The Flag of the World

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. JOHN 3:16

Once he had cleared the ground, Chesterton turned to a question that had troubled him since the dark years at the Slade: what is the right attitude to the world? The optimists of his day said that the world was good and getting better, and that we should be content with it. The pessimists said that the world was bad, and that the wise man despises it. Chesterton found that neither attitude was right, and that both were, in different ways, inhuman. His answer, in the chapter called The Flag of the World, is one of his most original contributions to Christian thought.

Not optimism but patriotism

Our attitude to the world, he argued, ought not to be that of a critic weighing up a hotel, deciding whether its rooms are good enough to stay in. It ought to be more like the loyalty of a man to his own home or country. “My acceptance of the universe is not optimism,” he wrote, “it is more like patriotism.” A man does not love his home because it is the best home in the world. He loves it because it is his, and because he loves it he wants to make it better. If it is falling down, he does not leave; he repairs it.

This, Chesterton saw, solves the old riddle of how a man can both love the world and want to change it. The optimist loves it too little to see what is wrong with it; the pessimist sees what is wrong with it but does not love it enough to mend it. The patriot does both. He illustrated the point with Rome. The city, he said, did not become great and then win the love of its people. It was loved first, and its greatness grew from that love. “Men did not love Rome because she was great,” he wrote. “She was great because they had loved her.”

But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. ROMANS 5:8

The Christian will see at once that this is a picture of how God loves the world. He did not love it because it was lovely. He loved it while it was ruined, and His love was the beginning of its renewal.

Loving the world, hating its sin

Chesterton found the Christian faith fitted this attitude exactly, and for a reason that surprised him. The optimists of his day had tried to make people happy by telling them that they fitted into the world, that man was simply one animal among others, at home in nature. But Chesterton had never felt at home in that way. The Christian account, he discovered, explained why. Man does not fit into the world as it now is, because he was made for a better one, and the world has fallen from what it was meant to be. The Christian may love the world as God made it, and hate with all his heart what sin has done to it, without contradiction.

For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. ROMANS 8:22

The martyr and the suicide

In the same chapter Chesterton wrote some of his sternest pages, on suicide. He had been near enough to despair in his youth to know its pull, and he believed the fashionable pessimism of his day was making it seem noble. He would have none of it. The man who takes his own life, he said, does not merely end one life; as far as he is concerned, he refuses the whole world. And he set beside him the martyr, who also dies, but for the opposite reason: not because he despises life, but because he loves something more than his own life. The two deaths look alike from outside and are utterly opposed. The church, he said, had always marked the difference.

These pages are severe, and some readers who have lost loved ones in this way may find them hard. It should be said plainly that Chesterton was writing against an idea — the glorification of despair — and not passing judgement on the suffering people who are overwhelmed by it. Despair is a terrible enemy, and those who are caught by it need not condemnation but help, and the hope of the gospel.

I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life. DEUTERONOMY 30:19

Weighing it

Chesterton’s cosmic patriotism is a precious idea, and it guards the Christian against two opposite errors: the worldliness that loves the world as it is, and the false spirituality that despises the world God made. It fits the Bible’s story — a good creation, a terrible fall, a loving God who does not abandon what He made.

A caution must be added from the other side. The New Testament also warns, sharply, against loving the world, by which it means the order of human life organised in rebellion against God. Chesterton’s joyful loyalty to creation must be held together with that warning. We are to love the world as God’s creation and God’s mission field; we are not to love it as our home, for here we have no continuing city.

Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 1 JOHN 2:15

And a word must be said to anyone who is tempted by despair. Your life is not yours to throw away, because it is not yours to begin with; it is a gift, and the Giver loves you. If you are in that darkness, tell someone today — a friend, a pastor, a doctor — and let them help you carry it.

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. MATTHEW 11:28

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Is your attitude to the world more like the optimist’s, the pessimist’s or the patriot’s? What would it mean to love it enough to change it?

2. Think of one place — your street, your church, your workplace — that you have been tempted to give up on. What would it look like to love it first, and let the improvement follow?

3. Read Romans 8:18–25 and notice how Paul holds together the goodness of creation and its groaning.

4. Read 1 John 2:15–17 alongside John 3:16. How do the two kinds of love for the world differ?

5. If you know someone in despair, reach out to them this week.

A PRAYER

Father, You so loved the world that You gave Your only Son, and You loved it while it was still in ruins.

Teach me to love what You have made, to grieve over what sin has done to it, and to work for its good.

Keep me from the worldliness that is content with things as they are, and from the false holiness that despises Your gifts.

Guard all who are tempted to despair; show them Your love, and bring them through the darkness into life, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.