The Dignity of Ordinary Things

And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men. COLOSSIANS 3:23

If Chesterton had a single social conviction, it was that ordinary life is sacred. He loved the common man — not the abstract worker of the economists or the voter of the politicians, but the actual man in the street, with his family, his house, his pint of beer, his small garden and his large opinions. He believed that the things such a man cares about most — his wife and children, his home, his freedom, his faith — are the most important things in the world, and that every theory which belittles them is wrong.

More extraordinary than the extraordinary

In The Ethics of Elfland he stated the principle with a characteristic twist. The things common to all men, he said, matter more than the things peculiar to any; and then: “Ordinary things are more valuable than extraordinary things; nay, they are more extraordinary.” Birth, marriage, the raising of a child, the sharing of a meal, the death of an old man in his own bed: these are not dull because they are common. They are common because they are so tremendously important that every human being must take part in them.

This gave Chesterton a deep respect for the home. He thought that the family was the one truly free institution left in the modern world — the one place where a man and a woman could build something of their own, by their own rules, under no master but God. He defended it against the reformers of his day who wanted to hand more and more of its work to the state or the factory. He defended marriage, too, as a lifelong vow, and wrote a short book in its defence against the loosening of the divorce laws.

Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it. PSALM 127:1

The holiness of small things

The Christian will see the biblical root of this. The God of the Bible is the God of ordinary life. He appears to shepherds at their work and fishermen at their nets. He commands that the Sabbath be kept in every household, that bread be shared with the hungry, that children be taught the faith as they sit at home and walk by the way. The incarnation itself is the supreme dignifying of ordinary things: the Son of God spent thirty years in a village workshop before He preached a single sermon.

Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary? MARK 6:3

Chesterton took this seriously. He believed that the housewife and the craftsman, the small farmer and the shopkeeper, were doing work of immense dignity, and that a civilisation which forgot it was in danger.

Three acres and a cow

From this conviction grew his politics. With his friend Hilaire Belloc, Chesterton championed what came to be called distributism. They were equally suspicious of big business and of big government. Capitalism, as they saw it, concentrated property in the hands of a few rich men, so that most people owned nothing and worked for wages; socialism concentrated it in the hands of the state, which was no better. Their alternative was to distribute property as widely as possible, so that as many families as possible owned the land they farmed, the shop they kept or the tools they worked with. They made their own an older slogan of English land reformers: three acres and a cow. Chesterton set out the case in The Outline of Sanity (1926) and promoted it in G. K.’s Weekly, and in 1926 he and his friends founded the Distributist League.

But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid. MICAH 4:4

Weighing it

Much in this chapter will warm evangelical hearts. Chesterton’s love of the home, his defence of marriage, his respect for ordinary work and his suspicion of anything that treats human beings as cogs in a machine are deeply Christian instincts, and they have aged well. The Reformation itself taught that the farmer and the housewife serve God as truly as the monk.

But distributism must be weighed for what it is. It is an economic opinion, and a disputed one. Chesterton held it with passion, and he sometimes wrote as though it followed directly from the faith. It does not. Scripture certainly teaches the dignity of work, the duty of the rich to the poor, the evil of oppression and the goodness of private property; it does not prescribe a particular economic system, and Christians who share every article of Chesterton’s creed have held every kind of view about how those principles are best served. Distributism also drew much of its inspiration from Roman Catholic social teaching, which evangelicals may admire without treating as binding. The same caution applies to many of his political opinions, on the Boer War, on Irish home rule, on women’s suffrage and on much else: they are the views of a vigorous journalist, often wise and sometimes not, but they are not the gospel.

Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s. MATTHEW 22:21

The reader should take from Chesterton his love of ordinary things and his concern for the poor, and think for himself, with Scripture open, about the economics.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. What ordinary thing in your life — a meal, a household task, a daily walk — have you treated as dull? Offer it to God as worship this week.

2. Read Deuteronomy 6:4–9 and notice how ordinary home life becomes the place where the faith is taught.

3. Thank God for the carpenter’s years at Nazareth, and for the dignity they give to ordinary work.

4. Is your home a place of freedom and love, or merely a place where people sleep? Consider one step towards making it more of a home.

5. Think about one economic or political opinion you hold strongly. Ask yourself honestly whether it is a conviction of Scripture or an opinion of your own.

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus, You worked with Your hands at Nazareth, and You made ordinary things holy.

Thank You for my home and my work, my daily bread and the people I share it with.

Teach me to do every small task heartily, as to You, and to see the glory in common things.

Give me a heart for the poor and the powerless, and wisdom to serve them well, and keep me from mistaking my own opinions for Your word. Amen.