An oft-quoted Chesterton insight is that it is unwise to pull down a fence which seems obstructive before establishing why it was put there in the first place. Gary Furnell, the Australian Chesterton Society’s Secretary-Treasurer and a frequent contributor to various journals such as Quadrant and News Weekly, explores the prevailing view of time that lies behind the secular attitude to reform.
This is an edited version of an article first published in News Weekly (January 22, 2024), edited by Peter Kelleher, and is reprinted with his kind permission.
There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.
G.K. Chesterton, “The Drift from Domesticity,” The Thing, 1929
Time is part of man’s intangible environment. Our attitude to time and its passing is in large measure determined by what we believe.
The Judeo-Christian faith posits a good creator sustaining everything in love, including each human being, and the creator’s provisions embody this goodness. Time can be seen as a gift that allows our lives.
A secular person is likely to view time with ambivalence. The passing of time, and the end of life in death, can be seen to subject all hopes, passions and achievements to change and decay. And, as the secular dogma maintains, there’s no beneficent, unchanging, knowable God to redeem anyone’s life and attainments from futility and nothingness.
This secular faith is in large part responsible for the void of meaning, purpose and significance that is draining our civilisation of much of its energy, good sense, well-being and confidence.
Although secularism has come to refer to an ideology that scoffs at transcendent spirituality, Chesterton noted that the Latin-derived word ‘secular’ doesn’t mean irreligious or worldly, but ‘dated’ or ‘of the age’.
A focus on the present, ignoring the distant past or distant future
It’s the present together with the recent past and near future—indifferent to any eternity—that is often the primary focus of secular people. They will be hesitant about embracing too much of the distant past—an embarrassing admixture of cruelty and inadequate goodness—or the distant future that, apart from culminating in death, is uncertain and therefore fuels anxiety as much as hope.
Pope Francis, in his book Happiness in this Life, said the present-focussed life is provisional:
The culture of provisionality does not increase our liberty, but deprives us of our true destiny, of truer and more authentic goals. It is a life in pieces. It is sad to reach a certain age, look at the path we have taken and find that it has been made of different pieces, without unity, without finality; entirely provisional …
Man is a finite creature dependent on time’s succession. We don’t know anything fully or immediately. What we may know among the many mysteries of life, we learn gradually.
There’s no such thing as Instant Knowledge in a therapeutic, mystical, pharmaceutical or philosophical form. Reflection on one’s experience, good teaching, humility and persistence in the search for knowledge over decades is required.
The fact that knowledge is acquired slowly means that hasty decisions are rarely good decisions. Time advises us – Despite the pressure of events, wait and watch, test and discern before any decision so that the best path is chosen, even if the delay means that some people continue a little longer in their distress.
Of course, the pressure to act is immense if lives are at risk. But even in crises, it’s best to take time to ask hard questions, to examine, to sift the evidence. Ill-considered action may make the situation worse; it may harm the innocent and empower the selfish; it may result in greater suffering or lost lives at a later stage. Time must be allowed to do its illuminating, differentiating work.
In public life, impatience is not a minor fault; it is a major folly. Impatience is a fatal characteristic of nearly all activists. We hear them shout: We want action NOW!