Skip to main content

My Up and Down Love Affair with Christianity Today

 A person close to me, unnamed, was ranting about Christianity Today being "woke" because of one of its articles on Charlie Kirk. I just said, "hummmm" like I do a lot with this person. 

I did find one of their first articles unnecessarily harsh, maybe snarky. The man, a fellow Christian, had just died violently--not a time for criticisms, as relevant as they might be at a later time because of Kirk's devotion to Trump.  As I wrote elsewhere, ten seconds after the bullet killed him,. Jesus was embracing him and having a talk with him about his priorities. Or not. How much of our lives in eternity reference our lives here?  We don't know. 

I have read CT since the 1980s, back in the day of "Eutychus and His Kin," penned by Warren Wiersbe of all people (who I can testify had a wicked sense of humor that he kept under control from the pulpit, as he should have). It has strengthened and informed me and at times infuriated me. One was a story on how women were using tattoos to testify about their faith. (These were huge, colorful ones on parts of the body that should have been covered and would have been in other cultures. Having just come back from Turkey where I had to be completely covered to go into the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia, I'm a big skeptical of faith declarations that require bare backs.) That struck me as insensitive. 

Under Russell Moore (who I also have had an up-and-down relationship with, or his writing and preaching) there is a lot of *anti-Trump material and vaguely anti-SBC. My respect for Russell has declined quite a bit since his time in this job. I feel that he follows the golden rule: He who has the gold (i.e., pays my salary) makes the rules (and I follow). When he was SBC, they could do no wrong. Until that changed. But he did leave it when he could not endure some of the Trump allegiance and the sexual abuse problems. 

*Anti-Trump is not a problem for me; he's horrible.** Anti-SBC overlooks the massive good the SBC does through medical missions, education, disaster relief, poverty alleviation, etc. They are the biggest denomination, therefore the biggest target, like the Roman Catholics. The Assemblies of God don't draw much attention. But they made some grave mistakes on the sexual abuse issue and they are going to have to come to terms with women's giftedness and roles in the church body.

But I keep up my subscription and go to it everyday for articles that may be valuable to me on missions, history of the Church, arts and literature, and spiritual growth.

That's why I often put links here, and ironically, this one is by Russell: https://www.christianitytoday.com/2025/10/hegseth-military-speech-virtue-dignity/

This essay is "gravely" (pun intended) needed. We are a silly, trivial, time-wasting crew right now. How much time and energy and finances would have for God's work and glory if we started cutting into our media consumption, scrolling, and foolishness? Why do we have to talk so much?

Also, I was glad to see that a real journalist is taking over as editor-in-chief:  Marvin Olasky, who should have been running it years ago. I suspect there will be some changes in tone under Dr. Olasky. https://www.christianitytoday.com/news-releases/marvin-olasky-editor-in-chief-christianity-today-ct/

**Why do I say Donald Trump is horrible? Because he violates norms and the constitution for the H- of it and he spends more time tweeting than understanding issues. He wants a Nobel Peace Prize for himself, not the good of humanity. I do admit that he is finally coming around to addressing Israel and Ukraine. I agree with some of his actions. He just needs to keep his mouth shut. He brings the value of the presidency down. The problem, of course, is that Kamala Harris was scarier than he is. I would like Trump to act like a president. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Birdwatching

 Whose world is this, anyway? My husband came out to the deck where I was reading, thinking, and taking long pauses to listen to birds and watch them visit the feeders. Nala and Butter were keeping the the squirrels away. The cardinals, like kings, were making sure they were fed first but wrens, sparrows, finches, robins, swifts sat in the trees calling and cackling. My Cornell Labs app has identified 18 in 18 minutes, some new ones included. “How interesting that God made all the birds have distinctive calls,” I said. “But I guess they are calling to their own kind, their mate and children.” “Do you think they are talking to each other?” he said. “Not like we do, no communicating, but signaling.” “I thought they were singing for us.” We laughed about that; our human-centric, self-centered view of things takes over. “They sing and make noises when we are not here, so it’s not for us. If they are singing for anyone, it’s God.” I had read Samuel’s speech to the nation in I Samuel 12,...
Post a Comment
Read more

Keeping Up Appearances? David's Surprise Anointing to Be King

  Have you ever watched the show, Keeping Up Appearances? What it is. A comedy about a British woman who wants to be thought of as very high class even though her family is low class. Her name is Hyacinth Bucket but she pronounces it Bouquet. She wants everything perfect but her family works against her, and her neighbors run from her. We all know someone who wants to keep up appearances, and sometimes we do. In our everyday life, we depend on our eyes and we automatically trust them, at least at first, and we often don’t look closely or below the surface. Like puzzles. But we know that appearances can be deceiving, even though they catch us. So I wanted to show this video I saw recently because it’s disturbing but informative. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FERa1AI2EK8 AI has gotten far better on making these deep fakes—videos that are not of anyone but totally generated by the software. Even though they look like someone, they are not. Of course, it is stealing fro...
Post a Comment
Read more