This Is My Flattered World

Fellow Labourers-

This is another interesting subject worth going over and over. On my job and because of associations I have met people from all walks of life. Do you know that the ones that I have met who often are filled with a lot of self-importance are the ones in church? I wonder why! Is it because we do not understand our purpose? How would you finish this question? If I want to be a good Christian, I must…..

Have you noticed these days the length of time we take to introduce preachers? By the time we are through one would wonder if they are not more qualified than Jesus because we spend so little time bigging up Jesus. I strongly believe in honour and respect but the church in my eyes have gone overboard. We have caught up with the world and have surpassed it.

Since we are dealing with communication it is apt that I quote from Malcolm Muggeridge's Christ and the Media. Lecture one of the book deals with "The Fourth Temptation."

"It is a truism to say that the media in general, and TV in particular, and BBC television especially, are incomparably the greatest single influence in our society today, exerted at all social, econimic and cultural levels. This influence, I should add, is, in my opinion, largely exerted irresponsibly, arbitrarily, and without reference to any moral or intellectual, still less spiritual guidelines whatsoever. Furthermore, if it is the case, as I believe, that what we still call Western Civilization is fast disintegrating, then the media are playing a major role in the process by carrying out, albeit for the most part unconsciously, a mighty brainwashing operation, whereby all traditional standards and values are denigrated to the point of disappearing, leaving a moral vacuum in which the very concepts of good and evil have ceased to have validity. Like a building site, which has been cleared, but with nothing erected on it; just a great, empty space, where rubbish is thrown, where children play and quarrel and fight, and layabouts sleep, and the rain collects in puddles. Future historians will surely see us as having created in the media a Frankenstein monster which no one knows how to control or direct, and marvel that we should have so meekly subjected ourselves to its destructive and often maligned influence."

Pax Vobiscum

Suggested Readings: Christ and the media, The third testament, Something Beautiful for God, Conversion-Malcolm Muggeridge.

Robert A. Stewart