—

Dear Phillies Organization,

I am writing in response to the rainbows all over your twitter feed, which I take to mean you are celebrating Gay Pride month.

—

The Nicene Creed
(Nicaeno-Constantinopolitan)

We believe in one God the Father Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible.

And in one Lord Jesus Christ,

the only-begotten son of God:
the one begotten from the Father before all the ages,
light of light, true God of true God,
begotten not made, being of one substance with the Father,
through whom all things came into being,
who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven
and became flesh by the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary,
and became man and was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered and was buried,
and on the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures
and ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of the Father;
and he shall come again with glory to judge the living and the dead,
whose kingdom shall have no end.

And in the Holy Spirit,

the Lord and life-giver,
the one who proceeds from the Father and the Son,
who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified,
who spoke through the prophets.

In one holy, catholic, and apostolic church:

we confess one baptism for the forgiveness of sins;
we expect the resurrection of the dead
and the life of the age to come. Amen.

We believe in one God the Father Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible.

And in one Lord Jesus Christ,

the only-begotten son of God:
the one begotten from the Father before all the ages,
light of light, true God of true God,
begotten not made, being of one substance with the Father,
through whom all things came into being,
who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven
and became flesh by the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary,
and became man and was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered and was buried,
and on the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures
and ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of the Father;
and he shall come again with glory to judge the living and the dead,
whose kingdom shall have no end.

And in the Holy Spirit,

the Lord and life-giver,
the one who proceeds from the Father,
who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified,
who spoke through the prophets.

In one holy, catholic, and apostolic church:

we confess one baptism for the forgiveness of sins;
we expect the resurrection of the dead
and the life of the age to come. Amen.

—

Some notes:

In the fall of 2017 I decided to make my own translation of the Creed for potential use in worship at Kenwood Baptist Church at Victory Memorial. We discussed it as elders and agreed that for 2018 we would recite the Nicene Creed at the end of the worship service where we had been doing the Apostles’ Creed.

Being more familiar with the phrases of the Greek New Testament than with the Greek text of this Creed, what struck me most was how so many of these Greek phrases match up almost exactly with the wording of the Greek New Testament. We tried to preserve and communicate this in our translation.

I made the initial translation from the text in Schaff’s Creeds of Christendom, which does not include the filioque (“and the son” after “the one who proceeds from the Father” in the statement on the Holy Spirit). I then sent the translation to my fellow elder Denny Burk, who worked over it, caught some errors I had made, and we had a healthy discussion about whether to use “seen and unseen” or “visible and invisible.” You can see from the translation where we came down.

Denny then had the idea to send the translation to Scott Swain, Fred Sanders, and Michael Haykin to get their input. We wanted to make sure we weren’t missing something, and we wanted their opinion on the filioque clause.

At the end of the day, we decided not to include the filioque in our translation. We did not leave it out because we do not believe it. We think the idea is taught in John 14–16. We left it out for reasons like these: first and foremost, it wasn’t in the original text we were translating. Second, whereas the Creed was universally accepted, there wasn’t universal agreement on the inclusion of that clause, and we see leaving it out as a way to avoid unnecessary disagreement.

Matt Damico and I then went over the translation and eliminated many unnecessary commas.

We want to confess the faith that has been handed down to us in unity with believers across space and through time. We want to do this week after week until these words become part of the fabric of who we are. The repetition of the creed weekly in worship will, hopefully, result in many of us memorizing it, so that its phrases flow from our lips and its vocabulary structures our thinking.

May the Lord build up and bless his people on the knowledge of him.

Celebrating the Passover meal at the Last Supper (Mark 14:14), Jesus had taken the unleavened bread that commemorated Israel’s hasty departure from Egypt and declared that it no longer represented the exodus from Egypt but now symbolized his body. This took place “on the night when he was betrayed” (1 Cor 11:23). He would be crucified the next day, and that reality informed his breaking of the bread and saying the words, “This is my body which is for you” (11:24).

Jeremiah had prophesied that God would save his people in the future in a way that would make them stop identifying Yahweh as the God who brought them out of Egypt. Instead, they would identify Yahweh as the God who had accomplished for them this new, definitive salvation that would bring them into the land of promise (Jer 16:14–15; 23:7–8). The authors of the New Testament present Jesus accomplishing that definitive new-exodus salvation by his death and resurrection, which will return his people from exile that they might inhabit a new heavens and new earth forever. On the night he was betrayed, Jesus transformed the feast that commemorated the exodus from Egypt into a feast that celebrated the exodus he would accomplish in Jerusalem (Luke 9:31).

When Paul wrote the words, “For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you” (1 Cor 11:23), he established the point that the celebration of the Supper was given by Jesus to him as an Apostle with the intention that he and the other Apostles would institute this tradition wherever followers of Jesus met to worship him. The bread that Jesus took (11:23) would have been the unleavened bread that symbolized Israel’s hasty departure from Egypt (cf. Exod 12:7–12). The giving of thanks Paul mentions (11:24) was likely one of the traditional prayers that accompanied the Passover meal.

