Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton

Week 10: Review & Reflection

Review Orthodoxy as a whole; re-read any chapter that most affected you.

We return now to the whole map — looking back at the journey Chesterton took, and at the journey we have taken alongside him, to ask what has changed, what has taken root, and what we will do with what we have found.

Discussion Questions

8 questions

1.Which chapter or idea in Orthodoxy had the most impact on you, and why? Try to be specific: what exactly did Chesterton say, and what did it do to your thinking or your feeling?

2.Chesterton's central method is to take something familiar (fairy tales, insane asylums, patriotism) and use it to illuminate something theological. What is the most effective of his analogies or illustrations for you? What made it work?

3.Before reading this book, how did you think of orthodoxy — traditional Christian belief and its creeds? Has that changed? In what direction?

4.Chesterton repeatedly discovers that what he arrived at by his own reasoning had "been discovered before" — that Christianity anticipated him. Have you had any moment in this study where you felt something similar: a personal conviction or instinct that turned out to be rooted in the Christian tradition? What was it?

5.The book argues that orthodoxy is not safe, humdrum, or comfortable — it is "the equilibrium of a man behind madly rushing horses." Do you feel more or less adventurous in your faith after reading it? What would it look like to live more fully into the romance of orthodoxy in your daily life?

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Closing Prayer

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Lord God, we thank you for G. K. Chesterton's elephantine adventures in pursuit of the obvious — and for our own. We thank you that truth is not a cage but a key, not a grey fog but a blazing light. We thank you that orthodoxy is not the last word of tired men but the first word of people who have seen something extraordinary and cannot stop talking about it. Send us back into the world with wider eyes, lighter hearts, and firmer feet — ready to be surprised by you at every turn. In the name of the one who is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and who is, for that very reason, the most astonishing person who ever lived. Amen.

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