Like a Bigfoot sighting

Is the news coverage of the Nigerian massacre on Pentecost.  I didn't even hear about it until a day later, and haven't been able to find out much information.  By today there were no stories at all.  It's horrific, and I have many friends from Nigeria I've met over the years.  In my ministry days, working with those through the International Missions Board, it was my blessed privilege to meet so many, and see what true joy in Christ really looks like.

It breaks my heart that this is their life, and has been for decades.  Again, you don't know it because the press ignores it.  So do most leftwing pundits.  We can't really blame the Islamic driven violence on European colonialism, or the US government, or GW Bush.  So it's small potatoes.  I know people can point to the WaPo, or Reuters, or CNN - all who have run some stories.  But can you in all seriousness say it compares to something like the coverage of the New Zealand mosque shootings?  I can't come close to mustering the level of denial to make that claim. 

Nonetheless, I know from those I've been blessed to befriend that their joy will continue apace.  Despite disease, hunger, persecution and death, they are among the most joyful and caring Christians I've ever known.  I still remember when my dear, late friend Joseph first met my dad.  My mom and dad were visiting us while in seminary.  I introduced Joseph to my dad, and he immediately rushed over and grabbed my dad and lifted him in a giant bear hug - just because.  Anyone who knew my dad gets the humor with that one. 

But prayers for these forgotten victims.  They serve no practical purpose to the media by covering their sorrows and suffering.  Pray for their loved ones.  Pray for the Church universal. And dear Lord, pray that we never slip down into the media's pitcher plant of demonic evil that measures charity and sympathy against a politically expedient yardstick. 

At least it wasn't a hate crime

If you've missed this story, it's probably because you get your news from national press outlets.  The story of a white father shot and killed by a black assailant who, according to witnesses, went on to dance over the father's body is local news fare at best.  Why?  Because it's a white father who died heroically blocking his child from the black gunman. 

Had it been the opposite, a white gunman and a black father complete with gloating over the victim, you bet your damn bank account that this would be a national press narrative, even with Afghanistan blowing itself halfway to hell and the floods and fires we continue seeing on the national news cycle.  

But it wasn't.  One of the greatest evils the modern press has visited upon mankind has been to sanctify the idea that we should only care about human suffering if we can exploit that human suffering for our pet agendas.  It's not new.  This has been happening for years.  Likely generations.  All the news that's fit to print is just a way of saying all the news we choose to report on, versus the stories that we choose not to cover.  I think nobody ever stopped to ask what the standards were for making such decisions.

Today, it's not hard to figure the standards.  Can a killing be exploited to drive home the 1619 Project Narrative?  Or perhaps the persecution of the LGBTQ movement?  Or gender inequality?  Guns, of course, are always a safe bet.  But we can't let gun stories that bring questions about the above narratives get out of hand.  So even if this might buttress the gun control narrative, a black man dancing over the dead white father he just shot could get the sheeple to ask questions about white privilege and white only racism. 

So don't expect any household names out of this.  I Googled the story and found only a couple national level outlets even mention the story.  Most stories were either conservative outlets or local news outlets.  It's the point where I can almost guess which stories will be ignored by the press based on the demographic identity of the parties involved.  The worst part?  I'm almost always right.  And that is a scandal. 

May God have mercy on the soul of the killer, and cover the victim's family with peace and strength.  May the victim's son grow up to remember his dad as the hero he was, not as a body danced upon by a man seen as the real victim of his father's privilege.  And may God have mercy on the twisted and wicked field of journalism that so doesn't care about anything or anyone, and increasingly gloats over the fact that we know this but can do nothing about it.  

Before we crucify

Which is, of course, our modern first response, perhaps we should just investigate.  The gist is that the Lieutenant Governor of Texas tweeted Galatians 6.7.  I'll let you look it up.  The Lt. Governor always posts a Bible verse each Sunday.  He stated that this verse was written up on Thursday, well before the shooting.

I don't know.  What think you? Is he lying, and he deliberately put it out there to put a finger in the eye of ... who?  Gays?  The Obama administration?  Americans who are complacent?  I'm not sure, but I think the Twittergist is that he obviously was saying the gays killed on Sunday got what they had coming.  Is that what he meant?  

Or is he innocent?  Was it just, what, bad timing?  In our day and age, hell yeah.  Just posting a Bible verse can get in trouble in the land of the free nowadays.  But what?   It's hard to say.  You almost wonder why it's even a story.  And then a dose of reality hits.  This is that stage where people who are watching their own narratives crumble under the weight of pesky evidence, seem almost desperate to change the subject.  So it being modern America, this popped up and we bypass all trials and execute Conservative Christians wherever possible.

Who knows?  It's not for me to say what his real motives were.  I'm bound by the Faith to give a positive take on another's statements.  And since it is the Bible that is in the middle of the firestorm, I'm willing to take him at his word.  Especially when those who are jumping on this, like the The Grateful Dead, are quick to take it to the next level.  The always credible Bob Weir reminds us that Lt. Governor Patrick is guilty, and furthermore, is the same type of hateful that is ISIS, both getting 'those hatreds out of different books.'

So given the quality of those making this about anyone not liberal being ISIS, and the command to assume the best spin on a statement, as of now Mr. Patrick is innocent of everything except believing the Bible, at least until proven otherwise.  At least IMHO.

It's always nice when intelligent people admit that water is wet

It looks like Dr. Tim Stanley, a historian specializing in the United States (he's British, after all), has noticed what should be patently clear to anyone with a brain.  The Mainstream Media has it in for the Catholic Church, at least regarding certain issues (those which the Church runs afoul of progressive dogma).  Wow.  Really?  As a Protestant pastor, I used to joke that I was thankful for the Catholic Church, since it gave people something they could still proudly hate.  That took Christianity in general out of the cross hairs   Sometimes I wonder if Catholics across the blogosphere realize this.  No matter how many times they try to insist the sins of the world are because of those rascally Protestants, and the Catholics Church is really, really super swell and never did the really bad things, the non-Christian world isn't buying it.  As a non-Christian myself, I initially bought into the whole 'religion bad/not religion good' song and dance, and along with most folks I knew, saw the Catholic Church as the epitome of everything that was bad in religion rolled into one.  It would be better for Catholics to stop hammering Protestantism  and realize when they do, it only hurts the Christian witness to a non-Christian world, and it doesn't do a damn thing to change the idea that if religion sucks, and Christianity really sucks, there is nothing that sucks more than the Catholic Church. Read the article.  It's a nice bit of 'water is wet' journalism, but it is something that would strike others as strange and far fetched.  Such is the depths to which the modern prejudice has sunk.