Read from this perspective, when Jesus says, “This is my body which is for you,” he means something like this: eating the unleavened Passover bread helped us remember and celebrate our hasty departure from Egypt when God delivered us from slavery, but I am instituting a new feast that replaces the old one; in this new feast the broken bread is to help you remember and celebrate my broken body by which God delivers you from slavery to sin. Thus when Jesus says, “Do this in remembrance of me” (1 Cor 11:24), he means for his disciples to remember his death on their behalf. Further supporting this view is Paul’s statement in 1 Corinthians 11:26, “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” The bread is a symbol of the broken body of Jesus. He who eats the bread does so to remember the death of Jesus in his place. He who eats the bread proclaims that death to others.

Paul presents Jesus taking up what commemorated the exodus from Egypt and turning it into a commemoration of his death on behalf of his people: “Do this in remembrance of me” (11:24). No longer would the people of God celebrate the Passover to remember the exodus. They would now celebrate the Lord’s Supper to remember the cross, where the exodus type was fulfilled.

Just as Old Testament Israel was instructed to celebrate the Passover to commemorate the exodus from Egypt, Jesus instructed his followers to “do this in remembrance of me” (1 Cor 11:24). Just as the exodus from Egypt was accompanied by Yahweh’s initiation of the Mosaic covenant with his people at Sinai, the new exodus Jesus accomplished was accompanied by the initiation of the new covenant, as can be seen from what Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 11:25, “In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.’” The cup, of course, is not literally the covenant (nor does the cup somehow become the covenant). Rather, the fruit of the vine in the cup symbolized the blood of Jesus shed on the cross: “This cup is the new covenant in my blood” (11:25). Just as the old covenant was inaugurated with blood (e.g., Exod 24:8), Jesus announced that the new covenant in his own blood would be inaugurated by his death on the cross (cf. Heb 9:11–28). Those who quaff the cup relish the fellowship of new covenant anticipation of the return of Christ and the consummation of his kingdom (Luke 22:18).

In his comments on the Lord’s Supper in 1 Corinthians, Paul teaches that the Supper reflects the unity of believers with Christ and one another, demanding their separation from idolatry (1 Cor 10:14–22), destroying socio-economic dividers (11:17–22), rehearsing the self-giving redemptive sacrifice of Christ (11:23–26), and thereby urging believers to follow Christ in laying down their lives for others (1 Cor 11:27–34).

Related: 

• How Often Should a Church Take the Lord’s Supper
• The Lord’s Supper in Paul

In her fiction, Rowling treats even Voldemort sympathetically. She takes nothing away from the evil he chooses to pursue, nor does she make the reader delight in his wickedness. What she does is put the reader in position to understand how Voldemort got to be so bad. She shows us the way he was wronged, helps us understand how needy he felt, and traces the steps he took—wrong steps, selfish steps, willful steps—that led him down the path of cruelty. Voldemort is evil, but Rowling presents him such that her readers understand the choices he made even as they hope for his demise. We feel sad that Tom Riddle chose so poorly, even as we love the good things he seeks to destroy. He’s the villain pure and simple, but still it can be said: J. K. Rowling loves Voldemort and respects him. She treats him with the honor and dignity due to a human being, even one who has literally dehumanized himself.

Perhaps, in spite of what she tweets, she has a similar understanding and sympathy for those whose politics differ from her own.

It seems to me that the twitter feed has led to some mistaken impressions about the meaning of the literature. Ross Douthat takes the Harry Potter stories as an allegory about the ruling elite’s struggle to deal with flyover country. Hillary Clinton thinks they instill progressive values in the young. Others have referred to the Potter stories as “secular” and suggested that their worldview is thin.

In what follows I want to argue that J. K. Rowling’s Christianity comes through profoundly in her fiction (the Cormoran Strike novels included) in a way that subverts the worldview of the political left and softens callused hearts on the right. The deep meaning of the stories, however, transcends today’s political streetfights, tells the truth about the world, challenges the secular premises of our age, and insures that these novels will stand with the greats of the western literary canon.

A Secular Age?

Charles Taylor has described the “buffered self” and the “expressive individualism” of the “exclusive humanism” of our culture. These terms describe the way many in our culture try to explain the world without any appeal to the divine or the transcendent (exclusive humanism), the way people live for themselves rather than for God, nation, or family (expressive individualism), and the way people think they are not vulnerable to influences beyond what they can see (buffered self).

Who embodies these secular perspectives in the Potter stories? Well, the Dursleys refuse to believe in magic, even after they have the pig’s tail removed from Ickle Diddykins, and Lord Voldemort lives only for himself, to extend his life however many people he must kill, however he must rip his own soul to shreds. J. K. Rowling is not exactly lionizing the progressive ideal.

The Potterverse is not the kind of place where everything that exists can be explained by scientific analysis, naturalistic evolution, and materialistic determinism. The Hogwarts saga is set in a world full of magic, a world not so much different from one in which, to borrow from N. D. Wilson, “Apple trees turn flowers into apples using sunlight and air.” J. K. Rowling’s world is full of magic, just like the one we inhabit. (By the way, the magic in the Potter stories is just like the magic in Narnia and Middle Earth. This is not the kind of magic the Bible condemns, which seeks to manipulate demonic powers. Rather, people who do magic in these stories have gifts, abilities, and they choose to use their gifts for good or bad causes).

Charles Taylor also spoke of the “cross pressure” people feel when the divine and the transcendent foist themselves on those trying to live in a world without anything like God. J. K. Rowling’s stories are saying to all such people, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

The Progressive Worldview Subverted?

