Somebody Has to Say Something

I tend to listen to way too much talk radio driving to and from work, church, and other places. I actually changed the radio in my car so I could use my iPod to listen to either music of choice – The Cotton Patch Gospel music comes to mind – or Tim Keller podcasts or audio books. My talk radio tastes range from news programming (Scott Slade on WSB in the mornings) to the want-to-be sports guys on 680 the Fan (especially Braves programming) to an occasional Neal Boortz (at least he knows and admits that he is primarily an entertainer).

Because the best traffic information in Atlanta tends to be on “WSB AM 750 and now 95.5 FM,” I sometimes am forced by circumstances to listen to Sean Hannity in the late afternoon drive time routine. A little of that goes a long way! It isn’t so much about politics as it is the hypocrisy that always noses itself in when arrogant and under-educated people have an unchallenged platform. Even when the political opinions he expresses are similar to mine, he does so in such bombastic, rude, and quite frankly, un-Christian fashion, that I think “I’ll vote the other way!”

But even that isn’t the most egregious part of his routine. Have you noticed, if you dare admit you’ve listened, that he tends to refer to the current White House occupant as “the anointed one.” I admit that I’m not the smartest theological mind in the world, but I’m fairly confident that the phrase “the anointed one” is a reasonably good translation of the Hebrew word Messiah and the Greek word Christ. One would be hard pressed to find more sacred names for Jews and Christians than Messiah and Christ. Yet Hannity, who constantly reminds his listeners that he is a Christian and espouses what he would define as Christian values and even occasionally sits as an interpreter of Christian Scripture – routinely and callously uses the sacred name of Jesus of Nazareth as an epithet for a president he doesn’t like. That his audience – at least if the callers are indicative and the political demographics are reliable – is made up of conservative Christian listeners and he gets away almost daily profanely using the name of our Christ just makes no sense at all.

But that’s not all. A frequent line he uses – especially when he assumes the role of "the great answer giver of all time" – comes straight out of the mouth of Jesus. “Let not your heart be troubled.” Those are words, I’m sure you know, that Jesus used on the Thursday night before His crucifixion while in the upper room with His disciples. How many Christian funerals have we attended where those words were quoted as offering comfort to grieving loved ones? At what must have been the most difficult moment yet in His life and ministry, Jesus offered words of comfort to the twelve men gathered with Him that night, a night in which He instituted the Lord’s Supper. Yet Hannity flippantly throws out “Let not your heart be troubled” whenever he seems to think that his answer solves the world’s or our nation’s political conflicts.

How ironic that as he uses “the anointed one” as a pejorative title for the President of the United States, he himself capriciously uses the words of the One who proclaimed that He and He alone was Christ.

The obvious fact that Christians are Hannity’s biggest fans and allow such violation of the third command (You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name. Exodus 20:7, NIV) probably speaks more prophetically to those of us who call ourselves Christians than it does to Hannity. It at least means that we have valued political opinion over the Kingdom of God. I know we don’t intend to say that, but I just don’t know how else to see it.

Perhaps I can start a movement – Christians who don’t tolerate violating God’s name – even when it that means disagreeing with our political favorites!

Then there's Glen Beck . . .