August 16, 2013

Rewriting History

My local newspaper has a column that uses archived papers to remind people of the past. They rewrite newsworthy events that happened a year ago, 10 years ago, and even 35 years ago. The problem is the column is often used to wound people in the community and pit neighbor against neighbor.

All under the guise of journalistic license we are reminded of homicides, community conflict and local political upheaval.
Proverbs 26:17 seems applicable, “Like one who seizes a dog by the ears is a passer-by who meddles in a quarrel not his own.” (NIV)

1 comment:

Steve Corey said...

Gail;

-----It is difficult to determine when a quarrel is or is not your own. Proximity is a thing of effect as much as it is of time and space. Many multiple homicides involving family members and mutual friends were eruptions of arguments which sprayed consequences upon others not a part of the dispute. Like a nuclear reactor run dry of its cooling water, a fight with no calming element faces the possibility of disastrous meltdown. Should a third party step in or out? I think it would be instructive to know how many quarrels rose to disaster directly by third party meddling, and how many disasters could have been averted by it.
-----We all have proximity of effect regarding the community around us. It is not wise to let history slip into the abyss of the unknown. Those who do not know history are bound not to so much repeat it as they are certainly bound to die under the feet of what ills they might not have let brew by knowing it. History is an instructive thing. A very large portion of God’s Word is history.
-----You understand this well, or you would not have pinpointed the problem as being the newspaper’s use of the past for wounding and pitting people against one another. A broad reflection upon a basically complete knowledge of history would quickly categorize these journalists with the rest of the commonly known social malignancies. A community well versed in history would have run these social gremlins out of town on a rail, then would have celebrated their good riddance. For that community would understand taking the dog by the ears with one hand has the other hand dropping a heavy club across its evil back.
-----Instead, the journalistic dog was fed at the family table until its strength became more fearsome to the children than the Word of God. Through deconstructionism it chewed the legs off the table of social nourishment and scattered all of the food across the floor. It relishes the family groveling before it on hands and knees and belly to access what filth covered morsels it does not protect with bared teeth. Having raised its offspring into the pantries of our education and entertainment systems, defecating and urinating upon everything socially nutritional stored up for our own children to come, its shredding, stamping, scattering, snarling horde now has too many ears to grab.
-----In God’s words, two concepts adorn Satan more than any others: destroyer and deceiver. If you think about these, they really are more one concept and a refinement of it than they are separate ideas. To deceive is to destroy the truth in another’s mind. It is to destroy his opportunities and hopes and the effects of all his efforts to achieve true things - living and sustaining things relational to the Creator of good. It makes sense that in deceit being the beginning of destruction and in the destruction of truth being deceit, the two are as indelibly one process as are their opposites: truth and love. So it should not be surprising that the buildup to the final battle between lovely truth and hateful deceit will entail the latter rising forth over the entire world like an all consuming, ugly boil. Today the press, the universities, the entertainment vest deceit in all their efforts.
-----This dog we can not take by the ears only because we cannot swing a sufficiently heavy club without also becoming a dog. The fight is for the one Who is pure by His own. Ours is to watch and to warn others to get out of the way, for that piercing Word soon is coming.

Love you all,
Steve Corey