The True Story of How Media Bias came to me…

It’s the subtleties that kill you…

The December 13, 2004 issue of Newsweek features the Madonna and Child on the cover and a lead story hyped as “How the Story of Christmas Came to Be.” It looked interesting to me and the blurb inside the cover made it even more intriguing, citing, “The hidden history of the Nativity narratives - and what they mean to the faithful.”

Unfortunately, the guy who wrote the blurb didn’t write the article.

It’s all in the subtleties… You see, I don’t agree with the people who get up in church or on the radio and state that the media is focusedly biased against evangelical Christians. Having worked in the media for almost 15 years, I can tell you, there is no hidden agenda that is signed by all members of the press except ABC’s John Stossel. However, as Prison Ministry’s Chuck Colson would be quick to point out, there is a prevailing mindset that does tend towards the non-Christians.

For example, in the Newsweek article, writer Jon Meachum doesn’t come right out and say that Christians are liars and the Nativity accounts from Luke and Matthew are pure fiction. He just raises some interesting questions – or so he says. So what questions is he asking?

“At the beginning of the 21st century, some scholars treat the Christmas narratives as first-century inventions designed to strengthen the seemingly tenuous claim that Jesus was the Messiah. And so the story of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth is, fittingly, as riven with complexity and controversy as Christianity itself.” “…As with so many other elements of faith, the Nativity narratives are the subject of ongoing scholarly debate over their historical accuracy, their theological meaning and whether some of the central images and words of the Christian religion owe as much to the pagan culture of the Roman Empire as they do to apostolic revelation.” What scholars? I personally haven’t heard about any of this, except one selective sect of “Christian thinkers,” who doubt much of Jesus’ divinity. They are known as The Jesus Seminar.

The Jesus Seminar claims to be interested in bringing more attention to and starting more conversations about Christ. The fact is, their larger purpose is to pick apart the accounts of Jesus’ life, both canonical and apocryphal to prove their historical inaccuracy. So guess who this writer goes to interview when he wants to get the opinion of someone, “passionate about their critical understanding of the faith”? You’ve got it. The Jesus Seminar. In fact, aside from a short quote from the Rev. H. B. London at Focus on the Family where he states that they don’t question the validity of the Nativity, all of his opinions and “facts” come from the Jesus Seminar. Now, do I blame Meacham for skewing to the left? Yeah, but not for the reasons you might think.

Normally, I would excuse Meacham for not understanding the difference between the folks at the Jesus Seminar and mainline Christians. After all, he did talk to Focus on the Family. But I think the FoF quote was an afterthought, a throw-away reaction quote, that he hoped would present an illusion of balance to the piece. If Meacham wanted to discuss the issues with someone “passionate about their critical understanding of the faith,” why not go to another investigative reporter, who, unlike the people at the Jesus Seminar has actually written five books debating the issues from a critical standpoint. I am speaking of none other than Lee Strobel.

Of course there are other critical thinkers in the Christian world that Meacham could have talked to, D. A. Carson, Craig Blomberg, Ben Witherington III, William Lane Craig, and Bruce Metzger, to name a few. I choose Strobel because of his background and presentation would have appealed to Meacham as an “investigative reporter.” Unfortunately, as we saw with Peter Jennings’ “Search for Jesus,” and ABC’s previous journalistic debacle, Elizabeth Vargas’ “Jesus, Mary, & DaVinci,” these so called investigative reporters are getting pretty lazy. Vargas’ report was less researched than Dan Brown’s controversial book. In fact, Vargas leaned heavily on Brown’s research in the area, rather than doing any investigating of her own.

But back to Meacham’s article. Laying absolutely no foundation, other than quoting statistics that most Americans polled disagree with what he is about to say, Meacham states, “To many minds conditioned by the Enlightenment, shaped by science and all too aware of the Crusades and corruptions of the church, Christmas is a fairy tale.” WHAT?!? Somebody better tell this guy that there’s nobody left alive that remembers the Enlightenment, so how could ANY minds be conditioned by it. Further, he claims to prove that a 1st century account of Jesus’s birth is tainted and proved to be false due to sixth and seventh century battles that embroiled the church in corruption and greed. I think I’m going to have to go back and re-earn my journalism degree because I don’t recall how you can make such a stretch and still call it a cause and effect situation. What’s more, he proves his own theory false by pointing out that the Nativity accounts have been pretty locked-in since the Council of Nicene in the fourth century.

“If we dissect the stories with care, we can see that the Nativity saga is neither fully fanciful nor fully factual but a layered narrative of early tradition and enduring theology…” “…so when we read and hear the story now, we are reading and hearing some of the original Christian attempts to ensure the survival and success of a religion that began as little more than one sect within first-century Judaism, a milieu of great religious ferment.”

I could go on, but I get a little too heated at times like these. I am not upset that they are questioning my faith, only the means by which they are doing it, and the sad fact that many will accept their opinions, stated as fact, and not question them. Of course, they release this report to coincide with the Christmas season, which makes sense from a marketing standpoint, but also takes advantage of people’s desperate desire to believe in something and offers them empty words, supposedly written by experts.

I believe that there is a time for blind faith and a time for questioning. Faith can sometimes fill in when questions cannot be readily answered, but questions should not be avoided – in or out of church. Questions make my faith stronger. But it helps to ask the right ones…