Written by Blake Mathews
There are a lot of ways to contact me: cell phone, office phone, Facebook, multiple e-mail addresses and buying me a cup of coffee are just a few. Yet people rarely take advantage of these outlets. When they do, it’s a pretty special event to me, so in this column I’ll be sharing all of the reader feedback that I can fit into this tiny stip of paper.
From Jason Sheehy
Harding alumnus Jason Sheehy sent me an e-mail regarding my column on Tim Tebow’s Super Bowl ad. The original column was a bit negative because I saw the Focus on the Family-produced commercial and its obvious pro-life message as a boon to no one and a stigmatizing curse to Tebow.
As Sheehy correctly pointed out in his e-mail, I hadn’t seen the ad before I wrote about what it would do. As it turned out, the ad was completely innocuous and, honestly, kind of cute. For those of you who were in another room when it aired, the commercial features about 20 seconds of Tim’s mother telling the story of his “miracle” birth. Tim then tackles his mother. The two share a warm laugh that basically dares the audience to even consider disrespecting the sanctity of life. Then the commercial ends. Abortion is not even hinted in the 33 seconds I predicted would turn the pro-choice crowd permanently against Tebow. As Sheehy said, “if anything, it celebrated life and simply told a bit of their story, which is an awesome testimony.”
Kudos to you, Mr. Sheehy, for calling me out when I was embarrassingly wrong.
From a mysterious caller
To be fair, this caller is only “mysterious” because no one in the office can remember her name.
What I do remember is the message from our phone conversation last week: The Bison wasn’t earnestly reflecting a Christian worldview, and she wanted more amen per article. This mysterious caller accused my fellow journalists and I of compartmentalizing our lives and keeping Jesus away from our work. When I asked for an example of how we let her down, she pointed to our coverage of Obama’s State of the Union a few issues back. Why did we only cover what he said? Where were the scripture-driven criticisms of Obama’s policies in the article?
To answer her question: we’re not B-MIN majors. If you want a sermon, go to a preacher. If you want a lecture, go to a teacher. If you just want the basic who-what-when-where-why so you can make your own decisions, then find a journalist with some objectivity. We kept our own fingerprints off of Obama’s speech because, frankly, the article wasn’t about what we think. None of our news articles should be about what we think. If you think that means we’re wasting an evangelical opportunity, then you don’t understand how the light of God is reflected in basic, foundational truths. We are informants, not advocates, and there’s a place in God’s kingdom for us as much as there is for the people who print off those “Unique for Christ” bulletins.
From Mom
This bit of feedback was directed toward the mugshot at the top of my column. Apparently my grandparents, who avidly read The Bison and make sure everyone at their church does too, were ready for a new one.
I’m paraphrasing, but my mother called and said, “That picture of you now, with the cup, I mean, it’s alright. It’s very … you. But could you, you know … come up with something a little nicer looking? Grandma and Grandpa would get a kick out of it.”
There you go, Mom. See you in May.
