My father loved the Proverbs. He loved quoting them, preaching about them, warning his sons with them.
He would warn us about the dangers of the “scoffer”. He would warn us about tale-bearers who kept gossip and strife going because they loved chaos. (My dad loved words like “strife”; “meddling”; “tale-bearing”; It turns out, Solomon was right. So was Dad.
Mostly.
I took his words seriously. When I was growing up, the air that I breathed was the air of the scoffer. We mocked everyone and everything when we were schoolchildren. I have since commiserated with those friends of mine from decades ago, in awe that any of us survived. We used our tongues as weapons, ever the jesters on the feelings of those who weren’t as quick with the wit as we imagined ourselves to be. But then I realized that words hurt, and I really hated hurting people.
I thought I was funny. But I was mostly hurtful. I remember all the Proverbs on the scoffer and the one who mocks and the one who says “I was only joking” and my heart hurt.
Around 1990, my dad introduced me to Rush Limbaugh. He was entertaining. Every good Christian and right wing person listened to him.
When Clinton was elected in ‘92, Rush exploded in popularity. Do you remember him playing “My ding-a-ling” as Madeline Albright’s theme song? Do you remember how you would mock Jesse Jackson’s name every time he said it?
If you knew my dad, you would know how out of character it would be for him to laugh at Rush’s masturbation jokes. But he did.
It was about that time that I turned Rush off and went back to listening to my CD’s in the car.
I, like every good Christian, got my news from Fox. Fair and balanced, unlike the libtard mainstream media….hahahaha.
But something happened gradually. The news turned into people just yelling at each other. There would be on two or four windows of obnoxious people shouting over each other, mocking each other, contemptuously railing on each other. I realized that I was poisoning myself with the air around me.
I hated it. I couldn’t watch more than 30 seconds of it.
And now, of course, I know that most people who lean right are saying “But MSNBC is just as bad. But the liberals are just as bad. WHAT ABOUT HILLARY’S EMAILS!!!”
Dunno. Never watched MSNBC either. I was always more apt to watch Friends reruns than the news anyway.
Scoffing, contempt, mocking, fear, demonization – it drives up ratings and eventually puts madmen in power. It changes how we think.
My father hated the uncouth. He hated jeans. He hated impolite language. He never talked about sex. He hated rudeness.
And then came Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.
The air that we breathe can make us alive, like the crisp fresh tang of a bright spring morning; or it can cause us to wither and die, like smog in Beijing.
Right wing media is smog in Beijing. It poisons the mind. And yeah, the left wing…blah blah blah blah. I don’t care. I don’t listen to any of it.
The left wing didn’t destroy my church and my family. So excuse me for not jumping on the bandwagon.
But I digress.
When the news companies got websites, I checked out the Fox website, just to see if I could get news without the noise.
And flashing everywhere were headlines – “Is Jennifer Aniston sleeping with Russell Crowe??” or some such thing. And then you’d click on it, and the story would be “Friends and acquaintances say that Aniston and Crowe don’t even know each other, and never met. And that was the story. Or whatever the details were. It was 25 years ago.
Now they call it “click bait” and I hate it. It is simply what my dad used to call “Tale bearing”. The hints of a story with just enough credibility behind it to destroy someone.
Fox did it with celebrities. Left leaning politicians. And I was angry. It was as if being a celebrity or a politician took away all obligation of Christians to not bear false witness. You could destroy someone for ratings and the church would cheer.
This was the only news that the right would watch. Every Christian watched Fox, you know.
And lives were destroyed. The followers of Christ were poisoned by the air that they breathed. Reputations destroyed. Hillary eating babies; Bill hiding pedophiles. And then an hour or so of people screaming over each other.
Jump ahead a few years.
I once talked to a man who was a member of a Reformed church his whole life. Avid Trump fanatic. He told me that when he watched that first debate in 2016, he knew that Trump was the guy to save America.
I didn’t watch the debate. I haven’t watched a debate in years. See above for my reasons. But I heard the sound bites.
Donald had nothing constructive or positive to say. He simply mocked, scoffed, gestured, insulted and ridiculed. It is what he does.
And it occurred to me. The church didn’t flock after Donald IN SPITE of his contempt and hatred. They flocked after him BECAUSE of it. It is what they wanted.
They were catechized by 30 years of Rush and Fox News.
When Rush and Fox were first starting, I asked my dad “Dad, how can you follow this? You’ve always hated that kind of thing”. and he said, “It’s just entertainment. We aren’t electing Rush president.”
Until we did. Only we elected someone far, far worse.
We were poisoned by the air that we breathed.
Turn off the talk radio. Turn off the news. Do something beautiful.
Go talk to your neighbors who might be different than you.
Quit acting the fool. We are better than that. We are the people of the living God.
Listen to Cory Booker, and learn how to talk to people. He knows Christ, so he knows how to talk to people.
But turn the poison off.
That’s all.
Have a great weekend.
My Only Comfort 