The Secret Wireless

On January 9 Rupert Murdoch tweeted this: “Maybe most Moslems peaceful, but until they recognize and destroy their growing jihadist cancer they must be held responsible”  To this author JK Rowling responded: “I was born Christian.  If that makes Rupert Murdoch my responsibility, I’ll auto-excommunicate.” Whatever you think of Rupert Murdoch, and whatever you think of JK Rowling, this does make an interesting exchange.  My concern, however, is not with Murdoch’s view of Muslims, nor Rowling’s.  I am far more interested in her statement about Christianity. Now, I am not an expert on Rupert Murdoch and I will not comment on his faith, but I will take JK Rowling at her word and assume that she is indeed a Christian.  And that makes her tweet problematic. First, Christians are not born, they are made.  Most Christians hold to the doctrine of Original Sin which confesses that human beings are conceived in a state of unrighteousness.  You...

Philosophers have measur’d mountains, Fathom’d the depths of seas, of states, and kings, Walk’d with a staffe to heav’n, and traced fountains: But there are two vast, spacious things, The which to measure it doth more behove: Yet few there are that sound them; Sinne and Love. Who would know Sinne, let him repair Unto mount Olivet; there shall he see A man so wrung with pains, that all his hair, His skinne, his garments bloudie be. Sinne is that presse and vice, which forceth pain To hunt his cruell food through ev’ry vein. Who knows not Love, let him assay And taste that juice, which on the crosse a pike Did set again abroach; then let him say If ever he did taste the like. Love in that liquour sweet and most divine, Which my God feels as bloud; but I, as wine. --George Herbert ++++++++++++++++++++++

To make a final conquest of all me, Love did compose so sweet an Enemy, In whom both Beauties to my death agree, Joyning themselves in fatal Harmony; That while she with her Eyes my Heart does bind, She with her Voice might captivate my Mind. I could have fled from One but singly fair: My dis-intangled Soul it self might save, Breaking the curled trammels of her hair. But how should I avoid to be her Slave, Whose subtle Art invisible can wreath My fetters of the very Air I breath? It had been easie fighting in some plain, Where Victory might hang in equal choice, But all resistance against her is vain, Who has th'advantage both of Eyes and Voice, And all my Forces needs must be undone, She having gained both the Wind and Sun.         --Andrew Marvell