Recently, I concluded my first proper reading of G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy. Exploring the whole of Chesterton’s thinking and argument, I was repeatedly struck by how much Chesterton detests modernity. Modernity for Chesterton is obstinate, an oddity that isolates itself from the rest of history, contradictory, and empty. As I watched him tear down modernity, I was struck with a question: Should the classical educator (should I) be opposed to modernity with the zeal and directness of Chesterton? Assuming the answer is yes, how do I begin to hate modernity and undo my deeply modern way of thinking?
First, an observation: teaching the love of old things means you cannot have an isolated affinity for your own age.
To be proudly, distinctly, or even mostly modern in thinking, habit, and practice is to embody a crosswind in the classroom. It is to insist things ought to swim in a particular direction and then to swim in the opposite direction. It is hypocrisy. You cannot teach medieval history and hate the medieval age. Even more subtle, you cannot teach the medieval age and feel superior to it; it will remain truly unintelligible. It will only produce vile results. The transfer of love comes through embodiment. Chesterton insists that much of modernity is the “clear, well-lit prison of one idea.” As clean and bright as that prison might be to the inhabitants, anyone in that prison would be ill-fit to either explain the outside world or compare and contrast that prison with the county prison down the road. Classical educators in the 21st century, beginning with myself, have intellectual responsibilities as well as moral ones. It is our duty to unmodernize ourselves and to unmodernize our students. In order to do this, our zeal against modernity must be much like Chesterton’s.
Second, we must readily acknowledge that modern society regards itself with too much esteem.
The modern man, as a consequence of being brought up in modern society, is trained to regard himself too highly. The undoing of modernism in our own thinking is the undoing of pride. To learn humility is to learn to see the good and beauty of all ages. It is to see the people of the past more as neighbors than strangers, and Jesus was clear on how we ought to treat our neighbors. The proud disposition that takes root in progressive, modern thinking is a danger to Christians, who, wishing to think classically and Christian, must press against the spirit of the age and attempt to undo the modernity they have inherited in their own frame of mind, cultural liturgies, and outlook. As Scout remarks in To Kill a Mockingbird, “One is not thankful for breathing.” Breathing is forgettable. We are fish and we do not easily see the haughty waters of modernity. Even worse, modernity shapes our thinking about itself, however, we are so insular we do not even recognize it.
Nevertheless, it is our Christian duty to seek to have the crosswinds of history and time blowing across our minds and habits. Beginning to learn to think classically and Christian in conjunction may take years of dutiful reading, talk, and consideration. Only when the task becomes that grand or humbling do we truly see the immensity of the thing and the active, rather than passive, responsibility it requires.
Finally, we must embrace the moral and intellectual labor required.
Comfort keeps us sheltered in our own times. Contentedness with the intellectual boxes we get from modern, western culture is slothful. We read more 21st-century novels than Platonic dialogues because it is easier, not because it is better. We know it’s literary junk food. Scrolling is easier than carrying a poem in your pocket to memorize in a spare moment. Therefore, we desperately need both grace and hard work. God will honor our little labors in the right direction. This is a task that will take our whole lives.
Chesterton’s prison cell image, “the clean well-lit prison cell of one idea,” is straightforward, easy, and familiar. There are no complexities, few dangers, and everyone we meet of the same frame is agreeable. A desire to stay in the cell, comforts and ignorance and all, is the mentality of the mad. The desire to get out is the first desire that must be created in teachers and students in classical, Christian education; they must make the mad sane. A desire to see Christianity in its best light, honestly, and lovingly in every age joined together with an honest pursuit to shed the modern skin is the only way forward in classical, Christian education. Classical, Christian education is more about casting off than about critical thinking. If we learn to cast off our old, sinful, modern skin, we will in all likelihood become better thinkers. However, if we seek to be critical thinkers, we may very well wear our old skin into eternity. The sloughing off must begin. In seeking Christ in every age, the fullness of His Church and its work will be enough, Chesterton notes, “to boil all modern society to rags,” beginning with us. And what remains will be the purity of the divine life (or clearer road toward it) leading further in and further up.
