Book Review: David Wells' God in the Wasteland

I recently completed David F. Wells’ excellent book God in the Wasteland; The Reality of Truth in a World of Fading Dreams. This book was intended as a sequel to the author’s earlier book No Place for Truth. The book is particularly good and makes a variety of excellent points. Wells’ central point is that the church is too affected by secular culture and seems almost unaware of the effects the world is having on it. Among these effects is that the church no longer takes morality, character or theology seriously enough. Instead, people who call themselves Christians tend to really be consumers who assemble an eclectic set of religious beliefs to their own liking. Many churches in turn seek to cater to this because of their very modern attitude that all problems in life can be dealt with through psychology, management and marketing (even though this is not true). Wells correctly identifies the solution to this problem as a re-emphasis on proper doctrine and good theology. If we are going to see the world as it really is, we need to look to God and seek Him first. If we begin to see God clearly, everything else will come into proper perspective. Wells suggests that we have underestimated the holiness of God and failed to fully appreciate His transcendence, while at the same time we have overemphasized the imminence of God to the point of seeing Him as a magical genie who exists to provide us with self-fulfillment and what Francis Schaeffer would call “personal peace and affluence.” (Speaking of Schaeffer, his classic The Church in the 20th Century is an even more excellent book on the same sort of subject.)

My only criticism of Wells is two-fold. First, he is very critical of the structure of modern capitalism without what I would consider the necessary disclaimers. While it is true that there are things in this economic system that hurt the poor and create among ordinary people an attitude that everything is for their personal benefit, it is also true that every other economic system known to the world has even worse side effects, drawbacks and problems. Perhaps Wells is well aware of this, but I don’t believe that he addressed it adequately in the book. One got the impression that it might be that it would be a happy thing to return to feudalism or to have socialism. Under those systems the poor are even worse off and there are even greater inequities and problems. But this first criticism of mine is not a criticism of what Wells said, but rather, of what he did not say.

Second, in some ways Wells is affected by the very modernism he criticizes. He criticizes the modernism of Hobbs, while falling at times into what appears to be the modernism of Rousseau. At least that is the impression created in my mind by the tone of his critiques of modernism and post-modernism. Part of his own modernism is also his use of extensive polling data. A close examination of the questions of the polling data shows that they were overly ambiguous and could be interpreted as resulting from a variety of internal polling phenomena as opposed to being an accurate reflection of the worldview and thought processes of the people surveyed. Since Wells did not write the surveys, he had to take what he was given. But I am not sure that the data he had to work with are completely accurate or explainable in the ways he supposes.

Nevertheless, these are minor quibbling criticisms. Overall, this is an excellent book and I recommend that people read it. Wells is really correct in stating that we need to recognize that we have been overly affected by the assumptions of the world in which we live. We have too often come to assume that “if it works for me” that is enough to accept something or believe in it. At the same time, we allow other people to do “what works for them” without criticism or objective evaluation. Ignoring the fact that God is the center and meaning of life, we effectively deprive life of its meaning, living as though we were “like those who have no hope.” We have been far too willing to compromise doctrine and objective truth in order to get a larger market share of Christians attending our church. We have been far too willing to conform to the group expectations of the world while at the same time being individualistic and rebellious against God’s moral principles.

While Wells’ theology would cause him to reject the label of prophet, his book is a timely, prophetic scolding of an errant church. Instead of seeking market share, the church needs to seek God and take both God and His revealed word far more seriously. God’s truth and commands need to be more important to us than the “felt needs” of our post-modern congregants. As I have often said in this blog, we need to return to a belief in and pursuit of objective propositional truth. We need the real Jesus, the God of the whole Bible, not an idol that mirrors our own desires. We need sound theology based on what we can see in the Bible, not a philosophy of how little we can know because we focus on man. God must be the center.

Book Review of Nancy Pearcey's Saving Leonardo; a Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, & Learning

Nancy Pearcey’s new book Saving Leonardo; A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, and Meaning is an excellent book that proves God has given her a double portion of the spirit of Francis Schaeffer. The book is an exploration of the common secular worldviews in our culture, how they have affected culture (and even the church), and how they contrast with the real Christian worldview.

Pearcey helps us learn how to do worldview analysis on our own with examples of how to evaluate movies, books, art, and more. She shows how approaching the arts as though they were only entertainment can be dangerous. This well-researched guide is of great importance because what we believe matters: it affects our behavior and choices. What we believe can undermine effective actions of love for our family and our neighbors. What we believe can affect our relationship with God. And what we believe can impact our feelings and motivations in ways that make Christian practice and growth more difficult.

Mrs. Pearcey starts with examples of how Christians can be deceived into exposing their children to secular worldviews if they lack parental commentary and support. She counters the cultural claim that neither truth nor ideas are important with wise counsel from figures like C.S. Lewis and Socrates.

A key set of insights in the book is an exploration of the major ways in which our culture divides life into “upper and lower stories” – dichotomies in which the lower story is accepted as the exclusive source of facts, and an upper story designed to deal with the rest of human experience without giving those areas traction in public policy, business, and critical choices. These bases of the so called fact/value spilt are a hydra of personal and social problems in the contemporary world. They include the current dualist acceptance of postmodernism in religion and morality while we still use modernism in science and industry. In a similar fatal division, the liberal view of the human being divides personhood (realm of the “autonomous self”, entitled to freedom and dignity) from the body (a mere “biochemical machine”, and hence, disposable and manipulatable). This false dichotomy facilitates the rationalization of abortion, euthanasia and embryonic stem cell research on a public policy level, and the dehumanizing “hookup culture” of sex separated from relationship. It goes even further in allowing the separation of identity and desires from biology and reality.

A magnificent panorama of history unfolds as the author describes the major paths to the secular worldview – the ideas of the enlightenment, such as empiricism and rationalism on the one hand, and romanticism on the other. She traces these roads, not only through their expression in art and literature, but as they changed philosophy. Pearcey illustrates how changes in the world of philosophy had real impact on “everyday” life and thought. She also explains the philosophical fork which leads to the split between analytical philosophy and European philosophy.

We are guided from Kant’s dualism of freedom and nature through the two major streams of modern art – one protesting the scientific worldview, the other portraying the scientific worldview, or in other words, expressionism and formalism. The book sails through the seas of art handing out broadsides and laurels to both sides of the great split. The analysis will please non-artists who have any interest in worldviews, theology, philosophy or apologetics as well as providing a fascinating perspective to those who do know and love art of all sorts. There are also surprises. It never occurred to me to class the Pre-Raphaelites (my personal favorite in art) on the “science” side because of their romantic subjects from myth, legend, and literature, but Pearcey’s analysis is persuasive

Pearcey also deals with so-called Christian art, and attacks head-on the need for good art as opposed to the cloying saccharine sweetness of so much craft devoted to Biblical objects. She gives some excellent examples of quality art by Christian artists such as Fujimura.

After a well thought-out discussion of worldview in movies, the book concludes with a challenge to believers to be makers of quality culture ourselves instead of responding with reaction and criticism to the values of secular culture.

Throughout this whole expedition into darkest culture Nancy Pearcey is remarkable in her attitude of charity and understanding. The book points out what happened and how it happened, but does not condemn anyone for the roles they played. Pearcey seems to expect that we cannot just break out of the confines of the current ideas. She understands that the most godly, talented and creative of Christian artists will still create art in the traditions of expressionism and formalism even while exploring new directions and pushing the envelope of culture because we are where we are, culturally speaking.

The book is very well-written and communicates complex ideas in understandable ways without reductionism. While Schaeffer was a true prophet of the problems of the church, he was often criticized for some controversial opinions in intellectual history. Nancy Pearcey’s book is far above possible reproach in this area. She bases her conclusions on the writings of a host of eminent and well accepted scholars while at the same time holding fast to the truth in her critique of the church, her explanation of secular beliefs, and her diagnosis of how Christ’s people can escape seduction by the spirits of the age.

It is, almost always, only by understanding the false categories that have led us into bondage to the spirits of this age that we can be free of them, and not cast them out only for them to return and find a tidied up vacancy ready for them to move back in. We need to know them so we can pray for God’s help, and receive the mind of Christ, to reject the false ideas of our time and to fill our minds with the genuinely good and true and beautiful. Without analysis like Pearcey’s we are like the church of
Laodicea. So often, our society has taught us to say we see and are clothed and in our right mind when we are spiritually blind, wretched, poor, and naked.

The good, truth and beauty really exist, and are to be found in God Himself. We can know Him by knowing Jesus. We know Jesus by believing and understanding what the Bible actually says. The Bible assures us that if we seek Him we will find Him, indeed because it is God who draws us to seek Him in the first place. When we believe God, we suddenly begin to see that all creation also speaks of Him. The knowledge of God already covers the earth as the water covers the sea, but we deny that we are wet. When we believe God and acknowledge that all the problems and pain we experience come from human sin (Adams, ours and other people’s) and that while mysterious and often unpleasant, the ways of God are just and good, not in error, Jesus cleanses us from our sin, corrects our errors, and slowly restores His damaged image – always there, but twisted and under a lot of gunk. We can then participate in Christ’s work in the world; work that includes not only preaching and helping the poor, but growing things, making things, doing art, writing, teaching, serving, designing everything from beautiful buildings to beautiful spoons, and glorifying God in all we do. Christianity is infinitely simple-those who call on the name of Jesus will be saved-but it is also infinitely complex. Learning the fullness of the Christian worldview and applying it to every area of life is the life’s work of a civilization, not even an individual or many individuals. But the gemstones we uncover in the search are well worth the effort. We need to return to the Christian tradition of searching out the precious stones of beauty, truth and goodness, polishing them to luster and displaying them for all to enjoy for the glory of God.