If there is anything that characterizes the left, it’s the idea that government can and should address the world’s problems. With the right people in power, the correct values imposed on the populace, and the best political system enacted, just outcomes can be insured for all people. Well, at least all the people the government deems worthy of justice.

If there is anything that characterizes the Harry Potter stories (and the Cormoran Strike novels), it’s the idea that no one should look to the government to fix anything. The government in the Harry Potter stories is worse than just neutral, it’s populated by fools and supporters of the Dark Lord, pursues cruel and wicked policies, and eventually becomes Voldemort’s own tool. In the Cormoran Strike novels, the authorities bumble along drawing wrong conclusions, resisting the force of truth, and impeding the course of justice.

Are these kinds of stories we expect from someone who believes the government can fix everything? For the left, the government replaces God, and politics replace religion. Not so in J. K. Rowling’s fiction. In her fiction, the government values itself, not the people. What the government seeks to do is make itself look good and maintain its own power not make life better for the people. And when things finally do get better in a Rowling novel, whether it’s the downfall of Voldemort or the solving of a crime, the achievement belongs not to government but to individuals who love truth, goodness, and beauty and risk their own lives for things that matter more than their own safety.

For progressives, the media—newspapers, journalists, talking heads—are looked to as a source of truth. People look to the news to find out what is happening and for help in processing how to respond. Information, values, opinions, and feelings are all shaped by those who do the reporting.

For J. K. Rowling in her fiction, the media are a pack of self-serving wolves preying on the populace. They live under the thumb of the government and are easily manipulated by anyone with power or money. In both the Potter and Strike novels, the press is mainly interested in clickbait, not truth. The Daily Prophet won’t, or can’t, report what is really happening. It opposes the good guys and shapes the opinions of the public in favor of Lord Voldemort against Harry Potter. The press in the Strike novels are bloodthirsty paparazzi and reporters who delight in ruining people’s lives.

Most people in the Potter stories and the Strike novels are treated sympathetically by J. K. Rowling. Not so with government officials or members of the media.

Whatever might be concluded from her twitter feed or other public statements she makes, in her fiction J. K. Rowling teaches that no one should expect help from the government, and no one should expect truth from the media.

Softening Hard-Hearts on the Right?

Have you read the Potter stories? Have you re-read them? (You can thank me when you’ve done so.) Have you noticed how your sympathy for different characters deepens as you encounter and re-encounter them? You sympathize with a werewolf, you lament that Tom Riddle’s mom didn’t love him the way Harry’s did, you see how Hagrid’s optimistic devotion tames Grawp, you feel the force of what Hermione says about house elves as you come to know Dobby and Creature, and you rejoice at the way Harry Potter honored two of the bravest men he’d ever known, headmasters of Hogwarts, one a vampire, the other outed by his author as gay.

Having said all this, it must be said again: in no way does J. K. Rowling provoke an appetite for evil. She shows what evil does, it gets people killed, people we love, people we know are needed by characters we care about.

In the Potter stories, love is the greatest magic. So Rowling said she always thought of Dumbledore as gay. He’s a celibate, single, wise old man who repeatedly refused the post of Minister of Magic (because he didn’t trust himself with power, and because government never does good). Dumbledore never gives any indication that he wants to redefine morality, and he even takes steps to protect himself from becoming too attached to his students, in the process protecting them from his own weakness. If I may be allowed to put it this way, Albus Dumbledore looks like a man who embraces traditional Christian morality who is struggling well against same sex attraction.

The reader who sees all this will grow in understanding, sympathy, and have his hard heart softened. But nothing in the Harry Potter stories or Cormoran Strike novels redefines morality, promotes a sexual or moral revolution, or advocates government takeover.

Telling the Truth about the World

If this has not been controversial enough, let me suggest that in Career of Evil, under the pseudonym of Robert Galbraith, J. K. Rowling has subverted the premise that undergirds all things Trans—transgender, transable, transracial, transwhatever. She accomplishes this through the fact that the main character of the stories, Cormoran Strike, lost half a leg in the war in Afghanistan.

In the course of an investigation, Strike comes into contact with people from the “transabled” community dealing with “Body Integrity Disorder.” These people want to have parts of their bodies amputated—working parts of their bodies.

The people Strike encounters have heard lies about Strike. They have been told that Strike was not injured in the war but is like them, someone who “needed” to have a working part of his body removed. As if a human “needs” to be disabled. The audience naturally sympathizes with Strike, and Rowling rehearses how as he recovered in the hospital he saw so many men who had been disabled, men who would have preferred to have been whole.

Strike’s reaction to the transabled is bracingly real. His assessment is that such people do not need help having body parts removed, they need mental and emotional help.

I submit that this fictional account argues that people should not seek to remove body parts or alter their sexual or racial identity but embrace what God has made them to be.

Great Literature

So much more could be said about these novels and topics, but I will conclude by echoing the sentiment of the Dean of Harry Potter Scholars, Hogwarts Professor John Granger: J. K. Rowling is the Charles Dickens of our time, and Harry Potter is the “shared text” of the 21^st century. As of May 2013, the series had sold more than 500 million copies worldwide, making it the best selling series in history, and there is no indication that it’s losing steam. Go to your local bookstore and note the many prominent displays of Harry Potter books.

