day no. 17,417: religion and riot

"The truth is that there is an alliance between religion and real fun... Religion and riot are very near, as the history of all religions prove. Riot means being a rotter; and religion means knowing you are a rotter." — G.K. Chesterton, The Illustrated London News (1907)

The real religion of God in Christ is really fun, but the false religions of man are just riots. It is the nature of religion to draw men upward, but when the highest ideals of a belief are beneath you, the only thing left to do is to settle for decadence. Just as the true religion leads to spontaneous laughter, all false religions lead to spontaneous lynchings. Fun is found in the Father, but licentiousness is lived out where there is no awl. 

"Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian." — G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Christendom does not fight for joy, it fights from it. Joy is the secret weapon of the kingdom. What paganism dismisses, Christendom promotes. The joy of the Lord is our strength.