Book Review: Cyril Barber's The Dynamics of Effective Leadership: Learning from Nehemiah

I recently had the very happy experience of reading Cyril Barber’s commentary on the book of Nehemiah, the title appearing above in the heading for this blog article. Barber’s book is both a superior commentary on Nehemiah and a superior leadership primer.

Barber fails to fall into the pitfall that many pastors fall into with respect to the book of Nehemiah. He does not see Nehemiah as an allegory of church building programs or an allegory of improvement of the soul. Instead, he takes the book at face value and sees the quite literal leadership style and characteristics of Nehemiah as something we can learn from. His insights into what makes a good leader are excellent and not your run-of-the-mill trendy stuff.

Barber comes to the discussion of leadership with a biblical worldview instead of the dominant secularist worldview. He is open to the lessons the Bible actually teaches rather than overlaying upon it what Harvard Business School or Madison Avenue might think. But that is not to say that Barber’s views are not practical. They are extremely practical and noteworthy.

Barber lays out the profile of Nehemiah verse by verse and then summarizes in the end the major conclusions that he has reached from the biblical example. Barber notes that an effective leader needs to have integrity. “He must possess a brightness of character and soundness of moral principles. He must know and stand for what is right—even in the face of popular disfavor.”

Barber notes that a good leader also needs conviction. He analyzes and shows that this conviction is founded on our faith in God and requires both confidence in ourselves and courage. Loyalty, stability, and concern for others are the other major characteristics that Barber identifies. Rounding out the characteristics of a good leader are discernment, motivation, and tact. But Barber does not see tact as the notion of telling people what they want to hear, but rather he notes that true tact must be founded upon truth.

Barber also analyzes the principles of sound leadership including knowledgeability, ability to maintain moral, and setting an example.

We also have some interesting observations along the way. For example he notes this about freedom: “Political freedom is based on spiritual freedom. When spiritual freedom is sacrificed through the toleration of evil, it inevitably results in oppression and the demise of moral standards. To counteract these trends, we need a return to the Word of God (see Nehemiah 8), then by submitting ourselves to it, and confessing our failures and shortcomings, we can begin to walk in a path of obedience, righteousness, and true holiness. Out of a spirit of genuine renewal, there comes a spiritual, social, and national freedom.”

In other passages that provide practical advice for leaders, Barber discusses how Nehemiah dealt with the task faced by middle managers—how to deal with criticism, how to deal with gossip, and how to deal with opposition from both within and without.

Nehemiah is a model leader and Barber has done a model job in expounding that model to us through his book, The Dynamics of Effective Leadership: Learning from Nehemiah.

Book Review: Paul Marshall's God and the Constitution: Christianity and American Politics

Paul Marshall’s book on God and the Constitution is the best book on faith and government, in fact the best book on government for that matter, that I think I have ever read. It is thorough, balanced, biblical, and almost always correct. Marshall begins by sketching the difficulty that in our culture today religious faith is suppressed, criticized and expelled from the public. At the same time religion is ignored here in America, it is ignored abroad despite its great importance in history, current affairs, war and peace. But a proper understanding of the world requires seeing things as they actually are rather than as we wish them to be or as they would seem to be convenient. Religion must be understood. True religion must be believed. Marshall sets about discussing the Christian faith and its application to the realities of human government. He starts off near the beginning with the story of Cain and its many implications. He deals wisely with the questions of coercion and power raised by human government. He notes the source of government’s authority in God Himself and goes through the biblical passages dealing with government both directly and tangentially. Marshall’s hermeneutic is practically flawless. He wisely interprets and combines the biblical passages to show the authority of human government, its limits and the times it can be changed. Marshall explains away many of the attacks by Christians and non-Christians alike on a biblical view of government.

Marshall also explains the proper relationship between the Christian faith and government. He notes that Christians should not be seeking a genuine theocracy, but cannot avoid expressing true ideas as part of their love for their neighbor in a participatory republic. Marshall deals with the issues of rights, civil disobedience, democracy and politics from a Christian perspective in a marvelously balanced way. He gives examples of the failures of both the right and the left to properly apply the truth in politics. He provides suitable anecdotes, the problems raised by these anecdotes, and illustrates in detail the classic understanding of the relationship between law and gospel. Marshall also warns us against the various types of idolatry inspired by life, culture and political action. But he is not afraid of political action. He explains the proper role of the church, the state and religious freedom. He debunks the current belief that true toleration is believing nothing at all and only endorsing religions that believe nothing significant. He also rejects the idea of a denomination controlling the government. He understands that there is a need to recognize the truth of Christianity and to use the truths flowing from Christianity in government despite the current hostility to doing so. But Marshall is sensitive to how this can be done effectively. He understands that while we should never compromise our principles, we must compromise in politics. Incrementalism will often gain us far more ground in the fight to love our neighbors than a steadfast insistence on all or nothing. He also understands the difference between law and morality, that a government cannot require all acts of virtue or punish all acts of vice. All human government is a tool for God to punish evil and reward good, but there must always be mercy and restraint involved since all of us are sinners and incapable of keeping the whole of God’s law. Marshall deals with some of the thornier issues in politics today including abortion. He also deals with the difficult questions of international law and international relations including the current problem with Islam and the ancient problem of war. Overall, I find Marshall’s book to be extremely satisfying and I am surprised that it is not more popular and more common among Evangelicals today.

Book Review: Stephen Grabill's Book Rediscovering the Natural Law in Reformed Theologiocal Ethics

Until fairly recently, Protestants in the last fifty years have neglected their historic roots in natural law theory. Protestant Christian jurisprudential writers have preferred secular philosophies of law like American realism and pragmatism to the legal philosophy held by the Reformers. In fact, to a large extent Protestants in the last fifty years have ignored what the Reformers had to say about law or political philosophy. Stephen Grabill attempts in this noble book, Rediscovering the Natural Law in Reformed Theological Ethics, to explain some of the reasons why recent Protestants have avoided natural law and exactly what Calvin and some of his most noted successors actually believed about natural law.

In his conclusion, Grabill discusses the gradual slide of scholars away from natural law theory. As empiricism and skepticism grew and belief in Augustinianism and the classic understanding of Reformed epistemology diminished, Protestants became increasingly vulnerable to sophisticated philosophical attack in the areas of law and epistemology. While Grabill does not discuss the next phase much in his book, the rise of skepticism succeeded in pummeling many Protestant Christians into pietism and anti-intellectualism during the 1800 and 1900s. Grabill does discuss Karl Barth’s contribution to the loss of natural law awareness. Barth, in substituting a false but spiritual sounding nonsense for the philosophy of higher criticism, convinced many people that in adopting his rejection of God’s general revelation they were being very biblical and very Protestant despite the fact that they were rejecting both what the Bible says about natural law and the beliefs of most of the Christian church prior to 1950. Barth confidently claimed that Calvin himself did not believe in natural law although anyone who actually reads portions of Calvin’s Institutes dealing with these issues can easily see that Calvin did believe in natural law. But Barth’s popularity was such that he swayed many people toward his side and also promulgated the belief that natural law was a Roman Catholic doctrine rather than a Christian doctrine. Grabill goes through much of the history of prominent natural law thinking within Reformed Protestantism. He discusses the views not only of John Calvin but of Peter Martyr Vermigli (1499-1562), Johannes Althusius (1557-1638), Jerome Zanchi (1516-1590), Francis Turretin (1623-1687) and others. Most of these important second and third generation Reformers believed in natural law.

These various Reformed theologians had slight differences in their theories of natural law and their understandings of its application, but they had a great deal of agreement as well. Grabill summarizes it this way: “Calvin, Vermigli, and Reformed scholastics all share the conviction that Scripture is the cognitive foundation (principium cognoscendi) of theology and that moral arguments can be based on axioms derived from that principium. Consequently they recognize the existence of a natural knowledge of God that is present in the natural order and discernable either in conjunction with or apart from Scripture. This knowledge, however, has no saving efficacy and merely serves to render all people to be ‘without excuse’ for their moral infractions, as Romans 1:20 attests.” The Reformers agreed that knowledge of right and wrong didn’t cause you to do what was right or cause you to be saved. But they did believe that God has not left Himself without witnesses. In addition to the direct and superior testimony of Scripture, God has also revealed Himself by writing the law on our hearts - a law that is very much the same as the principles behind the Ten Commandments. These Reformed scholars were also Augustinian in their epistemology. They recognized that God makes human knowledge, thought, and language possible, in addition to providing us with a moral compass.

Grabill does not go into depth in discussing the political and legal implications of natural law philosophy and its accompanying Augustinian epistemology. I would argue that our Western understanding of law, the rule of law, and the proper nature of jurisprudence, were originally based on the same presuppositions held by the Reformed theologians discussed by Grabill. Men like Richard Hooker and Coke, who shaped the theory and practice of the common law, understood that men were fallen, sinful and not to be trusted to reason or act properly. But they also understood that God had endowed man with the ability to learn language and communicate in a practical way, with an ability to understand universals like justice, goodness, truth, property, beauty, etc. and with a basic knowledge of good and evil in addition to providing man with the ability to reason, albeit an ability damaged by the fall. The way Western law developed presumes all of these things.

