by Michael G. Mickey
(4-10-08)
An AOL News story reveals, not surprisingly to me, that the Bible is the favorite book of Americans, eclipsing the likes of 'To Kill a Mockingbird', 'Gone With the Wind', 'The Stand', 'Lord of the Rings' and even 'Harry Potter', believe it or not. So far so good, right?
While the Bible is America's favorite book hands down, some polling associated with the AOL News story indicates something odd. Odd indeed!
While the Bible has been chosen as the book most liked of the top ten books by 34% of participants in a poll, the Bible also tops a list of the same top ten books where participants of a different poll were asked which book they liked least! A walloping 22% of those polled (as of the time I wrote this commentary) selected the Bible as the book they least liked. That's very telling, isn't it?
While many today still revere and honor God's Word, there is an ever-growing number of people who dislike it just as much! Do any of us believe a poll conducted in 1980 would've yielded similar results? I know I don't.
The spiritual health of our nation, having long been in the throes of death, is beginning to flat-line as I continue to document on this website. Long gone are the days when people weren't ashamed to speak the name of Jesus Christ. Today, public acknowledgment of faith in Christ outside the doors of a church is a rare thing. A mighty rare thing! And we wonder why our news is so filled with sorrow, violence, and disparity!
American Idol: Confessions and Observations
First off, let me confess that I enjoy watching American Idol. I pray you will all forgive me but I do.
As the father of two teenage girls who, like most teenagers their age, loved music and the idea of watching someone rise to fame through a talent competition, I was urged to watch it with them when the series started years ago. Now, even though they're grown and out on their own, I continue the tradition of what, for us, was good quality time spent together as a family wherein we could root for our favorites, pick at each other a bit, hear a wide variety of music, and munch on some popcorn a few hours a week. As any parent of a teenager knows, sometimes, if you want to convince them you can be cool, even for an hour, you sometimes have to meet them half-way. I did that, actually found it to be a relatively clean hour of television, and got into the habit of watching it which my wife and I are still doing, seeing who can best guess who is going to be voted off the show next.
At any rate, now that I've confessed to watching a bit of reality television, last week Dolly Parton was on American Idol and, believe it or not, belted out a song about Jesus Christ, our Lord! I laughed throughout the song and told my wife that I didn't think I'd heard the word Jesus spoken more times on primetime television than I did in those 4-5 minutes as Dolly lifted her voice, her hand practically every time she spoke the Savior's name, and my spirits, complete with a robed choir accompanying her. I said, at the end of her song, "American Idol found Jesus tonight!" Did I love it? You bet I did!
While Dolly did little, by virtue of her Southern ways and accent, to change the stereotype that most of us "Jesus Freaks" are located south of the Mason-Dixon line, I could've cared less! I was with Dolly 100% and she did the South proud by taking the values most of us hold dear before a national audience without politically correcting herself one bit! It was all about Jesus, Jesus, Jesus and, from where I'm sitting, you just can't get that name spoken enough in front of the mostly young audience that watches that show, the parents of recently-grown up teenagers aside.
Fast forward to last night...
American Idol, for the second year in a row, held a fund-raising charity event that featured many familiar celebrities. While the show was largely secular in content, Mariah Carey dropped the name of Jesus in a song performed live that was, as far as my ears could tell with her high-pitched voice, a pretty spiritual song. Now don't get me wrong here. I'm not lifting up Mariah Carey as an upstanding Christian girl or anything but she did, as far as I can tell, pay some respects to the Lord.
Later, at the very end of the event, all of the American Idol cast which hasn't been voted off thus far came onto the stage to sing a Christian song familiar to most of us called "Shout to the Lord!" Wow, I thought! They're going to wrap this thing up by praising Jesus on national television again!
Now all of you who can sing even part of "Shout to the Lord!" know that the opening words are: "My Jesus! My Savior! Lord there is none like you!"
Was that how the official American Idol version went however? Nope. It went like this: "My SHEPHERD! My Savior! Lord there is none like you!" Was I pleased? No. Not at all. I was disgusted by it.
I guess the American Idol producers felt they needed to gray the song up a bit, get rid of the inflammatory name of Jesus that upsets some people. It's politically correct, it would seem from where I'm sitting, for a song to be sung honoring an ambiguous Lord because the song could be a reference to most any Lord I suppose. From all I could tell, while I wholly believe there is at least one devout Christian contestant, they could've just as easily been singing praises to Lord Vader of Star Wars infamy as Jesus Christ last night.
How far we have come in such a short time, huh? Far from being near the point of no return, America's spiritual compass is so off course I don't think anything could turn it around, although I humbly pray that I'm wrong.
What's your point, Mike?
My point is this: The Bible may still be the favorite book here in America but only sort of. Why? Because God, specifically the one true God, has some rules in His Word, the Bible, that a politically correct world is teaching our children are cruel and insensitive to the feelings of those who wish to live a life counter to His will.
Year round, both at school and in the home through the mainstream media which is more liberal and secular than it has EVER been before, our children are being taught, ever so subtly, that the Bible has some moral truths contained in it but it isn't in keeping with the times. And all that talk about our origins? Just a fairy tale according to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution - a whopper of a lie which sprang from the mind of a man who, scientifically speaking, didn't know a solitary thing about the complexity of the cells he claimed were evolving back in the 1800s compared to scientists today, none of whom are allowed to question Darwinism at all lest they be expelled per the wishes of the god of this world (Satan) and his puppets in the scientific community.
I could go on and on but, for brevity's sake, I'll save my rantings for another commentary.
Who is to blame for this?
Who, exactly, is to blame for the spiritual cancer that is devouring our nation today? Sadly, a good portion of the blame concerning what has gone wrong with America in these last days rests with the Church.
For years we have sat on our hands as the world trampled the Word of God underfoot. It has gotten to be the way it is today because the Church of today as well as the Church of the past has turned a deaf ear and a blind eye to efforts that have been underway for decades to undermine the gospel of Jesus Christ to the extent that Christians are now being arrested and convicted for praying in silence in public, for example. Christian children are being deprived of their constitutional rights in our schools to the extent that they can't even wear a T-shirt demonstrating opposition to a "Day of Silence" being held for homosexuals without getting in trouble for it, and a man who is in support of most everything Bible-believing Christians are opposed to is posturing himself to become president of the United States, after which he'd like to see the homosexual agenda advanced in defiance of the Word of God which he purports he believes in, absent of any fruit supportive of that I might add.
The Holy Bible: America's favorite book (sort of).
That pretty much sums it up, doesn't it?
