Chesterton

1. What is Chesterton saying here? In your response, be sure to include how he interprets or understands how MODERN people see the world and how that contrasts with how he is casting a vision for seeing the world.

Chesterton understood the modern view of the people as them rejecting repetition and seeing it as boring and uneventful. They look at the world almost like it's a radio, if there is constant change then everything is in order and the world is "working". But if it starts to repeat then something is wrong and the radio is dying or dead. While in God's eyes repeating something has the same meaning as when a child wants something to be repeated. When babies love something they want you to do it over and over and over again, it is almost the same with God. He loves things and because of his love for it he wants it to be repeated. That is how we should see the world.

2.  What does Chesterton mean when he writes that God is like the child who each day says to the sun and the moon "Do it again?"  Why is this so significant in our understanding of the created world?  How does this contrast with the modern view of scientific materialism?

As mentioned in the previous answer, a child when they find joy in a certain thing they want it to be repeated. Chesterton, when he compared God to a child was saying that God finds immense joy in watching the rising of the sun and moon, and never tires of it due to it's beauty. This shows that our world is not meaningless in contrast to the modern views of scientific materialism.

3.  How do you understand his statement. "It may be that He [God] has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our father is younger that we"?

To me this means that we have been tainted by sin and therefore, we must suffer the affects of sin, which also means that we cannot see the world in it's full beauty. we see sin, and because it does not satisfy us we constantly want a change of scenery. While God can see the true beauty of things and appreciate it without tiring of it.

4.  How does Chesterton's vision of the world compare and/or contrast to the way you view the world? If we truly made it a point to train ourselves to see the world according to his vision, what do you think might happen as a result - in our lives and our interaction with the world around us?

I agree with Chesterton's vision because we tend to take things for granted, and if we could see things the way God sees them, then I think that we would be satisfied, and we would respect God's creation more and not ry to play God in creating "new" things.