The current emphasis in post-modernism and pragmatism on our inability to communicate or know anything objective about right or wrong is changing the meaning of the phrase “the rule of law” and rending the fabric of American law filament by filament. If Christian legal scholars want to reform the American legal system, they must do more than carry it a few decades back up the slippery slope down which it has slipped, and instead restore the theological and philosophical foundations upon which a proper legal system is built. Stephen Grabill’s book is a wonderful step in that direction. I hope and pray that we will see many more similar works appearing in print in the relatively near future.

Book Review: Islam at the Crossroads

Islam at the Crossroads; Understanding it’s Beliefs, History, and Conflicts by Peter Marshall, Roberta Green and Lela Gilbert is an excellent book. It provides an introduction to the history of Islam and the way in which the history of Islam has contributed to the current crisis within Islam and between Islam and the West. The book is very manageable reading at only 113 pages. It is well-written and has an easy to read style. At the same time, the book takes a scholarly, accurate and dispassionate approach. It is not a work of propaganda or extremist views. Instead, it fairly presents the historical situation with Islam, including the interesting realities of more moderate Islam and the rapidly expanding danger of Islamic extremism.

Marshall et al explains the basic beliefs of Muslims, the history of Islam, and the various major divisions within Islam. They also dispel many of the myths concerning Islam. It is interesting to note, as the book reveals, that the vast majority of Muslims are not Arabs and do not live in the Middle East. The vast majority of Arabs are not Muslims, but rather Christians who live in the western world. And, while radical Islam is an extreme danger because of the spread of radicalism through Islamic media, Wahhabist-sponsored madrassas and social pressure from radicals, the numerical majority of Muslims are far more easy-going about their faith.

Islam at the Crossroads explains the motivations behind the current Islamist movement. Islam believed that they would have the blessing of Allah in conquering the world and forcing the world to either submit to Islam. For hundreds of years, Islam was largely successful. But on September 12, 1683, the Ottoman Turks were defeated in their last siege of Vienna. The history of Islam from that point was largely one of continued defeat. The western powers used their superior technology to slowly spread not only their economic influence, but their political hegemony. Nearly the entire Arab world came under the domination of European powers. While from a western perspective, the reach of colonialism has been destroyed, radical Muslims still see the hidden hand of the West in many of their countries. They believe conspiracy theories that claim the West is behind all of the failures, difficulties and indignities faced by Muslim peoples.

The radicals, per Islam at the Crossroads, are motivated by religion. They believe that the failure of Islam to conquer the world since the defeat of the Ottomans in 1683 has been due to insufficient doctrinal purity and religious practice among Muslims. Hence they seek to “cleanse” and “purify” Islam from practices and beliefs that they view as idolatrous and un-Islamic. They seek to return to a less pietistic view of Islam. The book does not dwell on the quite probable theories proposed by some authors, that the radical Islamists have been affected not only by Islam, but by the teachings of Heidegger, Niche, Marx, Lenin, the Nazis, and the existentialists. While rejecting modernity, the Islamists may, in fact, be very much the products of the combination of modernity. But Marshall and his co-authors do bring this topic up as well as touching on many other important factors surrounding the conflict between radical Islam and the rest of the world. They emphasize that this conflict is not only between Muslims and Christians, but between Muslims and Muslims. For the radical Muslims are unhappy with the more liberal faith of the majority of Muslims throughout the world. It is their goal not only to conquer the West and subject it to Islam, but to conquer their fellow Muslims ideologically and politically in order to force them to abide by their ideas of a “purer” Islam.

The book by Marshall, Green and Gilbert is quite refreshing. It discusses the entire matter in a very appropriate tone, while at the same time not ignoring any of the warts and wrinkles of Muslim history. It is also honest about what the West has done wrong, and about exactly what it is in the West that inflames the radicals in Islam. So often today, modern works about Islam and the radical Islamist movement are really seeking to forward other kinds of agendas (e.g. anti-globalism, socialism, isolationism, etc.).

Marshall and his co-writers also present a balanced view of the possible hope for the future of Muslim populations. Here in the United States, political commentators dealing with the Islamist issue tend to either be overly optimistic and believe that if we can merely introduce Democracy to Muslim countries, their populations will suddenly be like the anti-war protesters of the 1960’s in America and demand the cessation of all “violence and oppression” by their governments, a scenario which is in no way likely. On the other hand, others have suggested that because Islam is incompatible with democracy and republicanism, (ideas originating, in their current form, from the spread of Christianity) democratizing Muslim countries is impossible and they should be left to rule by totalitarian dictators who can hold sway over the masses and keep them out of mischief. This second view is not a very pleasant way to allow our Muslim neighbors to be treated and is unlikely to solve the problem since the existence of dictatorial regimes in the Middle East is usually blamed on the West and is one of the major grievances the Islamists actually have. Marshall and his co-authors recognize that ideas do have consequences and that religious ideas are often the fundamental motivation of peoples—especially Islamic peoples. But they also recognize that even people who believe in a religion like Islam can adopt or prefer governments that are better than the ones they currently have, even if they are not perfect.

Balance is important for dealing with the Islamist problem. Christians are correct in believing that a truly just government is maintained most easily by true believing Christians. This is because ideas really do matter. Christians believe in the fallenness of man and hence if they take their faith seriously, and are not co-opted by the beliefs of the world, they are unlikely to fall for various utopian schemes like Marxism or nationalist socialism that vainly seek to remake human nature. Our ideas about the sinfulness of mankind have led to our emphasis on separation of powers, checks and balances, the rule of law, and a humble view of government’s ability to recognize the truth or solve human problems. By contrast, the religious and historical experience of fundamentalist Islam seems to support absolutist rule by religious extremists. Nevertheless, the history of the world should tell us that even though people may have false religious beliefs, and even though those beliefs can and do undermine successful government, people who are not Christians are still capable of having governments within a whole spectrum of options.

As Russell Kirk has pointed out, the faulty religious beliefs of the ancient Greeks caused the instability and failure of their city states. The Greeks’ democracies did not prevent them from engaging in wars of aggression, defrauding their neighbor city states, and taking politically repressive measures against some of their best citizens. But the Greeks still had what we consider a flourishing culture that was more open to democracy, freedom of conscience, and the spread of truth than say, Saudi Arabia. Today we have imperfect but functional democracies in Japan and India, despite the false nature of the dominant religions in those countries. In addition, both nations have been relatively at peace during recent decades and have been relatively good neighbors for most of the world (the religious persecution of Christians and others in India being an exception). But places like Japan and India show that it is possible for countries to have better governments than the dictatorships of North Korea and, for practical purposes, Iran. What Marshall and his co-authors do not deal with in depth are potential solutions to the Islamist problem. They are certain that we should support moderate Muslims who have a more pietistic version of their religion than a militant version. They also believe that it is appropriate to oppose the Islamists with force. But that is where they stop. Their book is largely descriptive rather than prescriptive.

Ultimately, the only way that the Islamist threat will be permanently stemmed is if there is a complete change in the ideology of peoples in Islamic nations so that they shift permanently away from the views of the Wahhabis and toward something closer to genuine Christianity. Ultimately, people who live in the darkness of the Islamic world need Christ. And to what ever degree they will not fully accept the truth, they will still be better off in this earthly life to whatever degree they are persuaded to accept propositions that are true, even if they are not the key saving propositions concerning salvation in Jesus Christ. As a result, the main need of the Muslims is actually for spiritual and ideological influence. This is very difficult and delicate business since Muslin people are often deeply offended by even remote attempts at proselytization or conversion. But somehow, the gospel needs to penetrate Saudi Arabia and other Islamic nations. And with the gospel we mean not only the basic truth of the gospel, but also the entire Christian worldview and the legal and political ramifications of that worldview. Democracy, republicanism, the rule of law, checks and balances, religious freedom and toleration, all need to be explained.

One simple means of doing this is by reaching out to people from predominantly Islamic nations who are already living here in the United States and elsewhere in the West. Many of the radical Islamists have spent time studying in the West, and the result was not good. They became more radicalized by what they saw as the decadence and corruption of the United States and Western Europe. Instead, we need people who are here from Saudi Arabia or Iran or Iraq or central Asia or south central Asia or Southeast Asia or Africa to see the love of Christ modeled and lived out by His people, by His church.

We cannot coerce people to accept the truth. Instead, we can engage them in dialogue and find out what they believe and why, and look for opportunities to share or for them to ask and receive good answers for what we believe and why. We can spread the truth about Christianity, law and politics among our own people (who are currently almost in need of the truth about such things as people from anywhere in the world). And we should be producing an translating into accessible languages like Farsi, Arabic, Turkic, etc. books, films, documentaries, motion pictures and television series that, in reasonable ways, present the truth about Christ, about natural law, about the rule of law, about human nature, about religious freedom and toleration, and about government. Americans have been doing the opposite to themselves for decades—preparing and promulgating television programs, motion pictures and novels that lead them to believe in a false version of human nature and to soften their opposition to sin and sinful lifestyles. These films and television series have often been subtle and clever in the way they have affected the mind of the populous. They have led to widespread toleration of sexual immorality, addictive lifestyles, radical consumerism, and other vices. It is time to turn the tables and to begin to use the tools of culture such as the novel, the motion picture and the screen play to gently move people in the opposite direction back toward Christ, and back toward truth. It needs to be understood that this needs to be done subtly and cleverly, just as our opponents have done. And we need to be careful to avoid being sucked into the worldview of modernity through the use of modern tools.

