This isn’t what it looks like.
By now you’ve been swamped with reports of what happened in San Bernardino. Being a 2nd Cupper, you’re digesting it all and forming your own conclusions. For that I applaud you.
This isn’t what it looks like.
I don’t waste my creative capital or your attention with unnecessary political pap. Though it may seem this is that, bear with me. It is not.
The New York Daily News: “GOD ISN’T FIXING THIS.” The subheadline below that declared, “As latest batch of innocent Americans are left lying in pools of blood, cowards who could truly end gun scourge continue to hide behind meaningless platitudes.”
Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten, on Twitter: “Dear ‘thoughts and prayers’ people: Please shut up and slink away. You are the problem, and everyone knows it.”
CNN legal analyst Casey Jordan, immediately after realizing the shooter was an Islamist, barely slowed down before asserting he was “going into this conference room where there was a holiday party, which may have been offensive to him.”
NYDN Executive editor Jim Rich, WP’s Gene Weingarten, and CNN’s Casey Jordan, representing all the other ‘analysts’ purporting to be journalists while exhibiting only the apeing ability of parrots: let me see if I’m getting this straight.
So your answer to my habit of praying for wisdom, courage and resolve during times of stress and great trial is to make fun of me? Am I getting that right?
And you’re thinking if you join with a lot of others all saying the same thing you do and I’m all by myself, if you all hoot and jeer and sneer enough, that will embarrass me so much that I’ll stop?
Really? This is what they pay you for? The least you could do is come up with something original.
Let me ask you something. If you were alone in your opinion and everybody around you – friends, coworkers, family, media peers, social connections, sources – everybody around you was pitying and poking open fun at you, how long would you hold that opinion? How long would it be before you got tired of being treated as a fool and caved?
Yes. What I just described does eerily sound like bullying, doesn’t it?
There was a time when real journalists dug for facts, no matter who they touched or crossed, and once sure of the truth, reported it and stood by their reporting. It was a thing of personal pride and professional ethics to have one’s name on the byline. Sadly, that seldom seems any longer the case.
Anticipating your pushback, yes, there is a group of people who routinely show that kind of solitary courage in the face of ridicule and thinly-veiled hatred.
They’re called Christians. Followers of Jesus Christ, the Word who because of Love put skin on and lived right here among all of us.
The Bible is full of accounts of solitary figures standing straight in God’s name before mobs of spiteful haters.
So is secular history.
Throughout all Earth’s millennia, men and women of God have showed their true love for Him and His Creation by fearlessly standing – alone if need be – when all around bowed to public and even religious opinion.
They still do. They still are.
I’m one of them.
Here I stand.
Rich? Weingarten? Jordan? You’re all old enough to know better than to jump on the running boards of a garbage truck full of knee-jerk before having sufficient facts to know the truth. Your positions have somehow inured you to the most basic of facts:
Your opinions are only that, and everybody has one.
That means mine is just a valid as yours.
Therefore, I’m encouraging all three of you to join with this hardy, resilient, joy-filled bunch of individuals known as Christians. Authentic ones who live out their love for God and people, and are actively praying far more than you know. “Meaningless platitudes”? I was taught that God is Sovereign and responds to praying as He knows is right for all concerned; yet God does nothing except in answer to prayer.
The longer I live, the more I believe that.
Oh, I’m not proselyting you. What you choose to believe is your choice. What I’m suggesting is that you be willing to fulfill your calling by digging for facts and helping discover the truth – even if the majority of your professional colleagues can’t handle that responsibility. And having done that, to faithfully report that truth, whether it comports with your personal opinion or not.
Ah, sure you can!
Christians do it all the time.
And that “joy-filled” part? Let that be your first dig: discover the reason for and origin of the joy that links all Christ-followers everywhere.
Told ya. This isn’t what it looks like.
© D. Dean Boone, December 2015