From open to close, the series is about the greatest kind of love, the kind where people lay down their lives for others. Moreover, there is an alchemical undercurrent of meaning that lies below the surface of the gripping stories. That undercurrent is all about Harry Potter being refined in the fires of testing until he has been transformed from base metal to pure gold. The pure gold is Christlikeness, as Harry Potter’s furious desire to live takes the form of his readiness to die.

I love these stories. I talk about the Harry Potter novels all the time—to my kids, in my teaching and preaching, and with friends, and I’m eagerly anticipating Book 4 in the Cormoran Strike series. If you’ve not yet read Harry Potter, you are in for such a treat. These books will make you better: better at loving, better at living, and better at worshiping God the Father through Christ the Son in the power of the Spirit.

Why not try to read it?

Here you go:

Πιστεύομεν εἰς ἕνα ΘΕΟΝ ΠΑΤΕΡΑ παντοκράτορα, ποιητὴν οὐρανοῦ καὶ γῆς, ὁρατῶν τε πάντων καὶ ἀοράτων.

Καὶ εἰς ἕνα κύριον ἸΗΣΟΥΝ ΧΡΙΣΤΟΝ, τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ θεοῦ τὸν μονογενῆ, τὸν ἐκ τοῦ πατρὸς γεννηθέντα πρὸ πάντων τῶν αἰώνων, φῶς ἐκ φωτός, θεὸν ἀληθινὸν ἐκ θεοῦ ἀληθινοῦ, γεννηθέντα, οὐ ποιηθέντα, ὁμοούσιον τῷ πατρί· διʼ οὔ τὰ πάντα ἐγένετο· τὸν διʼ ἡμᾶς τοὺς ἀνθρώπους καὶ διὰ τὴν ἡμετέραν σωτηρίαν κατελθόντα ἐκ τῶν οὐρανῶν καὶ σαρκωθέντα ἐκ πνεύματος ἁγίου καὶ Μαρίας τῆς παρθένου καὶ ἐνανθρωπήσαντα, σταυρωθέντα τε ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν ἐπὶ Ποντίου Πιλάτου, καὶ παθόντα καὶ ταφέντα, καὶ ἀναστάντα τῇ τρίτῃ ἡμέρᾳ κατὰ τὰς γραφάς, καὶ ἀνελθόντα εἰς τοὺς οὐρανούς, καὶ καθεζόμενον ἐκ δεξιῶν τοῦ πατρός, καὶ πάλιν ἐρχόμενον μετὰ δόξης κρῖναι ζῶντας καὶ νεκρούς· οὗ τῆς βασιλείας οὐκ ἔσται τέλος.

Καὶ εἰς τὸ ΠΝΕΥΜΑ ΤΟ ἌΓΙΟΝ, τὸ κύριον, (καὶ) τὸ ζωοποιόν, τὸ ἐκ τοῦ πατρὸς ἐκπορευόμενον, τὸ σὺν πατρὶ καὶ ὑιῷ συν προσκυνούμενον καὶ συν δοξαζόμενον, τὸ λαλῆσαν διὰ τῶν προφητῶν· εἰς μίαν, ἁγίαν, καθολικὴν καὶ ἀποστολικὴν ἐκκλησίαν· ὁμολογοῦμεν ἓν βάπτισμα εἰς ἄφεσιν ἁμαρτιῶν· προσδοκῶμεν ἀνάστασιν νεκρῶν, καὶ ζωὴν τοῦ μέλλοντος αἰώνος. Ἀμήν.

Dear Airbnb,

Your new community commitment discriminates against any person of the historic faiths of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity who remains committed to the moral teaching of those faiths.

Christianity and Judaism uphold the sanctity of marriage as a union of one man and one woman, and like Christianity and Judaism, Islam holds that God created human beings as male and female.

Your new policy on “discrimination” and “bias” does nothing but embrace the “bias” of those who believe other things—things pertaining to transgenderism and gay marriage.

So you may think that your policy is enlightened and kind, but all you have really done is trade one set of moral standards for a different set.

And in the application of your new moral standards, you are not achieving your “commitment” to “treat everyone . . . with respect, and without judgment or bias.” Instead, you are exercising “bias” and acting on a moral “judgment” that condemns everyone who adheres to the teaching of Christianity and Judaism (and at points Islam, which holds to the gender binary, condemns homosexual activity, but also embraces polygamy).

You are biased. Your policy is judgmental. And your new morality will be far more harmful than the one you have rejected in favor of this new moral code that belongs only to the religious adherents of late-modern secularism.

I refuse to commit myself to your newly invented moral code, which has been dictated by the false gods of secularism. In my view, your gods are no gods, and your worship of them is merely idolatry. You may, of course, cancel my Airbnb account.

Sincerely,

James M. Hamilton Jr.

