G. K. Chesterton and Romans

Romans 12:2 "do not be conformed to the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind..."

Chesterton in Orthodoxy:

No one doubts that an ordinary man can get on with this world: but we demand not strength enough to get on with it, but strength enough to get it on. Can he hate it enough to change it, and yet love it enough to think it worth changing? Can he look up at its colossal good without once feeling acquiescence? Can he look up at its colossal evil without once feeling despair? Can he, in short, be at once not only a pessimist and an optimist, but a fanatical pessimist and a fanatical optimist? Is he enough of a pagan to die for the world, and enough of a Christian to die to it? In this combination, I maintain, it is the rational optimist who fails, the irrational optimist who succeeds. He is ready to smash the whole universe for the sake of itself.

It's an interesting, but almost self evident, thing that if one loves something properly, one loves it in a way that wants its best. This is what true realism is. Many pessimists say they're realists, but if they forget to love transformatively. I have missed this for a good while. I have seen the evil in the world and been appalled, but not till recently have I seen the beauty in it and loved it in a way that made me want to make things better.

This kind of passionate love is how God loves us. Chesterton talked earlier about how one loves something not for the features of something but for the sake of that something being what it was. I love my house not so much for any particular feature, but for the sake of it being my house. I love my siblings not so much because of any particular feature of their personality (though there are many good features), but because they're my siblings. In a similar way, God loves us not for any feature of ours, but because we're his. And because he loves us not for any particular feature, he's free to completely remake us without losing his love for us.

It is in this way that we should love the world around us. Not because of any particular feature of it, for there are many reasons to despise the world. Great evil, pain, and sorrow are all quite apparent. But we should love it because it's God's. It's his creation. So, in spite of how nasty the world is, It's still God's and he still loves it. Consequently, as his children, we should too. We should be made new by God's transforming love, and then let that love flow out to transform the world around us.

This also speaks to the issue of total depravity, but I'll leave that to another discussion...