Small Community

G.K. Chesterton
from Heretics, 1905

It is not fashionable to say much nowadays of the advantages of the small community. We are told that we must go in for large empires and large ideas. There is one advantage, however, in the small state, the city or village, which only the willfully blind could overlook. The man who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world. He knows much more of the fierce varieties and uncompromising divergences of men. The reason is obvious. In a large community we choose our companions. In a small community our companions are chosen for us. Thus in all extensive and highly civilized societies groups come into existence founded upon what is called sympathy, and shut out the real world more sharply than the gates of a monastery. There is nothing really narrow about the clan; the thing which is really narrow is the clique. The men of the clan live together because they all wear the same tartan or are all descended from the same sacred cow; but in their souls, by the divine luck of things, there will always be more colours than in any tartan. But the men of the clique live together because they have the same kind of soul, and their narrowness is a narrowness of spiritual coherence and contentment, like that which exists in hell. A big society exists in order to form cliques. A big society is a society for the promotion of narrowness. It is a machinery for the purpose of guarding the solitary and sensitive individual from all experience of the bitter and bracing human compromises.

If we were tomorrow morning snowed up in a street in which we live, we should step into a much larger and much wilder world than we have ever known. And it is the whole effort of the typically modern person to escape from the street in which he lives. First he invents modern hygeine and goes to Margate. Then he invents modern culture and goes to Florence. Then he invents modern imperialism and goes to Timbuktu. He goes to the fantastic borders of the earth. He pretends to shoot tigers. He almost rides on a camel. And in all this he is still essentially fleeing from the street in which he was born...

We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next-door neighbour. Hence he comes to us clad in all the careless terrors of nature; he is as strange as the stars, as reckless and indifferent as the rain. He is Man, the most terrible of beasts. That is why the old religions and the old scriptural language showed so sharp a wisdom when they spoke not of one's duty towards humanity, but one's duty towards one's neighbour. The duty towards humanity may often take the form of some choice which is personal or even pleasurable. That duty may be a hobby; it may even be dissipation. We may work in the East End because we are particularly fitted to work in the East End, or because we think we are; we may fight for the cause of international peace because we are very fond of fighting. The most monstrous martyrdom, the most repulsive experience, may be the result of choice or a kind of taste. We may be so made as to be particularly fond of lunatics or specially interested in leprosy. We may love negroes because they are black or German Socialists because they are pedantic. But we have to love our neighbour because he is there--a much more alarming reason for a much more serious operation. He is the sample of humanity which is actually given us. Precisely because he may be anybody he is everybody. He is a symbol because he is an accident.

The Brothers Karamazov

"The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man."

Thus speaks Dimitri to Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov. Yes, I've finally finished it - all 701 pages. Like Crime and Punishment it's fairly easy to get into, and the characters represent ideas. If you're going to pick one Dostoyevsky book to read though, I'd say go with Crime and Punishment. It's more novel and less philosophy textbook, and it flows smoothly from start to finish. The Brothers Karamazov seemed to me to leave a lot of loose ends. Does Dimitri escape? What happens with Lise and Alyosha? What about Ivan - does he ever find peace? There's a lot of questions, and you're almost left to make up your own ending.

But the book is still genius! Really well written and making points in such a subtle way with so many interlocking themes. The whole book just takes a family and analyses what they make of God. First there is Fyodor Karamazov, a man given over to his sins, with no remorse and no thoughts of God. Then there is Smerdyakov - a man who thinks of God but only with hatred. In reference to Smerdyakov's suicide the defense lawyer says, "Conscience implies penitence, and the suicide may not have felt penitence, but only despair. Despair and penitence are two very different things." I thought that was interesting in light of Judas Iscariot committing suicide contrasted with Simon Peter's repentance.

Then there is Dimitri - the passionate soldier, who sees God and the devil as waging a war for his soul. He is redeemed by love, and at the point that the book ends has determined to submit to God but still has doubts over whether his old man is really dead. But if Dimitri shows the battle of the sinful flesh against God, Ivan shows the battle of the mind against God. In Ivan the torture of Raskolnikov from Crime and Punishment is replayed - the pain of a mind in rebellion against God. Finally, there is Alyosha, the hero, the man whose love for the Lord leads him to love men selflessly and who brings honour for the first time to the despised Karamazov name. His peace and joy is rarely shaken, despite all the horrific events that unfold round about him.

