saidyou know we're born limited.
You know, call it original sin,call it the human limitation
that we're just not very good atbeing our own gods.
And it's better to just own upto that and quit trying to be
(33:37):
God and let God be God and finda way to talk to God and what
you conceive him to be, ordistrust your oversimplification
either way.
And that just heightens themystery.
It doesn't do away with it,which is doing away with the
(34:00):
mystery of the human conditionis a dubious achievement.
Is a dubious achievement Evenif the AI answers the question
of what it means to be a humanbeing.
We'd have to put it back in thebox because we want joy, we
don't want to be right, andthat's different than wanting to
be famous or in control ofthings.
(34:22):
That'd be the worst.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
Along those, oh sorry .
Speaker 2 (34:26):
No, I was just saying I can't think of anything worse
than being in control of theuniverse.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
Yeah, that'd be the last thing I'd want there's a
movie about that yeah, bruce,bruce, almighty jim carrey yeah,
that's right, but jim carrey isa good person so yeah, on um,
one of the one of the topics yousaid, he has kind of his own
take on freedom.
(34:51):
You know, how would you buildthat out or where?
You know, is it coming fromorthodoxy or everlasting man?
Speaker 2 (34:59):
I think everlasting man has the most stuff on
freedom and it comes up in hisdebates with HG Wells.
Because in HG Wells, in thosedebates, hg Wells is saying that
science is an instrument ofhuman freedom because it brings
(35:20):
personal autonomy and unfetteredchoice.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
and Chesterton's view was oh, so he's saying
unfettered choice is freedom.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
And science gives us that.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Yeah, unfettered choice.
We can choose.
We have more choices becausescience enables us to intervene
in illness and illnesses andsolve problems we couldn't solve
before.
Same engineering and technologygo to planets, do all of that
stuff, and it improves ourpersonal autonomy that we're not
(35:57):
subject to the limitations ofnature as much, and Chesterton's
(36:58):
view was not that personalautonomy shouldn't be sought,
but not necessarily in terms ofunfettered choice or control
what we really is.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
The true and happiest expression of freedom is
through tradition and ritual andforms and love that we can fill
with our freedom andcooperation with others,
regardless of a tradition, is aform of freedom.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
When our culture is like I'm going to get married at
the justice of the peacebecause I don't care about those
traditions, I want my freedomto do it the way I want to do it
, it seems like opposite licenseat the uh at the um city hall,
(37:34):
which is where my, my, uh, myson, got married at city hall in
santa barbara, and we had to goand invent a ritual afterwards
to go get dinner and and, uh,you know, do all of these things
and and weddings are just sortof forms within which you can.
You can solve a lot ofquestions and and involve a lot
of different people and have,like roles for for grandma and
(37:57):
roles for grandpa and roles forthe, the husband, their mother
and the daughter's dad.
These rituals are not meant tobe these.
Well, I don't know what they'remeant to be, but they don't.
People that don't want to do itdon't want to be compelled by a
(38:23):
form, but you're only compelledby a form if you take it more
seriously than it was intended.
I mean if you realize that thisis an excuse for getting
together and spending a lot ofmoney and having fun and
enjoying one another and givingit a ritual structure in order
(38:46):
to bring people together, thathas traditionally had a kind of
payoff in terms of relationships, we might find we don't do that
anymore because the socialinstitutions have turned them
into obligations.
So we might want to get rid ofthose obligations and you can do
(39:07):
that.
But that doesn't mean thattradition itself is bad.
It's just that there's thisprocess order.
How does it work?
Order, disorder and reorder,and that's kind the the
(39:28):
three-part steps of humancultural development, and so the
order works for a hundred years.
And then we decide we don'twant to have to go to church
anymore because everybody'sliving in robot bodies.
So we can watch it.
We can go to church in ourheads with our artificial
intelligence beacons or whatever, and then that that'll be
(39:53):
adapted.
But the content of it, you know, is you know, are you using
that to become more alienatedfrom your experience, or are you
using that?
in order to become more joyfuland in love with life and and
(40:13):
the truth of the human condition, um, and and its greater ends
in love and relationships?
Or are you using it to solveproblems that were big deals,
maybe 200 years before that, butare no longer even a?
Speaker 1 (40:32):
problem at all.
Speaker 2 (40:33):
So Chesterton had that kind of imagination that
would allow him to think about,you know, sci-fi versions of his
own faith as a way ofdemonstrating its perennial
value, even if its rituals wererelative to one's time and place
(40:57):
and situation.
So I mean, that's sort of theway I read it and so it's not.
Those things are not sort ofthe way I read it and so it's
not.
Those things are not those,like, the rituals are not things
(41:19):
to have wars over, or, you know, civil wars over.
You know, whether or not theEucharist is wine or punch or
whatever, the although I'm surethere have been wars fought over
that very thing, doctorabsolutes that that become, you
know, sources of wars andconflicts.
Speaker 1 (41:43):
Now I think we're almost coming in for a landing
here.
The things I get fromChesterton that seem really
unique are his own political andeconomic vision that he pushed
(42:04):
forward a lot more than italready had as just tributism
that he pushed forward a lotmore than it already had, as
just tributism, His views onfamily and society and culture
and community being.
I don't know if they influencedWendell Berry or anybody, but
probably it sounds like theyshare a lot of that fabric.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
I don't know if Wendell Berry actually read
Chester.
I'm sure he probably read atleast one of the books.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
But yeah, you can see it certainly in his thought is
similar in so many ways to that,yeah, a fabric of actual local
community and stuff.
Yeah, community and stuff, um,the, the, the joy and humor as a
weapon, as a spiritual weapon,is new to me.
That was pretty awesome to, to,to see that and and to see how
it resonates.
You know you just, you're gonnalisten to a guy like chesterton
(43:02):
10 times more than you're gonnalisten to a guy who's all
serious and doesn't have anysense of humor.
It's like.
It's like humor opens the door,and and so does creativity and
art.
So, um, they open doors thatare closed typically like people
are not, you know, people arenot like just wanting to hear
every serious person's thoughts,but a funny person starts
(43:24):
talking and gets them laughing.
Then they're like oh, tell memore.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
Yeah, and who was it saying that?
Maybe it was some sitcom I waswatching on TV and one of the
characters was saying that theywanted their friend to go out on
this blind date or somethingMaybe it was a Seinfeld episode
(43:50):
or something.
And he said the test is if youcan make her laugh, that you're
going to have a better shot withher.
