The Man Who Was Thursday

I just finished reading G.K. Chesterton's "The Man Who Was Thursday", and as usual Chesterton is maddeningly funny in the story.

A young man, a recently recruited police detective, named Syme infiltrates the anarchist underground in Europe. There were seven members of the central committee led by an intimidating figure who went by the codename "Sunday." Each of the other members, invariably, used the names of the days of the week as undercover aliases. Syme took the position of Thursday.

In the end, it is eventually discovered that each and every member of the central committee is in fact a police detective bent of infiltrating the organization. The notion of an anarchist organization is actually antithetical and rather humorous in and of itself, but the process of getting to the point is hilarious. In the end it is found that Sunday himself is the police recruiter who sent them in pursuit of himself.

The story takes a wild turn as Sunday ends up being a metaphor for God and we are those who he recruits to pursue himself. Each man pursued Sunday alone; however, they were all pursuing him together.

Syme explains why each man must struggle, working out his own salvation:

So that each man fighting for order may be as brave and good a man as the dynamiter (referring to a nonexistent suicide bomber). So that the real lie of Satan may be flung back in the face of this blasphemer, so that by tears and torture we may earn the right to say to this man, “You lie!” No agonies can be too great to buy the right to say to this accuser, “We also have suffered.”

Dinner

We arrived for dinner at Shnauzers Bar and Grille in Schoolcraft at about 8:00 pm and consequently had to wait for a table. The only others waiting were a young family…obviously a mom, dad and two young boys, one in school and one not yet. We talked for a little while. Mom had just taken a really hard test for nursing school and they were going out to celebrate. They were all excited, and mom was glad to get her nose out of a book for the first time in a quite a while.

They were seated just shortly before us, and we we watched them celebrate. Dad was just a normal looking balding guy, prematurely, who just seemed sincere and responsible. He was just nice enough to not be weird. Mom was in her twenties or early thirties and was quite attractive even though it was obvious that she was a mother. The kids were fairly well behaved, but they were still boys.

While we watched, Jen, my wife, blurts out that we could pay for their meal. I don't reply, but I just mulled it over for a while as I watch them. Jen and I just split a small order of nachos, and while Jen had a large Blue Moon white wheat beer, I had a small Samuel Adams Cherry Wheat.

Our waiter, a young and slightly immature kid named Jamie who picked on the waitress Jamie constantly, came and asked us if we needed anything else. I asked him to do something for me on the sly, and pointed out the table real undercover like. I told him to bring me their bill and tell them nothing.

He brought it back, but said their waitress wants to know what and when to tell them. I reply that they should wait until the family is finished and then just tell them that it's all taken care of. I paid the bill and we left.

We returned the next day, and waitress who waited on the family the night before waited on us. She said they were astonished and didn't know what to think. They really couldn't believe it. I'll admit that I did feel some little bit of self satisfaction.

I thought later that this would be a great evangelism tool, but we prefer other less productive and cheaper evangelism systems.