Cigar Man and Rock-and-Roll Yoda

An afternoon with my favorite Catholic smartass

Re-reading Chesterton’s¹ Orthodoxy for the eleventy-seventh time.

Every time I read it, the burly swamp-oaf of a man pops out of the pages to blow cigar smoke in my face, demanding I pay attention to some particular chunk of the book.

This time, it was the chapter exploring different arguments against Christianity.²

He goes into great, smartass detail about all the intelligent criticisms that have been made of Christianity over the past ages - as only a man who has lobbed the criticisms himself can.³

In short, Christianity is too:

• pessimistic and gloomy (a gray land of the damned) / optimistic and delusional (la-la land)

• Weak and cowardly / warlike and violent

• Fundamentalist / syncretic

• Prude / sex-obsessed

• Imperialistic / insular

• Ascetic / libertine

• Sexually repressive / sexually coercive

• Fractious / monolithic

• Antisemitic / Zionist

…et cetera.

Also, I realized today that I used to make these paradoxical charges vehemently while at the same accusing Christians of hypocrisy. Oops! I guess it’s Opposite Day! In my case, and apparently in G’s case as well, these opposing criticisms were held to both be accurate at the same time - exclusive, but both somehow valid.

As someone a bit wiser and far more foolish than I was in youth, I can tell you: I still support all of these charges 100%. I’ve come to believe that the whole logic-puzzle approach to things, A ≠ (¬A), is bullshit. Water is a liquid and a solid, light is a particle and a wave, Cheerios are for breakfast and dinner.

Chesterton became fascinated with the idea of a strange, misshapen phenomenon of which these could all be true, thinking that only something huge, bizarre, and otherworldly could have such contours. He came to the conclusion, over years of brandy-soaked bickering, that these charges do not apply to Christianity - they apply to humanity. I came to the same conclusion two-hundred and some years later, probably over a Jack Daniels bottle, feeling like rock-and-roll Yoda.

the REAL rock-and-roll Yoda.

Absolute Boobery! Pride! And then: humiliation as I realized that several of these charges are against me also.

That’s why I need Christianity. I shit you not: a few months ago I caught myself daydreaming about some very specific heads in guillotine baskets while at a nonviolence seminar⁴.

If it’s true that Jesus of Nazareth was the only guy ever to be immune from this bipolar baloney - if it’s true that he was only one thing, all the time - I have to stay close to him, take notes, pay attention, ask for tips. And I like sitting together every Sunday with hundreds of other turds who are trapped in this moral whiplash cycle, admitting together that we’re trapped in it but there’s hope for us yet.

Anyway: Chesterton explains all of this so much better, and funnier, and more clearly, in Orthodoxy. Five stars, would recommend, will read again.

1. a man who describes himself as “prone to writing books at the slightest provocation”, and refrains from calling himself an asshole on every page only because they didn’t say that back then

2. It’s important to note, if you haven’t read it, that he’s not trying to change the reader’s mind about any of this. It’s apologetics - but not in the “defending the faith” way. It’s apologetics as in “I’m sorry I had to write this book, but I owe you guys an explanation for all of this incipient Catholic weirdness on my part.”

3. I am also that (wo)man, and was raised to be this way. It’s important to remember that Chesterton, like myself and like C.S. Lewis, spent the first half of life opposed to religious faith and furious with its adherents.

4. I am so glad Confession exists. The Confessional booth is a nice refuge, though not the natural habitat, for Hypocriticus americanus.