Dostoyevsky also brings out his perceptive themes of socialism as the outworking of atheism - as seeking to build heaven on earth. Again, as in Crime and Punishment, he deals with the fact that to the man who does not believe in God "everything is lawful". He also draws a devestatingly good picture of a Screwtape kind of devil, a "poor relative" snivelling to earn favour but secretly working his own agenda.

But for me, I think the real genius of the book is that Dimitri is wrong in his statement to Alyosha. God isn't fighting with the devil - God is clearly sovereign in this book - nothing the devil can do can thwart His plans. Despite being Karamazovs, despite their genetic make up, despite their circumstances, despite their desires - in the end God overrules, and every knee is bowed and every tongue, even Ivan's, confesses that Christ is Lord.

There is a famous chapter in this book called "The Grand Inquisitor". It is Ivan's great speech against the existence of God. The man who wrote the preface to my copy of The Brothers Karamazov felt that in this chapter God lost to the devil. He felt that the miscarriage of justice at the end of the book confirms this. But I think he doesn't see that God is changing people's lives and the circumstances are really incidental to that. And he misses the fact that the book ends with the redemption of the Karamazov name from one of shame and dishonour to one of love. Yes, injustices are done, and yes, people suffer, but through all this, God brings good. But most of all, the man who's written the preface misses that The Grand Inquisitor is not an argument against God at all. As Alyosha says, "Your poem is in praise of Jesus, not in blame of Him - as you mean it to be." Speaking of those Ivan describes as the enlightened ones who protect humanity from religion Alyosha says, "It's simple lust for power, for filthy earthly gain, for domination - something like a universal serfdom with them as masters - that's all they stand for...Your suffering Grand Inquisitor is a mere fantasy." And at the end of the day that's all atheism ever is - a fantasy.

And now...I'm off to Professor Challenger in The Lost World by A.C. Doyle.

Finally...Another Post - Chick Flicks and Fairy Tales

All right, all right...I'm updating my blog. All of you people who've been complaining that I never post anything - you know who you are, Linda :) - here it is. And wow, I can't believe it's been over a month, and a long month at that - what can I say - March was very busy!

Anywho...even though my "scholarly" (yah right) treatise on The Brothers Karamazov is long overdue - I still haven't finished it yet (on page 670 - about to read the speech in Dimitri's defense) but expect to be posting on that within the next week.

In the meantime - from the heady, philosophical realms of Russian literature to the more...well, not really mundane...what's a good word...ah, frivolous. I saw the film 27 Dresses on Saturday night, and I loved it!!!!!! Now before you rush right out to see it (or if you're in America inform me that it's been out since January), let me qualify - if you don't love chick flicks - you'll not like it. If you can only tolerate romantic comedies if they're quirky or more realistic or based on a novel written 150 years ago - you won't like it. This is a classic chick flick, which some (you know who you are) might say is code for "formulaic, predictable, cheesy, fake, unrealistic, and setting forth a false view of love based on lies, appearance, lust, selfishness, etc."

And yes, many chick flicks, just like all other film genres, have aspects that are either blatantly sinful or promote an unBiblical worldview. Yes, some of them portray a warped view of love, just like action movies can portray a warped view of killing, or period dramas can portray a warped view of the purpose of life, or comedies can portray a warped view of humour. We live in a sinful world with sinful men and women whose worldviews are, as my dear professor used to say, "messy". That's why we have to use the Bible to interact with films and music and literature and sort the good from the bad and think on whatever is true, beautiful, good etc. and not necessarily throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Are chick flicks unrealistic? Maybe. But maybe it depends on your perspective. There's an awful lot of girls in love with frogs they see as princes; and an awful lot of girls with princes they only see as frogs. And anyway, whose to say that realism is all it's cracked up to be. A friend of mine said today that when he goes to the cinema he doesn't want to go see Seven - yes, a head in a suitcase may be reality, but he wants to go to see a film for a bit of escapism.

I love chick flicks - I love every predictable bit from the start to the happily-ever-after ending, because I love fairy tales. But I have a theory that fairy tales and chick flicks and fantasy, all that great escapist stuff, is actually based in reality - a Puddleglum reality (see previous post for direct quote). Only God can make something out of nothing -