Obama and Strange Fire

Jesus said to his disciples: "Things that cause people to stumble are bound to come, but woe to anyone through whom they come. [Luke 17:1 (NIV).]

I hope I am not a rock of stumbling. This isn’t for my friends only; it’s for me, too.

1. Obama-hating.

I believe that some people hate Barack Obama more than they love America. When the economy ticks up, they’re not glad. They see America’s climb from this slump through the crystal of Obama’s re-election chances. So good news is, to them, bad news.

Likewise, a friend of mine heard early in the Obama administration that Defense Secretary Robert Gates was going to resign. My friend couldn’t conceal his percolating glee. He didn’t regret America’s loss of a competent leader; he rejoiced in potential disruption of the Obama administration.

2. More Obama-hating.

But it’s more than a willingness for America to sink as long as Obama sinks with it. Recently, partisans have been exploiting Obama’s verbal hiccup in his you-didn’t-build-that speech. In context, it’s clear that Obama knows that people build businesses by their initiative and hard work; his point was that America helps. His point was that the help that America gives includes help from our government. Government supplies (for example) roads, educated workers through free public education, fire protection, and police protection (so that you don’t need an armed posse to keep your business relatively safe). Non-partisan fact-checkers have shown that the partisan attacks on this speech are untruthful.

I have debated what Obama said with my friends. I have pointed out what the fact-checkers say. And I have pointed out other parts in his speech where he pays tribute to the initiative and hard work that business owners dedicate to their businesses.

What amazes me is this: some of my friends now think that context doesn’t matter. If somebody says something that sounds crazy, these friends now don’t think it’s necessary to look carefully at what that person said to make sure that they really meant that crazy thing. It’s legitimate, apparently, to lift a statement out of context, and impose on the speaker a belief that he doesn’t hold, and to judge him harshly if that belief happens to be crazy.

In other words, my friends hate Obama so much that they are willing to abandon logic, reason, and truth in the service of their hatred.

3. Defining evil and good by what Obama is and is not.

I lived in China for two years. A Chinese man compared America unfavorably to China. He said that America is young, implying that it is immature compared to China, who’s civilization goes back thousands of years. When I pointed out that the United States is older than the Republic of China, he missed a beat. Then he rejoined that China is "young and vigorous". In other words, whatever China is, that is good. Whatever America is, that is bad.

I find hatred of Obama is like this. Just like good or bad is defined to this Chinese man by China in comparison to America, so also, to Obama-haters, bad and good are defined by what Obama does or does not do.

No act by Obama is too trivial to overlook in the gathering of scorn. Do Obama and his wife tap their knuckles in exuberance and joy? That becomes a "terrorist fist-bump". Does Obama drink a Budweiser? Budweiser is foreign-owned!

Some hatred is directed at actions not so trivial. Obama kept America’s economy from sinking by bailing out American car companies. This saved jobs not only at those companies, but also at the American companies that supply parts to those companies. Almost all of that bail-out money has come back to the treasury now that those American car companies have regained their footing. Was this a worthy policy? Not to hear some say. To them, it was "socialism".

Recently, Obama expressed solidarity with families of victims in Aurora, Colorado. His said that his daughters like to go to movies; he expressed what it would be like for him if they were harmed in a movie theater. Naturally, this mourning with those who mourn (Romans 12:15) was a bad thing. According to Rush Limbaugh, it was "egomania" because it showed that to Obama the tragedy in Aurora was supposedly all about himself. Limbaugh is widely followed; I assume that that means that his words find many listening ears.

3. Obama-hating as a rock of stumbling.

It dis-eases me a little bit to tease out the implications of all of this. One of those dis-easing implications is this: if my friends hate Obama more than they love truth, then I worry that they hate Obama more than they love the one who is truth personified, namely God.

This is truly a dreadful thought. But it is not shocking.

