How Chesterton saved me from athie...boredom

> Do not underestimate the power of rhetoric. It does not decide truth and untruth, but it can do many terrible things to them...
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> A few days ago, a few years of me despising anti-Chestertonality almost went down the drain. No, Obama didn't almost outlaw Chesterton...not quite that bad. Rather, I was assaulted by the power of Niechtchze.
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> Now, mind you, I wasn't actually reading N. directly, although, for good or ill, I am that foolish. Rather, I was reading what I thought would be a morally 'safe' publication, written by a professor at the Univeristy of Dallas and bought in the Ave Maria University bookstore. The book is not morally safe, but keep in mind that the opposite of "safe" is not necessarily "dangerous."
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> Entitled 'Placing Aesthetics,' the book investigates the place of art in the thoughts of several prominent thinkers, including Chesterton's antitheses, Schopenhauer and Mr. N. No matter how stupid the main system of thought is, the views specifically on art generally contain a small bit of truth. But in finding this bit of truth, one must sort through all the untruths provided by the thinkers for our amusement. And the thought of Mr. N is nothing if not filled with untruths and amusements.
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> Actually, amusement is too weak of a word to detail the appeal of N. Chesterton, yes, can separate the thought from the rhetoric and reveal the result as a boring and tedious world-view, but 'Placing Aesthetics' references Chesterton infrequently at best. I had to face the (toned-down) glories of the rhetoric of N., seemingly without GK. Very exciting, almost as exciting as listening to "Nacht" from "Pierriot Lunaire" without the protection of a music theory teacher.
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> And the boredoms revealed by Chesterton are, at first glance, but a tribute to the glory of the falsehoods. The ultimate hero for N. is one who defies the very absence of God to live a life and try to add meaning to it. Many thrills that the Christian experiences equal and exceed this one, but none are quite like it...or are they?
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> And as I was bemoaning my sorry state of being enamoured in a seemingly completely unique way of something I could not believe, Chesterton rode to my rescue on Sunday's elephant.
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> The drama of the N.-type hero consists in the magnitude of the hero's defiance, a defiance in magnitude similar to that of the anarchist Gregory. Sunday answers the drama of Gregory by referring to the sufferings of Christ. Christ, like the sort of hero and like Gregory, is in opposition to God. As the psalmist says: "it pleased Him (God) to crush Him (the Suffering Servant, Jesus) in infirmity." Jesus Christ and the defiant un-theist are both crushed in infirmity because of their defiance of their opposition to infinite realities. Both carry out their actions in defiance of the complete despair that accompanies the absence of God (Jesus felt the absence of God on the Cross). But Jesus also has the Resurrection. Hence, nothing tragically profound is lost by being Christian, and God is gained. From the depths of my attraction toward the thoughts of this atheist, Chesterton provided the hints that transferred the full force of my admiration to the Drama of God.