Ten years ago, I felt honored to write a chapter in a book edited by John Piper and David Mathis, With Calvin in the Theater of God. Many of our readers have read John Calvin and are deeply aware of his theological brilliance, but here’s a slightly adapted part of the chapter in which I looked at 10 ways Calvin challenged his era’s conventional wisdom concerning government and economics. In this election year, as the full fury and superficiality of half-blind 2020 politics assaults us, let’s spend a few minutes looking deeper.

Organizations have canceled or postponed at least 440 trade shows and exhibitions in response to the coronavirus. But in Austin, where the lucrative and enjoyable South by Southwest (SXSW) 10-day music/movie/tech festival is still scheduled for March 13–22, the band plays on.

Just as a Texas two-step helps us fight poverty—1. Be generous 2. Be discerning—so a Texas two-step helps us fight a pestilence like the coronavirus: 1. Love your neighbor 2. Don’t be foolhardy. 

Such an understanding is nothing new. Ten years after Martin Luther jumpstarted the Protestant Reformation with his 95 theses, a plague ravaged Germany. Breslau pastor Johann Hess asked Luther for advice, and Luther responded with a tract titled, Whether One May Flee from a Deadly Plague. 

On Friday night I Googled “South by Southwest,” Austin’s huge music/movie/tech festival scheduled to begin in 13 days, and “Jaws,” the 1975 film. No one had mentioned them in the same breath. Not yet.

In Jaws, coastal town police chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) sees strong evidence of a shark attack and wants to put up “Beach Closed” signs. Cadillac-driving Mayor Larry Vaughn countermands the order, saying, “We need summer dollars, and if they can't swim here, they'll use the beaches at Cape Cod. … We don’t need a panic this close to the Fourth of July.”

Right-wingers of the world: Let’s not be hostile to International Women’s Day, coming up on March 8. Let’s distinguish among the feminism that lets women be all they can be, the kind that keeps men from being all they can be, and the kind that keeps millions of unborn babies from being anything at all. 

Parasite received a huge box-office boost when it won the best picture Oscar on Feb. 9. It even received a one-week engagement in 214 IMAX theaters starting Feb. 21. And that’s too bad, because anyone who knows basic Marxism could predict its plot: Poor liars-for-justice outwit the bourgeoisie, who are either dumb or evil, until scorn from the rich and dissension among the proletariat bring destruction and death. 

Beware the Ides of March, ancient Romans used to say, but Catherine Wilson’s How to Be an Epicurean (Basic, 2019) would have us, as we become ancient, beware every day. That’s because one of her heroes is Lucretius, the ancient Roman materialist who considered the absence of pain and fear to be the greatest pleasure—and the old, facing both, would have “hearts ranked with anxiety.”