WE PASS TO another pair of opposites, which Paul says cannot separate us “from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:39). It would seem at first sight that Paul had abandoned the plan of opposites and had inserted a single item—“nor powers” (v. 38). Phillips’s translation keeps the opposites, however, combining the word “powers” with them: “neither a power from on high nor a power from below . . . has any power to separate us.”
What is this power from on high which might separate us? When we look at that ancient world to see what power from on high had influenced it most, the answer is astrology. The stars decided the destiny of that ancient world, and still do in many parts of the world, including India, and strange to say, America. One of the things that strikes me as strange when I come back from the East where astrology has reigned, and where they are gradually throwing it off as an outworn superstition, is finding the newspapers of America printing daily horoscopes, written according to the position of the stars for that day and given as a serious guide to conduct for its readers. This in Christian America! I thought we had passed from the stage of astrology, a pseudoscience, to astronomy, a real science. Perpetuation of this superstition by newspapers shows an incredible moral and spiritual shallowness. Believing that unconscious lumps of matter floating in space can determine the destiny of moral and spiritual beings, capable of moral and spiritual choice, is materialism of the grossest kind. There is no essential difference between an ancient pagan bowing before a stone idol, asking for its guidance and blessing, and a modern pagan studying charts that depict the movements of lumps of matter in the sky to determine the guidance of his life. Nothing would paralyze a civilization quicker than for its citizens to abandon the responsibility of moral and spiritual choice in favor of letting the stars decide.
O Christ, forgive us when we abandon Thee, the Light of the world, in favor of night lights that twinkle in the darkness. We have lost Thee and hence turn to these false lights that lead us into increasing folly and emptiness. Help us to look into Thy face for guidance. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: The only horoscope I’m interested in is my destiny in Christ—the rest is piffle.