If we are to survive, we must not only defeat our immediate enemies on the battlefield, but we must persuade our potential enemies of as much basic truth as we can get them to accept. And, of course, in order to accomplish all of this, we must pray. Because ultimately, while God can use us to act, it is His sovereignty and providence will ultimately determine the issue. And on top of work and prayer, we obviously need to repent and turn from our own wicked ways. If Christians were truly living out their Christianity, Islam would appear much less attractive.

I highly recommend Islam at the Crossroads.

Book Review: George Orwell's 1984

Though most people today have no fear of left-wing totalitarianism, and though many people alive today were born so recently that they cannot remember anything about the history of the Soviet Union (which doesn’t appear to be taught in schools at all either), 1984 is still a fascinating book in many ways. 1984 is a novel that takes place in what, in Orwell’s time, was the future. George Orwell wrote the book around 1948. But part of the point of the book is that the main character doesn’t even know that the year is actually 1984.

Winston Smith, the central character of 1984, lives in one of the three totalitarian societies that together cover the entire globe in the hypothetical year of the novel. In this society, there are three classes: the proletariat, the party, and the inner party. The inner party uses the face of “big brother” as its ubiquitous symbol. In all probability, big brother is not even a living human being. Instead, he is an invention of the party. The state in 1984 has complete and utter control over the lives of party members and inner party members. It pays little attention to the lives of the proletariat, but nevertheless dominates them as well. The party meticulously trains their members from childhood upward to be ruthless informers and to police their own minds through techniques of thought discipline. This thought discipline is aimed at eliminating all unorthodox thoughts that are in any way contrary to the doctrine, ideas, facts, and teachings of the party. But I must use the word “facts” loosely because one of the main points of 1984 is that the party has created a society in which they treat all facts as mutable. The party also seeks to facilitate this by creating a new language in which all unorthodox thoughts are essentially impossible because the words necessary to formulate them - like “right,” “liberty,” or “justice” - are no longer part of anyone’s vocabulary.

The party uses not only constant propaganda and intrusive monitoring, but also insidiously clever undercover operations and meticulous torture to force all party members into complete and utter submission. Big brother wants not only physical obedience, but the souls of his captives.

The idea of the mutability of history, of current events, and of reality itself is extremely post-modern. It’s interesting that Orwell had such a post-modern vision of the future as early as 1948. The pieces were already all there, but no one was putting them together in quite the way Orwell has. 1984’s post-modern vision is also curious because of the idea of the immutability of history. The party in 1984 is able to collect all books, papers, newspapers, magazines and documents that contain information that they wish to change, and to destroy those old documents and replace them with new ones that contain only what the party wants people to know or believe. The old Soviet Union actually tried to do this. There is a remarkable book called the The Commissar Vanishes that shows sequential picture modification in the old Soviet Union. First a picture will appear with both Lenin and Trotsky, then in a subsequent release of the same picture, Trotsky will disappear, and then in yet a later incarnation of the picture, Stalin will be standing next to Lenin, then Stalin will disappear and a young Nikita Khrushchev will be standing next to Lenin when he could not possibly have been there at all. This sort of attempt to manipulate reality was common in Soviet Russia even though the Russians could not obliterate existing documents to the contrary of the party’s new legends. Today we need not fear this in our own day because there is such a proliferation of documentary sources about the past. But I suppose that with the digitalization of information and the rotting of so many books that were printed on acidic paper, an attempt by government to change perceptions of history is certainly a real threat. We already have an academy full of revisionist historians who sometimes discover unknown truths about the past but who just as often perpetuate new fictions about a past that never really was. It has almost always been popular in modern times to discount historical accounts of people who were close to events when often those are the best accounts of what happened that we possibly have. Why should anybody start off presupposing that there was no Trojan War despite Homer, or that George Washington was a profane and godless man despite the accounts of his early biographers and friends? With the digital age, it some day may be possible for a government to meddle with the internet sufficiently to change most of the digitalized texts on past history. If every book is on Kendall and the worldwide web and none of them are on paper or vellum, there would be little difficulty to manipulate the history and texts of the past. It is now true as it has always been that libraries full of good, true, and beautiful books are one of the best defenses against tyranny. But of course it only works if you read them and believe the true things that they say.


A variety of things jump out at you when you listen to or read Orwell’s book. He has a strange insistence on the reality of class differences. While it is very true that different people have different gifts, and that not everyone is gifted in the same way, Orwell’s understanding of the people who he regards as proletarians as being completely un-thinking and only interested in drinking, gambling, and the like, may occasionally be true of many people, but it is certainly not true of everyone within that supposed class. Every level of society has its brilliant minds, its intellectuals, and its students of philosophy. And every level of society has those who have common sense and spiritual depth. Each level also has those who may be gifted in loving or in some other way, but lack wisdom and understanding. But Orwell seems blind to the dignity and variety of what he thinks of as the lower classes. I suppose Orwell might defend himself by saying that the party absorbed everyone that they regarded as intelligent. But the truth is that not all kinds of intelligence are measurable by standardized tests or the other ways in which technocrats try to discover what they believe to be natural aristocrats. Every person has something they do well, and many more people than we appreciate have practical wisdom in one area or another. Hence, I found Orwell’s apparent insistence on class troubling. The same thing appears in his story, Animal Farm. Orwell seems to believe that it is reasonable to think of the different classes of society as being like different animals with different levels of intelligence and ability. This is simply not true. The image of God appears in every human being. There are no lower human beings. Yet even human beings who are highly gifted in working with their hands, or in working with plants, or in being a help to others in vocations that the elites of society do not value, still have the inherent dignity of being created in the image of God and often have depths and complexities that are completely unappreciated.

It is also interesting that Orwell’s story seems to imply a fundamental selfishness of all political orders. Orwell’s characters concede that some past orders may have developed certain sympathies for idealistic principles, but treats these mainly as weaknesses rather than strengths. Perhaps I am misunderstanding Orwell’s pessimism, or mistaking Orwell’s mere pessimism as a description of reality in 1984. Yet so little light appears in the story that this seems to be his assumption.

One thing that clearly stands out in 1984 is the persistent nagging of natural law. Orwell never mentions natural law or the objectivity of morality or right and wrong. In fact, I wonder if he really believed in such things. But the whole effect of his book is premised on the notion that we will find the states’ obliterating the truth about facts, and substituting their own will as immoral and wrong. If you don’t feel this when you are reading the book, it really isn’t working. Orwell’s character evidences that there really is some kind of an objective reality that gnaws at the conscience of even extremely selfish and flawed human beings even after they have been extensively trained, conditioned, and educated in the opposite notion, and even after they have been tortured to beat objective truth out of them. Despite all of this, the conscience still gnaws at us, and, as J. Budziszewski would say, “It has its revenge.” In the end, big brother and his minions are able to break the people of 1984, and to cause even those who harbored the notion that perhaps two plus two must equal four, to finally conclude that if the party says two plus two equals five, or three, or seven, then that is true and real and to be loved and embraced. But the people who are forced to believe these things through torture, conditioning, and manipulation lose their souls in the process. They become shells of human beings who are torn and hollowed out in a way that has sucked the life out of them. This is caused not merely by the torture itself, but by what is lost when a human being is finally separated from his connection with reality, truth, conscience, and beauty. We all desperately need the good, the true, the beautiful, the divine—and when we don’t have it, it scars us deeply. When we turn our backs on it and reject it, it destroys us even if our physical body continues to go on for some time after our soul has died in addition to the Adamic spiritual death that we were born with. Of course I mean “died” here in a certain way.

We have the comfort and the fear of knowing something that Orwell’s characters have long forgotten: that there is an eternal kingdom of God in which those who believe in Christ will be comforted, blessed, have their tears dried and their hurts completely healed. By contrast in this eternity, those who rebel against God will enter into a darkness, a loss, and a hollowing out that is far worse than the pale foreshadowing of the torment faced by the people of 1984.

The state in 1984 has sought to make itself god. It seeks to control reality, to control the minds and thoughts of its people, not merely their external actions. It has sought to re-define right and wrong, language and truth, and to make its own reality. In doing so, the big brother state is the ultimate fulfillment of post-modern philosophy. Post-modernism insists that there is no objective right or wrong, no objective reality behind language or ideas, and no real way to communicate effectively across cultural boundaries. Instead, the committed post-modernist believes that all reality is constructed by human communities. We make and shape our reality in our own image. We use force to make people concede that reality is what the community says, and that words mean what the community says they mean. The post-modernist rejects the centrality of an objective logos of God, and instead embraces a shattered world in which each community is its own miniature pantheon of deities. The Oceania state of big brother is the ultimate fulfillment of this post-modern vision because it creates a unified perception of “reality” throughout the community, creating complete harmony and homogeneity. It then labels this totalitarian nightmare as joy, happiness, peace and love. And who can discount these labels, or dispute them if there is no objective reality beyond the will of the community, or beyond the mind of big brother?

Thanks be to God that there really is an objective, divine logos. Thanks be to God that there is a God, and that He cares about human beings and has entered our world in order to reveal to us the truth about goodness, truth, beauty, morality, sacrifice, sin, and atonement. And especially we ought to be thankful that God has come into our world, died for us, and revealed the truth about resurrection. In 1984, the central protagonist wonders often if there is any hope that big brother can ever be destroyed, or that anyone can escape from his iron grip. Orwell gives us no hope. He leaves no chink of light gleaming through any small crack or window. But Christians know that this dark vision can never be fully fulfilled except in hell because there is a God who transcends the universe but who involves Himself in the affairs of mankind. There is a God who not only provides objectivity, but who restrains human governments. There is a God who will ultimately at some point end human history and bring all to judgment. If some day a real big brother succeeds in attaining global hegemony, he will be crushed by the return of Christ or by God’s sovereign hand.