It's an indication that shemight like you.
(44:11):
And the other character saidwell, why is that?
And he says well, when youlaugh, if someone laughs at your
joke, that means that theyidentify with your sense of
humor, which means that theyfind you intelligent.
(44:34):
That humor is an indicator ofintelligence, even though we
don't consciously register that.
But if someone is funny, um,they're usually self-deprecating
and they're usually showingthat they see two sides of
(44:56):
something, or three sides ofsomething.
And in that, in that epiphany,that funny epany, you come to an
appreciation of their capacityfor imagination and daily
mysticism.
You know, not right or wrong,not good or bad, not absolute
(45:21):
and relative, but all thosethings at the same time, and
that's really reassuring.
You know that that's really agood person to be around and a
good, a good reality toexperience, more so than
somebody browbeating you intojoining the cult or making this
(45:48):
radical change that doesn'tbegin with you and your
experience, but them and theirneed uh, yeah and and that's
what?
what friendship?
That's how friendship and love,and uh and all those things
bloom, uh, because we startliving in a beautiful world
(46:08):
together rather than in acontested world.
So that's what chestertonbrings to the table, man, and
that's, uh, you know, the bigcigar.
Speaker 1 (46:19):
That's part of the program yeah, now on on on
ending this podcast.
I'm tempted.
Speaker 2 (46:28):
I'm tempted to read this monologue that we had, that
you had chat gpt, chat, gpt,create, because it's really good
well, if you want, I mean we wehave to give credit to chat gpt
for for doing it, because I, I,uh, I just thought it would be
a clever way of trying to doresearch on what Chesterton
(46:53):
might, how he might viewcontemporary cultural conflicts
using one of the tools ofcontemporary cultural conflict.
Speaker 1 (47:06):
And it even critiques AI within his own thoughts, ai
critiquing AI's thoughts.
Here's the prompt, a poeticsummary of his arc, perhaps a
dramatic monologue in his voice.
Imagining him speaking to a21st century audience about the
coming age.
That's why I think it'spowerful imagining him speaking
(47:27):
to a crowd and capturing centuryaudience about the coming age.
That's why I think it'spowerful imagining him speaking
um to a crowd and capturing histhought in the ark and how, how
his voice would speak to thisgeneration.
Um, so I'm gonna just read itand um, take it for what it's
worth.
You can definitely, you candefinitely hear a very, uh, a
poetic synthesis of his thoughts.
I think here so poeticsynthesis of his thoughts.
I think here so a monologue forthe end of the age from the
(47:52):
voice of GK Chesterton.
Ah, so we have come to the endagain, have we?
The end of reason, the end ofreligion, the end of man, the
end, it seems, of endings?
Very well, let us begin.
You say God is dead.
I've heard that obituary fivetimes already.
(48:13):
He died with the Caesars, theysaid.
He died with the monks.
He died with the cathedrals, hedied with the candles and the
plagues and the peasant saints.
He died again in the shadow ofthe guillotine, and once more in
the smoke of your clever littlefactories.
And now you tell me, breathless, blinking at your own glowing
screens, that he has died again,that we have outgrown him at
(48:36):
last, that your machines havelearned to think and your
children have forgotten how topray.
Forgive me if I do not attendthe funeral.
I have found it ratherrepetitive, for it is never God
who dies, it is only man'simagination of him that grows
thin and brittle, like oldparchment burned by the fever of
each new age.
You mistake the ash of yourfailed empires for the dust of
(49:01):
the divine.
What perishes is not the cross,but the crooked little
scaffolds you've built around it.
You say you are post-Christian.
So be it.
You were once post-Roman,post-feudal, post-medieval,
post-rational, and soon, perhaps, you shall be post-human.
You may have been many things,but the church, the true church,
(49:24):
has been one thing all along Awitness, not a winner, not a
tyrant, not a tool.
A witness, a voice in thewilderness, mocked, mistaken,
sometimes martyred, never mute.
You may silence the pulpits,but the stones will sing.
(49:44):
You may digitize your doubts,but the child still dreams of
glory.
And the grave, my friends, isstill empty.
I tell you, it is notChristianity that evolves to fit
the times.
It is time that crashes againstthe rocks of the creed and
breaks.
Each age has tried to bury it,but the tomb keeps being found
(50:05):
vacant.
You call this the age ofartificial intelligence.
I call it the age of realstupidity.
You have taught your machinesto mimic your minds, but you
have forgotten how to nourishyour souls.
You speak of uploadingconsciousness, but you cannot
bear to sit quietly with yourown.
You trust your algorithms morethan your ancestors and your
(50:28):
ancestors God help them.
Trusted in miracles and still Ido not despair.
For I've seen this before.
I've stood at the edge of theempires.
I've watched cities fall andcreeds collapse and clever men
declare their own greatness withthe triumphant squeal of a pig
discovering fire.
And each time, out of the ruinthere comes a sound, not a shout
(50:50):
but a whisper.
Behold, I make all things new.
Not new as in novel, but new asin true.
Again, the eternal rediscoveredin the ruins of the fashionable
, the child laughing in thesilence after the storm, the
cross lifted from the rubble notby kings or corporations, but
by beggars, and poets and lovers.
(51:12):
So I say do not fear the end ofthis age, for christianity does
not die, it rises, and perhapsif you stop running from wonder,
you may see it rise in your ownheart.
I suggest you leave a littleroom, not in your schedule, but
in your soul.
Speaker 2 (51:31):
Pretty, pretty amazing, isn't it?
Speaker 1 (51:34):
It is amazing how it aggregates all his types of
thinking and writing.
Speaker 2 (51:40):
Yeah Well, yeah, that it, it did that and you know,
the prompts helped some to shape, did that?
And the prompts helped some toshape what he was able to
express.
With that I would go toChesterton himself, first the
Orthodox book and then theEverlasting man.
(52:07):
I've also heard that peopletell me that they really get a
lot out of his essays Becausethe essays are short.
Again, they were written forlike newspaper columns, some of
them, and they're on all varietyof things, some of them, and
(52:32):
they're on all variety of things.
Um, you know, because their turnof the century right around the
time when modernity wasemerging in culture and the
dadaists were doing their thingand and chesterton was doing his
, and a man called thursday isabout a guy who gets involved in
anarchist group.
Um, who are I mean forChesterton these are real data
is Dan Arcus.
(52:52):
So it's really.
Um, that might be a way to goto would be either the essays or
or orthodoxy.
