Finished Reading “Heretics”

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  "G. K. Chesterton, the "Prince of Paradox," is at his witty best in this collection of twenty essays and articles from the turn of the twentieth century. Focusing on  "heretics" - those who pride themselves on their superiority to Christian views - Chesterton appraises prominent figures who fall into that category from the literary and art worlds... those who hold incomplete and inadequate views about "life, the universe, and everything." He is, in short, criticizing all that host of non-Christian views of reality, as he demonstrated in his follow-up book Orthodoxy. The book is both an easy read and a difficult read. But he manages to demonstrate, among other things, that our new 21st century heresies are really not new because he himself deals with most of them." (Goodreads)

You Don't Have One

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“We have the power to hold no opinion about a thing and to not let it upset our state of mind – for things have no natural power to shape our judgments.” (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 6.52)

Think for a moment about everything you don't know. 
Go ahead. I'll wait. 

What is your opinion about those things you don't know? How do you feel? 
You don't have an opinion because you don't know what you don't know--right? 

Ok, think for a moment about something that might upset you. Can you name it? Say what it is? 
  • Did someone say something behind your back? 
    • What did they say? 
    • Did you hear it? 
    • Do you even know for a fact that anyone said anything about you at all? 
    • Was it derogatory or nice? 
    • Still don't know? Then why upset? 
So why get upset about something we know nothing about? 
  • That guy that cut you off on the way to work this morning--why did he do it? 
    • To be rude because he saw YOU coming down the road and thought you needed a driving lesson? (That's selfish)
    • He woke up late and is still rubbing the sleep out of his eyes?
    • He was simply not paying attention? 
    • He had a bad night over a sick kid or a family fight and is not paying attention? 
    • He's hung over? 
    • His opinion was there was enough room to pull out? 
    • Still don't know? Then why upset? 
Here's another way to look at it: 
  • if something does not exist, what power does it have for one to create an opinion about it? 
  • if something is irrelevant, why does it bother us? 
Waste no more time and/or energy on things that don't matter.

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