I said that I was not going to write about Chesterton for a little while, but I came across a situation a few weeks ago that brought Chesterton back to the forefront of my mind again. I was thinking about a quote that is misattributed to him by Bartlett as saying, “Don’t ever take a fence down until you know the reason why it was put up.” The spirit of this quotation, according to the American Chesterton Society, comes from a longer passage in “The Drift from Domesticity.”
“In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. 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.’”
You can certainly see the similarity of spirit between the abridged version and the more accurate quotation, but I think that the point of this is pretty hard to miss. We often times think that fences are bad things, and we have come to the conclusion that any type of boundary is some type of affront to our unfettered pursuit of freedom that we feel entitled to in 21st-century America. However, there are some things that it is good to stay away from, and sometimes boundaries are positive things.
Imagine a world where there is no personal property. There would be even more conflict than there already is because there would be no definition of what belongs to me and what belongs to you. Some people picture this as a type of communist utopia, but human nature tells me that we do better when we actually know the situation we find ourselves in, and we prefer the security of knowing that our car will not be taken by someone else while we are inside the grocery store. When we come back out, we have the reasonable expectation that our property will still be where we left it. That allows us to go places and have more freedom than we would if we had to limit ourselves to places that we knew we could return home from. These types of boundaries or fences do indeed restrict freedom, but they serve a purpose and actually provide a greater amount of good than would be provided by removing that restriction.
There is a caveat to this. In the words of James Madison, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” If nobody ever did anything wrong, then obviously we would not need boundaries. We wouldn’t need a law protecting personal property if everyone respected personal property. I would be reasonably assured that going to the grocery store would not result in my being stranded at the grocery store. It is not because the boundary from the outside would protect me, but people’s internal boundaries and sense of morality would protect me. We do not live in that world clearly, but it is worth pointing out that in the ideal world, boundaries may not be necessary if no one would do anything that would cause the harm that the boundaries protect against.
Therefore, given the situation that we find ourselves in, it is worth considering the types of harm that boundaries can protect us from. There are all kinds of things from the outside that can potentially impede our ability to flourish. To bring another founding father into this conversation, Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter to Charles Yancey, “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” The implication of this is that perhaps our greatest threat to our own freedom is our own ignorance. We are not perfect, and we are not always the most intelligent people. Some of us are ignorant by choice while others are ignorant just because they haven’t had the opportunity to be exposed. Boundaries protect us from our own folly at times.
I know this may not be a popular example, but we can consider speed limits. Maybe sometimes they seem too low, but as a general rule, they are there to encourage people to drive within a range of safe speeds. I can imagine being in a town I don’t know very well, and I may not realize there is a local school nearby. It is good for me to slow down in that situation, but because of my own ignorance, I would not know that. Other people who have that knowledge have decided that it would be a good boundary to impose on my driving.
This is not a perfect example because a speed limit is not an unbreakable boundary. I can still be unsafe if I want to be, and my freedom is not restricted by the existence of that speed limit in that moment. However, I think that you see the connection here. It is important for people who know something about a particular situation to be the ones who set the boundaries, and the world will be a better place when they do, based on their own expertise.
Now, we have to return to the beginning of the story. I suggested that boundaries may be good things. This is in stark contrast to our belief in total freedom without limits in America today. Because we are not perfect and did not have perfect knowledge, we rely on the wisdom of others to help determine where those boundaries ought to be set. For some of us, we may be in positions where we even have the ability to help determine some of those because we have the relevant knowledge and expertise to know where the line should be drawn between what maximizes flourishing and what actually causes harm due to excess.
The Christian Parallel
As Christians then, this is vital for understanding God’s role in our lives and role in the universe. After all, I think that a normal reason that some people reject our faith is because they see it as the imposition of rules. Taking Chesterton’s perspective on this issue allows us to recognize that sometimes boundaries are good, and they provide us with the opportunity to avoid harm. We know what we can do, and we know what we should stay away from.
The common rebuttal for this argument returns to the fact that people do not trust God to know where that boundary line is. They feel that they know better than God. Therefore, if there is going to be aligned about what is right and wrong, I am going to trust my own judgment rather than what God has outlined. Of course, a refusal to acknowledge God’s authority is a pretty solid sign that this person is not going to be very receptive to the Christian faith.
In response though, I would suggest that if you followed my argument up until this time, I think it is pretty clear that we willingly subject ourselves to the judgment of other people all the time. I may not know why a particular speed limit should be set at a particular limit in a particular area, but I trust that there is wisdom to that decision. I subject myself to the limit based on the authority of another person. Therefore, it seems kind of confusing to me that we are so willing to subject ourselves to a variety of forms of authority on earth, but we are so resistant to do so when it comes to the supernatural. We don’t necessarily have a problem with authority, but we have a problem with certain types of authority, and we have a problem with authority that runs directly contrary to our nature.
That is the fundamental difference between the boundaries of God and the boundaries of man. The boundaries of God conflict at the deepest level with our own sinful nature. However, consider the implications of pursuing a sinful lifestyle. It is not hard to tell, and it is not hard to see in people’s lives that it leads to a disaster. When we push against what God would have for us, the results are never good. I know some people are going to read this and shut the door right here. All I can say to you who may choose to make that decision (which of course may be irrelevant if you actually did stop at the previous sentence) is that it is important to actually take a serious inventory of things that have gone well and things that have not gone so well. I am pretty confident that if you compile that list of the things that have not gone so well, the vast majority of them are going to be times that either you yourself or other people have violated God’s law. You would have been better off if you respected the boundaries of the One who had more wisdom and knew where to put those aforementioned boundaries.
I guess that is the bottom line of this discussion. We all still have the free choice to determine how we are going to live our lives. We can try to make our own boundaries in our own imperfect intelligence and wisdom, or we can realize that sometimes listening to authority is a good thing if that authority has the understanding and the wisdom to put the boundary in the right place.
The beauty of this is that I can then have the confidence to run right up to the boundary. I know that as long as I am within those guidelines, I am in a safe place. I can maximize my own human freedom to do whatever I want within the boundaries without potentially running into disaster. This only works with someone who has the wisdom to not make the boundaries too restrictive and therefore inhibit the degree to which we can flourish but also not too broad that we run headlong into a preventable disaster. As I have emphasized throughout this discussion, human wisdom is insufficient for the task. We do not always know where the boundary ought to be, and our judgment can be clouded by our own shortsightedness.
Therefore, at least for me, I do not find the boundaries of God to be an oppressive imposition on my freedom. Rather, it is a set of boundaries I willingly take upon myself because I know that they are designed for my good. Within those boundaries, I can truly be free without fear. That is just about the best combination for anyone who wants to get the absolute most out of the human experience.