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A Joy Beyond Words: How Orthodoxy Changed my Life

October 1st, 2012 | 1 min read

By Matthew Lee Anderson

English: Author G.K. Chesterton August 12, 1904

English: Author G.K. Chesterton August 12, 1904 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

If you’ve wondered why I tend to talk plenty about G.K. Chesterton around these parts, I’ve got a post over at The Gospel Coalition that riffs a little on Orthodoxy’s climax:

Chesterton never minimizes the reality of brokenness: his haunting poem on suicide makes it clear he tasted enough of the dark to know its power. To declare defiantly that the good is fundamental requires seeing and acknowledging the parasitic power of evil. But Chesterton’s cosmic and transcendental oath of patriotic affirmation demands that we acknowledge that the world may be a comedy, but it is not a joke. There is no vicious prankster at the end, waiting to pull the rug from beneath us. There is only resolution and satisfaction, a good more potent and real than any of its degraded imitations.

As they say, read the whole thing.

Matthew Lee Anderson

Matthew Lee Anderson is an Associate Professor of Ethics and Theology in Baylor University's Honors College. He has a D.Phil. in Christian Ethics from Oxford University, and is a Perpetual Member of Biola University's Torrey Honors College. In 2005, he founded Mere Orthodoxy.