Here are my complaints, as they come to me:

• The characters are flat and boring and say the kinds of dumb things we say in real life with all our cliches and banality. These hacks have the same names, but they are nothing like the surprising, funny, noble, sincere, honest, endearing, real characters in the Rowling novels. One of the bad guys in the novels tells Harry that if he’s going to use an unforgivable curse, he has to mean it. These characters don’t seem to mean it.
• The plot fails to grip. The book arrived on my doorstep last night. We got the kids in bed, and I started reading around 10pm. At the end of Act 1, I went to bed. It was about 11:30. And I had done other things than read in that hour and a half. If this were a J. K. Rowling novel, I would not have been able to put it down to do other things, and I would not have gone to bed at 11:30. I likely would have read into the early morning, unable to stop until I simply couldn’t read any more. But this isn’t a Rowling novel.
• The plot fails to convince. In a Rowling novel, the spell is cast convincingly and both the story-world and the events that take place in it so fit that we never pull up from the book and say to ourselves: that would never happen. Or: there’s a simpler fix for all this. Or: this is preposterous. Or: I don’t think these characters would act in these ways. Everything in a Rowling novel is right and feels inevitable. She does the necessary work to set us up, and she does it in a beautiful way. But this play by Jack Thorne isn’t a novel by J. K. Rowling, so I repeatedly found myself broken out of the weak spell of its world, unconvinced by the unnecessary events, the dumb solutions, and the trite words and actions of the characters.
• Whatever has been said about him since the end of Book 7, Ron Weasley is a great guy in the Rowling novels. He’s a big enough person to be normal around the boy who lived when he first meets him, and then at the end of the first story sacrifices himself for his friends. He is funny, principled, heroic, and true to the right. His barbs toward enemies have teeth, and his dialogue is sharp and witty. In this stupid play Ron is a worthless doof of a loser. That’s not fair to him, and I don’t know why J. K. Rowling signed off on letting this be done to someone she cared so much about as she wrote those magnificent novels. She should have had more dignity. She should have loved Ron now as she loved him then. And she should not have let her name appear on this new play by Jack Thorne. She should not have let Jack Thorne and John Tiffany do this to her creation. And if it’s her fault it’s the way it is, she should have let the creation stand as it was rather than risk ruining it with this failed add-on.
• Even worse than Ron is the way Harry is presented in this play. If he’s going to be such an incompetent father in this disappointment, why not just leave the hero alone and the story untold? I simply do not believe that the Harry Potter of those seven great novels would be as bad a father as this play tries to make him. The Harry Potter in this play never could have done what the Harry Potter in the novels did: The play-Harry could not have loved people, understood what was at stake, been taught by Dumbledore, and sacrificed himself the way the novel-Harry did. If he could have done all those things, he wouldn’t be the loser-dad the play-Harry is. So even though the play-Harry has the same name as the novel-Harry, they are not the same character.
• Please. The adult novel-Harry would never say to Dumbledore-in-the-portrait: “I have proved as bad a father to him as you were to me.” I’m just not buying it. Adolescent Harry who didn’t know or understand the whole story could have blown up at Dumbledore the way he does when he throws a fit in his office. But then the rest of the story happened, and the characters both matured through their experiences and came to understand the necessity of everything that happened in the novels. In this play, the main characters are childish, even though they’re presented as adults. And these characters went through too much in those seven novels to be childish adults. Adults in our culture are childish, but adults in our culture haven’t been through what Harry, Ron, and Hermione went through, nor have they stood up the way the threesome did.
• If J. K. Rowling wrote the lines of these characters in this play, she didn’t begin to approach what she achieved in the dialogue of the novels. So I’m inclined to think that either she didn’t write the lines and someone without her genius is responsible for the tripe, or that she’s too busy now, or that she failed to enter into this new story with all her emotional range and creative power. Because the dialogue stinks.
• This play is a sappy, uninteresting attempt at sentimentality that fails to convince and just leaves me disgusted that someone would attempt to manipulate my emotions rather than earning the right to move me with real goodness, deep beauty, and high truth.

To sum up, the difference between reading a J. K. Rowling novel and reading this new play by Jack Thorne is like the difference between watching LeBron James play basketball and watching yours truly attempt the same. The one is dynamic, mesmerizing, awesome in his physical prowess and dominating presence. Thousands gather every time LeBron takes the court, and even more tune in for the spectacle. The other is the attempt of a guy in his 40s to get some exercise, not something even friends and family would have any reason to show up to watch.

Maybe Cursed Child is better on stage than read as a script, but I doubt it. Shakespeare’s plays do just fine when you read the script instead of seeing them enacted. Not this one. This is no J. K. Rowling novel. There’s no magic here.

Summary

A lot of her post is personal narrative about how she campaigned for Bush, “represented the worldview of conservative evangelicals” on an MTV reality show, and then went off to study religion at the University of Pittsburgh. She talks about how people at her church warned her about liberal university influence, and of her confidence that: “surely a faith as strong as mine could stand up to academic scrutiny.”

She explains that “what happened . . . wasn’t an abandonment of [her] faith, but a shift in [her] understanding of Scripture.” From what she says in her post, she appears to have shifted from believing everything the Bible teaches (the position of her un-schooled Sunday School teachers) to believing the parts of it that would be embraced at the University of Pittsburgh. She describes reading the Bible “through unfiltered eyes” and learning “about scholarly investigation.” In the end: “[the evangelicals’] old Jesus looked nothing like [her] new Jesus.”

How did her new Jesus differ? She could “no longer reconcile

1. Jesus’s calls for non-judgment
2. loving your enemies
3. and taking up your cross

“with many of the Religious Right’s positions on

1. social services
2. women’s rights
3. and the LGBT community

She goes on to relate how “increased reading of the Bible correlated with greater passion for social justice–a trait typically associated with liberalism.” She describes her “worldview fall[ing] apart like a house of cards,” and states, “Now I no longer identify as an evangelical, but I study them for a living.”

