Bearded Gospel Men--Matthew 5:43-45
Day 11
Jared Brock and Aaron Alford make another exception in Bearded Gospel Men: The Epic Quest for Manliness and Godliness for another famous Christian guy that didn’t have a beard.
But G.K. Chesterton did have a stupendous mustache. Plus, Chesterton was just plain stupendous. 🙂
(And like Charles Spurgeon was rarely without a cigar).
Also, like Charles Spurgeon, I quote Chesterton a lot because he clears up a lot of theological matters for me and in a way that makes Christianity seem like a fun and whimsy–when actually you can get your head lopped off for it.
Aaron Alford allows for this sense of whimsy and being comfortable with the mystery of our faith:
“Chesterton is famous for having the wonderful ability to express paradox and mystery, things which some of us modern Christians are very uncomfortable with. We often prefer to have an airtight theology that keeps God safe and secure within our notions of how things should be. For Chesterton, however, a sense of mystery and paradox was at the heart of the Christian faith. Indeed, it was what drew him and secured him to the Christian faith. God was not an equation to be solved but a mystery to be lived in.”
A key paradox that Chesterton rumbled around with (and I still cannot quite capture for myself) is Jesus’ command in Matthew 5 to love your neighbors AND your enemies.
Matthew 5:43-45 43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may prove yourselves to be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
I’m so bad at this. I fairly bristle with malice if someone parks even a millimeter over the parking space line closer to me.
Chesterton took on all comers against the Christian faith–in conversations, public and private, and especially in print–and never seemed to make an enemy.
Just friends.
Chesterton once remarked about George Bernard Shaw, one of his most vocal critics and enemy of the Christian faith, “It is necessary to disagree with him as much as I do, in order to admire him as much as I do, and I am proud of him as a foe even more than as a friend.”
Maybe really smart guys are able to disagree politely and write long essays to each other about their arguments, but I don’t ever seem to be able to reach that level of mature Christian love.
Chesterton wrote in a 1910 Illustrated London News essay:
“The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and to also love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people.”
How’s that for a paradox?
When I meditated on Jesus’ words in verses 43-45, I had to tease out that Jesus is referring to Leviticus in the first part of verse 43, but there doesn’t appear–anywhere in the Bible–a statement about hating your enemy.
In The Gospels: A New Translation by Sarah Ruden, she explains that hating your enemies was how the pagans seemed to survive in the rough and tumble ancient world.
Not to mention that the Pharisees were teaching to only love those who love you (based on a very narrow reading of Leviticus 19:18) and to hate those who are your enemies (based on an even narrower interpretation of Psalm 139:21-22).
But verse 45 offers a challenge to me. I have to prove I am one of God’s family by loving my enemies and praying for them.
Really?
Really.
John Piper writes in But I Say To You, Love Your Enemies:
“This does not mean we can earn our way into God's family by loving our enemies. Rather it means that when we love our enemies, we prove ourselves to be in God's family. "If you love your enemies the way God loves his enemies, then you show that you ARE a child of God. You are seen to be a child of God." Loving your enemy doesn't pay for your birth into God's family; it proves you've been born into God's family.”
This is why Chesterton could laugh with and nurture dear friendships with people who thought he was a religious weirdo.
He was just proving he was part of God’s family.
Can I do this? Maybe for just half a day? A quarter of an hour?
I’ll see who is parked next to me first. 🙂
Lord, grant us the grace to see others was You see them, with compassion and mercy, even when our hearts resist.
Lord, help us to reflect Your perfect love, which shines on the just and unjust alike. Transform our bitterness into blessings and our anger into acts of kindess.
Amen.