Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Trust Your Media-anic

Some time ago, I was visiting my grandmother-she is in a nursing home-and, at the suggestion of my mother, I turned the t.v. to a news channel. I was interested in a story they were telling about the 'Gabriel Tablet'. This archaeological find may, according to some, shed light on the historical Jesus. Now, as a conservative, I break out in a rash whenever I hear about 'the quest for the historical Jesus' though, of course, there is nothing wrong per se with such an idea. I was delighted to see Ben Witherington (a fellow conservative evangelical) being interviewed on this program which, I should also mention, was not on Fox News (so it was presumably leftist).

So they talk about the Gabriel tablet for a short-too short-then go back to their lead story. Apparently Jessie Jackson had said something less than flattering about Barrack Obama. He subsequently made it crystal clear that he was very sorry about getting caught saying such things. They went on and on about this foolishness for some time, occasionally alluding to an extra-marital affair that Jonathon Edwards was said to have had four years ago.

So, they talked for about a minute on this archaeological find which allegedly gives new information about Jesus (albeit, unsympathetic to traditional Christian beliefs) and spent the much of the rest of the time with the usual garbage associated with political campaigning.

With this, we come to my main point. It has neither to do with liberal religious scholars or liberal politicians. Instead, I am pointing out how backwards the liberal media is. What is more important, the latest presidential race gossip or Jesus? To ask this question is to answer it. Yet we are subjected to the sophomoric, or rather junior high-ic, hooie we've all come to expect from the liberal media day after day.

So there I am, with the two women I love most (after my wife, of course) complaining about how bad the media can be sometimes. My mother told me, "for goodness sake, not everyone is a zealot [like you]". She may have a point there. But the point I was getting at, and am getting at now in this post, is that the media often is not the objective, informative, and relatively comprehensive information source they presumably want us to take them as. One certainly does not have to be religious fanatic to recognise this fact.

1 comment:

Joseph Hinman (Metacrock) said...

That stone is not bad for Christian apologetics, not to any degree. It helps us emmensly and it's an answer to prayer.

It proves that the expectations for Messiah were different in Jesus day then they are today. This is very important evidence or people arguing with Jewish anti-missionaries who assume that today's Jewish understanding of Messiah is just as it was in Jesus day.

IF that were the case then most of the fulfillment we credit Jesus with would not even be things the Jews are expecting Messiah to do.

Evidence like this already existed because Martinez (a scholoar) found a florogelum at Qumran which says about the same thing: but it applied to the Messiah as redeemer of sins.