The act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has today all the exhilaration of a vice. G.K. Chesterton
Well. I’m always up for some exhilaration. Idealists usually are. But what a concept that the defense of an absolute truth should be so exotically rare as to bear the flavor of a forbidden vice. And Chesterton said that quite a few years before the current drought of living ideas that is our postmodern, relativistic culture. Yet perhaps it is a boon to the world of Truth, for the idea of its rarity carries a challenge. It makes the culling of true ideas an adventure, the pursuit of a lost morality not a duty, but a counter-cultural exploit. The sheer scarcity of virtue makes it an attractive oddity.
I think perhaps for those of us who desire to live according to the life-giving vibrancy of God’s ideas, we are in a strange and demanding, yet oddly fortunate time. We can’t be careless about our truth. We can’t relax into the numbing familiarity of a culture that widely embraces Biblical morality. If we are going to be moral in heart and body, wholesome in art and thought; if intend to embrace an absolute truth that dictates worth to human life and meaning to its days, then we must buck the foremost assumptions of popular culture. Especially in the realms of artistic beauty, family and objective morality. To this adventure-starved soul, it sounds pretty exciting.
But isn’t that how it ought to be? If God, the core and center source of every goodness, every beauty, every delight, created a world founded on one true Word of truth, shouldn’t the living of that truth bring a gladness beyond expression? It should be breathtakingly rational. Delightfully practical. The incarnation of God’s ideas into the cadence of our lives and thought ought to result in laughter, in richness, in a life of tasteable goodness. Perhaps people have lost sight of the delight of virtue. But in this world of barren thought, we have the rare chance to foray out into a fresh discovery of truth in all it’s unspeakable beauty. And then to keep it, defend it, and bring its startling goodness crashing into our own generation.
Exhilaration indeed.
