The Next ‘Official Christian Perspective’
Michael Spencer has written an excellent post about everytime a news story breaks, we have our pundits who have to give us ‘God’s Official Perspective And Reaction’ for us to care about next.
What I find suprising is how many Christians will not decide for themselves but let the pundits and the ‘big boys’ decide for them. Why? Because we have equated ‘big boys’ with anointing and we dare not ‘…touch the anointing’. Spencer tells like it is with these paragraphs:
…Christians? Tune into Dobson, Mohler and a thousand other religious pundits who will keep your outrage focused where they believe- sincerely- that it needs to go. Right to Life issues. Threats to Marriage. The threats of liberalism to Christians. It’s Washington and Hollywood, not Mayberry and Oneida, that matter….
…Today I read a Christian blogger’s post saying that if you did not agree with his view of the Shiavo case, you probably weren’t a Christian. I don’t know the Shiavo/Shindler family. I hear from lawyers, experts and lots of pundits on television, radio and print. They all have strong opinions. In fact, they seem to know too much about this story. They know so much that you start to hear a lot of conflicting information, and some of it sounds very suspect. Emotions are very agitated, and reasonable people who see lots of complex problems all around, get drowned out.
We’re told how we must feel, and what we must believe about what is “important.” We are told who are the good guys and the bad guys. We are told that the fate of our culture is in the balance. We are told that it’s the dawn of a culture of death. We’re told that the Nazis are in control. Christians are praying….or making threats. There’s a sense of unease because so much emotion has been poured out through the media. There’s a lot of emotion, and it seems be a crisis. This may all be true, but when I look at Jesus, and at those who know him and follow him closely, I don’t see this kind of manipulative emotional roller coaster.
Now, in between the crisis and the experts, there are commercials and promos. I assume the price of these advertisements is somehow tied to how many people are watching. So we always pause in our discussion for a message from our sponsor. The blogs are getting to be much the same way. Blogs that tell you what you must care about are full of ads telling you other things you must care about. It’s all desperate and urgent. Click now or suffer the fate of the ignorant masses.
It’s time to start thinking for ourselves once again and not allow the select influential few (Robertson, Dobson, Wildmon, Kennedy, etc. to do the thinking for all the Christians. Spencer has hit the bullseye on the vast majority of the Christian blogosphere where all we see is politics turned presbytery. Have we gotten to the point where we do not want to make disciples of Christ but instead make disciples of our opinions? But the point of the influent and affluent ‘big boys’ is to imply that to not think like them is to be a lesser Christian than they are and to make you feel guilty and to take their viewpoint in order to be considered as being a ‘more enlightened’ believer in Christ.
It’s time to ask the question Michael has already asked.
Are Christians ready to admit that no media- not Fox, Worldnet or Christianity Today- are anointed to tell us what to care about?
Comments are closed.