Speaker 1 (53:04):
Yeah, well, that's, I was recommended orthodoxy um by
my mentor brett and but but healso had trouble.
He had trouble recommendingwhich book because he's kind of
like it kind of depends what youwant to get, because he has
books on so many different yeah,yeah, he was, uh, he was really
prolific, one of the mostprolific writers probably in
(53:27):
history.
Speaker 2 (53:28):
Um, and some of it is , you know it's, it's that voice
, uh, pre-modern voice beforehemingway.
You know where, where you're,um, it's almost feels like
someone talking to you sometimes, um, but it he so funny and and
(53:48):
he's so witty and and the stuffand the stuff he talks about is
so contemporarily interesting.
You know that, uh, he's wellworth the trouble.
Speaker 1 (54:01):
Awesome.
Well, I hope we did him justicetoday.
I think we did.
He is quite a gem.
So thanks for writing about him, thanks for sharing about him,
and I really appreciate you,professor, and look forward to
the next time.
Speaker 2 (54:16):
Yeah, okay, look forward myself.
Thank you very much, travis.
Speaker 1 (54:20):
Thank you, bye.
Well, that concludes Episode 9,chesterton, part 2.
I want to leave you here withone of Chesterton's greatest
quotes the Christian ideal hasnot been tried and found wanting
.
It has been found difficult andleft untried.
A believer or somewhere inbetween, on your own
(54:49):
deconstruction journey, we'regoing to be exploring what it
means to live a life of deepmeaning in a world that often
feels fragmented and nihilistic,and this revelatory faith
doesn't seem to come to us fromthe expected places.
The prophetic voice doesn'tseem to come from the pulpits or
the seminaries.
It's breaking through in novels, poetry, activism, art and the
unexpected corners of culture.
(55:10):
We hope you'll join us on thisongoing conversation.
Until then, thank you forlistening to the Subversive
Orthodoxy Podcast.
If you found this meaningful,please leave a five-star review,
subscribe and share with anyonewho might resonate with this
conversation Adios.
Subscribe and share with anyonewho might resonate with this
conversation.
Adios.
Speaker 2 (55:28):
Spiritually, I want to jump off a cliff.
Speaker 1 (55:31):
This has been a subversive orthodoxy podcast
with Travis Mullen and professorin trust.
I could drift.
Or if I could drift through it,dancing through a moonlight
under nighttime skies,forgetting the world's lies.
Meanwhile, I'm fine lookingthrough a stained glass.
Oh, she and I seem to say hi tohuman beings with a smile
unseen, grabbing wildflowers asI slide down hills after the
(55:52):
rain.
Thank you,
Ah, so we have come to the end again, have we?
The end of reason, the end ofreligion, the end of man, the
end, it seems, of endings?
Very well, let us begin.
You say God is dead.
I've heard that obituary fivetimes already.
He died with the Caesars, theysaid.
He died with the monks.
(00:22):
He died with the cathedrals, hedied with the candles and the
plagues and the peasant saints.
He died again in the shadow ofthe guillotine and once more in
(00:42):
the smoke of your clever littlefactories.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
And'm your host, Travis Mullen, and I'm excited
to have you with us.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
This is a podcast about philosophy and meaning.
It is about how we as humanswithstand the challenges of our
cultures.
It is about the generalJudeo-Christian revelation of
God in the world and how thebloodiest century ever recorded
couldn't kill that revelation.
It's also about how thatrevelation, tossed aside as
archaic, outdated and obsolete,may be the very life-giving
(01:18):
power we need to resist thisdistracted techno state we're
living in full of anxiety,depression and teenage suicide
(01:57):
technostate we're living in fullup a little bit to the part
right before the ending on thelast episode where we were
talking about reading on page 16of Subversive Orthodoxy, where
he's talking about Chesterton.
So it's in the intro of thewhole book.
It's not in the Chesterton partand obviously Chesterton's so
(02:18):
important he made it to the verybeginning intro work on the
book introducing all 20 of thecharacters.
So I have thoroughly enjoyedChesterton.
He's extremely fun and funnyand witty and it just lightens
the mood.
It's really fun.
So hope you're enjoyingChesterton and I hope this makes
you want to read some of hisbooks if you haven't already.
(02:40):
I currently am in the middle ofwhat's Wrong with the world and
I did start orthodoxy a whileback and I'm going to get back
to it as well.
So here we go.
Okay, so this is on page 16 ofSubversive Orthodoxy Professor's
(03:01):
book, where he's this is notthe chapter.
If any of you are followingalong with the book, this isn't
in the chapter on Chesterton.
This is actually in theoriginal intro of the whole book
.
So I believe yeah.
Yeah, it's on like page two ofthe whole book, page 16 of the
intro, yeah, which is page twoof the actual book, of the text,
(03:22):
okay, as it starts to talk.
So I'm going to read twoparagraphs here, cause I feel I
feel like I underlined them all,I had all these notes and how
much it related to currentdeconstruction in our, in our
culture.
So, in other words, the historyof faith is really the story of
how the soul out distances itsown culture, bound rituals,
(03:45):
refurbishing itself from theinside out through the examples
of its prophets and saints, zenkoans.
Is that the right way to saythat?
Yeah, for example, are notepistemological riddles, as our
enlightenment philosophers mightdescribe them, but exemplary
forms of poetic revivification,like the Sermon on the Mount.
(04:06):
They preserved the spiritualcontent of a tradition by
challenging convention on theinvisible wings of metaphor.
In his book the Everlasting man, GK Chesterton describes the
power of orthodoxy to renewitself in a chapter titled Five
Deaths of the Faith.
Christianity, he tells us, wasnever really reborn because it
(04:28):
never really died.
The cultures it lived in died.
So Christianity wasrediscovered five times in the
history of the West, as onecultural epoch was superseded by
another.
This happened after the fall ofRome, then in the 12th century,
at the end of the feudal era,again when the medieval
synthesis gave way to thesecular energies of the
(04:49):
Renaissance.
Again when the Renaissance fellto the new rationalism of the
Enlightenment.
And yet again as Enlightenmentvalues have begun to dissolve
with the arrival of ourpost-industrial age.
In each instance, the end ofcivilization and death of God
were proclaimed.
But what was really dying was acomplex set of institutional
(05:10):
arrangements wedded toparticular cultural premises.
In each case, a new culturalage emerged, when Christianity
was rediscovered as somethingabove and beyond the culture
that claimed to embody it, aboveand beyond the culture that
claimed to embody it.
