Chanthip’s moving Reflection last week focused on current events, and how Jesus’ teachings can guide us. What follows are my contribution about the same current events, but with a somewhat different focus; the media that delivers what we refer to as “news.”
Rather than the generally more objective local reporting of news events, the polarized national media reporting of the federal government’s enforcement of immigration laws suggests that one is either with the ICE agents who are “Defending The Homeland,” (wording painted on the back of a government vehicle), or an avid supporter of the undocumented immigrants that ICE is rounding up.
But the truth is more like – to further economic and political interests, even the federal government has historically turned a “blind eye” toward the enforcement of its immigration laws, and far from being the “enemy,” the vast majority of undocumented immigrants have contributed handsomely to our country’s economic and social prosperity.
My mother emigrated from South Africa as an infant in 1919, and being born to Scandinavian parents, she “looked like” she belonged here. So, the fact that she did not automatically become a U.S. citizen when her parents were naturalized did not come to light until after she had worked during WWII with a Top-Secret clearance for U.S. Army Intelligence. There she was part of a San Francisco counterintelligence unit that operated as part of the Manhattan Project. Her “alien” status only came to light after the war, and she easily became a naturalized citizen.
In his 1996 autobiography A Reporter’s Life, the late CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite chronicled the end of news reporting’s independence from of his network’s economic interests: “Newspapers and broadcasting, insofar as journalism goes, are public services essential to the successful working of our democracy. It is a travesty that they should be required to pay off like any other stock-market investment.”
In a 2002 article sub-titled The American Media’s Economic Power, it recounted that when the Framers of the U.S. Constitution referred to freedom of the “press,” they contemplated the many independent printers who circulated small newspapers or published writer’s pamphlets for a fee. But by the year 2000, the four largest newspapers in the country were controlled by parent companies that owned many other media interests and had multi-billion-dollar annual revenues.
More recently, a newspaper op-ed mourned today’s lack of local journalism, and decried the “relentlessly cruel economics of the news business, driven in part by the voracious profiteering of monoliths such as Google and Facebook,” and the resulting “daily diet of ‘news’ that the media serves up . . . being sourced from partisans, propagandists and self-interested promoters who falsely style themselves as prophets of the unvarnished truth.”
A retired California state Senator was quoted in the op-ed as saying: “The ability of the public to get information, discern that facts and have reasoned opinions about who’s in charge and doing what is in serious jeopardy without a robust local news community.”
This dehumanizing of people and what is today referred to as “news” is a far cry from Christian teaching, that counsels “we are all God’s kids,” and faith in Christ is our guiding “law.”
Today’s psalm reading says that those who may dwell on God’s holy hill are those who do what is right, speak the truth, do no evil to their friends, reject the wicked, do not give money in hope of gain, and honor those who fear the Lord.
The reading from Micah asks us to “do justice, . . . love kindness, and . . . walk humbly with your God,” and Corinthians reminds us that God chose those of us who are not “wise” to boast His presence.
Matthew recounts that Jesus spoke of his followers as poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, and asks us to rejoice and be glad, for our reward is great in heaven.
It seems like every day we hear of atrocities committed against God’s chosen by those who claim to be enforcing the law, providing further evidence that, like all other human institutions, what we refer to as “the rule of law,” has its flaws.
Even the United States Supreme Court, which is the branch of our federal government that has the ultimate authority to determine “what the law is,” admits that it doesn’t always get it right. As Justice Robert Jackson famously said in the 1952 case of Brown v. Allen: “We are not final because we are infallible, but we are infallible only because we are final.”
In a prior Reflection, I referred to Paul’s letter to the Galatians, where he concludes: “For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” (Galatians 5:14)
He also explained that “law was our custodian until Christ came, . . . But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a custodian; for in Christ Jesus, you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew or Greek, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.” (Galatians 3:24-29)
But if we are “all one in Christ Jesus,” how can we say that another person’s way of thinking and doing things is wrong? Aren’t those who insist that our immigration laws be strictly enforced entitled to their point of view?
Paul speaks of action, not thought or feelings. He tells us to treat our neighbors the way we want to be treated; those who act as if they truly love their neighbors, have kept the law fully.
So, if we individually try to “act as if” we love our neighbors as ourselves, we are likely to experience the freedom in Christ that Paul talks about. And if we can practice what some therapists refer to as “opposite action” when confronted with potential adversaries, we can treat them with the respect we all deserve.
As the old saying goes: “actions speak louder than words.”
