Anti-Christian Humility

Every story we see in the press about Christianity they will take the absolute worst possible line on it. Any story about atheism or Islam is approached from the most positive angle possible. You point this out and the press sees this as a virtue. They think western society is basically Christian and that we should be proud to be critical of our own religion. It is a form of humility.

The trouble is the press thinks they are Christian but they are not. Almost all of them have bought into basically a secular humanist mindset. They have been exposed to Christianity in some form but have largely rejected it. So doing a negative story on Christianity is not really humility. Christianity is not something they know and love. It is something they think they know and actually don't have much respect for. So they sense that they can criticize the faith like they are an insider but they really are not.

This is why so many articles on Catholicism label somebody as a devout Catholic. They feature somebody who feels like they are part of the church but really has a very secular mindset. They don't really understand the distinction. They don't seem to expect the church's teaching to be different from the idea our culture embraces. They just get confused when what comes from their bishop or pope does not match what comes from the man on the street.

They don't have that expectation for other faiths. They seem to expect them to be different and they want to put as positive a spin on that difference as they can. That is because the press knows they are not Muslim or Hindu or Atheist. They don't actually understand they are not Christian.

In England it is quite striking. You have the Anglican church behaving pretty much like one would expect. There is a steady process of caving in to secular ideas. The leadership still thinks it is Christian. So they play the same game as the press. Then Pope Benedict shows up. They just don't understand why he isn't Anglican.  But it is not a difference to be celebrate. If the celebrate Pope Benedict as Christian then they have to explain what they are. The answer is too difficult to contemplate. MAybe a few words from 1 Tim 3:1-5 might help:

But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them.