And so in my notes I had saidcurrent deconstruction is
actually the death of just aform the megachurch, the
(05:30):
satellite church, the corporatepractices of the church.
So these are the things peopleare shedding, thinking, they're
shedding Christianity, but theywill find that it did not die.
Only those forms died whichyeah, and chesterton's pointing
to a thread.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
You know that this is , and since chesterton's
probably happened five moretimes yeah in different contexts
, you know yeah, I, I thinksomewhere, somewhere, chesterton
says the corpse turned out tobe the coroner, the person
burying Christianity and seeingit as a relic was really burying
(06:16):
their old understanding ofChristianity, born of a previous
set of institutionalarrangements that no longer make
any sense.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
Yeah.
So, the words like constructsand theological infrastructure
come to mind.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Yes, and back when fundamentalists were living in a
culture where literal truth wasthe only truth, you know, a
culture where there weren'tthings like electricity, that
went in two, that had positiveand negative poles and went in
(06:57):
two directions at the same time,these scientific developments
enlarged the human imagination.
So why wouldn't it enlarge yourunderstanding of your Bible and
your faith?
Why would the faith then becomethe old world critique of the
(07:19):
new, when it's really your faithis bigger than the world you
lived in?
That's all it means.
It doesn't mean that the worldchanged and is no longer
believing what your literalismtaught you.
It's that literalism is nowexposed as just being one tool
(07:41):
that was limited and notinclusive enough.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
So that means that it isn't that the fashions of the
day are more inclusive than whatthey replace.
It's like the fashions of theday are just insufficient to the
(08:08):
transcendental truth of thefaith in a different way than
the fundamentals Right.
So it's like it's theunderstanding of the faith I
think we talked about it I thinkit was with Kierkegaard that
(08:29):
the idea that the truth wasabsolutely paradoxically
teleologically placed.
And what did it mean to beabsolutely paradoxically
teleologically placed?
It meant to be placed outsidethe absolutes of your cultural
era and culture and time, yeah,where all the constants are way
(08:54):
bigger than 100 years.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Yes, yeah, you could live within your cultural
framework and all of thoseconstants, assumptions, premises
, premises, mental, theological,worldview, infrastructure could
all be 40 years old yeahexactly, but there is a there,
there are.
There are not constructs.
There's actual constants thatare 3 000 years old yes, yes,
(09:19):
that's what he's saying, yeah uh, one thing, one thing
chesterton said that relates towhat you're saying is uh, on
progress, he says and and relatethis to church or theology or
anything.
Yeah, he says progress shouldmean that we are always changing
the world to fit the vision,but instead we're always
changing the vision to fit theworld yeah, yeah.
(09:41):
So we're adapting to theworld's cultural movements
rather than changing our worldto fit the real vision.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
The long constants of the world.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Yeah, and you just have to live long enough to see
a few cultures rise and fall.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
A few cycles.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
A few civilizations rise and fall, things that seem
sort of you know that would lastforever.
I guess the Roman Empire, youknow was one that people thought
would never die.
And then they had the GreatDeath, which they thought was,
(10:21):
you know, the end of the end ofcivilization.
But it turned out that it was acyclical change into a new
civilization that the people whowere raised in the old couldn't
see until much later, or, if atall, never in their lifetime.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Much later or, if at all, never in their lifetime.
Yeah, and this also, I think,triggers the best quote of
Chesterton which I've known inmy life was from my college
pastor, brett, who likes ourpodcast.
Yeah, he said Brett taught methat Chesterton and said the
(11:07):
Christian ideal has not beenbeen tried and found wanting.
It has been found difficult andleft untried.
Yeah, and that's from.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
What's wrong with the world yeah, that's good because
again, it's that, it's thathumility, you know it.
It isn't.
People haven't tried, you knowthey, uh, my ancestors probably
tried, they just weren't verygood at it and I'm not very good
at it, and who am I to sort ofsay they had the wrong religion?
(11:34):
or they had the wrong ideology.
No, it wasn't about that.
It was about they worked withwhat they had and they weren't
all that great at it, and thatshould make us more grateful for
what we have and what they wereable to do, not bitter or
nihilistic that the world isgoing to hell in a handbasket.
(11:55):
You know, there have been greatmysteries and graces in
everybody's lives and theyhaven't been accidents.
They're part of creation andgrace.
And that's why Chesterton said,you know, he went from a cynic
to a believer because he movedfrom looking at the dark side to
(12:17):
looking at the joy and thegrace as a story that he hadn't
paid attention to right.
And so he thought that his agewas particularly overly rational
(12:41):
and underappreciate, had notenough gratitude for existence,
but very intelligent andrational in terms of critique,
and that's okay.
But it isn't healthy forsocieties, both economically and
(13:06):
psychologically from his pointof view.
So Christianity and plus hethought that Christianity had
the other virtue of being trueand that its truth was confirmed
in its survival from all thesedifferent epics that died.
(13:29):
And then Christianityreappeared in a new guise, where
all things are made new again,and that means that all the old
explanations go but the faithand God and the eternal are back
(13:51):
.
You know, they never left.
They just became obscured therefor a while because we thought
AI was the answer to no.
It was a replacement for havinga soul and being human.
(14:12):
It's going to save us fromourselves and for Chesterton,
that artificial intelligence isreally real.
Stupidity is basically what itis Not seeing yourself in your
(14:33):
context, thinking your contextis absolute.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
And Kierkegaard was very good.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
That was the existential insight.
Very good, that was theexistential insight.
You know, context is verydeterminative of human thought
and understanding and experience.
But context is not absolute andthat gives room for faith and
(15:04):
also for spirituality.
That puts them in.
I think the Buddhists talkabout the two truths, the
eternal and the relative.
And the worldly and thefashionable is the relative.
But where's the eternal?
Well, maybe universalscientific laws, but they get
turned over every 10 years.
(15:25):
So where's the eternal?
That becomes the question uh,that, uh, faith answered that,
um, rationality didn't so, um,we're coming into about the last
bit of our podcast.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
We're going to focus in on a couple of his books and
some of his themes now from theprofessor here.
So one is let's talk aboutorthodoxy because that to you it
meant a lot to you in thedefinition of orthodoxy for your
book Subversive Orthodoxy, andalso it's a type of orthodoxy
(16:03):
that he's talking about in hisbook that really appeals to you
and also sets kind of a generoustable.
We're not talking about GreekOrthodox or Russian Orthodox
specifically, or we're not incontext of the book Subversive
Orthodoxy or our podcast.
