CommonChristianity: media bias

6:16 PM | Posted by Bob Walters | | Edit Post

Spirituality Column No. 562

August 22, 2017

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Unity of Purpose

By Bob Walters

Hate and diversity sure have been in the news a lot lately.

Hate groups. Diversity narratives. The media tacitly cheers this group’s open uncivil violence while haranguing that group’s odious philosophy. News coverage fairly shouts with 360-degree condemnation of America’s past and present while offering neither a plan nor resolute voice of rectifying our future. Dialogue is subordinate to distemper.

But therein, insanely, is ensconced our national political, conversational and media prioritization of the moment. The crazies outnumber the haters. The less sense an opinion makes, it seems, the more news and hyperbolic rhetoric about it we see.

Diversity, not unity, is our battle cry.

And we are doing all of this to ourselves as Americans, without the help of or even especially the interest of existentially dangerous global bedfellows like religious jihadis and nutty dictators with nukes. I doubt there is an Imam or an Un anywhere who gives a flying flip about our Civil War monuments or celebrates gender fluidity.

Yet look at us. Witness today’s academic drivel and celebrity bloviation complicit with purpose-pitch, truth-shredding, secularly purified “news” that stifles freedom, muzzles constructive discourse, and mocks truth: right is wrong, wrong is right, truth is unwelcome, and hate must stop! … unless of course you hate the right people: the Klan, neo-Nazis, and Donald Trump.

Maybe now would be a good time to bring up the love of Jesus? No, wait …

Actually, forget white supremacists; the media levels its sincerest angst and castigation on the current American president who is not Jesus and … news alert … is not Satan, either. Granted we all have a little of both in us – Jesus and Satan, that is – but the divine process that is our personal, individual eternal salvation or everlasting destruction is determined neither by a fire-breathing, context-rigging media that gets the occasional fact right but has lost moral authority and public trust, nor a tweet-seeking missile of a U.S. president. You see, our human purpose is greater than public opinion.

We are, each of us, an accountable, salvational, image-of-God work in progress.

So where is Jesus? Right where he always is: at the right hand of God and, by the Holy Spirit, in the loving hearts of believers. A whole lot of Americans went to church last Sunday, identify as Christians, embrace at least the idea of objective truth if not every jot and tittle of orthodox Christian doctrine, and take the name of Jesus seriously even if they don’t know Him well. Real truth doesn’t die; hope endures.

What our culture misses most today, I think, is a reliance on the Bible as the great expositor of truth. Our salvation is in Jesus the Truth, and our destruction is in Satan the Liar. Taking the Bible seriously is the single most educational, loving and perspective-fixing mindset available to us. The saving words of Jesus harken our human love, freedom, and unity in Him; it is Satan who divides, hates, and conquers.

Choose your own public weapon of reason and faith in these perilous times, but the sword of the spirit – the Bible – is absolutely the best place to start, dwell, and finish.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) sees Jesus as reason and faith … and truth.

555 - Truth and Freedom

4:01 PM | Posted by Bob Walters | | Edit Post

Spirituality Column No. 555
July 4, 2017
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Truth and Freedom

By Bob Walters

"But the fact being once established, that the press is impotent when it abandons itself to falsehood, I leave to others to restore it to its strength, by recalling it within the pale of truth." —Thomas Jefferson (1805)

I love freedom of the press. I’ve studied it. I get it. I defend it.

Though I like to joke that my own journalism degree (Franklin College, 1976) was squandered by several years working as a newspaper sportswriter, I was never very far personally – in spirit or function – from the larger themes of public information and mass communications. Perhaps it’s a career irony that most of my private reading and interests since college have centered on politics and history, not sports. It was always the people in sports I found truly interesting anyway, not the sports themselves.

Since 2001 those intellectual interests have been considerably added to with the Bible and the enthusiastic study of nearly 2,000 years of Christian thought, religious philosophy, doctrinal development and church history. I found faith in Christ at age 47 and suddenly a bevy of scholarly and preacherly companions appeared alongside me to help navigate my faith journey to a confident trust in Jesus Christ. These folks – who I mention often in these weekly essays – revealed a deep, wonderful and mysterious ocean of Christian truth, peace, wisdom and purpose. Question my discernment and discipline if you like – I do all the time – but Jesus is the solid rock of truth in this life.

Not “my” solid truth; “the” solid truth. Not me, not my opinion, not church: Jesus.

So going back to journalism as an issue within the context of truth, I find some solace in the fact that Thomas Jefferson who not only penned the American Declaration of Independence but also championed the Bill of Rights – freedom of the press, etc. – to have been confounded (see quote above) in his age by journalistic malfeasance. Every time I see a dust-up in church or in the Christian community or among different religions, it is rare to see one that hasn’t happened multiple times over the centuries. Similarly, in a free society journalists tend to push their own agendas. That’s not cynicism or hate speech any more than studying the Great Schism of the 11^th century is an indictment of the Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox churches. It’s just how it is. Agendas happen.

But there are times – and this is one of those times – that the American Experiment would be well served by earnest media truth-telling rather than hyperbolic obeisance to fashion and fancy. Perhaps some of you also notice today a pervasive “backwardness” to how news stories are covered and social narratives are asserted. Things we should probably worry about – domestic security and international terrorism come to mind – are pooh-poohed with claims of phobias. Private preferences of sexuality that have always been with us but, shall we say, will never propagate the species, are celebrated with specious huzzahs of courage and heroism. Religion is covered with politically correct themes rather than academically rigorous investigation. Truth suffers.

Freedom requires truth to realize human purpose, life’s desires and God’s glory.

I pray for American journalism to regain its strength by getting the message.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com), who understood tennis because he played it, will return to visit God’s truth and American journalism in the coming weeks. Happy 4^th!

Fourth of July bonus reading ...

Click here: CommonChristianity: 524 - The Gift of Freedom, Part 1

Click here: What Is Fake News? | PragerU

562 - Unity of Purpose

555 - Truth and Freedom

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