Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, the first novel in the Harry Potter series, hit bookshelves in the UK on this day in 1997 after being rejected by twelve publishers. I reference this despite the fact that I have never read one of the novels or seen one of the movies made from them. I am focusing instead on their author, JK Rowling, who has been in the news in recent years for defending her belief that sex is determined by biology. As a result, she has been vociferously castigated as anti-trans and her work has been “cancelled” by many.
Add Pedro Pascal to the list. One of the most popular actors working today, his profile in the latest Vanity Fair is compelling. Pascal was nine months old when his parents fled Chile as political refugees. He struggled financially as a young actor and was twenty-four when his mother died by suicide. The article lauds his “emotional depth onscreen and exuberance everywhere else” and calls him “a star unlike any other.”
But here’s the part that is making headlines: In support of his transgender sibling, Pascal said of Rowling in the interview, “Bullies make me [expletive deleted] sick.” He has also called her a “heinous loser.”
It’s been said that “a candle loses nothing by lighting another candle.” However, as the pastor and author Nate Pickowicz noted, “John the Baptist lost his head for having a biblical view of marriage.”
Our founding “moral principles” may surprise you
Clemson political science professor C. Bradley Thompson has been a visiting scholar at Harvard, Princeton, and the University of London. In a recent blog, he writes, “The United States of America is the first nation in history to be founded explicitly on moral principles.”
However, he shows that these are not the moral principles you and I might assume them to be.
As his extensive research and writing in the area demonstrates, many of America’s founders were deeply influenced by the European Enlightenment and its emphasis on the natural rights of individuals. Accordingly, their Declaration of Independence embraced the equality of all people and our unalienable Rights to “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”
According to Thompson, the founders sought “a new kind of society that affirmed the individual’s right to pursue a flourishing life.” This was because they believed that pursuing rational self-interest “was moral and produced a virtuous and civil society.”
To be sure, they emphasized the role of religion in helping people be virtuous. John Adams was adamant that “our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people” and “is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” George Washington similarly attested, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.”
But as Thompson shows, many found “religion and morality” to be a means of producing people whose self-interest and self-reliance could then flourish in the new nation founded to provide such freedom.
Now that our post-Christian, “post-truth” culture has largely abandoned both Christian religion and objective morality, all we have left are self-interest and self-reliance. And those who stand for “religion and morality” can expect to be labeled intolerant, bigoted, and worse.
When “neutrality is movement”
Truthless “spirituality” that capitulates to the culture is one way to respond. William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, saw this day coming: “I consider that the chief dangers which confront the coming century will be religion without the Holy Ghost, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration, politics without God, and heaven without hell.”
Our secularized society subtly but incessantly insists that we join them in separating faith from life. Joel Berry is right: “We’re all in a culture in a leftward-flowing river. Neutrality is movement.”
The good news is that the gospel has thrived most fully across Christian history when the culture has been most antagonistic to its truth. For example, even though the religious authorities rejected Jesus’ resurrection and viewed Christianity as heresy (Acts 5:27–28), the apostles chose to “obey God rather than men” (v. 29) and “a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith” (Acts 6:7).
The fastest growing church in the world is in Iran. Christianity is growing exponentially in the Muslim world. Over my many trips to Cuba, I have witnessed personally the joyful courage God gives his faithful people when they face persecution.
“This willing conversion of ink back to blood”
Now it’s our turn.
Barbara Brown Taylor said, “The whole purpose of the Bible, it seems to me, is to convince people to set the written word down in order to become living words in the world for God’s sake. For me, this willing conversion of ink back to blood is the full substance of faith.”
What God did at Pentecost in enabling early Christians to speak languages they did not know, he can do today by enabling us to live with miraculous joy and courageous faith. St. Antony of Padua (1195–1231) observed:
The man who is filled with the Holy Spirit speaks different languages. These different languages are different ways of witnessing to Christ, such as humility, poverty, patience, and obedience; we speak in those languages when we reveal in ourselves these virtues to others. Actions speak louder than words; let your words teach and your actions speak.
As a result, “Our humble and sincere request to the Spirit for ourselves should be that we may bring the day of Pentecost to fulfillment, insofar as he infuses us with his grace, by using our bodily senses in a perfect manner and by keeping the commandments.”
Charles Spurgeon testified:
“We shall not adjust our Bible to the age; but before we have done with it, by God’s grace, we shall adjust the age to the Bible.”
Do you agree?
Quote for the day:
“Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are anger and courage; anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are.” —St. Augustine
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