fight evil, read books
I love books! That’s why it pains me when people start banning them. Years ago, as I was walking through Grand Central Terminal in New York City, I bought a bracelet that said, “I read banned books”. The books on the bracelet were some classics like To Kill a Mockingbird and Catcher in the Rye. Not all were books I had read or even want to read. But the notion that these books had been banned was anathema to my understanding of free speech.
Recently I was reading 1 Samuel, chapter 8 where Israel was asking the prophet Samuel for a king. Samuel was old. He had appointed his sons as judges, but they were crooked. Israel couldn’t trust them, and for good reason. So, Israel asked Samuel for a king. Samuel was displeased. He knew that their reliance on government as their moral corrective was not going to help them…that God was their king, and that their desire for an earthly king was just another example of their spiritual drift away from the Lord. But as Hope A. Blanton and Christine B. Gordon write, “Fear, worry and anxiety can cause us to do illogical, ridiculous things that seem perfectly sane at the time.”
I see this lack of logic happening now in the banning of books. New laws in Florida are causing school library and classroom shelves to be scrubbed of ALL books, each book having to be vetted by one particular media specialist for approval before they can be returned without repercussions. This is terrifying to me, and it should be to you…to all Americans who value the Bill of Rights.
Are there books out there that I would not like my grandchildren to read? Of course. Are there movies I’d rather they didn’t see? Yes, indeed. But I believe that God will plant good ideas in their minds through their parents, through their churches, through me. I believe that God can water those seeds through a childhood of prayer and conversations. And I believe that when they choose sin and make self-destructive choices, as they most certainly will, that God can bring them back through the redemptive grace of Christ and his people, NOT by governmental morality police.
Human beings are rebellious. We don’t like being told what to do. We chafe under authoritarian control. To those who say that books are dangerous and to those who want to control our nation’s morality by coercion I quote theologian John Stott: “We love to boss people around and extend our empire.” It would be far better if we sought God as our true king, than to rely on our politicians’ moral compasses. It would be far better to seek and believe in God’s ability to change hearts than ours to change actions. Humans respond better to love and kindness, to empathy and generosity. Remember when the church was known for starting all the finest universities and hospitals instead of censoring them?
The good news is, as Dale Ralph David writes, “Israel’s stupidity cannot wither Yahweh’s compassion.” Neither can our stupidity. Some of Jesus’ final words spoke of his compassion for those who did not know what they did not know: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
The Lord had words of grace for the unknowing. I want to be counted among those who wait patiently on the Lord for a corrective, instead of a foolhardy government and rigid moral positions.
Love, Liz
