Is there any answer to the proposition that those who have had the best opportunities will probably be our best guides? Is there any answer to the argument that those who have breathed clean air had
better decide for those who have breathed foul? As far as I know, there is only one answer, and that answer is Christianity. Only the Christian
Church can offer any rational objection to a complete confidence in the rich. For she has maintained from the beginning that the danger was not in
man’s environment, but in man. Further, she has maintained that if we come to talk of a dangerous environment, the most dangerous environment of all
is the commodious environment.
I know that the most modern manufacture has been really occupied in trying to produce an abnormally large needle. I
know that the most recent biologists have been chiefly anxious to discover a very small camel. But if we diminish the camel to his smallest, or open
the eye of the needle to its largest—if, in short, we assume the words of Christ to have meant the very least that they could mean, His words must
at the very least mean this—that rich men are not very likely to be morally trustworthy. Christianity even when watered down is hot enough to
boil all modern society to rags. The mere minimum of the Church would be a deadly ultimatum to the world. For the whole modern world is absolutely
based on the assumption, not that the rich are necessary (which is tenable), but that the rich are trustworthy, which (for a Christian) is
not tenable. You will hear everlastingly, in all discussions about newspapers, companies, aristocracies, or party politics, this argument
that the rich man cannot be bribed. The fact is, of course, that the rich man is bribed; he has been bribed already. That is why he
is a rich man. The whole case for Christianity is that a man who is dependent upon the luxuries of this life is a corrupt man, spiritually
corrupt, politically corrupt, financially corrupt. There is one thing that Christ and all the Christian saints have said with a sort of savage
monotony. They have said simply that to be rich is to be in peculiar danger of moral wreck. It is not demonstrably un-Christian to kill the
rich as violators of definable justice. It is not demonstrably un-Christian to crown the rich as convenient rulers of society. It is not
certainly un-Christian to rebel against the rich or to submit to the rich. But it is quite certainly un-Christian to trust the rich, to regard the
rich as more morally safe than the poor. A Christian may consistently say, “I respect that man’s rank, although he takes bribes.” But a Christian
cannot say, as all modern men are saying at lunch and breakfast, “a man of that rank would not take bribes.” For it is a part of Christian dogma that
any man in any rank may take bribes. It is a part of Christian dogma; it also happens by a curious coincidence that it is a part of obvious human
history. When people say that man “in that position” would be incorruptible, there is no need to bring Christianity into the discussion.
Was Lord Bacon a bootblack? Was the Duke of Marlborough a crossing sweeper? In the best Utopia, I must be prepared for the moral fall of any
man in any position at any moment; especially for my fall from my position at this moment.
Orthodoxy, first published in 1908, by G. K. Chesterton, is in the public domain, and available from Project Gutenberg. The previous post in this series is here. Thanks for reading! Read Chesterton.
Musings on science, the Bible, and fantastic literature (and sometimes basketball and other stuff).
God speaks to us through the Bible and the findings of science, and we should listen to both types of revelation.
The title is from Psalm 84:11.
The Wikipedia is usually a pretty good reference. I mostly use the World English Bible (WEB), because it is public domain. I am grateful.
License
I have written an e-book, Does the Bible Really Say That?, which is free to anyone. To download that book, in several formats, go here.
The posts in this blog are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. You can copy and use this material, as long as you aren't making money from it. If you give me credit, thanks. If not, OK.
The posts in this blog are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. You can copy and use this material, as long as you aren't making money from it. If you give me credit, thanks. If not, OK.
Sunday, October 25, 2015
Excerpts from Orthodoxy, by G. K. Chesterton, 44
Labels:
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