I made the mistake over Christmas of letting my kids watch Home Alone and they have since been rounded up and placed into a young offender’s institute after swinging bricks into my husband’s face and setting his head on fire*.
*This did not happen.
Here, I want to address the problem of a culture which is adrift from its Christian roots, and the inevitable sanitisation of language that follows. I want to, if you will, feed two birds with one scone.
Some books and films open a window into our human condition and reveal both the deadly consequences of sin and the moments of grace that penetrate our lives. They bring to light the transcendentals of truth, beauty and goodness by exposing falsehood, ugliness and evil. But that which cannot be named, cannot be exposed. Flannery O’Connor is one such author whose fiction takes its character from a reasonable use of the unreasonable.
“Our age” she says “not only does not have a very sharp eye for the almost imperceptible intrusions of Grace, it no longer has much feeling for the nature of the violence which precedes and follows them…the devil’s greatest trick…is to convince us that he doesn’t exist.”
In a culture obsessed with non-offence we are in very grave danger of falling for this trick.
Having rejected the rock of our Christian identity we have had to find a new absolute against which to judge all things. The new absolute for Puffin and Netflix is the Holy Trinity of diversity, equality and inclusivity; a benchmark which has led to the reworking of Roald Dahl’s canon.
All things are relative to something, and what that something is matters. I do not let my children watch or read anything they like, not because the deepest hope I have for them is that they are nice non-offenders, but because I desire heaven for them and I know that some things will take them further from what is true, good and beautiful, and some things will draw them closer. But Roald Dahl, whose language does not meet with the approval of the sensitivity readers, will not take them further away. “Bye Bye Binary”, whose language is approved, will.
It may seem petty to complain about the removal of the word “fat” (so as not to offend fat people or fat mice) or any language that relates to mental health, violence, gender and race, but the removal of the words is far more sinister than the words themselves.
As Peter Hitchens commented recently on Talk Radio in conversation with Mike Graham, “an obliteration of the past is fundamentally an obliteration of the truth”.
We have to be free to offend if we are to get to the truth. It is no surprise that the more concerned we are with non-offence, the less concerned we become with truth. The more we let “nice” trump truth, the less real we become. The capitulation to the trans movement is a perfect case in point. A person simply cannot be a “they”, ever. If this offends, so be it, but always in the service of truth.
Our freedom to speak and write words that flow naturally and instinctively from the human heart must not be curtailed; not out of a desire to offend but always from a desire for authentic freedom to become the people that God has created us to be.
We cannot be authentically free in a sanitised soft totalitarianism. A system where, in the words of the band Dirt Poor Robins, they’ve “fenced off the ledges and rounded the edges of all that goes wrong…a true hedonist indeed, so don’t lift a finger, your warden provides all you’ll need, but never a key”.
Heinrich Heine’s ominous utterance that “they start by burning books and end with burning people” might be usefully referenced here. They start by rewriting Dhal and end by rewriting scripture.
The Chinese Communist Party have been at this longer than we have and offer a cautionary tale. In October 2020 Simon Caldwell reported that the CCP had rewritten parts of the Bible that might undermine the ideals of the party, and that in 2018 unveiled a plan to “Sinicise” Christianity.
Imagine how an ideological rewrite might look in the hands of the good people at Puffin.
“Hey folks! Words matter,” they will say. “The wonderful words of Jesus can transport you to supernatural worlds and introduce you to the most marvellous characters, but The Bible was written many years ago and so we have reviewed the language to ensure that it can continue to be enjoyed by all today.”
Some of the updates will appear along these lines:
‘Whosoever is an obstacle (not because of weight issues) to one of these little ones, big ones or medium sized ones who have faith, it would be better to take a dip in shallow water with appropriate swim attire and think about what you’ve done. And if your hand causes you to be intolerant, then use it to shake hands with someone you struggle to tolerate, because it is better to try to be nice than it is to be unkind.” Matthew 18:6.
“‘Another to whom he said ‘follow me’ replied ‘let me go and bury my father first’ and Jesus answered ‘Oh I’m so sorry to hear that your dad has passed away, of course please go and do that first.'” Luke 9:60.
“‘If any man, woman or non-binary member of the LGBTQ+ community comes to me without loving his/her/their father, mother, wife, husband, children, brothers and sisters, and his/her/their own life more than me then he/she/they may find that I’m not the person they want to follow.” Luke 14:26.
“If you have no sword, don’t get one, because they’re dangerous and could cause serious harm.” Luke 22:36.
If we allow equality, diversity and inclusivity to be the absolutes against which we make judgements then we will see an increase in the incoherence that we have already begun to observe. We will cancel people over words that cause offence whilst sending convicted rapists into women’s prisons. We will ban books that refer to a person as fat whilst selling picture books that encourage self-mutilation. We will tolerate everything except intolerance and include everyone expect those who disagree.
Lies will always reveal themselves to be incoherent because truth is always coherent. A return to Christ as the absolute is a return to the coherence that we have lost, and many mourn; but it won’t just happen. Unlike Netflix/Puffin, God gives us the freedom to choose and if we don’t like the direction this is going, then we must stand up and be counted. We must fight for Truth and stop capitulating.
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