Dear Rev. Know-it-all,
In your previous column you remarked that there are three forces in the modern world that want to eliminate Christianity. You mentioned Marxism and Islam. What is the third?
Yours once again,
Isabela Giornata
Dear Isabela,
I’m getting to that. Lenin said that in the West there would always be useful idiots. The most useful idiots available today are found in the Mediacracy. By Mediacracy, I mean the geniuses of the media who, for the most part, are secular fundamentalists. (Interesting term, no? They are fundamentalist in that they blindly accept the tenets of their religion, secular humanism, without any questions.)
We, in the West, believe that the minute you are on TV, you have acquired the status of “Expert In All Things.” Madonna becomes a theologian, Jane Fonda becomes a diplomat and everybody becomes an ecologist. I’ve always enjoyed the old commercial in which Angela Lansbury is asked to recommend a painkiller. Angela Lansbury? Does being an actress in the series “Murder She Wrote” qualify a person to give medical advice? Apparently in the minds of advertising agents and the fools who trust them it does. Such is the intellectual depth of those who control what you see in your living room. (I’ve always wondered about the premise of “Murder She Wrote.” If a dead body appeared every time Angela Lansbury showed up in a quaint New England seaside town, I would begin to suspect Angela Lansbury.)
Where was I? Oh yes. We moon over these idiots and take their advice on every decision of good taste, political correctness and morality, from the New York Times at the top to Jerry Springer on the bottom, and Oprah somewhere in between. They systematically anaesthetize us to every immorality. The televised governing class feeds us on a steady diet of corrupt assumptions. Everybody knows the Crusades were evil. Everybody knows the Spanish Inquisition killed millions. Everybody knows that abortion is a private decision. Everybody knows that Queen Mary was blood thirsty and Queen Elizabeth I “good Queen Bess” was the best ruler England ever had and wouldn’t hurt a fly. Everybody knows that Islam is the religion of peace and we should never discriminate or profile. Everybody knows that any kind of censorship is wrong. Everybody knows... Everybody knows.... Everybody knows....
When is the last time you saw a show that didn’t say divorce was okay, that same-sex relationships were okay, that sexual promiscuity was okay, and these are just the sitcoms!. I could go on and on, but my intention is not just to rage at the situation. Rather, I am impressed at how they have done it. They have just made the assumption, repeated the lie and said, “Well, let’s move on now. Wash, rinse and repeat...” They have gotten us to agree to their premises without any real discussion.
Here is a case in point. Few people have done more to change the world than Alfred Kinsey with his study titled “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male” released in 1948. It was hailed as a triumph of scientific research and began the avalanche of the sexual revolution. One problem: Kinsey’s research was very poorly done. His statistical samplings were not representative of the group he was studying, and most astounding of all, as James Jones points out in his 1997 biography “Alfred C. Kinsey: a Public/Private Life” Kinsey’s own very twisted sexuality drove his research. It was bad research by a troubled man. And everybody believed it because they wanted to. It relieved them of guilt about destructive sexual behavior. In 2004, there was a popular movie made starring Liam Neeson that portrayed Kinsey as hero of liberation. Everybody knows Kinsey is a hero. Everybody knows???
Another example; In every sitcom and TV commercial dad is clueless. The Mediacracy has done all it can to trash fatherhood and family life. They have trashed a lot more than that. When was the last time you saw a show that lionized honest poverty? Was there ever such a show? I vaguely remember such shows in my distant youth in which not everybody was rich. Remember the “Honeymooners” ? He was a bus driver. They struggled. They were poor, They worked hard. They weren’t glamorous. They fought and still somehow they stayed together because they loved each other. “Good Times” was another sitcom that aired from 1974 until 1979, on CBS. It was about struggling African-Americans who valued family, faithfulness and honor. Now everybody in sitcoms is rich, doesn’t seem to work and is sleeping around. If you are really adventurous, look at TV aimed at African-American youth. Simplicity and hard work are not the models held up there either. Lots of bling and lots of, well..... I can feel you getting nervous just reading this. Shall we pretend that one of the most disadvantaged groups in our society is not being used and abused for the monetary well being of the Mediacracy?
I plan to get a lot more offensive. Here goes. Another swell example of the gradual anaesthetization of the culture is a Penn and Teller comedy show. I will quote from it. I am not making any of this up. “Tonight we’re going to take you through the da*n Bible and show you it’s full of inaccuracies. Really, no kidding. Go get your g*dda*mn Bible! If you don’t read along with us tonight, you’re going to think we’re making this sh*t up.” I’m not sorry if I offend. You need to know that the culture has turned its back on the Faith and the Book that founded it. The darlings of the Mediacracy mock what you hold dearest. If we cannot defend our faith as well as witness to it we are not hearing the Biblical injunction from St. Peter’s first letter that I quoted last week.
Another example: “Piss Christ” is a 1987 photograph by photographer Andres Serrano. It depicts a small plastic crucifix submerged in a glass of the artist's urine. It won the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art's "Award in the Visual Arts" competition, sponsored in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, a U.S. government agency. In other words, your taxes paid for it. Here’s one more: In 1999,Chris Ofili painted, “The Holy Virgin Mary,” a depiction of the Virgin Mary, as a part of the “Sensation” exhibit shown in New York City at the Brooklyn Museum of Art from 2 October, 1999 to 9 January, 2000, you guessed it, funded in part by your tax dollars at work. The painting depicted the Blessed Mother surrounded by images from exploitation movies, close-ups of female genitalia cut from pornographic magazines, and elephant dung. How avant garde! Slapping Christians around is a very brave thing, as long as they turn the other cheek.
Islam, the religion of Peace, does not put up with this sort of thing. Theo Van Gogh, the great-great nephew of artist Vincent Van Gogh, was murdered by Mohammed Bouyeri in 2004.Van Gogh had made a movie dealing with the topic of violence against women in some Islamic societies. It told the stories of four abused Muslim women. Imam Fawaz of the as-Sunnah Mosque in The Hague, Netherlands, gave a sermon several weeks before the murder in which he called Theo van Gogh “...a criminal bastard and beseeched Allah to visit an incurable disease upon the film maker.” We Christians are enjoined to pray for our critics and to ask God to bless them. Islam has a different approach. Can you imagine what would happen if the Koran were treated in the way that brave artists of the left treat the symbols of Christianity?
So by all means, defend the faith in ways means permitted to us, by honesty and virtue and by the clear presentation of the faith and its history. Witness to it by your lives, but defend it by your words and actions. If we do these things now, perhaps we will not soon have to defend ourselves in a more forceful way.