April 07, 2014
Spiteful
I recently participated in a round-table
discussion where the topic was local media. A newspaper publisher from a
neighboring town didn’t mince words when it came to elected officials. He
smirked, “We need to make them sweat!” Certainly the media needs to hold
elected officials accountable, but make them sweat – really? This seasoned journalist
seemed uneasy when I questioned his terminology and he said, “Well, I guess
it’s personal.” The more he talked it was obvious that his personal reasoning
applied to all politicians and, from an editorial perspective, he considered
them fair game. It’s interesting that before these people were sworn into
office they were our friends and neighbors, but taking an oath of office puts a
target on their back. Paul reminds us, “Love does not delight in evil but
rejoices with the truth.” (1 Cor 13:6 NIV)
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----I suppose that if “making them sweat” and putting a “target on their back” had anything to do with reporting the truth about circumstances, what these politicians stand for, and the general condition of human nature, then these would be very proper to do. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Counting our recent scandals illuminates just how much wisdom politicians could use. The Lord often referred to Himself as the Truth. It doesn’t matter whether politicians or anyone else would agree. The truth remains the truth. And when the public humbly receives truth, the latitude for politicians to fleece us and put us out to pasture is ruined.
-----So the problem is not mostly with the politicians. People themselves are culpable in their being very fleecable. One of my daughters gave me a coffee mug for Christmas that reads, “I see dumb people.” It’s one of my favorites, because it is one of the truest. We people are so incredibly dumb that we think we are smart. We think we actually know the answers to our problems. God laughs in His heaven. You think I see dumb people! And at the very core of human stupidity is that ever running mental script, “I want,” and its illicit children, “I know,” and “I will.” Where are the healthy children, “I doubt,” “I humble,” and “truth comes?” The public has a mental disorder simply called fraud and deceit. They love it. They live it. Even in the church we find this disorder bowing to the Creator with one thought while calling Him a liar by grasping evolution and the “billions of years” poppy-cock with the other. In the church it is beyond dumb, it is insanity! No wonder politicians have free reign to trick us like cheap hookers. Stupidity runs through our minds in our blood. So yes, friends and neighbors are adorable when they’re at home harming no one any more than casting their own handful of ignorance on the bonfire of human misery. Then they turn dangerous by becoming politicians able to cast our money, opportunities, and hope onto that same bonfire.
-----Even more than the politician’s culpability, and far beyond the peoples’ culpability, the reporters’ culpability rises above all. Any word spoken to another human being should be vetted for truth. And the more to whom it is spoken, the more closely it should be examined. Unreported truths roam our land like a vast herd of marauding elephants in the room. Stupidity is what it is less because it doesn’t know stuff, and more because it refuses to follow hints of the truth. When you find your designer coffee table smashed into the floor with a footprint in its middle, that’s a hint to go elephant hunting. When you find your economy smashed into the dust and your health care system exploding like Pompeii, that’s a hint. When you find in the middle of Colorado’s worst job market a sales tax raised ten percent for buying a wreck center better than the one we already don’t much use, that’s a hint for a good reporter to explore. The problem is that most all reporters are too busy knowing what they want. They have no mind at all for humbling to emerging truths. Should these reporters make politicians sweat? In fact, these reporters have been making them sweat to our ruin. Any political resistance to Obama’s tyranny is quickly silenced by threat of the awesome “racist” label. How smart is that!
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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