The Olympics have passed into history, and with them France’s questionable attempt at performing art during the opening ceremonies. For sports fans who missed the first night, the festivities included an apparent interpretation of The Last Supper, including drag queens and a female Jesus.
Why this decidedly non-da Vinci portrayal was ever included in a sports program was never clear, nor why a revered religious event merited such a controversial artistic interpretation.
The Olympic opening highlighted a lukewarm regard for Christianity in Europe and in certain circles worldwide. Indeed, theologians now describe the latter 20th and 21st century as “post-Christian,” an era when Christianity became inconsequential. It’s quite different from how the Christian faith was seen to affect our world a century ago.
G.K. Chesterton was a fluent advocate of the Christian faith. He became Catholic later in life and used his considerable intellect to advocate for Catholicism, and by implication, Christianity. He made keen arguments about the distinctiveness of his faith in an essay found among his collected works in 1926, reprinted in 1990. What was it he found so attractive about his adopted faith?
Chesterton observed that the Christian Church is the only thing in which “the superior cannot be superior.” He referred to the admonition to be a servant of others before self, thus following Christ’s teaching that the greatest must become the least. What other school of thought advocated servant leadership 2,000 years ago, during the Roman Empire no less? Christians are to be upside down in their world, then and now.
He also said that the Church “prevents a sin from being a secret.” Here he meant that Christians are charged to label wrongdoing for what it is: sin; to call a spade a spade. The point is to confess sin rather than deny, hide, or explain it away. We are not to rationalize or justify misdeeds, but transparently admit them, and repent. Consequently, one should avoid the temptation to throw out God’s rules and replace them with our own, popular though that may be.
Chesterton said that Christianity “frees a man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age.” By this strange phrase he meant that the 2,000-year-old Christian faith liberates a believer from compliantly serving passing fads, fickle fashions, or catchy philosophies. To him, Christ’s much-studied teaching transcended the ever-changing moral climate. As Chesterton put it: a living thing can go against the stream, but the dead can only go with it.
Truth is a controversial subject today; for many it’s just a matter of opinion. The Christian must speak truth confidently, as if it is THE truth, Chesterton said, as truth is a messenger who does not “tamper with the message.” One should not change the texture and meaning of truth to his or her own liking, though many do.
Chesterton contended that the church is the only continuous and intelligent institution that’s been “thinking about thinking” for 2,000 years. It makes itself responsible for warning its people against all the blind alleys and dead-end roads that lead to destruction, and defends humanity from its worst foes (corruption, violence, hate, and so on). He found no other collective entity in the world on watch to deter human beings from going astray.
One more Chesterton thought among many demands mention here. The Christian church attempts to change the world from the inside, working through the will and not the law to change minds, rather than rely on force or power to alter behavior. Spiritual and moral authority, not power, advance the cause of the church.
We are not forced into truth; we must choose it. When the church has departed from free choice, and imitated the world’s power, Chesterton argues, this is exactly when the church has failed.
What was the church to Chesterton? To him It upheld humility when others preached pride. It brought sacrificial charity to relieve human suffering, when the rest of the world wanted totalitarianism. It taught free will and responsibility over determinism and irresponsibility. It valued the past when many would rather forget it.
Conversely, when the church forsakes its role and seeks to blend in and be popular, or acts coercively, it becomes no different than the rest of the world, and its people just as unfulfilled.
G.K. Chesterton, “the Apostle of Common Sense,” a hundred years ago expressed a confident belief in God, obtained only after a careful search for truth later in life. What might he have thought as he watched The Last Supper portrayed at the Olympics in 2024?
One may or may not agree with Chesterton’s observations or accept his Savior, but we owe it to ourselves to approach life and its complex questions with the same diligence, open mind, and earnest quest for truth he employed so well.
Gene G. Blair has been a resident of Huntsville for 44 years. He is retired from the Criminal Justice Center at SHSU, and retired from the U.S. Army. You can reach him at [email protected].
