Reality Check 101

The great Christian apologist and writer C.S. Lewis captured the essence of Jesse Jackson’s career, if not his character.  In his classic “The Great Divorce”, Lewis describes the self-serving tunnel vision of a tragedian, a melodramatic actor who cultivates false guilt in his wife so that he may enjoy her pity and accomplish his own ends.  He views life as a constant useful process of victimization and seizes every opportunity to exploit it.

 When the contrived controversy erupted over comments made by Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty in an interview, both Jackson and GLAAD (Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) played perfect tragedian roles. As they worked their magic, the A&E television network and Cracker Barrel corporation folded to claims of Robertson’s verbal misconduct. 

 It is impossible to know who within A&E or Cracker Barrel actually read the full original Robertson interview as published in GQ magazine.  What is clear is that both Robertson’s accusers and GQ magazine care more about maligning someone else’s exercise of faith and freedom than they do about their own moral frivolous depravity.

 If that accusation sounds offensive, one only needs to read the original GQ article to find out who is truly offensive.  The reporter, Drew Magary, and his editor couldn’t even get through the title of his article without hurling an f-bomb innuendo at the Robertson family.  His first paragraph was not done before he had profaned God.   By the end of the article, he had cavalierly spewed more filth and employed almost every common profanity.

 Magary’s demeaning work was not the worst of the situation.  Tragedians hit the big time by effectively titillating the public with images of the beloved Duck Dynasty’s patriarch exposing dark homophobic and racist intolerances.  In the mind of liberal America, it is virtuous to bring forth sewage from your mouth – which Jesus said comes from the heart – but evil to speak faith against sin.

 Hypocrisy rules in America’s GQ culture.  GLAAD seems to believe that it is slanderous for a Christian to question the logic of gay sex by using accepted body part language but is perfectly normal for Magary to call himself a p—sy and constantly drop f-bombs.  Jessie Jackson and the race industry are just as shameless.  For them, it was racist for Phil Robertson to simply observe the facts of his life.  Read his crimes:  “I never, with my eyes saw…mistreatment” and “I’m with the blacks…” and “They (blacks) were godly; they were happy”.  For race merchants, the only acceptable narrative is white equals perpetrator and black equals victim.

 The backlash against A&E and Cracker Barrel is the true story.  Duck Dynasty demonstrates that millions of Americans still get it.  They are committed to a faith relationship between themselves and God that will not tolerate moral compromise.  It is vexing to the GQ crowd that life can be enjoyed without crudeness, perversion or filth and that humor does not have to be sleazy.

 More than anything else, the Robertsons have shown other persons of integrity how to exercise courage, faith, liberty and conscience without cliché.  They have modeled what it is like to live humbly with God, family and creation.