God & N.P.R.

For the last couple of years, I have been working on my own titles for programs on NPR. "All Things Considered" is "Some Things Considered." "Fresh Air" is "Stale Air." You get my drift. I make up these pet names because, although I really like the intellectual and cultural swath of NPR, it is decidedly Liberal if not out and out Leftist. Since most of the people who listen to NPR are of those ideological leanings, there is a general lack of understanding of conservatism, and particularly the Christian faith.

Which has finally lead me to create what I consider a good explanation of what N.P.R. stands for in my interpretive lexicon. Not Particularly Relevant. God is not particularly relevant. This piece on NPR about Lucretius is more par for the course in how NPR sees all things religious, particularly Christendom. According to NPR, we believers live in the backwaters of society, in the biblical bayou, where guns and Bibles run as high waters and intellectual development and cultural sophistication run at a low ebb. NPR typically does not launch a strident out-and-out attack on the faith, it is more of a pooh-poohing and silent dismissal, as if the belief in the Bible is for children and mentally-challenged individuals who lack the academic and intellectual chops to dialogue beyond a fifth grade level understanding of the world.

We Christians play into the hand of these stereotypes by being xenophobic and backing candidates like Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, and Rick Perry. Seriously, if this is the best that we can forward to a watching and skeptical world, we deserve a good helping of scorn. When I became a Christian, I started reading the works of St. Paul, Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, and C.S. Lewis. One might disagree with their theology but it was much harder to not grant that they were seriously engaged thinkers of monumental and towering intellects.

We believers have often taken the easy way out of engaging our minds seriously with the profoundly difficult issues of the day that are crying out for winsome and wise answers. We depend on this: Since God's truth is seen as foolish in the world's eyes, we often just adopt a fool's approach to anything requiring serious study. Yet, this is not what the Bible means when it says that God's ways appear foolish to man. The foolishness of God is that He loves sinners and has made a way for reconciliation and healing for wayward people in a broken world. Not that we revel in getting D's on life's report cards, somehow thinking that our ignorance is a proof of faithfulness.

Colossians 2:8

Don't let anyone capture you with empty philosophies and high-sounding nonsense that come from human thinking and from the spiritual powers of this world, rather than from Christ.