I suppose for some people they think of God or Christianity as being somewhat like big brother. This is not the case. God actually is a source of objectivity. He has created us and given us our sense of right and wrong. God is the source of goodness itself. But unlike big brother, He is entitled to His position as being the source of goodness itself as the creator of the universe. Big brother and his ilk are distorters of what God has already created. They are those who bend and break, and seek to remold God’s creation into their image. But they are not God. Certainly it is popular today to find fault with God. The “new atheist’s” essential argument is to say “I strongly disagree with the ideas and actions attributed to the Christian God, ergo He must not exist.” Of course this doesn’t follow logically and usually they distort the ideas and actions actually attributed to God. They long for an impossible world that bears more resemblance to the old hobo song about the “Big Rock Candy Mountains” instead of moral adventure of real life.

Book Review: The Victory of Reason

Over Christmas vacation, I finished reading The Victory of Reason; How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success by Rodney Stark. I found this book to be extremely interesting. I take exception with Max Weber’s explanation of the prosperity of Northern Europe. Rodney Stark believes that western prosperity and inventiveness started far earlier than the Protestant Reformation, and he gives many historical examples. Stark looks at the development of capitalism among Italian city-states in what are normally called “the Dark Ages.” He discusses how that capitalism moved north into the Netherlands and then across the English Channel into England. He also discusses how the most successful early capitalist enterprises were later squelched in Southern Europe but were eventually allowed to flourish in England.

What Stark argues is that a number of factors were necessary to sustain the prosperity, inventiveness, and the growth that occurred in the West and resulted in the development and dominance of western civilization up until recent times. Stark identifies Christianity as the source of all of the basic factors that he sees as behind the success of western civilization. He compares the brief periods of success in other civilizations with the sustained growth in the West to make his point. The factors that Stark identifies as flowing from Christianity include, first of all, the fact that Christianity, as it was known for nearly its first 1,800 years, was a rational faith, second that it was a faith that believed in progress, and third, that it believed in freedom.

Unlike many other global religions, Christianity emphasized logic and reason. It also believed in progress. Christians historically recognized that as time goes by, the process of using reason to evaluate the will of God as expressed in special and general revelation may result in increased knowledge and recognition of God’s will and how it can best be carried out. As a result, the Christian West had no vested interest in maintaining the status quo but rather fostered an endless drive toward greater freedom and greater prosperity in addition to greater faith and commitment to God. Aside from a few anomalies that Stark discusses, the church was largely supportive of science and the development of new inventions such as the water and windmills, the horse-drawn plow, the horse collar, the modern wagon, and the clock—all of which came out of the period we commonly refer to as “the Dark Ages” and yet which were necessary for the future revolutionizing of the western world. Stark notes how capitalism itself originated among devout Christians and flourished where Christianity was the most dominant and the most practiced. He notes that the same types of frugality, industry, and philanthropy associated with the Reformation in Northern Europe were equally present in the capitalist Italian city-states of the so-called Dark Ages.

Stark also sees freedom as fundamental to the success of the West. He believes that freedom flows from the rational Christianity of Western Europe. The rise of political freedom in given areas coincided with the rise in prosperity. By the idea of freedom Stark includes the rule of law, respect for property rights, freedom from state confiscation, freedom to innovate, freedom from restrictions of wages, prices, and business practices, and freedom from command economics. Stark points out how in contrast to the effects of freedom, the imposition of confiscatory and manipulative governments on the Italian city-states eventually quelled their capitalistic expansion and initiated their decline.

Overall, I think Rodney Stark’s historical arguments and examples are fascinating and compelling. The one thing with which I would take exception is his insistence that official Roman Catholicism is not problematic in terms of its effect on politics and the economy. Stark uses the argument that prosperity existed before the Reformation to say that the historic teachings of the Roman Catholic Church do not interfere with the prosperity and freedom that he discusses. But he is ignoring the fact that prior to the Reformation all of the persons and views that later became Protestantism were within the Roman Church alongside the views that later became Tridentine Roman Catholicism. The Reformation did not constitute the creation of a new set of theological views, but rather a coup d’ état in which a particular branch of the church was able to gain control of the church hierarchy to the degree necessary to force out those who held different views. The exodus of the university professors, theologians, pastors, priests and Christians who would constitute the “Protestants” changed the makeup and complexion of the Roman Church that remained. The teachings of Tridentine Roman Catholicism between the time of the Reformation and the time of Vatican II have largely been supportive of the very types of government and approaches that are antithetical to political freedom, capitalism, and the progressive application of reason that Stark identifies with the success of the West. Yet today it is true that in many ways the church has transformed and become much closer to the Protestant church. Nevertheless, deep divisions still remain despite some closing of the historic gap. It can be said that with the Roman Church’s current emphasis on ideas like political freedom and subsidiarity, Catholicism’s current approach to politics and economics has become much more like that of the Reformation and also and much more like the pre-reformation church’s approach prior to the various changes and instabilities that led to the rise of authoritarian governments in much of Europe during the Renaissance and the modern era.

One of Stark’s most fascinating conclusions is his belief that a free market in religion is helpful to the growth of Christianity and that the denial of that free market and the maintenance of a monopoly in religion in the areas of the New World south of the Rio Grande has been inimical to the growth and flourishing of capitalism and true Christianity among the people up until fairly recent times.

Stark’s book is an enjoyable and fascinating work which is well worth reading.

Book Review: Dorothy Sayer's Lord Peter Wimsey Mystery Stories

I recently had the happy experience of reading all of Dorothy Sayers’ mystery stories about Lord Peter Wimsey. The body of work consists of short stories, all of which are collected in a book entitled “Lord Peter Wimsey” and a series of full-length novels. The first Peter Wimsey story, “Whose Body,” appeared in the 1920s. It was followed by the novel “Clouds of Witness” in which Lord Peter helps his brother, the duke of Denver, who is accused of murder. “Clouds of Witness” was followed by “Unnatural Death,” “The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club,” “Strong Poison,” “The Five Red Herrings,” “Have His Carcass,” “Murder Must Advertise,” “The Nine Tailors,” “Gaudy Night,” “Busman’s Honeymoon,” and a book (“Thrones, Dominations”) started by Dorothy Sayers and finished by mystery writer Jill Paton Walsh. Jill Paton Walsh also has an additional Wimsey novel (“A Presumption of Death”) using Dorothy Sayers’ characters, but I believe entirely written by Ms. Walsh. Interspersed with the novels was the appearance of 20 short stories involving Lord Peter.

The Lord Peter Wimsey stories are uniformly delightful. Peter Wimsey is the second child of an English aristocratic family. In the stories Lord Peter was born in the late 1800s. They follow his life up to the beginning of the Second World War. Wimsey is an interesting character. He attended Oxford and while not a physically large person, became successful in sports. He is not particularly handsome, but is regarded as a very eligible bachelor until his marriage to the mystery writer, Harriet Vane, in “Busman’s Honeymoon.” Lord Peter served as an officer in the British army during the First World War. During that time, he had a variety of traumatic experiences including a short episode of being buried by shell fire. This produced what today would be called post traumatic stress syndrome. Back then, they thought of it as a problem with “nerves.” Wimsey is aided in life by his extremely able butler who is also an amateur photographer, Bunter. True to his name, Wimsey loves frivolous conversation and is extremely humorous to read. Sadly, Dorothy Sayers’ great erudition results in her frequent use of untranslated quotes in Latin, medieval Italian, French and other languages. But the books are still enjoyable, even if you are not an expert in languages. I hope that some day a publisher will put together an annotated version of the Lord Peter Wimsey stories that will contain not only translations of all of these quotes, but footnotes as to their origins.

Wimsey was provided by his family with a legacy of real property in the city of London. Throughout the period of the stories, he is always well provided for financially because of his income from this property and his successful reinvestment of that income. He lives in upper class British life despite the coming of the Great Depression and some guilt over his privileged background. Wimsey’s strong sense of noblesse oblige leads to his work as an amateur detective despite his strong aversion to the unhappy fates that befall murderers once they have been found out. Wimsey greatly enjoys the hunt and happily sleuths his way through Ms. Sayers’ substantial body of writing. The stories have a humorous tone and are a picture into life in England in the 20s and 30s. Sayers mercilessly makes fun of nearly everyone. She points out the odd peculiarities of the English aristocrats. She mercilessly mocks people who are attracted both to fascism and to communism and provides very true-to-life pictures of the strange avant-garde art community of the radical left in depression era London. There are, to be sure, in the novels some small elements that we would find distasteful today. But these have to be understood as flowing from the cultural context of the day.

One of the most interesting things about the Lord Peter Wimsey stories is their clandestine Christian tone and drive. Dorothy Sayers was a committed Catholic Christian. In addition to her mystery stories, she also wrote a series of essays which were satirized higher criticism of the Bible and made apologetic arguments in favor of orthodox Christianity. Sayers considered her greatest work a translation of nearly all of Dante’s “Divine Comedy.”

