Joanne Kathleen “J.K.” Rowling has said she has a “God-shaped vacuum” inside her.
In a post on X, the Harry Potter author wrote: “I've struggled with religious faith since my mid-teens. I appear to have a God-shaped vacuum inside me but I never seem quite able to make up my mind what to do about it.”
Rowling’s statement might remind us of these words from Ecclesiastes 3v11: “He has also set eternity in the human heart.”
The novelist goes on to write about proof – that “concrete evidence” could alter any of her beliefs; she knows what that evidence would have to be, in all but one case… “The exception is the God conundrum, because I don't know what I'd have to see to make me come down firmly on either side. I suppose that's the meaning of faith, believing without seeing proof, and that's why I'll probably go to my grave with that particular personal matter unresolved.”
Rowling’s post also references assisted suicide: “I used to believe in assisted dying. I no longer do, largely because I'm married to a doctor who opened my eyes to the possibilities of coercion of sick or vulnerable people.”