We're not talking aboutspecifically technical Christian
(16:23):
Orthodoxy theologicalstatements, but rather, as we
said in the intro of the podcast, like a general revelation kind
of aspect.
But there's more to it that hetalked about and that you
resonated with.
So let's talk about that.
I'll first read two of hisquotes from the book.
Number one is from chaptereight, the romance of orthodoxy.
(16:49):
He says this is a thrillingromance of orthodoxy.
People have fallen into afoolish habit of speaking of
orthodoxy as something heavy,humdrum and safe.
But there was never anything soperilous or so exciting as
orthodoxy, and that wassomething we had read in a
previous episode as well.
That quote, and then elsewherehe says orthodoxy chapter uh six
(17:11):
.
In the paradoxes ofchristianity chapter he says um,
the church is a lion tamer.
It has kept the wild animals ofthe cosmos at bay by refusing
to be swallowed by any of them.
It has been the only thing thathas.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
Yes, yes, the slaves to fashion which are really for
(18:11):
him.
The aristocratic classes arethe ones that are more slaves to
contemporary fashions, both indress and in ideas, than even
the working class, and thatorthodoxy is a kind of escape
from the orthodoxy.
Well, let's say it's escapedfrom the tribal faiths and cults
and values of the age that youwere just sort of born into,
like the trends of the day.
The trends of the day, and Ithink I mentioned that quote
before that he said there'snothing more demeaning than
(18:32):
being a slave to the trends ofyour day.
Well, how do you get out of thetrends of your day?
How do you get into freedom ofthought?
Well, for him, there was oneplace you can go, and that was
Christianity, and especiallyOrthodox Christianity, not some
sort of cult of extreme ideas.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
The.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
Orthodoxy, the Christian Orthodoxy he's talking
about, isn't a set of doctrinalcheckboxes that you check off
and that makes you a member ofthe cult.
It's more of a paradoxicalvision of reality that's poetic
and that seizes upon the mysteryof human experience, which is
(19:21):
not.
That experience is a mysterybecause it's unknown.
It's because experience is kindof a daily mystic experience
where you can fall into yourlove for your wife or your child
, and it has an infinite space.
(19:42):
It doesn't stop, and so it's amystery because you're wondering
how you could be inside thisexperience.
Nature is the same way.
The ocean they're mysteries,but they're not unknowns,
whereas for science andrationality, mystery is an
(20:02):
unknown and the idea is to solveit.
So, like star trek, you knowtheir.
Their greatest vision is to gowhere no man has gone before and
to seek the unknown, not toappreciate it, but to come to
know it.
So it's no longer a mystery toconquer it, to conquer it.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
So, in a sense, in a sense, what he's part of, how
he's saying that christianity is, um, it's a, it's a, it's a way
of seeing the world, a way ofbeing in the world.
That is different is that he'ssaying that you're familiar with
mystery.
Yes, rather than trying tosolve everything in a way that
maddens you and makes you insane.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
Yes, it's the joyful humility that allows you to live
comfortably and joyfully inmystery.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
In an infinite world.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
In an infinite world, and it's not and it isn't your
job to predict things andcontrol things.
In fact, it's your job not tobe center stage and not to
predict and control things.
God does that.
Your job is to feel the graceand the love and pass on the
(21:22):
vision of daily mystic living inChrist, and that is a whole
joyful thing that he found.
And so then, when he gets intothese public arguments with
George Bernard Shaw and HG Wells, these powerful intellectuals,
(21:45):
many of whom were troubled humanbeings who were carrying the
world on their shoulders,Because, if the socialist
revolution fails, I will havefailed England, but that is not
the life I'm living or the worldthat I'm living as a
(22:07):
human being, following my faithin the God that Christ revealed
to me, which is open to joyfulhumility and peace of mind, and
that becomes his counter storyto the heroic, the new version
(22:32):
of the heroic quest, which iswhatever that generation finds
epic, like mountain climbing orcross-country racing or whatever
.
Whatever becomes the uh, the uhheroic story.
(22:53):
Um, and then there's the,there's the counter story of the
, there's the christian story,which is well, the, the, the
hero is the guy who gave himself, and the poor are the
inheritors of the earth, and thepoor in spirit are the ones who
(23:16):
live closest to the mystery andthose kinds of Christian
paradoxes that turn out to alsoteach you how to live with
social paradoxes.
And the other thing that wedidn't talk about, which, well,
probably we'll talk about it ina second, with orthodoxy, is
(23:38):
this, this way of living, thisembrace of mystery is, you know,
I don't know if it's for us thebest word, you know, because we
think of mystery as things thatshould be revealed, revealed,
(24:09):
and the truth is the revealingbehind a mystery.
But for, for chesterton, truthis really the reality of the
mystery, um, and living in itand with it in, not in
intellectual freedom where thereare no rules, uh, but in in
terms of a dance, a relationshipto things that have a structure
(24:30):
, and a set of relationships andconventions that help you find
your place in the scheme ofthings, without immediately
reaching out for certainty,power or some sort of absolute
um, I think I think I just madea connection of what you're
(24:52):
saying as far as adifferentiation between a
mystery, the way we might thinkof it, and the mystery of what
he means.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
like in a scientific or empiricist mindset you might
think mystery, well that's just,that's just unknown, that's
just unknown.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
So like blank you're looking at something blank yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
But what we mean is, or what orthodoxy would mean,
according to Chesterton, is youknow, give an example of like
the Trinity, so you have the.
The scientists go.
Well, that's meaningless, thatdoesn't make sense.
But what he's saying is no,it's the truth.
Now, live in the mystery of it,cause you don't get to, you
don't get to solve for zero,like you don't get to, you don't
(25:34):
get to, you are not infiniteenough to make this equation
work for your brain.
And that's not to say that.
It's not that it doesn't have amath equation, it may, but it's
to say you get to humble human,you get to live in this
equation.
That's called mystery.
That is a truth that you don'tget to fully understand, rather
(25:56):
than you thinking, oh, thatdoesn't make sense, so it's not
true.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Right, right, that is nothing, you know.
That is nothing you know.
Well, you know, it's thoseparadoxes that our language, our
(26:22):
culture and our brain evolutionisn't prepared yet to reveal to
us.
Like you know, we know thatsometimes our best friend is
also our best enemy, our frenemy.
But how is that so?
What does that mean?
Am I just someone who flips?
Well, it's part of the mysteryof friendship that makes
friendship a source ofcontemplation and revelation.
