It sometimes happens that the public response to a news story is more fascinating than the news story itself. The recent arson which consumed the "coffee shop" in Vassalboro provoked a typical reaction from the news media. At first, the editorials and letters to the editor tried to lay an accusation covertly. They subtly insinuated that a member of the Religious Right was responsible for the crime. As time went by, the voices grew bolder and more reckless in their accusations. Now we are seeing editorials and letters that are clearly tainted with an anti-Christian bias.
A piece published in Saturday's Lewiston Sun Journal is a good example. The comments do not rise to the level of an anti-Christian bias. They simply raise an unfounded suspicion that the arsonist tried to convey "a message of morality" by burning the coffee shop to the ground. The identity of the arsonist is unknown, as are his motives, and the Lewiston Sun Journal has done its readers a disservice by laying the arson at the feet of those who speak out against vice. The eagerness of the Lewiston Sun Journal to favor one explanation over another - in the absence of all proof - reveals a clear bias against those who seek to bring society "a message of morality."
Such unfounded accusations take a milder or more virulent form according to the character and spiritual state of the accuser. A letter published on the same day in the Kennebec Journal stated unequivocally that the act was the work of local terrorists - "The American Taliban" - as the writer puts it. Incidentally, that is what the homosexual rights movement calls those who oppose their dangerous agenda - "The American Taliban." But that is another story.
The writer of the letter does not stop there. His calumnizing extends to everyone who protects the public by enforcing the law. He says that law enforcement agencies are unlikely to interrupt their "day long coffee break" to solve the case. The opposite is true. Police work is a physically and psychologically demanding profession, and requires a heroic effort by dedicated men and women each and every day.
Similarly, the opposite is true for all similar calumnies against Christians. The Religious Right opposes any act which injures our neighbors, and that includes donut shops with indecently clad young women; and it includes sex crimes, too. But that is what the Kennebec Journal is not telling us. They omitted the fact that the writer of the letter is himself a convicted sex offender.
The great Charles Spurgeon, called "The Prince of Preachers," distinguished three stages of sin. In the first stage, vice or sin is incidental and not deeply-ingrained in the life of the sinner. In the second stage, the sinner sins willfully, and is less likely to reform. In the last stage, the sinner mocks and scorns good people, and he is looked up to by other sinners as a teacher of immorality and evil.
Calumnizing Christians is nothing new. The classic instance of an unfounded charge against Christians was Nero's mad accusation that the newly-founded sect had set fire to Rome. It is pertinent and useful to know that Nero was a homosexual, and he often entertained his garden party guests by executing Christians in ways too gruesome to mention. If Spurgeon is correct in his analysis of the three stages of sin, and I think he is, we are hearing echoes of Nero's calumny against Christians, here today, close to home, in Augusta.
