Toleration?

I believe in God. I honestly do.

I believe God loves even me. I often wonder why. I have lived long enough, made enough horrible mistakes, to wonder how anybody can love me. Yet I believe God does. Thank God.

I believe God loves all people. I know quite a few people who seem to have earned that love more than I. I also know some who seem not to have earned it. But who am I to decide who God loves and why?

I pray—literally—that I live my life in a manner that supports my beliefs. I pray that I would manifest the love of God for all. I know I fail in this. But I sincerely try.

This is why the flap over Indiana's new law protecting the free exercise of religion grieves me deeply. I am a Hoosier. But I happen to live in a state, Michigan, that passed the same law years ago. Nobody seemed to care then. Nobody seemed to care when President Clinton signed the same law on the federal level twenty-two years ago. But times change, and so do political calculi.

For decades now “tolerance” and “diversity” have been taught in our schools. They have received ever-greater play in the media. But I put those words in quotation marks because in my experience the tolerance extends only to certain people. Christians who try to live according to a traditional interpretation of the faith—no matter how lovingly—are not tolerated by many.

As a Christian I have often felt condemned by the tolerance folks. I have never felt this more keenly than right now. The bitter irony of their judging my beliefs in the name of tolerance seems to escape them.

I understand that many people sincerely believe that these laws are meant as an attack against gays and lesbians. I disagree with them, but I grant their genuine feeling.

Can they grant my genuine religious convictions? I can live with them; can they live with me?

I thought I lived in a country founded in part on the protection of my right to practice my sincerely-held religious beliefs. If a law meant to defend that cannot stand, then where can I go? I know of no place.

In that case, God help us all.

Journalism--or what passes for it

This week our local newspaper waged a campaign against a city official. The articles have divulged personal information better left unprinted—for the sake of him, his family and the rest of us. The attack has been personal and mean. It has been blatantly self-serving. (How many papers and clicks can we sell if we slop around down here in the sewer?)

I have decided not to read the newspaper in question, not in print nor on-line. I hope others will make the same choice.

I recognize this merely represents the latest in a long line of media fails. Once-proud networks have fallen from Murrow to Williams, from investigative to yellow journalism. I remember watching actual reporters breaking actual news while sweating humidity and bullets in Viet Nam. Now I feel I must consume at least three outlets just to get the facts. Everybody has an agenda. Everybody's bottom line colors their editorial policy.

Many moons ago I had the opportunity to interview Bob Knight, the basketball coach at Indiana University. He intimidated me into preparing for the experience with a rigor I have matched only once: when I took the board exams to qualify for the ministry. (Well, I was pretty nervous when I went to dinner the first time with my eventual wife's parents.)  I made absolutely certain every word I printed about Knight was accurate. If only reporters--and editors--always took this approach.

We live in media ghettos. We tend to consume only what agrees with our preconceptions.  I urge you to turn to Fox, National Public Radio, the Atlantic Monthly, the National Review—oh: and the Bible AND Discover magazine. Think about it. Test it with your B.S. meter. Listen to people you respect with whom you disagree. Repeat with me the vital incantation, “I could be wrong.”

Our local newspaper seems oblivious to the irony of its rage against any person or organization it feels might be spinning information. It has made me feel a little slimy just from reading certain headlines. It has done the same number when crusading against the local school district and community college. Its "coverage" of a lengthy debate about how best to serve the homeless villainized decent people on all sides.  I have given up thinking it can clean up its act. That leaves only the question of whether I can clean up mine. And you, yours.