We love God with our lips, if not with our hearts. Jesus knew this. "But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all people." (John 2:24 (NIV).) One evidence of this is our preference for our own comfort. When we cherish our comfort instead of helping our needy brothers and sisters in Christ, we show where our loyalty lies. (1 John 3:17.) I don’t exclude myself from this judgment.

Barack Obama is a Christian. He is a flawed Christian like the rest of us, but a Christian nonetheless. He attended a Chicago church with his family. He professes Christianity. Recently, he recited very appropriate scripture when speaking words of comfort about the tragedy in Aurora, Colorado.

My brothers and sisters stumble over Obama. If we trembled before the word of God, and we don’t, we would tremble before this:

Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. [1 John 4:20 (NIV).]

If these words don't stir the waters by themselves, consider them with these words:

Jesus replied, “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.  Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching.  [John 14:23-24 (NIV).] 

4. Furnaces of hatred.

Jesus said to his disciples: "Things that cause people to stumble are bound to come, but woe to anyone through whom they come." Luke 17:1 (NIV)

We spend an hour or two in church; more time in front of the television. Some media companies are in American society great furnaces of hatred. Fox News might as well call itself the 24/7 hate-Obama network. And Keith Olbermann used to hate deeply on MSNBC. (I’ve watched almost no MSNBC lately, so I don’t know any current haters.)

This is the problem: we become what we behold. That’s why we are urged to keep our eyes on Jesus. (Hebrews 12:1-2.) Keeping our eye on the media haters, their strange fire touches us like a profane Pentecost, and we ourselves become little furnaces of hatred.

6. Hatred separates us from God.

As we hate, hatred marbles itself into our psyches. It becomes increasingly ingrained in our thoughts.

Jesus knew the danger of hating. That’s why he warned us not to oppose evil people, but to yield to them rather than to struggle against them. (Matthew 5:39-41.) (Yes, I know it’s hypocritical for a litigator to point this out.)

7. Better fire.

Not to finish down, but up:

"A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another." [John 13:34.]

Also: John 13:35; Romans 12:10; Romans 13:8; Galatians 5:13; Ephesians 4:2; 1 Thessalonians 4:9; 2 Thessalonians 1:3; Hebrews 10:24; 1 Peter 1:22; 1 Peter 3:8; 1 John 3:11; 1 John 3:23; 1 John 4:11; 1 John 4:12; 2 John 1:5 (in case we didn’t get it the first time).

I write this essay as much for myself as for my friends. I will try to regard those I disagree with with sympathy. Maybe this will ripen into kindness, which will ripen into love. By grace.

Eric Sevareid, Send Help!

If broadcaster Eric Sevaried were alive and working today, he would be like a giant among pygmies. His farewell speech expressed humility and exhibited profundity. It’s worth viewing, both to behold the man and to remember how different broadcasting was when Sevareid retired in November, 1977.

America at that time was neither bland nor homogeneous. The Watergate era ended with Richard Nixon’s August, 1974 departure from the White House in disgrace. Also in that year, the first "March for Life" pro-life rally took place in Washington D.C. Saigon fell in April, 1975, the same month that the last Americans died in the Vietnam War. In 1978, 100,000 persons marched in Washington D.C. to extend the time to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. Sevareid retired in turbulent times.

Yet Sevareid could look into the camera in his farewell address and say that the listening public "applies one consistent test, not agreement with one on substance, but the perception of honesty and fair intent." This generalization astonishes the listener of our era, when people often choose their news programming according to its correspondence with their cherished opinions. Fox News viewers choose Fox News for the Fox News slant. The same is true of MSNBC viewers. Neither station apologizes for its point of view. They revel in it.

These networks evoke extreme reactions. One night, I sat in my bedroom listening to MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, and a conservative friend who shares the house came by my room. Seeing who I was watching, he said he wanted to vomit. I have seen online expressions of raw hatred against Olbermann and Rachel Maddow.