She writes,

“Only after my doctrinal evolution did I realize I no longer aligned with the political conservatism for which I once literally campaigned. Jesus was a champion of the poor, the weak, the meek, and downtrodden. He encouraged his followers to ‘sell their possessions’ and give them to the poor. He hung out with hookers and crooks. The lifestyle of Jesus didn’t look anything like the politics of the Right.”

She voices some other concerns about the hypocrisy of evangelicals supporting the likes of Ronald Reagan the divorcee, Mitt Romney the Mormon, and Donald Trump the bragging adulterer. She concludes, “The life of Jesus simply didn’t reflect the agenda of the political right, so now neither could I.”

Response

I suspect that many people resonate with Susie’s concerns, and I don’t want to be antagonistic in the way that I address them. Let’s be friendly, and let’s talk about the ideas and issues, isolating them and understanding the choices that we’re all making.

As I listen to Susie, I hear four concerns that I would like to discuss with her. The first has to do with the way that Jesus lived, with his instruction to “judge not” in Matthew 7:1, and with “the Right” that Susie left behind. The second has to do with the shift she describes in her understanding of Scripture, the third with the relationship between the Bible and worldview, and the fourth with the influence of our families, our communities, and our teachers.

1. Jesus, Hookers and Crooks, Non-Judgment, and the Right

Susie is right that Jesus was a friend of sinners–and praise God for it! We’re all sinners, and what a relief that “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” (1 Tim 2:5).

But what Susie doesn’t mention is that while Jesus engaged people where they were, he never left them there. Jesus told that woman he defended (it’s not clear the woman in John 8:1–11 was a prostitute) to go and sin no more (John 8:11).

That very passage also addresses the “non-judgment” issue. The defense Jesus provided for that woman against those who would stone her relied upon him judging that what those accusing her were doing was not right and them being convinced by his righteous appeal to the truth. The words of Jesus in Matthew 7:1 cannot mean: never make any kind of moral judgment. If they did, Jesus could never have told that woman (or anyone else) to stop sinning. But Jesus tells everyone to stop sinning–that’s a lot of judging going on!

Even the context of the statement in Matthew 7 shows that the words of Jesus can’t mean “never make any moral evaluations,” because Jesus immediately speaks of seeing specks (moral imperfections) in other people’s eyes. He doesn’t say “let’s all pretend those specks aren’t there,” but rather “get the log out of your own eye before you address he speck in your neighbor’s” (paraphrase of Matt 7:3–5).

Jesus is telling people not to be overly judgmental and ungenerous and self-righteous. Everyone makes moral assessments and comes to conclusions that can only be regarded as judgments. Susie does so in her post–she concludes that the judgments made by the left, for instance, are superior to those of the right.

I’m not a shill for the Republican Party, and this post is not for defending what they do.

I do have some questions, though, about life, sexual morality and marriage, and the economy that I hope Susie will consider:

Life

• Jesus taught us to treat others the way we would want to be treated. Doesn’t this extend to the way we treat unborn children in the wombs of their mothers?
• Susie rightly mentions that Jesus was a champion of the weak–is anyone weaker than the defenseless child in its mother’s womb? If Jesus is their champion we should do what we can to protect them too, right?

Sexual Morality

• Jesus taught that God the creator made man male and female and said that the two should become one flesh (Matt 19:4–5). If we agree with Jesus, won’t we believe that the only appropriate way for humans to engage in sexual activity is within the context of a covenant of marriage between one man and one woman, right?
• Would Susie agree that the Bible treats all sexual activity outside of marriage as sinful? Would she agree that the weak are the ones who are most often exploited and victimized by extra-marital sexual activity?

The Economy

• The commands not to steal and not to covet make some assumptions, right? Don’t they assume that people are going to own things? (true socialism abolishes private property and everything is owned by the state). And don’t these commands also assume that other people are going to have some things we would like to have ourselves? (that is, isn’t the Bible forbidding certain responses to income inequality?).
• Is it possible for the government to make things better? Are people who want the government to fix the world’s problems putting government in the place of God?

2. Understanding of Scripture

Susie talks about reading Scripture through “unfiltered eyes,” but none of us is really capable of this. We all have some kind of filter. I wonder if perhaps Susie has replaced a Sunday School filter with what she learned at the University of Pittsburgh?

The real question is this: are we going to believe everything the Bible teaches?

If we believe everything the Bible teaches, we won’t be captive to either the right or the left, the Democrat or Republican Party. We will have concerns that overlap with some on both the left and right, and then we will have to rank those concerns in order of importance.

The life of the unborn, the definition of marriage, and the free exercise of religion–the right to live out our faith–are the weightiest concerns facing our civilization. At present those concerns are shared by the Republican Party and not the Democrat Party. I wish the Democrat Party would share those concerns. It would make life better for everyone.

3. The Bible and Worldview

Susie speaks of having her “worldview fall apart like a house of cards,” and I suspect this was a direct result of the “shift in [her] understanding if Scripture.” God gave us the Bible as a worldview building book. If Susie became convinced that the Bible was not totally true and trustworthy, or if the “scholarly investigation” she learned about left the Bible in rubbles, then it would only be natural for her worldview to fall apart.

Every one of those challenges to the unity of the Bible can be answered. And I suspect that if Susie’s confidence in the Bible were to be restored, she would see that the house of cards was not the Biblical worldview she abandoned but the new one she replaced it with.

