Gray Lady Down

Wed Dec 28, 7:00 PM ET

Trust: The so-called mainstream media in general and The New York Times in particular are waging a relentless campaign undermining the war on terror. The Fourth Estate is beginning to look like a Fifth Column.
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It's hard to imagine a major American newspaper in 1942 announcing before the Battle of Midway that we had broken the Imperial Japanese code or before D-Day that the Allies had a machine that let us read the Nazis' highest-level transmissions.

Yet in the war on terror, that's exactly the kind of information that papers like the Times and The Washington Post, in the name of the "people's right to know," have provided our jihadist enemy -- from stories on secret
CIA prisons where our mortal enemies are held to wiretaps on al-Qaida operatives and their U.S. contacts.

Where was the defense of the "people's right to know" when the issue was who "revealed" the name of CIA desk jockey Valerie Plame and her Bush-bashing, mint tea-drinking husband, Joe Wilson? Then the issue was who was placing our covert agents in jeopardy and who should be indicted and sent to federal prison.

But when it comes to the Post disclosing classified information on CIA prisons, which we hope exist, or the Times telling the world that the CIA uses its own airline service, disguised as a private charter company, to move prisoners around, hey, that's Pulitzer Prize material.

Last May, the Times reported in painstaking detail on how "the civilian planes can go places American military craft would not be welcome." These revelations prompted widespread protests in Europe and elsewhere with demands for investigations into and the curtailing of these operations.

It is hard to see how making public this information in the middle of a war helps, say, a housewife in Des Moines. By compromising these weapons in the war on terror, it only places the American people in greater jeopardy. But it's easy to see how this information aids al-Qaida.

The Times finds itself in the unique position of publishing classified information at the same time it insists that terrorists in contact with their operatives in the U.S. have an expectation of privacy while plotting their next attack.

In its Dec. 16 story reporting that the National Security Agency eavesdropped on calls between terrorist suspects abroad and residents of the U.S. -- a practice that is not only legal and constitutional, but also has broken up several terrorist plots -- it alerted al-Qaida that we might be listening in.

As damaging as the story was, its timing was curious, to say the least. If the "people's right to know" was so important, why did the Times sit on the story for a year, only to publish it on the eve of the debate on renewing the Patriot Act, inciting a brouhaha that also drowned out the good news of
Iraq's successful and violence-free election of a permanent government?

Sen. John Cornyn (news, bio, voting record), R-Texas, says he knows of two senators who decided to vote against renewing the Patriot Act in its present form based on the Times piece. Did the Times intend to strip us of this vital tool in the war on terror by revealing a clandestine, successful operation that has thwarted another 9-11?

We enjoy press and other freedoms only because we have successfully defended our nation from those who would take away our freedoms, and our lives.

But with freedom comes responsibility.

Contextualization and Christianity

From Townhall.com...
I felt compelled to mirror this in its entirely, since it meets my criteria for brief, witty, and accurate. I wonder though if the author would be inclined to agree that in many ways Christiandom needs to synthesize its message, drop the old ideas, and embrace science when it can.


The Church and Contextualization Frustration

By Doug Giles

Dec 24, 2005

As a minister, the “mission field” with which I’m primarily concerned is that difficult-to-understand and freakishly lost people group commonly referred to as “America’s youth.” This extraordinarily confused demographic is the tribe that I feel particularly called to reach.

American young adults, though living in a nation inundated with Christianity and founded upon Christian principles, have become (through parental neglect and ecclesiastical nonchalance combined with a heavy dose of liberal acrimony) completely secularized.

This demographic seems more disinterested in Christianity than PDiddy is in driving a Corolla. Face it, Church, generally speaking, young adults do not attend, en masse, our worship services—unless they’re forced to. Nor do they listen to or care about Christian radio, and the majority of them think Christian TV is weird (and they’re right). American youth live in a world that is foreign to the American Christian, and it’s hard for the well meaning saint to understand why they don’t “get it.” The gospel is completely plain to us, yet confusingly strange to them.

I believe the culpability flow chart regarding this generation’s indifference and ignorance lies partly on the shoulders of the youth and to a degree upon the churches that refuse to contextualize the gospel message. Certain ill-bred sectors of evangelicalism blame the youth for their obstinacy and the devil for his constancy—but never condemn itself for its belligerency towards contextualization.

We have failed as American missionaries to appreciate and bridge the Grand Canyon-sized ideological and communication chasms that exist between this secularized age group and their believing, biblical predecessors. And I hate to put responsibility upon the lazy believers, but the initial onus to adjust falls to us and not to them.

In order to reach out to young adults effectively, we’ve got to seek first to understand them instead of attempting to make ourselves understood by them. Therefore, brailing their culture is a must. And here’s where the Christian’s commitment to duty hits the floor. Shallow as it might sound, not keeping up with modern society can be a real detriment to communication. The society that we’re living in here in the U.S. is undergoing more changes than a PMSing Emily Rose, and it’s incumbent upon the Christian to understand each cultural shift and adjust his means accordingly. We can’t afford to be monkish in our avoidance of the multi-faceted influences that affect our culture—the culture in which we have been sovereignly placed to reform.

This means keeping up with what’s going on in the young people’s world, paying attention to what’s on TV, in the theatres, on their iPOD’s and in their CD players. I’m not advocating spending endless and mindless amounts of time watching and listening to every hip-hop-Hollywood-come-lately diphthong; rather, listening as an evangelist and an apologist attempting to get the gist of where they’re coming from and where they intend to take your kids. As cultural analysts, we must dissect the beliefs and values of our youth’s gurus and their temporary icons, paying attention to the particular effects upon them and the Christian worldview.

Therefore, as we watch an estimated 50 hours a week of TV, between the giggles, our eleventh bag of Lay’s and our fifth Foster’s, we should pause to listen and maybe even scratch down some casual observations made while viewing an episode of SouthPark, a Green Day video or Napoleon Dynamite.

Simply increasing our sensitivity to what we are actually seeing and hearing will serve tremendously in making the gospel come alive to the youth by using current illustrations couched in a gospel context. The epoxying of the abovementioned will form a lethal bond of understanding with our audience, which when backed up by eternal wisdom from on high, will build a communicative platform that will help God get their attention.

“Our business is to present that which is timeless in the particular language of our own age. The bad preacher does exactly the opposite: he takes the ideas of our own age and tricks them out in the traditional language of Christianity. Your teaching must be timeless at its heart and wear a modern dress.”

-C. S. Lewis