THIS TIME I LISTENED FOR A CHANGE

Confession time: I was a Glenn Beck basher. Lacking cable TV at home, I’d half-heartedly watched his program on the TV at Perkins Restaurant, but they had the sound muted so I can’t really say I listened to him. I read some of the captioning the Fox network thoughtfully provided, but not enough to pick up any continuity. Often I looked up at the screen to read a caption that could have come from Limbaugh or one of the other talk-show entertainers. Because of my “in depth” analysis of Beck’s spiel, I tagged him in my mind as another knee-jerk, right-wing...well...jerk.

This evening, however, I happened to find a YouTube video showing him extolling our nation’s Founding Fathers, including 18th-century preacher George Whitefield. And I listened. Beck stood there in my flat-panel monitor actually making sense!

Was this an isolated moment of lucidity for him? To answer that question I watched other YouTube videos featuring Beck. At times he overstates for effect. And at times he understates for effect. I’m sure Beck would take exception to this, but to me he seemed quite similar to Savage, Limbaugh, O’Reilly, and several other talk-show entertainers. These people all rely on ratings. Where do ratings come from? From polling John Q. Public and all his cronies. How does a media personality get J.Q.P. and his friends to watch? By presenting entertainment. And very little is more entertaining than outrageous prattle, unless it’s wrestlers bad-mouthing one another or football players breaking each others’ heads.

Tragically, those examples illustrate the debauched state of our popular culture. At least this little tangent I’ve pursued introduced me to George Whitefield’s concise, tell-it-like-it-is preaching. Maybe if we had another Whitefield preaching, as he did, to people other than the choir, we’d see spiritual revival on the scale of The Great Awakening that fueled thirteen British colonies’ struggle for freedom.

And maybe if we who call ourselves Christ-followers quit spouting Evangelical slogans at each other and took time to listen to God’s word through His Holy Spirit for a change, we would indeed be ready to work for a change.