Of Grinches and Meachams
"If your mother says she loves you, check it out!"
According to Lee Strobel, that sign hangs in the newsroom of the Chicago Tribune. Its cynical, hard-edged sentiment represents the John 3:16 of modern journalism: For we so question the Word that we ask every besotted question, that whosoever belittles Him shall not go unpublished, and enjoy everlasting fame.
I will leave it to the many theologian-bloggers and Drs. Mohler and Roberts, whose articles were wonderful, to deconstruct Meacham's wayward and awkward theology. As a former journalist who shared Meacham's irreverent view of the reverent, I'll focus on Hugh's questions about MSM's propensity to publish articles like this whenever Easter and Christmas roll around.
Thesis: The cynicism of the media feeds reporters' secularism; their "enlightened" secularism compels them to evangelize; they evangelizes insensitively and offensively because they can't understand Christianity. Not "don't want to," but "can't."
Let me tell you a story. In the early 1970s, after a couple of years of college, my best friend Peter left our mutual commitment to sinful ways and enrolled without warning in a theological seminary. I wrote him to ask why, and his answer -- about Christ being in his life, of being a servant to Christ -- had an effect on me I can't quite explain. The words of his letter appeared as serpents on the page; it was something I wanted no part of. Was it fear? Disgust? A synaptic disconnect? I don't know, but I knew my best friend was lost and nothing, nothing, could make me reach out and save him because he was somewhere I just did not want to go to. (fortunately, he prayed for me regularly over the next 20 years ... and he wept for joy when I too accepted faith in Christ.)
For secularists, studying Christianity is a high risk/low reward proposition. High risk, because you might become one, and that would be like losing your mind, your stature, your friends, your identity. Low reward because your editor and friends are hostile to it, your career doesn't need it and your self-realization doesn't demand it. Ah, but if you study the Christian criticism of the Jesus Seminar, you're safe -- you won't be converted, you'll be hip, your editor will love you.
That may explain why Meacham would write an article attacking our faith, but it doesn't explain why such articles become Christmastime cover stories in a Christian nation. Why would editors , who see themselves as champions of reason, do something so without reason as deliberately alienating 80 percent of their readers?
It is because they are every bit as evangelical as a corner preacher. Hardly humble servants of God, editors are prideful proponents of cynicism and secularism, and they want very much to save believers from foolish mythology -- or at least they want to appear intellectual and worldly trying. Putting something antithetical to Christianity on the newsstand in the midst of Christiandom's most holy period, may eclipse reason, but it offers the reward of the admiration of your secular friends. And besides, you know that all you have to do is slap some Christian art on the cover and it'll be one of your best selling issues of the year. Low risk/high reward.
Lifetime Christians cannot fully understand the depth of the gulf between them and lifetime secularists, especially those in the cynical world of journalism. Fortunately, God does, and he carried Lee Strobel, and me, over it easily.
According to Lee Strobel, that sign hangs in the newsroom of the Chicago Tribune. Its cynical, hard-edged sentiment represents the John 3:16 of modern journalism: For we so question the Word that we ask every besotted question, that whosoever belittles Him shall not go unpublished, and enjoy everlasting fame.
I will leave it to the many theologian-bloggers and Drs. Mohler and Roberts, whose articles were wonderful, to deconstruct Meacham's wayward and awkward theology. As a former journalist who shared Meacham's irreverent view of the reverent, I'll focus on Hugh's questions about MSM's propensity to publish articles like this whenever Easter and Christmas roll around.
Thesis: The cynicism of the media feeds reporters' secularism; their "enlightened" secularism compels them to evangelize; they evangelizes insensitively and offensively because they can't understand Christianity. Not "don't want to," but "can't."
Let me tell you a story. In the early 1970s, after a couple of years of college, my best friend Peter left our mutual commitment to sinful ways and enrolled without warning in a theological seminary. I wrote him to ask why, and his answer -- about Christ being in his life, of being a servant to Christ -- had an effect on me I can't quite explain. The words of his letter appeared as serpents on the page; it was something I wanted no part of. Was it fear? Disgust? A synaptic disconnect? I don't know, but I knew my best friend was lost and nothing, nothing, could make me reach out and save him because he was somewhere I just did not want to go to. (fortunately, he prayed for me regularly over the next 20 years ... and he wept for joy when I too accepted faith in Christ.)
For secularists, studying Christianity is a high risk/low reward proposition. High risk, because you might become one, and that would be like losing your mind, your stature, your friends, your identity. Low reward because your editor and friends are hostile to it, your career doesn't need it and your self-realization doesn't demand it. Ah, but if you study the Christian criticism of the Jesus Seminar, you're safe -- you won't be converted, you'll be hip, your editor will love you.
That may explain why Meacham would write an article attacking our faith, but it doesn't explain why such articles become Christmastime cover stories in a Christian nation. Why would editors , who see themselves as champions of reason, do something so without reason as deliberately alienating 80 percent of their readers?
It is because they are every bit as evangelical as a corner preacher. Hardly humble servants of God, editors are prideful proponents of cynicism and secularism, and they want very much to save believers from foolish mythology -- or at least they want to appear intellectual and worldly trying. Putting something antithetical to Christianity on the newsstand in the midst of Christiandom's most holy period, may eclipse reason, but it offers the reward of the admiration of your secular friends. And besides, you know that all you have to do is slap some Christian art on the cover and it'll be one of your best selling issues of the year. Low risk/high reward.
Lifetime Christians cannot fully understand the depth of the gulf between them and lifetime secularists, especially those in the cynical world of journalism. Fortunately, God does, and he carried Lee Strobel, and me, over it easily.
posted by Laer at 2:01 PM
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