“Jesus answered, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me’.” (John 14:6)
If you’re middle-aged, you remember the 1960’s television classic, Dragnet.
Sgt. Joe Friday came into our homes every week investigating crimes for the
Los Angeles Police Department. On occasion, when he interviewed a citizen
who just ran on, he would say, “Just the facts, please”.
Just the facts. I once became so angered by a newspaper article in another
community where I lived that I paid a visit to the publisher. The story was
simply not true to which the publisher replied, “We’re not interested in the
truth, just the facts.”
That taught me a real lesson about what newspapers can become. And while
the town I lived in has a good newspaper that is for the most part factual,
it is not always the truth. Consider, for example, a newspaper editorial on
homosexuality and evolution I read several years ago, which in part read:
“Laura Schlessinger – a.k.a. Dr. Laura, based on her Ph. D. in physiology –
has been taken to task by the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council for
characterizing homosexuality on her radio show as ‘deviant,’
‘dysfunctional,’ ‘aberrant,’ ‘abnormal,’ and biologically ‘an error’.
What is most astounding about ‘Dr. Laura’s’ proposition is that she clearly
missed taking a course in evolutionary biology. Biology is all about
deviance. Species arise because variant traits are selected for by the
environment.”
To the newspaper’s credit, no one on their editorial staff wrote that
editorial. It originally appeared in The Globe and Mail of Toronto.
Nonetheless, I was sad to see our editorial staff choose an editorial read
largely by Christians that contradicts what the Word of God has to say about
creation. It may be fact, but it’s not the truth.
Interestingly, most Americans don’t believe the evolution lie. A 2009
Gallup Poll conducted on the eve of Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday revealed
that only 39% of Americans say they believe in evolution. It certainly
makes you wonder how a view held by only 39% of Americans has taken control
of what’s taught in our public school system and read in our local
newspaper, doesn’t it?
Ever wonder why we’ve never seen an editorial defending creationism in our
newspaper? The truth is evolution is politically correct thinking and
creationism is not. Why?
Dr. John Morris, a creationist, says one reason is evolution is one of
several principles that help spurn other closely held thought systems that
are at work in our society today and are deemed to be politically correct.
He argues that since evolution cannot stand the “test of open scientific
inquiry”, the “alternate view of creation must be censored”.
But Morris’ strongest argument probably points to the real reason why this
newspaper and others fail to include such thinking on its editorial pages:
“In the name of ‘tolerance,’ the politically correct crowd vilifies any
person or thought that is not ‘tolerant’, which does not value every view or
action as equally valid. Since Christianity insists that absolute truth
does exist, in faith and practice as well as science and history, it must
not be tolerated. The message of creation, which under girds Christianity,
further implies that there are absolute guidelines for life, and that some
choices constitute sin, which must be punished. In the name of ‘tolerance,’
this view cannot be tolerated.”
We may not be as free and open-minded as we claim. Have you ever stopped to
think that’s it that same kind of thinking that put Jesus to death?
In his book, Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis urges against making young people
read newspapers because “nearly all that a boy reads…will be known before
he is twenty to be false in emphasis and interpretation, if not in fact.”
Moreover Lewis adds, “Most of it will have lost all importance. Most of
what he remembers he will therefore have to unlearn; and he will probably
have acquired an incurable taste for vulgarity and sensationalism.”
I don’t know if I agree with Lewis or not. Perhaps we just need to read a
good book along with the newspaper, like the Bible. That way we can get
both truth and facts!