(26:44):
That's what it is Like lookingat the ocean and trying to
figure out you know why thatback and forth movement is so
reassuring and at the same timeso mysterious beauty and
possibility in things that ascientist or rationalist might
(27:11):
reduce to a complex set ofrelationships to allow for
prediction and control.
But that's just part of thehuman experience.
That's not all of it, nor is iteven the best of it.
And Chesterton found that inChristianity and became probably
(27:37):
the most popular apologist of20th century, far more popular
and probably far more longerlasting I mean I think he still
has contemporary significancethan somebody like Billy Graham
who saw it as partly a, you know, crowd control and numbers game
(27:59):
and PR Not that he was entirelythat, but a lot of it ended up
being that, whereas withChesterton it's sort of like his
faith and his belief in thepower of paradox to transcend
(28:24):
the human pride keeps him in thegame, in the conversation, in a
way that and kirkagard in thegame and in the conversation
regarding human condition uh farlonger than some of those uh
cold war apologetics yeah, umone one quote about him is that
(28:46):
he was a prophet who saw themodern world coming before it
arrived.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
Um, he warned of soulless progress, technocratic
control, cultural amnesia, moralrelativism.
He predicted the rise of biggovernment and big business and
the breakdown of the family, andthe dangers of a society that
forgets beauty and wonder yeahum.
Did you see that in um?
Did you feel that in each ofhis books, or is that coming
(29:13):
through in certain books?
Do you think?
Speaker 2 (29:16):
well, um, the uh, I.
I love that book, orthodoxy, um, and, and there are some
chapters in there I forget whatchapter it is where he describes
pragmatism and it's arationalist.
(29:51):
To undo rationalism it's sortof like, well, I'm not going to
get to the absolute becauseeverything is tied to practical
ends in the real world.
So if I could just say thatthese ideas work and that's what
makes them true, then I'm bothbeing a realist and a
(30:14):
rationalist at the same time.
And Chesterton sort of says,well, that's very clever, but it
doesn't really work.
There's a more inclusiveunderstanding of life, that of
all classes and intellects andtimes and places.
And if it doesn't show up inyour time and space, well, it
(31:00):
isn't necessarily because it'snot true, it's because the world
you live in doesn't have thecapacity to register it.
Because you're, you're apragmatist.
Now you're not.
You're not a person with a soul, and and the soul, that that's
the other thing.
Yeah, you said that theabsolute of having a soul, you
(31:21):
know, uh, has become problematicfor modern people.
You'll say you know, my soultells me that this is not good.
And they'll say, well, what doyou mean?
Speaker 1 (31:34):
soul Can you define a soul.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
And then you say well , I think the first person to
talk about soul is Heraclitus,and he never defined it.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
But in his world.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
It helped him live in harmony with a changing reality
.
What does your negation of theidea of the soul do for you?
Make it clearer that you can bea pragmatist or a scientist
without self-doubt.
That's a dubious achievement,right yeah, the Esquire magazine
used to every year have thedubious achievement, right yeah,
(32:07):
the Esquire magazine used toevery year have the dubious
achievement awards and theywould give out, like you know,
there'd be like 50 differentpeople that they would give the
dubious achievement award andthey were always things kind of
like that, you know, likeproving that God didn't exist by
(32:27):
counting the number of I don'tknow hamburgers in a restaurant,
or something.
Or these world records, youknow, that are just these silly
things that nobody had everthought to do before and so now
make it into the Guinness Bookof World Records, that nobody
had ever thought to do before,and so now make it into the
(32:48):
Guinness Book of World Records.
And the fun of that littlesatire was to show, you know,
looking back in history, youknow there were a lot of dubious
achievements.
And looking back in our ownlives, we have a lot of dubious
achievements, and it isn'tbecause we're bad people or that
we're pursuing, we're doing thebest we can at pursuing the
(33:10):
justice that we seek.
It's just as Chesterton saidyou know we're born limited.
You know, call it original sin,call it the human limitation
that we're just not very good atbeing our own gods.
And it's better to just own upto that and quit trying to be
(33:37):
God and let God be God and finda way to talk to God and what
you conceive him to be, ordistrust your oversimplification
either way.
And that just heightens themystery.
It doesn't do away with it,which is doing away with the
(34:00):
mystery of the human conditionis a dubious achievement.
Is a dubious achievement Evenif the AI answers the question
of what it means to be a humanbeing.
We'd have to put it back in thebox because we want joy, we
don't want to be right, andthat's different than wanting to
be famous or in control ofthings.
(34:22):
That'd be the worst.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
Along those, oh sorry .
Speaker 2 (34:26):
No, I was just saying I can't think of anything worse
than being in control of theuniverse.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
Yeah, that'd be the last thing I'd want there's a
movie about that yeah, bruce,bruce, almighty jim carrey yeah,
that's right, but jim carrey isa good person so yeah, on um,
one of the one of the topics yousaid, he has kind of his own
take on freedom.
(34:51):
You know, how would you buildthat out or where?
You know, is it coming fromorthodoxy or everlasting man?
Speaker 2 (34:59):
I think everlasting man has the most stuff on
freedom and it comes up in hisdebates with HG Wells.
Because in HG Wells, in thosedebates, hg Wells is saying that
science is an instrument ofhuman freedom because it brings
(35:20):
personal autonomy and unfetteredchoice.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
and Chesterton's view was oh, so he's saying
unfettered choice is freedom.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
And science gives us that.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Yeah, unfettered choice.
We can choose.
We have more choices becausescience enables us to intervene
in illness and illnesses andsolve problems we couldn't solve
before.
Same engineering and technologygo to planets, do all of that
stuff, and it improves ourpersonal autonomy that we're not
(35:57):
subject to the limitations ofnature as much, and Chesterton's
(36:58):
view was not that personalautonomy shouldn't be sought,
but not necessarily in terms ofunfettered choice or control
what we really is.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
The true and happiest expression of freedom is
through tradition and ritual andforms and love that we can fill
with our freedom andcooperation with others,
regardless of a tradition, is aform of freedom.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
When our culture is like I'm going to get married at
the justice of the peacebecause I don't care about those
traditions, I want my freedomto do it the way I want to do it
, it seems like opposite licenseat the uh at the um city hall,
(37:34):
which is where my, my, uh, myson, got married at city hall in
santa barbara, and we had to goand invent a ritual afterwards
to go get dinner and and, uh,you know, do all of these things
and and weddings are just sortof forms within which you can.