Sayers does not overtly put the Gospel into the Lord Peter stories. In fact, Lord Peter is often heard to deny that he would consider himself a strong Christian. But Peter’s actions belie his humble self evaluation. Even though Lord Peter is accused of being a man of the world and did apparently have mistresses during his youth, he nevertheless behaves in an extremely moral manner throughout all of the novels. While we hear of his alleged James Bond-like past, we do not see it nor do we see him engaging in any sort of actual immorality. What we do see is a man who is kind to everyone from all social classes, who is thoughtful, considerate, polite, and extremely giving. Wimsey makes arrangements to quietly, and in some cases secretly, meet the needs of many of the people in difficulty that he comes across during the stories. One of Wimsey’s most clever activities is his creation of a group that is the equivalent of Sherlock Holmes’ Baker’s Street Irregulars. Wimsey has an agency that he calls the “the Cattery.” The Cattery is made up of a collection of women who Wimsey employs largely to undertake support activities for his amateur private detection. But these women are also found and employed based upon their need. They are spinsters, widows, divorcees, and other women who would easily find their lives destroyed by the economic and social circumstances of the l920s and 30s but for Wimsey’s decision to employ them in this special agency for his special purposes. Yet Wimsey’s kindness also allows them to keep their pride and dignity. Throughout the books, Wimsey’s actual actions and words are an example of the Christian virtues—love and charity.

Sayers also depicts Christians in her work. While Lord Peter does not claim to be a representative of Christianity, many of Peter’s closest friends and associates are strong evangelical Christians. One of them is a reformed safecracker who is now a member of the Salvation Army. Miss Climpson, the director of the Cattery, is also an evangelical believer though of high church sentiments. While Sayers is realistic and occasionally depicts Christians who are not altogether virtuous, she, unlike the modern media, is also unbiased and depicts Christians as basically good people. They may have quirks, but they are people who are in the process of sanctification rather than people who are representatives of the devil while claiming to be representatives of Christ.

Christianity also appears in Dorothy Sayers’ novels in a third way: the work of providence. In some of Sayers’ short stories, she actually makes mention of providence. But throughout her novels we see providence in action. Crime in outed and mysteries are solved not merely through the cleverness of Lord Peter or the hard work of the police, but through the inexplicable confluence of circumstances coming together. Sayers repeatedly depicts God’s providence at work in the world. Mistakes are made, people are discovered, evidence is uncovered as if by chance, but by chance so improbable as to require the directing hand of providence to intervene for an explanation. The active hand of providence is a strong theme throughout Sayers’ work. Sayers is also a respecter of people. While she can easily make fun of Bolsheviks or millionaires, she sees people with their quirks, peculiarities and strange beliefs as all having their own inherent dignity and value. She doesn’t try to disguise the fact that people can have beliefs that are just plain wrong. She also doesn’t disguise the fact that all people are sinners and have their own shortcomings. But she still sees people as valuable and important. People are made in the image of God. Sayers’ portrayals of Anglican vicars, businessmen, domestic servants, chimney sweeps and advertising men are insightful and delightful.

In addition to all of the things about the Sayers’ novels that I’ve already mentioned, Sayers is also a good writer and a good mystery writer at that.

Book Review: The Harry Potter Books

I have just finished reading all seven of J.K. Rowling’s books about Harry Potter. I have both praise and a caution.

There tends to be a great battle among Christians between those who reject the Harry Potter books completely because they involve witchcraft, and those who love the Harry Potter books because they incorporate Christian themes such as the struggle between good and evil and life after death. I think that both sides are partially right and partially wrong.

I would first give my cautionary warning: the Harry Potter books are not fit for small children who do not yet know that the occult is wrong or know the difference between real good and real evil. The Harry Potter books are very complicated. One of the major themes of the books is death. Another major theme is the problem of revenge, dislike, hatred, and anger. For children’s books involving children at school, the books are extremely violent. And it is true that the books do incorporate some ideas and practices from the world of secondary witchcraft and historic alchemy. Children who do not understand why magic is wrong are likely to pick up sticks to use as wands and to go around attempting to cast spells as part of their play after reading the Harry Potter books. I think there is a risk that reading Harry Potter could interest children in the occult or in possible experiments with alchemy (that could be physically dangerous). But the books do not actually create a view of witchcraft or alchemy that makes it practical in the real world. So for older and more mature children, I do not think that the books are particularly dangerous. Indeed, if one understands them, the books can be quite enjoyable.

After having read the books, I am willing to accept that J.K. Rowling may be a Christian of some sort. She does incorporate a variety of Christian themes and arch-types in her work. It is also true that she is a post-modern person and incorporates some of the themes, ideas, and approaches of the post-modern worldview either consciously or unconsciously. Nevertheless, I must say that the Harry Potter books are a magnificent work of literature and enjoyable to read.

Many others have already documented the amazing literary aspects of the Harry Potter series. One of the most well-known is John Granger, author of Looking for God in Harry Potter, Unlocking Harry Potter, and a blog at http://hogwartsprofessor.com/. Granger describes many of the ways in which Rowling incorporates Christian themes, pays homage to classic Christian literature such as Dante, and incorporates a philosophy of character change called literary alchemy. I haven’t read Granger’s books and have only looked at his blog, but I definitely think that he is on to something.

The Harry Potter books are not just separated individual stories, but rather are each part of a larger story. Ideas that are mentioned in the first book and the subsequent books culminate together to explain and set up the situation in the final book. Every little tidbit of information that you’re given by the author is used at some point or other in the course of the stories. They form a whole that is locked together in quite an amazing way. In a sense, this sort of writing in which past events, current events and future events all come together to work things out just perfectly is a literary testimony to providence. In a random world, it would not be the case that people would always learn along the way exactly the fact that they will need to know in order to solve a problem near the end. And yet this is exactly what happens in these books and in many other Christian works of literature such as the writings of C.S. Lewis and Dorothy Sayers, not to mention writers like Charles Dickens or William Shakespeare. Writing that expresses a providentially guided reality is antithetical to the materialist scientific worldview whether its adherents recognize this or not. These books can be said to reflect a Christian worldview if for no other reason than because they clearly reflect a world that is guided by providence in which things work out as though they were planned even though they could not have been planned by mere mortals.

Another aspect of the books that could be thought of as consistent with the Christian worldview is Rowling’s admission of the reality of good and evil. Rowling describes a world in which all human beings are flawed. All struggle with sin and difficulty within themselves. But some of them are clearly worse than others, having sold themselves out to purer and more vicious forms of evil. But there are aspects of Rowling’s dealings with good and evil that are somewhat post-modern – that is to say they imply a world in which morality is relative to culture, family, or individual rather than implying a world in which morality is flowing from a universally accessible objective moral order. While Rowling incorporates many good themes and plot motifs that reject racism, bigotry, and stereotypes in a variety of ways, there are at least three examples of a more post modern approach to morality. First, Rowling almost seems to accept that being on the “dark arts” side of things is in some way natural and acceptable for some people. Second, the witches and wizards slice and dice various relatively intelligent sentient creatures in order to make their potions and medicinal compounds with no moral qualms. And, third, no real thought is given to the question of whether or not practices like divination might be wrong rather than merely ineffective.

There are ways in which Rowling attempts to make her magical world more compatible with the Christian world. For example, she admits in one of the later books that ghosts are not actually the souls of dead people but rather “projections” of them. She is not at all clear about what may or may not happen to people after death. At one point, Harry despairs about facing death. He does see visions of people who have gone on to death before him. But are these, like the ghosts, merely projections or are they actually the real souls of the real departed people?

The magic in Harry Potter differs from that in Narnia and Middle Earth in that it looks so much more like our popular images of occult magic – black pointed hats and all. But, the magic used in Harry Potter is, as other writers have pointed out, “incantational” rather than “invocational.” In other words, people are witches and wizards in Rowling’s world because they have magic in them that they are able to project into the outside world in accord with various laws not unlike the laws of physics. In the Christian worldview, occult power is generally seen as flowing from the invocation or use of the power of unclean demonic spirits. In the real world both invocational and incantational magic are problematic. While magic, in the occult sense, may seem like an application of laws like the laws of physics, it is, in a sense, an attempt to force God’s hand or to make the universe function in certain ways that it is not actually designed to function in – to obtain forbidden power by forbidden means. The way Rowling deals with magic in her books makes it seem quite different - like a natural talent, power, or ability within certain human beings. The mature can accept this conceit in literature. The weak of character may be lead astray by it unless assisted or guided by the more mature. After a thousand years of Christian freedom in the west, most people have come to deny the existence of spiritual power. Indeed, most appearances of the occult in the west are shams, frauds, and play acting. But, as C.S. Lewis has written, there is real personal evil in the world, and it is as much a mistake to ignore the reality of evil as it is to become obsessed with it. But one can read Harry Potter without being drawn into the occult.

Some people have suggested that in Rowling’s world the distinction between wizards and witches on the one hand and non-magical people known as “muggles” on the other, is one that involves two different species, and hence there is no real problem with genuine humans getting involved in magic. But this is not true. In Rowling’s world, children of normal muggle parents can be born with enough magic in them to be witches or wizards. By the same token, the children of witches or wizards can be born without magic in them and be what they call“squibs.” No explanation is offered as to why some people have this innate magical power versus others, but the innate magical power seems to render them far more durable than non-magical human beings. Characters of the Harry Potter stories survive many physical injuries that would clearly prove fatal to non-magical people in the real non-magical world. The apparent between children attempting to become witches or warlocks like those in the Harry Potter stories is not their muggle birth, but rather the problem that we have no magic wands made with the magical creature parts such as dragon heartstrings or unicorn hairs required for the direct application of magical power in Rowling’s magical world. But I don’t suppose this will stop new ageish human beings from looking for such magical devices even though they cannot exist.

