I have a two-week break from preaching, so I’m trying to clean up some files that are starting to overcrowd my now limited hard-drive space. I came across a “Writings” folder I haven’t used in forever that has old homework assignments, church newsletter articles I had written, and copies of old blog posts from HarvestNet, where I had an ongoing debate with a guy named “SpeaksinTongues” about that particular spiritual gift. The following is an article I had evidently written for the church newsletter, although I never remember that church publishing a regular newsletter. It’s still as relevant today as it was in 2007, so I offer it here.
As I was editing a book recently, I serendipitously encountered a profound proverb in Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary: au pays des aveugles les borgnes sont rois. I could barely pronounce this French saying, but fortunately the meaning was not lost in the English translation that accompanied it: “in the country of the blind the one-eyed men are kings.”
Immediately I recalled Frank Peretti’s second book on spiritual warfare, Piercing the Darkness. Early in that story, a television news crew is covering a story about a controversy at a Christian school; Peretti’s narrative is astounding: “The cameraman set the camera on his shoulder and started watching the news with one eye.”
I could jump up on my soapbox and complain about how most network news is biased against Christian principles and morality, but most of us already know that. Less than seven percent of television, motion picture, and news media elite attend church on a weekly basis according to a 1990’s survey by The Center for the Study of Social and Political Change at Smith College, so it is easy to see why they have a bias. The one-eyed media monster has set itself up as the judge of right and wrong in our society. Many times their judgments are contrary to Scripture, because most do not know what the Scriptures really say.
But I am more concerned about the first part of the French proverb cited above. Have Christians, myself included, turned a blind eye and deaf ear to the cultural decay around us? Do the problems that plague our society overwhelm us to the point that we do not think we can make a difference? I for one have grown tired of hearing of the almost daily assault on Christian values and principles. Tyrannical judges (and the media who praise them) say, for example, that constitutional amendments affirming the Christian view of marriage, approved by the majority of voters in a state (e.g., Nebraska, 2005), are unconstitutional. How can this be?
I hope that Christians will, like Ezekiel’s watchman, keep both eyes open to counter the influence of the media Cyclopes [plural of Cyclops], in order to reclaim and proclaim God’s truth to a world that is seeking a moral compass.
My opinions are my own
Pastor Scott Stocking, M.Div.
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