4. The Influence of Family, Community, and Teachers

There is more to Susie’s story than she related in her short post. But from that post it appears that at one time her church community held primary influence in her life and thinking, and then that primary influence shifted to a new community whose values she now shares.

She wrote, “surely a faith as strong as mine could stand up to academic scrutiny.” The issue is not whether her faith could stand the scrutiny but whether the truth claims she believed would be defended and maintained.

The reason Susie’s church family warned her about the liberal influence of the academy is that the liberals in the academy defend their own conclusions not the ones Susie formerly believed.

The history of ideas demonstrates that people will believe bad things if good things are not explained, defended, illustrated, and applied.

The problem was not a lack of faith on Susie’s part but the lack of diversity in secular universities. I suspect there is not a single evangelical who holds to the inerrancy of the Scriptures at the University of Pittsburgh. No one should be surprised when a school’s graduates believe what its faculty advocates.

So Susie, I hope and pray that you will reconsider the Bible. If those who defend it convince you that it stands, and it does, you might find yourself in a better place than on the left or the right. That is, you might find yourself in the arms of the Jesus of the Bible, at home in the true church.

If you’re ever in Louisville, I hope you’ll come visit us at Kenwood.

Don’t get me wrong: I love competition. I love excellence. And I want to provide the best competitive opportunities I can for my own kids.

I played two years of major college baseball at the University of Arkansas, and I’ve been coaching my sons in baseball and basketball for the last 7 years or so. These reflections grow out of my own experience playing and coaching and watching other families. My thoughts will be mainly applied to baseball, but I think they are valid for basketball, volleyball, soccer, lacrosse, swimming, and whatever else.

Here are 10 reasons I think you should keep your kid in the rec league rather than quitting it for travel ball. These are presented in the order in which I suspect most dads think about them, not in the order of importance I would rank them (#6 would be #1, and #4 would be #2).

1. Kids should play not work.

Growing up I loved baseball. I wanted to play all the time, until I got to college and had to do so. When I walked on and made the Razorbacks, the sport I loved to play became a year-round job. A job is not a game. We practiced a lot, doing as much as the NCAA allowed, all year long, in season and out.

That’s fine for an 18 year old on the cusp of adulthood, but there’s no reason to put a 7–14 year old through that kind of rigor.

After my first year of it in college, I found that what had been so fun because I had the opportunity to look forward to it in the off season, or even on days between practice or games, began to feel like a dreaded obligation that consumed a significant portion of every day.

The daily grind not only sapped the joy of the game, it was physically punishing. My arm hurt all the time, and I wasn’t a pitcher. The journey the Lord had me on led to me being cut from the team after I did not play summer ball following my sophomore year. I had played non-stop from the summer before my freshman year, through fall ball, winter weights, the spring season, then summer ball before it started all over in my sophomore year. I needed a break, and I wanted to be a counselor at a Christian camp that summer (Kanakuk).

The gods of baseball punished me for my lack of devotion. I was sad when the team cut me from the roster, but I was also relieved. I had my schedule back. So much time was freed up by not having to go to practice. I could now study what I wanted to study, and my classes were no longer determined by baseball practice. I could rest.

I’ve heard of travel ball teams that play 60 games in a summer—for kids under 10!—and then they practice at least once a week through the winter.

I’ve also heard more than one parent tell me that after a few years of travel ball, in some cases only one year of it, their son decided he didn’t want to play baseball anymore. I never felt that way until I got to college, but looking at the demands of travel ball, I totally understand how the kid feels.

That’s why I’m writing this post. I want your son to love baseball, to have the opportunity to be a kid, and to play the game as a kid. Baseball should be a fun game for him not a demanding job.

Keep him in rec ball, where he won’t get burnt out because he’s a kid facing the demands of a profession.

2. Your kid isn’t going pro (and that’s a good thing).

The percentages are outrageous. So many kids grow up dreaming, so few put on a big league uniform. No one should expect to make the show.

I grew up wanting to be a major league baseball player, and I’m so glad I never even got drafted. I spent my 20s laying the foundation for what I’m doing with the rest of my life, not bouncing around in the minor leagues. I got an education, got married, we started having children, and now I get to coach my kids.

If I was in the big leagues, my summers (and falls, and springs) would be dominated by an unrelenting schedule leaving no opportunity to coach my kids’ teams. Travel is not glamorous but grueling. How does a big leaguer have a family? And at best a professional athlete might play into his late 30s or early 40s, then what?

I submit that even with all the excitement of the game, and the money and fame that come with it, the life of a professional athlete is not one to be envied.

Don’t sacrifice your son’s childhood on the altar of the hope that he’s the next Derek Jeter. Have fun with sports, and use it to build character, not dream-castles in the skies.

Give your kid the chance to be a great person and cultivate that through sports.

3. If your kid does go pro, rec ball is the likelier path.

On the off-chance that your kid is a freak athlete with the arm strength, foot speed, power, stamina, and character, who gets all the right breaks at just the right time, chances are he’ll rise up through the ranks of rec ball rather than being groomed on the travel ball circuit.

Small towns breed professional athletes, and the reason seems to be that kids in small towns aren’t over-coached, over-organized, and over-specialized by the travel ball opportunities found in larger cities. Small town kids grow up playing lots of sports not getting burnt out playing the same one all year round.

