Practical Theology

It's far from the first time I've heard it: often enough that I usually don't pay much attention to it anymore.  At our last Bible-study the teacher, a retired minister, mentioned some recent event he'd heard about.  Can't remember how CNN came into it: either he knew it wasn't on CNN, or he apologized that he had heard it on CNN: but in either case he said he doesn't listen to CNN because "they're too liberal."

Like I say, I've heard similar remarks from "conservatives" for years, and usually don't pay much attention to it.

This time it caught my attention: in the context of Bible-study, where we come to hear what God says, the teacher's criteria seemed bizarre; and I had to think "I wonder what God's criteria is for CNN ?"

I've been too seized by Jesus' self-identification in John 14:6, for 'way too long, to come up with any better answer to that question than "Truth."  God desires truth in man's innermost parts (Psalms 51:6): I have to believe He desires not a whit less truth in man's network news.

Fortunately truth is also the standard journalism sets for itself, in a secular manifestation, "accuracy."  Honest journalists' criteria is to tell events as they verifiably happened, quote newsmakers' words accurately and in their true context, and clearly label their personal interpretations as "commentary."

Honest journalists make mistakes: some may even at times give in to the temptation to mix personal opinion with verifiable fact.  Don't we all fall short of our own standards, much less absolute Truth ?  But "falling short" of truth is meaningless unless our criteria is truth.  As it is for journalists...and even more for Christians.

The world...Christians and all other human beings...cannot live without Truth.  Try to imagine a society where scientists are honored for faking their data: where witnesses in court take an oath to lie: where news-media reliably report as fact the opposite of what happened.

We all know there have been such societies: and we know that they never endure.  Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia are two examples.  It cannot escape our notice that in both societies honest science, justice and journalism were falsified to conform with the dominant politics of those nations.

Indeed, politics seems the only human "institution" where lies have any history of (albeit short-term, and disastrous) "success."  Needless to say, politics has long been a favorite venue of "the father of lies," and one in which he has perpetrated destruction and untold death, through deceived men.

So it struck me that the Bible-study leader's criteria for CNN was a political one: not the criteria of truth that CNN's journalists' set for themselves, in which Christians concur.

It seems a widespread perversion of the faith among so-called "conservative Christians" that politics is their sovereign criteria, in all things.  The name they've chosen for themselves tells where their priority lies, and their voting-record over the last 40 years confirms it.  Could anything more delight the "father of lies" ?

Jesus said He IS The Truth.  It seems then the practical theology of every Christian...the way we practice our belief in Jesus...must be loving Truth, following Truth, and measuring all things else by Truth.  Down to an including what news-media we favor, or disfavor.

May God lead His people in Truth, by the Spirit of Truth, to all Truth.  May every follower of Jesus desire as God does "truth in the innermost parts."

Amen !!