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It's open season on the tabloid press at the moment, so much so that it is hard to know whether people hate bankers or journalists more at the moment. With the Leveson inquiry running, victims of tabloid hacking and sleeze stories are queuing up to recount the way they have been savaged, misrepresented, slandered or abused in what appears to have been a 10 or 20 year reign of terror led by the media barons and their Nikon-armed heavy infantry. The press are alleged to have trodden roughshod over practically everyone's sensibilities in the scramble for the best story, usually accompanied by the most revealing, tear-jerking or humiliating photograph. And all with an approach to truth that was not only economic, but frequently creative as well. So now the proverbial chickens are coming home to roost and the press is likely to pay quite dearly for the years of treating people so dreadfully.
It would be good to know how editors persuaded themselves that the assaults they carried out in the name of their papers were justified. I imagine that there was something along the lines of journalistic freedom, uncovering the truth, acting in the public interest, or just providing people with the sort of material they want to read. It is probable that many acted with a clear conscience, feeling no real qualms about what they were doing. But conscience can be blunted or stifled and may not be an accurate guide, and we can simply talk ourselves into doing something that is wrong because there are other rewards for our dishonesty that outweigh the rewards for doing what is right.
The Bible doesn't have cautionary tales as such, but many of its characters provide significant examples of human weakness that we do well to heed. This should not distract us from the main storyline of the Bible (God's salvation announced and prepared in the Old Testament, and then fulfilled and realised in the New), but rather remind us of the need of God's salvation because its heroes are so flawed. One series of examples comes from Abraham and his line, where one of the patriarch's actions almost becomes a family trait: lying. It all begins when Abraham feels obliged to head down to Egypt on account of a famine in Canaan. He feels that his wife, Sarah, will be a source of temptation to the locals, who may kill him and take her captive, so he instructs her to tell the Egyptian king she is his sister rather than wife. This she does, with ensuing complications from which God has to extract him, but it is not the last time such a tactic appears in his family. Abraham feels obliged to employ the same dubious method with a tribe in Canaan, his son Isaac later feels he has to do the same with his wife, Rebekah. But it doesn't stop there.
Isaac's son, Jacob, sadly lived up to his name of “Deceiver” with a life of trickery, bluff and simple lies (no, I don't think he was on the staff at the NOTW). In consequence he earned his brother's hatred, he had to flee his life at home and never saw his mother again, and then he produced a family of his own riven with such jealousies and animosity that his own sons conspired to sell one of their number into slavery and then cover up the deed for perhaps 15 to 20 years. No doubt each of them could have justified their actions at the time and explain why they treated others like this, but in the cold light of hindsight we call their actions by their proper names; despicable, cruel, heartless, selfish, greedy … this list goes on and on.
The heart of the lesson for us is that we have to know ourselves and, as John Calvin says, the only way we can know ourselves is if we know God. Of course, knowing God does not make us completely immune from the temptation to silence our conscience and abuse others or act dishonourably (that's what those Old Testament stories prove). But he gives us his Spirit to strengthen us to resist temptation and do both what honours him and protects others. His Spirit in us creates traits like openness, honesty, integrity, faithfulness, goodness and self-control, traits which must be cultivated carefully because we know we are weak and may give in to selfishness. Above all, one of the key motivating factors that will cause us to guard our tongues and our attitude to other is that we stand, not merely in the glare of public attention, but under the gaze of God who has called us to honour him and reflect his holiness, whose own inquiry into both our words and lives awaits.
It would be good to know how editors persuaded themselves that the assaults they carried out in the name of their papers were justified. I imagine that there was something along the lines of journalistic freedom, uncovering the truth, acting in the public interest, or just providing people with the sort of material they want to read. It is probable that many acted with a clear conscience, feeling no real qualms about what they were doing. But conscience can be blunted or stifled and may not be an accurate guide, and we can simply talk ourselves into doing something that is wrong because there are other rewards for our dishonesty that outweigh the rewards for doing what is right.
The Bible doesn't have cautionary tales as such, but many of its characters provide significant examples of human weakness that we do well to heed. This should not distract us from the main storyline of the Bible (God's salvation announced and prepared in the Old Testament, and then fulfilled and realised in the New), but rather remind us of the need of God's salvation because its heroes are so flawed. One series of examples comes from Abraham and his line, where one of the patriarch's actions almost becomes a family trait: lying. It all begins when Abraham feels obliged to head down to Egypt on account of a famine in Canaan. He feels that his wife, Sarah, will be a source of temptation to the locals, who may kill him and take her captive, so he instructs her to tell the Egyptian king she is his sister rather than wife. This she does, with ensuing complications from which God has to extract him, but it is not the last time such a tactic appears in his family. Abraham feels obliged to employ the same dubious method with a tribe in Canaan, his son Isaac later feels he has to do the same with his wife, Rebekah. But it doesn't stop there.
Isaac's son, Jacob, sadly lived up to his name of “Deceiver” with a life of trickery, bluff and simple lies (no, I don't think he was on the staff at the NOTW). In consequence he earned his brother's hatred, he had to flee his life at home and never saw his mother again, and then he produced a family of his own riven with such jealousies and animosity that his own sons conspired to sell one of their number into slavery and then cover up the deed for perhaps 15 to 20 years. No doubt each of them could have justified their actions at the time and explain why they treated others like this, but in the cold light of hindsight we call their actions by their proper names; despicable, cruel, heartless, selfish, greedy … this list goes on and on.
The heart of the lesson for us is that we have to know ourselves and, as John Calvin says, the only way we can know ourselves is if we know God. Of course, knowing God does not make us completely immune from the temptation to silence our conscience and abuse others or act dishonourably (that's what those Old Testament stories prove). But he gives us his Spirit to strengthen us to resist temptation and do both what honours him and protects others. His Spirit in us creates traits like openness, honesty, integrity, faithfulness, goodness and self-control, traits which must be cultivated carefully because we know we are weak and may give in to selfishness. Above all, one of the key motivating factors that will cause us to guard our tongues and our attitude to other is that we stand, not merely in the glare of public attention, but under the gaze of God who has called us to honour him and reflect his holiness, whose own inquiry into both our words and lives awaits.
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