4. Your family doesn’t need travel ball.

This is the one your wife wants you to care about. And you should. Your marriage matters a lot more than some sport your kid plays. What will travel ball mean for your marriage? What will travel ball mean for your other kids? If you’re coaching your 12 year old’s travel ball team, what does that mean for the rec league opportunities your 7 year old has? Do you want to miss the younger kid’s games and practices?

If you are traveling every weekend, or most of them, for a Friday, Saturday, Sunday tournament, what happens to non-sport family time? If you’re exalting baseball over all these other things, are you serving a false god, an idol, that is going to use you and then throw you away?

Is the travel ball opportunity your 7–14 year old kid has more important than Friday nights and Saturday mornings at home with the family? Is it more important than being at church on Sunday morning? (on which more below).

5. Your wallet will thank you.

I don’t even want to think about how much parents pay for their 7–14 year old kids to travel to tournaments, to stay in hotels, to pay the tournament entry fees, and whatever else all this costs. I am confident that there are better ways to steward those thousands of dollars.

You may be betting on the kid getting a scholarship. I’m betting you would be better off saving your money to help him with college expenses. Consider D1 baseball: each team is allowed a maximum of 11.7 scholarships, and those scholarships can be divided up between players. The roster includes 35 players, 27 of whom can receive scholarship money.

When I was playing at Arkansas, none of my teammates had a full ride from the baseball program. Not one. The only kind of baseball scholarship D1 programs offer is a partial one. That means that even if your kid is the best thing since Babe Ruth, if he goes off to play major college baseball, the baseball team isn’t paying all the expenses. And given the number of kids playing and the number of available spots, even a partial baseball scholarship is terribly unlikely.

6. You should be in church.

As a follower of Jesus, this consideration is the most important one for me.

I talked to a dad who was committed to having his family in church even when they were on the road—and he said they traveled as a family as often as they could—for tournaments. That’s commendable, but I suspect that those tournaments don’t always start the Sunday games at times that make finding a worship service possible.

More important than that, you and your family don’t need a summer long break from the life and fellowship of your local church. Christians need to be gathering with the same group of people every week to worship the risen Lord Jesus, to hear his word, and to fellowship with each other.

Kids need to see that Jesus and his church are more important to their parents even than baseball. Jesus is God not baseball.

You need the church, and the church needs you.

If you’re a non-Christian reading this post, don’t you want to live for something more than baseball? I would urge you to consider how trustworthy Jesus is, how he can reconcile you to God, how he has paid for your sin, and how his Spirit can enable you to love others and enjoy life with them in a gathering of people joined together at a local church. Baseball can’t raise the dead, but Jesus will do just that when he returns to make this world into the new heavens and new earth.

If you’re in Louisville, come check us out at www.KenwoodBaptistChurch.com.

7. Better to play more than one sport.

I’ve alluded to this somewhat above. Kids need to play more than one sport so their rotator cuffs can recover, so their elbows can rest, so they don’t have to have Tommy John surgery at 17. They need to run and jump and exercise other muscles than the ones required by baseball. They don’t need to have baseball practice every week all year long, and you don’t need to be their taxi for that every week all year long either.

8. Don’t dilute the talent pool in the rec league.

Part of the argument for travel ball is the appeal of better competition. As more and more kids get involved in travel ball, the best players are taken out of the rec league. It’s a vicious cycle. The best coaches and the best players stop playing rec ball in favor of travel ball, leading to fewer teams and a lower level of competition in the rec league.

9. Don’t cause the rec league to dry up.

This is related to the previous: the best players leave the rec league for travel ball, and then the mediocre players get tempted to do so, and then all the kids get burnt out and stop playing baseball. Thus the rec league dries up. Was it really worth it?

10. Don’t get seduced.

As I’ve talked to people about this dilemma, one friend proposed this to me: he said that I should start my own travel ball team, and I should commit myself to being “low-key” about it. Sound familiar? It did to me. Several dads had told me that they were leaving rec ball for a “low-key” travel ball team, or that they were adding a “low-key” travel ball team on top of the rec ball their son was playing.

But my friend who suggested that I do this also told me what was going to happen: he said I needed to understand that the other travel ball teams weren’t going to be low-key, so we would get pummeled at tournaments and probably lose every game. That would inevitably awaken the competitive impulse, leading to more practices, more effort expended, and the gradual creep to a higher key. He said he had seen it happen. Dads get into it for a little better competition not meaning for it to take over their lives, and the next thing they know their schedule and wallet are dominated by travel ball.

So I’m writing in the hope that you’ll see that rec ball is a better route. It’s better to honor God than to win, and it’s better for your kid to enjoy the game than for him to play at the highest possible level.

Conclusion

Do I think you are sinning if your kid plays travel ball? Not necessarily, but if your kid is in the 7–14 age range, I will suspect that you might not be pursuing the wisest course. I could be wrong. There may be instances in which it’s the right thing, and when a kid gets to be 15 to 16 years old, it’s understandable that commitment levels and demands are going to rise and choices are going to have to be made.

But I say be wise. Be a parent. And for the good of rec ball leagues everywhere, for the good of your family, and for the good of your kids, I would urge you to avoid travel ball until the kid is old enough to commit to a more demanding regimen. It seems to me that time comes in the mid to late teens, but that’s going to be a judgment call . . .

Bottom line: give your kids a childhood they’ll want to replicate with their own children not one they’ll react against.