You can solve a lot ofquestions and and involve a lot
of different people and have,like roles for for grandma and
(37:57):
roles for grandpa and roles forthe, the husband, their mother
and the daughter's dad.
These rituals are not meant tobe these.
Well, I don't know what they'remeant to be, but they don't.
People that don't want to do itdon't want to be compelled by a
(38:23):
form, but you're only compelledby a form if you take it more
seriously than it was intended.
I mean if you realize that thisis an excuse for getting
together and spending a lot ofmoney and having fun and
enjoying one another and givingit a ritual structure in order
(38:46):
to bring people together, thathas traditionally had a kind of
payoff in terms of relationships, we might find we don't do that
anymore because the socialinstitutions have turned them
into obligations.
So we might want to get rid ofthose obligations and you can do
(39:07):
that.
But that doesn't mean thattradition itself is bad.
It's just that there's thisprocess order.
How does it work?
Order, disorder and reorder,and that's kind the the
(39:28):
three-part steps of humancultural development, and so the
order works for a hundred years.
And then we decide we don'twant to have to go to church
anymore because everybody'sliving in robot bodies.
So we can watch it.
We can go to church in ourheads with our artificial
intelligence beacons or whatever, and then that that'll be
(39:53):
adapted.
But the content of it, you know, is you know, are you using
that to become more alienatedfrom your experience, or are you
using that?
in order to become more joyfuland in love with life and and
(40:13):
the truth of the human condition, um, and and its greater ends
in love and relationships?
Or are you using it to solveproblems that were big deals,
maybe 200 years before that, butare no longer even a?
Speaker 1 (40:32):
problem at all.
Speaker 2 (40:33):
So Chesterton had that kind of imagination that
would allow him to think about,you know, sci-fi versions of his
own faith as a way ofdemonstrating its perennial
value, even if its rituals wererelative to one's time and place
(40:57):
and situation.
So I mean, that's sort of theway I read it and so it's not.
Those things are not sort ofthe way I read it and so it's
not.
Those things are not those,like, the rituals are not things
(41:19):
to have wars over, or, you know, civil wars over.
You know, whether or not theEucharist is wine or punch or
whatever, the although I'm surethere have been wars fought over
that very thing, doctorabsolutes that that become, you
know, sources of wars andconflicts.
Speaker 1 (41:43):
Now I think we're almost coming in for a landing
here.
The things I get fromChesterton that seem really
unique are his own political andeconomic vision that he pushed
(42:04):
forward a lot more than italready had as just tributism
that he pushed forward a lotmore than it already had, as
just tributism, His views onfamily and society and culture
and community being.
I don't know if they influencedWendell Berry or anybody, but
probably it sounds like theyshare a lot of that fabric.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
I don't know if Wendell Berry actually read
Chester.
I'm sure he probably read atleast one of the books.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
But yeah, you can see it certainly in his thought is
similar in so many ways to that,yeah, a fabric of actual local
community and stuff.
Yeah, community and stuff, um,the, the, the joy and humor as a
weapon, as a spiritual weapon,is new to me.
That was pretty awesome to, to,to see that and and to see how
it resonates.
You know you just, you're gonnalisten to a guy like chesterton
(43:02):
10 times more than you're gonnalisten to a guy who's all
serious and doesn't have anysense of humor.
It's like.
It's like humor opens the door,and and so does creativity and
art.
So, um, they open doors thatare closed typically like people
are not, you know, people arenot like just wanting to hear
every serious person's thoughts,but a funny person starts
(43:24):
talking and gets them laughing.
Then they're like oh, tell memore.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
Yeah, and who was it saying that?
Maybe it was some sitcom I waswatching on TV and one of the
characters was saying that theywanted their friend to go out on
this blind date or somethingMaybe it was a Seinfeld episode
(43:50):
or something.
And he said the test is if youcan make her laugh, that you're
going to have a better shot withher.
It's an indication that shemight like you.
(44:11):
And the other character saidwell, why is that?
And he says well, when youlaugh, if someone laughs at your
joke, that means that theyidentify with your sense of
humor, which means that theyfind you intelligent.
(44:34):
That humor is an indicator ofintelligence, even though we
don't consciously register that.
But if someone is funny, um,they're usually self-deprecating
and they're usually showingthat they see two sides of
(44:56):
something, or three sides ofsomething.
And in that, in that epiphany,that funny epany, you come to an
appreciation of their capacityfor imagination and daily
mysticism.
You know, not right or wrong,not good or bad, not absolute
(45:21):
and relative, but all thosethings at the same time, and
that's really reassuring.
You know that that's really agood person to be around and a
good, a good reality toexperience, more so than
somebody browbeating you intojoining the cult or making this
(45:48):
radical change that doesn'tbegin with you and your
experience, but them and theirneed uh, yeah and and that's
what?
what friendship?
That's how friendship and love,and uh and all those things
bloom, uh, because we startliving in a beautiful world
(46:08):
together rather than in acontested world.
So that's what chestertonbrings to the table, man, and
that's, uh, you know, the bigcigar.
Speaker 1 (46:19):
That's part of the program yeah, now on on on
ending this podcast.
I'm tempted.
Speaker 2 (46:28):
I'm tempted to read this monologue that we had, that
you had chat gpt, chat, gpt,create, because it's really good
well, if you want, I mean we wehave to give credit to chat gpt
for for doing it, because I, I,uh, I just thought it would be
a clever way of trying to doresearch on what Chesterton
(46:53):
might, how he might viewcontemporary cultural conflicts
using one of the tools ofcontemporary cultural conflict.
Speaker 1 (47:06):
And it even critiques AI within his own thoughts, ai
critiquing AI's thoughts.
Here's the prompt, a poeticsummary of his arc, perhaps a
dramatic monologue in his voice.
Imagining him speaking to a21st century audience about the
coming age.
That's why I think it'spowerful imagining him speaking
(47:27):
to a crowd and capturing centuryaudience about the coming age.
That's why I think it'spowerful imagining him speaking
um to a crowd and capturing histhought in the ark and how, how
his voice would speak to thisgeneration.
Um, so I'm gonna just read itand um, take it for what it's
worth.
You can definitely, you candefinitely hear a very, uh, a
poetic synthesis of his thoughts.
I think here so poeticsynthesis of his thoughts.
I think here so a monologue forthe end of the age from the
(47:52):
voice of GK Chesterton.
Ah, so we have come to the endagain, have we?
