Faith in the KC Star

I’m one of the rare breed of individuals who have subscribed to the newspaper most of my life, including when I was in college (as a finance major, I even subscribed to the Wall Street Journal until I discovered they didn’t have a “Comics” section). The idea of reading the newspaper every day was ingrained into me by my dad. Although he didn’t even graduate from high school, he was a voracious reader, insisting that we maintain our subscriptions to the Kansas City Times (the morning paper), The Kansas City Star (the evening paper), and The Kansan (the “official” newspaper of Wyandotte County), even when money was tight. My dad would consider me ill-read today if he knew that I only consumed the news of one local daily (even though there is only one local daily left).

A few years ago, in an effort to save money, I decided to take advantage of the “Friday, Saturday, Sunday” offer for the Kansas City Star, figuring that I could keep up with the news pretty well through the Internet. However, I found myself missing the feel of the morning paper, and eventually renewed my daily subscription.

I’ve been rethinking that decision a lot lately. Part of it is the cost relative to the content of the newspaper. Recently, the Star has combined sections and reduced the amount of news content without any corresponding decrease in the cost.

Part of it is the fact that my newspaper carrier in Spring Hill can’t seem to hit the two car-wide driveway to save his life—invariably the paper is at the edge of the driveway in the street. Of course, I don’t complain too much about that, because it’s better than the days I don’t get a paper at all (about twice a month, on average).

Last week, my thoughts returned to cancellation when I read the article asking readers to choose five comics for elimination, including some I’ve read since childhood like Marmaduke, Beetle Bailey and Wizard of Id.

But the one consideration for cancelling my subscription to the local newspaper that ranks above all others is the atrocity they call their Faith section. Every Saturday, they devote a few pages to a section that talks about religion. They ought to call it the Faithless section, for week after week, it is dominated by articles and columns featuring Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and increasingly, by atheists.

Don’t get me wrong—I understand that a secular newspaper is not a forum for the spread of Christianity—let alone my particular brand of Christianity—but in a society in which the vast majority of our citizens define themselves as “Christians”, why does the newspaper insist on featuring nearly every religious system except Christianity? Shouldn’t the ratio really be heavily favored towards articles dealing with the Christian faith? Yet there are times when if it weren’t for the weekly Billy Graham column, there wouldn’t be a single article that touches on anything remotely “Christian”.

I just finished reading their weekly Faith Walk article, which is written on a rotation basis by local folks about their faith experience, except today’s article was written by a women who admitted that she hated church. She didn’t say what her particular brand of theology was, but described herself as a freethinker, who decided to raise her children without religion, presumably with the idea that someday, they could make up their minds for themselves about their faith.

Imagine if she had done that about food. Who am I to tell my children to eat vegetables? They may not like vegetables—I’ll let them decide that for themselves. When they get older, they can decide what they want to eat—or if they want to eat at all.

What if she applies this philosophy to her children’s decisions about drugs or alcohol? Some people abuse drugs and alcohol and some don’t. Whatever my children decide, I’m OK with it as long as they’re happy.

Now, I’m frustrated with all this for two reasons. First of all, and directly related to my introduction to this blog, is that this has nothing to do with faith. It is about the lack of faith. Does The Star put articles on automobiles in their “Food” section, or publish the obituaries in the “Comics”?

But as to the content of her article, my frustration is rooted in the fact that this woman was being disingenuous. It wasn’t that she thought it best for her children to grow up without religion as she initially contended. For she admitted that she found the approach of the Unitarian Universalists quite appealing, for in this church no one would tell [my children] that their mother was evil.

And folks, therein lies the problem. Her children need to hear that their mother is evil. Their father is evil. They are evil. The pastor is evil. Everyone who attends those religious services is evil. And everyone who doesn’t attend their services is evil too. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

Because if a person doesn’t understand they are evil in the sight of a holy and righteous God, then they’ll never know the glorious truth that God’s righteousness can be applied to them through the shed blood of Jesus Christ.

So when all is said and done, this woman, like so many others, hates church and rejected “religion” for her children because she didn’t like being told the truth. But now that she’s found a “church” (how it pains me to write that, even in quotation marks) that has declared her righteous of her own accord—not in need of Jesus or His shed blood or the cross on which He died—she’s perfectly happy to introduce “religion” to her children.

My prayer is that someday, someone will introduce them to Christ.