Oscar Wilde [1854-1900] said that sunsets were not valued because we could not pay for sunsets. But Oscar Wilde was wrong; we can pay for sunsets. We can pay for them by not being Oscar Wilde. G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (reprint, 2004; New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1908), 50.
Above we have a clever quote; it sparkles with Chesterton’s wit and smashes with his blunt force; the statement is pregnant with great truth and some terrible lies.
Oscar Wilde was an early public homosexual and defender of pedophilia on the Greek model (post-pubescent boys). He died young in part because of the punishment for his use of rent-boys, the notoriety of his crime, and in part through an artistic listlessness. He was also a brilliant writer and wit, but neither as clever nor wholesome as Chesterton.
Rather than exposing the repugnant nature of Chesterton’s rhetoric and theology, I’d like to make the statement exhaustively true with some additions and changes:
Oscar Wilde said that sunsets were not valued because we could not pay for sunsets. But Oscar Wilde was wrong; Jesus Christ paid for sunsets. We can applaud for them by admitting we are Oscar Wilde in our sin and by striving to be like Christ.
Oscar Wilde in all of his sin was a great admirer and experiencer of beauty. He rejoiced at the pretty and the sublime. Some of his writings are the laughter of Puck and some words edge near eternity. He valued sunsets, a silken ascot, and the brush of mink. And he is right exhaustively so, we do not value sunsets as we ought, because we do not understand what we will pay for them or what Christ paid for them. We do not pay for them now and cannot.
In as much as Wilde valued things as good and experienced and rejoiced over them in their natural innocence, he accepted and traded in the gifts of heaven. Or as James tells us, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights (James 1:17).
The word of God, a book respected by Chesterton in an incomplete way, tells us that the “Wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23). And so the thing that Oscar Wilde and we deserve for our sin is immediate death—spiritual (Eph. 2:1), physical, and eternal (Rev. 21:8).
What Wilde experienced in his physical life was only spiritual death. And even that spiritual death contained within it some pleasures both of the senses and the heart. God forbore full punishment of Wilde’s sin while he was alive, allowing him a rich diversity of unearned gifts including sunsets.
This legal space between Wilde’s birth, “dead in trespasses and sin” (Eph. 2:1), and his physical death and the judgment (Heb. 9:7) was purchased by Jesus Christ on the cross (Rom. 2:4, 3:25-26, cf. Acts 17:30). Jesus died in part so that Oscar Wilde could write The Picture of Dorian Grey and The Importance of Being Earnest and so that he could enjoy sunsets and wearing what looks to my untrained eye like a bearskin coat with almost hysteric irony.
On Wilde’s death he began to pay for sunsets. But the payment was for enjoying them without worshiping the God who both created him and paid for the privilege. Or as Abraham told one of his wayward children in hell, “Child, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner bad things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish” (Luke 16:25).
And now we come to the living; we cannot pay for sunsets in this life. We cannot purchase them because the price for them has been paid. The thing that we can do is recognize that we are Oscar Wilde in our sin.
The thing that separates us from Oscar Wilde is not human nature. Paul describes both Wilde and us in identical language in Romans 3:10-12, “as it is written: ‘None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.”
There is no difference then between Wilde and us in our natures. The difference is only in the grace of God. I’ve never used the services of a rent-boy or defended pedophilia in a court room because of the grace of God. And if you haven’t indulged in those sins, it’s the same for you.
Repenting of you sins is turning to God and recognizing that apart from the grace of God there is no good within us. We are Oscar Wilde in our sin. And Jesus has promised to save the Oscar Wildes of the world.
The second thing to note is that once the Spirit of God is within us and has changed our hearts so that we can believe (Rom 8:7-10), we still cannot pay for sunsets. Or as Paul and then Augustine thunder out with such incredulity, “What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?” (1 Cor. 4:7)
The thing that we can do is applaud. We can stand before the crimson, azure, purple, fuchsia, sunset and thank God for the death, resurrection, and accession of his Son, and we wonder at the good things God has given us in Christ and in this world, and thank him. He is good.
It is only here after we have recognized ourselves as potential Oscar Wilde’s and observed the goodness of God in Christ that we then move to the next step which (Col. 3:5) is to strive to be less like Wilde in his sin. But again not as payment rather simply as worship.