But while I would disagree with many of the ways in which Rowling goes about her project, no one who has read the books can contest that she tries to deal with some important themes. Rowling emphasizes the power importance of both real love and romantic love. Truly God’s love is far more important, but one must understand and deal with the realities of romantic love as well in order to fully live life in the real world. Rowling also illustrates the problems of prejudices and loyalties, but from a very post-modern aspect. She shows how they can turn out well or turn out badly, but that the way they turn out is in many ways almost beyond the control of those who have them. Rowling also extensively mocks government. But then one must admit that government is so often worth mocking. I wonder if Rowling realizes that the Ministry of Magic in her books is more like the real labor government of England not because it abuses civil rights, but because it fails to recognize the true nature and power of radical Islamo-Fascism in much the same way that the Ministry of Magic refused to recognize the return of Voldemort (Rowling’s villain).

The Harry Potter books start out at a lower reading level and gradually increase to a higher reading level. The vocabulary goes from relatively simple to relatively complex. The concepts and situations to which the reader is exposed go from the dramatic but simple to the deeply complicated and troubling. In that sense, the books do appear to be designed to correspond to the growth and continued education of children over time. But as I say, I don’t think that Harry Potter is really good for young children who don’t understand why the occult is bad or who don’t understand the difference between good and evil and the importance of not taking revenge or of disliking people purely because they have irritating personalities. On the other hand, the books are extremely enjoyable and a wonderful reading experience for mature readers. They can stimulate thinking about character, loyalty, romance etc. The books are suspenseful, engaging, and fun.

Christian adults should read Harry Potter in order to be culturally literate. I believe that they will be seen as classical literature at some point in the future. Certainly a variety of elements including the fairy tale of the Deathly Hallows will be grist for the English professional journal writing mill for decades to come. For people who have any sort of reservation about adding to J.K. Rowling’s already vast wealth, the books can always be read by checking them out from the library or buying copies at used bookstores. But they probably should be read—just don’t go out and try to do any magic because of what you read.

Case Review: California Supreme Court Case In Re Marriage Cases

In 1999, the California Legislature enacted domestic partnership legislation. In 2000 and nearly every year thereafter, the benefits associated with domestic partnership were expanded by the State Legislature. By 2006, the state had given domestic partners nearly all of the benefits of marriage, including married filing status on state income taxes. There were still some differences relating to the parameters of defining domestic partnership, i.e. that it can’t be secret, that the parties must live together, etc.

In the year 2000, a backlash to the growth of gay rights in California occurred with Prop. 22, a proposition that made it a state law that marriage in California should be between one man and one woman. The law, however, did not affect domestic partnerships. In 2004, the Supreme Court of California rejected an attempt by local officials to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples. That decision was based largely on the local authorities’ lack of constitutional authority to force such a change on the state. The court, however, did not foreclose the possibility of future litigation. In the case In Re Marriage Cases, the question of the constitutionality of limiting marriage to opposite sex couples came before the California Supreme Court. On May 15 of this year, the California Supreme Court found that it was unconstitutional under the California State Constitution to limit marriage to opposite sex couples. The court concluded that denying same sex couples the label of “marriage” treated them as second-class citizens and violated equal protection under the California State Constitution

The court started off its reasoning by discussing several technical arguments such as the argument that the case was moot, that it was barred by Prop. 22, or that current marriage law already allowed domestic same sex marriage. After rejecting these, the court also went through a long summary of the development of laws related to marriage in California.

The court noted a general right to marry based on case law interpreting the California Constitution and the Federal Constitution. The court quoted Ortiz v L.A. Police Relief Association (2002) 98 Cal. App. 4th 1288 at 1303:

“We have recognized that the concept of personal liberties and fundamental human rights entitled to protection against overbroad intrusion or regulation by government extends to such basic civil liberties and rights not explicitly listed in the Constitution as the right to marry, establish a home, and bring up children.”

The court also referred to the right to marry as discussed in the federal courts in Meyer v Nebraska and Griswold v Connecticut. In this way, it associated a right to marry with fundamental rights and with privacy. But while the court cited federal cases based in natural law and natural right, it sought to avoid the traditionalist moral claims associated with that line of reasoning by focusing on the evolving nature of legal norms. The court noted, “Constitutional concepts are not static…we have never been confined to historic notions of equality.” It noted that in California, the right to marry “is not based on anachronistic notions of morality”…but is “rooted in the necessity of providing an institutional basis for defining the fundamental relational rights and responsibilities in an organized society.” The court, however, did make “moral” judgments of its own, and took a swipe at people who believe that homosexual acts are immoral by implying that the past was essentially wrong when it “once denigrated the general character and morals of gay individuals, and at one time even characterized homosexuality as a mental illness rather than as simply one of the numerous variables of our common and diverse humanity.” The court noted that by contrast, “this state’s current policies and conduct regarding homosexuality recognizes that gay individuals are entitled to the same legal rights and the same respect and dignity afforded all individuals and are protected from discrimination on the basis of their sexual orientation.”

The court characterized the question before it as not a question of whether or not there is a right for homosexuals to marry each other, but rather whether or not the right to marry could justly be denied to anyone based on sexual orientation. The court was aware of the argument that marriage law in California passes the equal protection test by allowing all persons to marry persons of the opposite sex regardless of sexual orientation. But they dismissed this as essentially requiring people with a homosexual orientation to change their orientation or live unsatisfied lives:

“In light of the fundamental nature of the substantive rights embodied in the right to marry—and their central importance to an individual’s opportunity to live a happy, meaningful, and satisfying life as a full member of society—the California Constitution properly must be interpreted to guarantee this basic civil right to all individuals and couples, without regard to their sexual orientation.”

The court finds that marriage is actually a cluster of rights that includes “the opportunity of an individual to establish—with the person with whom the individual has chosen to share his or her life—an officially recognized family.” The court tries to bolster its expansion of the notion of who’s entitled to marry by referring to other civil rights cases such as those involving miscegenation and the case involving reproductive freedom for a disabled woman. The court tries to say that rights should be interpreted broadly and has given a sweeping definition and scope, rather than limiting it through a narrow definition. The court attempts to distinguish the cases cited by the California Court of Appeal in which the Supreme Court had used a narrow definition of rights in order to avoid their expansion, such as its narrowing of the definition of autonomy in order to avoid a right for assisted suicide.

The court proceeds to an equal protection analysis in which it finds that sexual orientation is a suspect class. The court claims that sexual orientation is the equivalent of an immutable trait because “whether or not sexual orientation is based on biological factors, which may be a matter of some controversy, it is a deeply personal characteristic that is either unchangeable or changeable only at unacceptable personal costs.” The court concludes with little or no discussion of data that it is prima facia the case that homosexual people make a contribution to society and that that categorization does not in any way eliminate that contribution or mitigate it. They also discuss the history of stigma associated with homosexuality. Given those three criteria, they find that sexual orientation is, in fact, a suspect class and that strict scrutiny is the appropriate standard. The court finds no compelling interest for excluding people with a homosexual orientation from marriage to one another. The court claims that there is no harm to children either from gay parents or from the existence of homosexual unions, asserts that there is no harm done to opposite sex couples by expanding the scope of who may marry whom, says that the new definition of marriage will avoid the disparagement of people with a gay sexual orientation, and maintains that the law must not treat these people as second-class citizens. The court has an extensive discussion of the statutes that limit marriage to couples of the opposite sex, and concludes that these statutes are in effect unconstitutional. But the court recognizes that it should not destroy marriage itself, and so essentially allows that marriage will have to be understood to include same sex couples.

The practical impact of this case is, of course, that same sex couples can now officially marry in California. Now all of the rights pertaining to marriage will apply to them, including, for example, California Family Code sections 7540 and 297.5 that provide that a child born to one member of a couple is presumed to be the child of the other member of the couple as well. This, and the law related to annulment, will fit uncomfortably with same sex couples, but the California Supreme Court has not felt challenged by these anomalies.

The court has also already applied the Unruh Civil Rights Act to require that businesses not discriminate against people based on sexual orientation. This will undoubtedly also be expanded to include non-discrimination on the basis of same sex marriage. The court tried very hard to claim that its ruling would not interfere with religious freedom. The Court cited a provision of the California Constitution that says, “Free exercise and enjoyment of religion without discrimination or preference are guaranteed. This liberty of conscience does not excuse acts that are licentious or inconsistent with the peace and safety of the state.” The court said:

“Affording same sex couples the opportunity to obtain the designation of marriage will not impinge upon the religious freedom of any religious organization, official, or any other person; no religion will be required to change its religious policies or practices with regard to same sex couples, and no religious officient will be required to solemnize a marriage in contradiction of his or her beliefs.”

Of course, this statement is dicta. It remains to be seen whether or not future courts will accord churches the religious freedom, or whether they will conclude that the exercise of that religious freedom in deciding against the morality of same sex unions is “inconsistent with the peace and safety of the state.”

The same dilemma will face policy makers with respect to private schools. It remains to be seen if private schools will be allowed to maintain statements of faith or other documents that have either the intent or effect of discriminating against homosexual couples or individuals. The effect on public schools, however, is quite certain. Public schools will almost certainly be required to teach that same sex marriage is entitled to the same respect and dignity accorded the unions traditionally designated as marriages. In effect, it is now public policy in California that homosexual sex is just as normative and normal as any other kind. It will need to be discussed in a positive light in sex education classes. It will need to be depicted in a positive light in books K through college graduation. Students who are critical of same sex relations will need to be disciplined just as if they expressed racial animus or other irrational or bigoted ideas. It remains to be seen how the parents in the state will accept this. But it would appear that so far the court has made this shift in conjunction with the legislature without any real opposition except for Proposition 22 and Proposition 8.

