My old college friend, Emmitt Channel, gave the following feedback from last week's essay on "Marshall Dillon Has Died": "You have brought back some fond memories. I remember those Saturday nights over the cafeteria watching Gunsmoke. It was a good time to spend with our girl friends! Lash Larue lived in St Petersburg, Fla when we lived there. He ended up a homeless drunk. "
hugh's news & Views
FAIR AND BALANCED
I am not a big television fan. Other than some morning and evening news shows, some sports events, and some country music programming, I watch very little TV.
In the mornings, after a light breakfast and reading the local Nashville newspaper, my wife and I usually start off with a "look-see" at the local news on the CBS affiliate, surf up to CNBC to see how the stock market futures are doing, go on to HLN to see what Robin Meade is chirping about, and then land at Fox News and our favorite morning news show, "Fox and Friends." We love Gretchen Carlson, Steve Doocy, and Brian Kilmeade. We appreciate Fox News' slogan, "Fair and Balanced." In a day of political correctness and political bias, "fair and balanced" is a tough motto to live up to. Fox News does not always achieve such, but in my judgment it is far ahead of ABC, CBS, NBC, and the other mainstream media in this department.
A friend who, along with me, is a member of an internet discussion group recently wrote to me privately saying: "It is my perception that usually those who claim to be 'fair and balanced' are neither." This was in response to a post I had made to the list in which I stated that "fair and balanced" did not seem to be a very high priority
with liberals, a comment I intended to be applied socially, politically, and religiously. My comment did not sit too well with him, and he was led to make the above comment. I responded to him with this question: Do you claim to be: a) Fair and balanced? _____; b) Fair and unbalanced? ____; c) Unfair and balanced? _____; d) Unfair and unbalanced? ____. His response was an astounding: "None of the above"!
"Fair and balanced" should be the motto of every Christian. Jesus said, "Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets" (Matthew 7:12). But we often have the same problem with achieving this as the news media has with achieving it. We have our prejudices, our biases, our slants on people and things. We are skilled at making those with whom we disagree look bad, and those with whom we agree look good—in spite of good points in the former and bad points in the latter.
Preachers of the gospel need to be fair and balanced. Some are pleased to preach about the love of God but never about His wrath. They emphasize His goodness but not His severity. Heaven is often mentioned in their preaching, but little, if anything, is ever said about hell. (Some no longer believe in hell.) They talk much about faith but little about obedience. They will stress the importance of belief, but say little in the way of what the Bible teaches we are to believe or not to believe. They say much about Christ but little about His church. They may be strong in their emphasis on the grace of God and the atoning death of Christ for the sins of the world, yet say little about what sinners must do to appropriate God's grace and the benefits of Christ's atonement. Some preachers are strong in their emphasis of Christian attitudes, but weak when it comes to emphasizing the doctrine of Christ and the necessity of adhering strictly to that doctrine (see II John 9).
In all of these matters, it should never be either/or but both/and. With the apostle Paul, all who profess to be preachers of the gospel need to say: "For I have not shunned to declare to you the whole counsel of God" (Acts 20:27). In other words, fair and balanced.
Hugh Fulford
June 14, 2011
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