So it would be refreshing if people today heeded Sevareid’s counsel "to retain the courage of one’s doubts as well as the courage of one’s convictions in this world of dangerous passionate certainties." "[C]ourage of one’s doubts" is a deep phrase. An open mind is a dreadful thing for people with no tolerance for uncertainty, of whom there are legions. The quest for certainty among them is like a hunger so intolerable that they will fill their minds with mental empty calories, rather than discriminately seek out what nourishes their judgment.

Instead of counseling the courage to embrace one’s doubt, some networks plant shallow certainties, fertilizing them with us-versus-them rhetoric, and watering them with appealing spokespersons. It is as if, once they implant in their audience's minds a conviction, they want to expel from their audience’s minds any openness to a contrary point of view.

So the media closes minds, and seals them with raw appeals to negative emotion. So Bush is a fascist. So Obama is Hitler. Or a racist, a socialist, or a tyrant. The recklessness of these hyperbolic accusations bears scrutiny. In my five decades, I have learned that reckless disparagement of someone else’s character always indicates the reckless party’s low principles. Low principles in an individual is disturbing. Low principles in a powerful media conglomerate is blood-draining-from-the-face frightening.

Low principles in a network give rise to no consoling belief that that network will heed one of Sevareid’s other counsels: "To elucidate when one can, more than to advocate." Disregard of this principle is not the failing of only one network. But one network fails more conspicuously than others. One network conspicuously promotes a political movement, the Tea Party. One network donated one-million dollars to the Republican Governors Association, a donation unmatched by any other media company to the Democratic counterpart. One network has on its payroll every major Republican candidate for President in 2012, who isn’t presently holding office or named Mitt Romney. I don’t mean to pick on Fox News, but Fox News and its parent, News Corp., go conspicuously beyond any other news organization. If I am wrong, I crave correction.

Sevareid counseled "[t]o remember that ignorant or biased reporting has its counterpart in ignorant and biased reading and listening. We do not speak into an intellectual or emotional void." Sevareid reminds us that a broadcaster can appeal to the better angel or the worse angel of our nature. Those that strive to inform, those who don’t have the motto "We report, you decide" but act as if they did, appeal to the better angel. Those that do have that motto, but only as a farce, appeal to the worse angel.

Let me here promote www.NYTimes.com. It has a point of view that it expresses on its Op/Ed pages, but its reporting is first class. It will satisfy the curious on topics from politics, to travel, to health, to world affairs, and all else. The right fulminates against it for partisan reporting, but it broke the story of Connecticut Senate candidate Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, misrepresenting his military record. Fox News cheerleaded for Bush, but New York Times columnists do not hesitate to criticize Obama. I love the New York Times, and I wish more people would read it on a daily basis.

Just before he said "goodbye", Sevareid said this: "Millions have listened intently and indifferently, in agreement and in powerful disagreement. Tens of thousands have written their thoughts to me. I will feel always that I stand in their midst." Sevareid thought of himself as standing in the midst of those who disagreed with him as well as those who agreed. This is a refreshing thought in times like his and ours when there were/are "dangerous passionate certainties"; and especially in times like ours when media stars use hate-mongering like a scourge to drive apart the American people.

Sources:

Eric Sevareid’s 1977 farewell broadcast: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHGHm8iPeUY&NR=1

The fall of Saigon and the last American to die in Vietnam: http://www.pbs.org/battlefieldvietnam/timeline/index4.html

Timeline of women’s liberation movement, including 1974 pro life rally and 1978 rally to extend ERA: http://novaonline.nvcc.edu/eli/evans/his135/Events/womenslliberation/womensliberation.htm

News Corp. (Fox News parent corporation) donates $1,000,000 to Republican Governor’s Association: www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/17/AR2010081704338.html

Every major Republican Presidential candidate for 2012 who isn’t currently in office or named Mitt Romney is on Fox’s payroll:  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/04/opinion/04krugman.html?ref=paulkrugman

New York Times breaks the story of Richard Blumenthal’s false claims that he served in Vietnam: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/nyregion/18blumenthal.html?ref=nyregion