Yet to come from the effects of this ruling are a variety of other demands, issues, and conundrums. It is likely that this issue will be used as a wedge to get rid of civil marriage as we know it and only have contractual relationships and a separate non-legal, non-state recognized religious marriage. That would be a precursor to encouraging an uncommitted “free love” society with no civil benefits for marriage and no special rights for parents of families or special family control over children. Such a situation would encourage lack of marital commitment on the part of nearly everyone except sincere religious believers or people who recognize their self interest in having some sort of a marital union. It would also facilitate the shift of parental responsibility from families to the state.

Calls to get rid of exemption for faith-based organizations and churches in hiring may only be the beginning of the difficulties that faith-based organizations face. Will the California Legislature ultimately claim that the Bible is hate speech because of its opposition to homosexual sex or same sex unions?

Demands for the right to clone human beings and utilize other genetic manipulations are likely to increase with the desire of same sex couples to have children with the genes of one or both “parents.” Polygamy and polyamory are also on the horizon. While the court in a footnote denied that polygamy was consistent with “mutual supportive and healthy family relationships,” that can easily be contested through pseudo-scientific studies like those supportive of same sex parenting, and can easily be subjected to the same gradual change through social pressure and avant garde legislation. There is no principled way under the court’s reasoning in In re Marriage cases to prevent polygamy or polyamory. Practitioners of polygamy and polyamory can likewise claim that their propensity to this is in some way immutable and linked to their fundamental personality. They can also claim that there is nothing wrong with their sort of unions and that they will benefit society. Certainly they can claim that they, too, have been subjected to social opposition and stigma. In other words, they can easily obtain the same strict scrutiny that the court used In re Marriage Cases and, given a few years of social pressure and Hollywood TV and movie-making to approve them, they can easily obtain the same imprimatur of a court eager to please a left-leaning contingent in society.

Of course the results from this court decision are going to be devastating. There will be widespread adjustment problems for the children of same sex marriages. Think what will happen when they are confronted with moral and biblical truth as they grow up. In the 1970s and 80s, there were literally hundreds of books written by people who identified the cause of their dysfunctional families as the stoicism of their fathers and grandfathers. Just wait until we have to deal with the hundreds of male children raised by two women who hate men and the female children raised by two men who hate women. In addition, it is likely that the levels of child abuse and subsequent acting out are likely to increase as we see more non-genetic parents who recognize no inherent moral limits on what they consider legitimate activity. While not all homosexuals are pedophiles, and not all pedophiles are homosexuals, there is a high correlation rate between pedophilia and male homosexuality. As a result, we are likely to see increases in child abuse for that reason alone. In addition, other moral ideas will erode because there is less fear of God and man in a society that is willing to sanction same sex unions. Instead, we have only desire and an arrogant demand for human autonomy. Most people fear God or man enough to be “civilly righteous.” In other words, they don’t openly kill people, or openly steal things, or do other obvious and open crimes. One aspect of civic righteousness was that people avoided public sexual immorality. Now the Supreme Court of California says the public must endorse certain kinds of sexual immorality. We now “not only do such things, but approve of those who do them.” Romans chapter one clearly speaks of the acceleration of moral decay based upon such gradual rejection of God and His order.

Of course one other problem that is likely to accelerate is that we will face unprecedented legal shell games with the most fundamental and sweeping aspects of our culture even at the hands of supposedly conservative justices like Justice Ronald George. This is due in no small part to the way lawyers and judges are trained in secular law schools. Unless the fundamental nature of legal education is altered so that lawyers and future judges and future legislators are once again taught and made to understand the implied limits of law, the nature of the rule of law, and the relationship between law and objective morality, we will see more and more of the same, even if there is a temporary reprieve through the passage of Proposition 8 or other constitutional legislation.

There are several lessons we can learn from all of this. Allowing social evil in the present leads to more social evil later. Slavery and racial discrimination in the United States were very wrong. They were heretical and should never have been allowed by Christian people in a society dominated by Christians. Allowing them for so long and dragging feet in correcting them created the judicial power and template for the In Re Marriage Cases decision. If we had not allowed slavery and discrimination, this never would have happened because the courts would have been limited to dealing with individual disputes instead of becoming broad social policymakers in these areas. In other words, the court accrued power dealing with a legitimate moral evil, but now has used that power in order to create a moral evil. Had the first moral evil not been tolerated politically, it never would have been necessary for the court to accrue that power.

This also goes to show that incrementalism does work if pursued consistently over time. You have to hand it to the homosexual lobby that they have survived tremendous moral and social pressure and worked through an incremental agenda that has achieved incredible results for them in a remarkably short period of time. This also shows that giving some groups a compromise of legal ground does not necessarily end an issue, but gives them a foothold for their next claim. The nature of legal change is also evident here. Changes in the law often seem sudden, but usually the reality is that small incremental changes in the law build up and create a tension that is suddenly resolved in a change that appears rapid—but was really foreshadowed and pre-arranged by all the small changes that went before. So no small change in the law is necessarily really small if it is part of a trend. In re Marriage Cases is also part of a trend in the public square to exclude or reject arguments based on morality or the Bible. Yet the abolitionists and Martin Luther King could cite the Bible and did so successfully. But in our culture and society, speaking straight from the Bible is no longer a socially viable strategy. Increasingly there is even hostile pressure from those who sense a religious belief behind a secular argument. To you, my fellow users of the internet, this should be more than apparent. The attack comments by radical secularists are quite common on religious blogs. This has led many bloggers to go to a moderated format.

What do I actually think about In re Marriage Cases? Well, I think you can tell from what I’ve already said about the implications. I think it is a perfectly dreadful opinion that uses legal sleight of hand and makes an argument that is quite inappropriate. What the court is really doing is changing the understanding of marriage. Marriage has always been understood as a union between a man and one or more women in all societies. There are no sustained and numerous instances of men marrying men or women marrying women. There aren’t even common instances of many men with one woman. Christianity and an enlightened understanding of the interest of women has illuminated what Jesus Himself said that originally God created Adam and Eve—one man and one woman—and the two of them joined together and became one flesh. What God has joined together, human beings really shouldn’t tear apart. Of course the problem with marriage as with all institutions is that human sinfulness creates additional problems that often mean that a marital union cannot survive. Yet it is still the case in nearly all civilizations that marriage is between one man and one woman, or at the very outside, one man and a handful of women. Same sex unions really are an exceptionally radical idea. But then ideas are not inherently bad because they are radical. They are bad if they are immoral. And indeed, same sex marriage is immoral. The Bible teaches in many places, including the first chapter of the book of Romans, that homosexual acts and desires are not in accord with God’s optimal design for the way human beings are meant to live. They are damaging to society as well as to the individuals who engage in them. This is not to say that they are the very worst of all sins. Certainly there are many sins and there are probably sins worse than same sex unions (certainly genocide, for example). But no sin is excused because other people commit other sins.

Here the court has transgressed a major boundary. It has sought to create a civil right to do something that is inherently wrong. As I have said on this blog before, real objective rights that come from God cannot be rights specifically to do something wrong. They may be rights that make it easier for you to get away with doing something wrong, but there cannot be a right to do wrong in itself. Humanly created rights should similarly not transgress this boundary and specifically enable evil. Yet that is exactly what the court has done here. It is requiring a civil imprimatur for evil.

The court essentially did this by saying that there is a right to marriage itself and that that right applies to all people regardless of who they are inclined to marry. Now the court could have stopped there if it was willing to say that the right to marry is the right to do what marriage has always meant, marrying someone of the opposite sex who is above the age of consent, and not a close of a blood relation. Instead, they have decided that marriage includes the ability to marry whoever you want, even if they are of the same sex. This is a fundamental radical change, and yet the court does very little to justify it apart from saying that attitudes against homosexuality are outmoded, outdated, and contradicted by the legislative trend of the state of California. The court also tries to say that marriage law is really in the realm of positive law. But the court uses many citations from Meyer v Nebraska and other cases that are speaking about natural law, natural rights, and the right reason of the common law as sources for fundamental rights. It is those kinds of arguments that made marriage a fundamental right to begin with, not any kind of positive law finding or indication. The court is cheating not merely by saying that they are merely expanding a recognized right to marriage, but in their claim that they have positive law power vis á vis the right to marry.

Based on this, what can we do? We need to react in love and prudence, and NOT in hate and fear. Certainly the most important thing we can do is to pray. We need to pray for more people to come to Christ, and for revival among those who already believe. We need to pray for good sound doctrine to be taught, believed, learned, and lived. We need to pray for wisdom and for better leaders and judges than we deserve. We need to pray for repentance and for at least a temporary reformation of society. Practically, we can support Proposition 8. We can also make sure that our churches have appropriate expressions of policy on same sex marriage that make clear our religious beliefs and why we believe them so that they can be protected as religious beliefs. We also need to get more good people involved in the political process and train more good people as lawyers. We need to stand against societal evil and injustice regardless of what it is so that we can prevent this kind of situation in the future. We need to educate and train our children in the faith and in sound doctrine and reasoning, and we need to support good Christian education, especially legal education.