For My Postmodern and Skeptical Friends

Generally when I lack creativity I go for quotes. There's this old saying that good writers borrow from great writers, but the great writers steal outright. I don't claim to be either good or great, but I have really been enjoying the non-fiction and fiction of G.K. Chesteron as of late and so wish to quote him. I'm into my 5th book of his this year and have found him highly refreshing to my stage of life.

The following quotation occurs in his novel, Man Alive, which describes a seemingly insane person as the only truly sane person (a common motif of Chesterton), because he is so full of life. In the context of one of these exhuberant episodes, Chesterton writes:

It is the fashion to talk of institutions as cold and cramping things.
The truth is that when people are in exceptionally high spirits, really wild
with freedom and invention, they always must, and they always do, create
institutions. When men are weary they fall into anarchy; but while they
are gay and vigorous they invariably make rules. This, which is true of
all the churches and republics of history, is also true of the most trivial
parlour game or the most unsophisticated meadow romp. We are never free
until some institution frees us; and liberty cannot exist till it is declared by
authority.

Leave it to Chesterton to frame things in a way that totally spins our contemporary sensibilities. Prescient even to our time, Chesterton exhorts us to accept and love our organizations and institutions, not distrust them. This exhortation is something I try to live by daily in the context of church ministry, despite the postmodern skepticism of institutions.