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Friday, February 29, 2008

DailyQuote: The Framework of Free Thinking


The Framework of Free Thinking

G. K. Chesterton once wrote of the mesmerizing power of and the temptation towards relying solely on reason in this way: "Everyone who has had the misfortune to talk with people in the heart or on the edge of mental disorder knows that their most sinister quality is a horrible clarity of detail; a connecting of one thing with another in a map more elaborate than a maze. If you argue with a madman, it is extremely probable that you will get the worst of it for, in many ways, his mind moves all the quicker for not being delayed by the things that go with good judgement. He is not hampered by a sense of humor or by charity, or by the dumb certainties of experience. He is more logical for losing certain sane affections. Indeed, the common phrase for insanity is in this respect a misleading one. The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason."(1)

Yet on the other hand, when we follow the exclusionary path of sheer emotionalism, we end up in the same place there, too: insanity. As Dr. Ravi Zacharias brings out in his talk Why the Bible?, when we do these things what we are really trying to framework is the complexity we really need that will truly serve free thinking. Ultimately, "We are trying to find the bridge between the head and the heart." (2)

This is the point that Chesterton makes so clearly for us. When we think we can try to rely solely on the rational, the reason for everything, the experience only, it runs us in circles. It imprisons us from the truth. For the truth is more than our mind. It is more than our heart. It is both working in harmony. And nowhere do they work in complete harmony more than in the Christ, who said of himself" "I am the way and the truth and the life." (John 14:6)

DailyQuote: [The Madman of Experience] is in the clean and well-lit prison of one idea: he is sharpened to one painful point. He is without healthy hesitation and healthy complexity.

-- G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
©DailyQuote, M.S.Reed 2008

(1) The Maniac, Orthodoxy, G. K. Chesterton, 2002, Ed., Craig M. Kibler

(2) Why The Bible, Q&A, University of Illinois, Dr. Ravi Zacharias, YouTube, Feb. 11, 2008

posted by Melanie Reed @ 8:07 PM

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