The end of reason, the end ofreligion, the end of man, the
end, it seems, of endings?
Very well, let us begin.
You say God is dead.
I've heard that obituary fivetimes already.
(48:13):
He died with the Caesars, theysaid.
He died with the monks.
He died with the cathedrals, hedied with the candles and the
plagues and the peasant saints.
He died again in the shadow ofthe guillotine, and once more in
the smoke of your clever littlefactories.
And now you tell me, breathless, blinking at your own glowing
screens, that he has died again,that we have outgrown him at
(48:36):
last, that your machines havelearned to think and your
children have forgotten how topray.
Forgive me if I do not attendthe funeral.
I have found it ratherrepetitive, for it is never God
who dies, it is only man'simagination of him that grows
thin and brittle, like oldparchment burned by the fever of
each new age.
You mistake the ash of yourfailed empires for the dust of
(49:01):
the divine.
What perishes is not the cross,but the crooked little
scaffolds you've built around it.
You say you are post-Christian.
So be it.
You were once post-Roman,post-feudal, post-medieval,
post-rational, and soon, perhaps, you shall be post-human.
You may have been many things,but the church, the true church,
(49:24):
has been one thing all along Awitness, not a winner, not a
tyrant, not a tool.
A witness, a voice in thewilderness, mocked, mistaken,
sometimes martyred, never mute.
You may silence the pulpits,but the stones will sing.
(49:44):
You may digitize your doubts,but the child still dreams of
glory.
And the grave, my friends, isstill empty.
I tell you, it is notChristianity that evolves to fit
the times.
It is time that crashes againstthe rocks of the creed and
breaks.
Each age has tried to bury it,but the tomb keeps being found
(50:05):
vacant.
You call this the age ofartificial intelligence.
I call it the age of realstupidity.
You have taught your machinesto mimic your minds, but you
have forgotten how to nourishyour souls.
You speak of uploadingconsciousness, but you cannot
bear to sit quietly with yourown.
You trust your algorithms morethan your ancestors and your
(50:28):
ancestors God help them.
Trusted in miracles and still Ido not despair.
For I've seen this before.
I've stood at the edge of theempires.
I've watched cities fall andcreeds collapse and clever men
declare their own greatness withthe triumphant squeal of a pig
discovering fire.
And each time, out of the ruinthere comes a sound, not a shout
(50:50):
but a whisper.
Behold, I make all things new.
Not new as in novel, but new asin true.
Again, the eternal rediscoveredin the ruins of the fashionable
, the child laughing in thesilence after the storm, the
cross lifted from the rubble notby kings or corporations, but
by beggars, and poets and lovers.
(51:12):
So I say do not fear the end ofthis age, for christianity does
not die, it rises, and perhapsif you stop running from wonder,
you may see it rise in your ownheart.
I suggest you leave a littleroom, not in your schedule, but
in your soul.
Speaker 2 (51:31):
Pretty, pretty amazing, isn't it?
Speaker 1 (51:34):
It is amazing how it aggregates all his types of
thinking and writing.
Speaker 2 (51:40):
Yeah Well, yeah, that it, it did that and you know,
the prompts helped some to shape, did that?
And the prompts helped some toshape what he was able to
express.
With that I would go toChesterton himself, first the
Orthodox book and then theEverlasting man.
(52:07):
I've also heard that peopletell me that they really get a
lot out of his essays Becausethe essays are short.
Again, they were written forlike newspaper columns, some of
them, and they're on all varietyof things, some of them, and
(52:32):
they're on all variety of things.
Um, you know, because their turnof the century right around the
time when modernity wasemerging in culture and the
dadaists were doing their thingand and chesterton was doing his
, and a man called thursday isabout a guy who gets involved in
anarchist group.
Um, who are I mean forChesterton these are real data
is Dan Arcus.
(52:52):
So it's really.
Um, that might be a way to goto would be either the essays or
or orthodoxy.
Speaker 1 (53:04):
Yeah, well, that's, I was recommended orthodoxy um by
my mentor brett and but but healso had trouble.
He had trouble recommendingwhich book because he's kind of
like it kind of depends what youwant to get, because he has
books on so many different yeah,yeah, he was, uh, he was really
prolific, one of the mostprolific writers probably in
(53:27):
history.
Speaker 2 (53:28):
Um, and some of it is , you know it's, it's that voice
, uh, pre-modern voice beforehemingway.
You know where, where you're,um, it's almost feels like
someone talking to you sometimes, um, but it he so funny and and
(53:48):
he's so witty and and the stuffand the stuff he talks about is
so contemporarily interesting.
You know that, uh, he's wellworth the trouble.
Speaker 1 (54:01):
Awesome.
Well, I hope we did him justicetoday.
I think we did.
He is quite a gem.
So thanks for writing about him, thanks for sharing about him,
and I really appreciate you,professor, and look forward to
the next time.
Speaker 2 (54:16):
Yeah, okay, look forward myself.
Thank you very much, travis.
Speaker 1 (54:20):
Thank you, bye.
Well, that concludes Episode 9,chesterton, part 2.
I want to leave you here withone of Chesterton's greatest
quotes the Christian ideal hasnot been tried and found wanting
.
It has been found difficult andleft untried.
A believer or somewhere inbetween, on your own
(54:49):
deconstruction journey, we'regoing to be exploring what it
means to live a life of deepmeaning in a world that often
feels fragmented and nihilistic,and this revelatory faith
doesn't seem to come to us fromthe expected places.
The prophetic voice doesn'tseem to come from the pulpits or
the seminaries.
It's breaking through in novels, poetry, activism, art and the
unexpected corners of culture.
(55:10):
We hope you'll join us on thisongoing conversation.
Until then, thank you forlistening to the Subversive
Orthodoxy Podcast.
If you found this meaningful,please leave a five-star review,
subscribe and share with anyonewho might resonate with this
conversation Adios.
Subscribe and share with anyonewho might resonate with this
conversation.
Adios.
Speaker 2 (55:28):
Spiritually, I want to jump off a cliff.
Speaker 1 (55:31):
This has been a subversive orthodoxy podcast
with Travis Mullen and professorin trust.
I could drift.
Or if I could drift through it,dancing through a moonlight
under nighttime skies,forgetting the world's lies.
Meanwhile, I'm fine lookingthrough a stained glass.
Oh, she and I seem to say hi tohuman beings with a smile
unseen, grabbing wildflowers asI slide down hills after the
(55:52):
rain.
Thank you,
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