Beware of Poison

As I think I've mentioned here before I'm a sermon junky. I don't necessarily agree with everything that people say but I love to listen to them say it. As a result when I'm not listening to NPR or Sports Talk I'm usually listening to our local Christian talk station which will remain nameless (they're in the air for good). I just so happen to be listening today and had the distinct (dis)pleasure of hearing one of their (dis)service announcements. It was one of those thirty second blurbs where they boil down some immense truth in to some trite sound byte. Needless to say they didn't disappoint.

Fortunately I don't remember exactly who it was but this is how it went. They start off by appealing to the common sense of all parents. Surely you would never let you child knowingly have poison. Any good parent will protect their kids from this awful stuff that will kill them. But, as it turns out there is some poison out there that your kids are ingesting that you don't even know about. (I'm sure it's part of some evil, sinister left-wing plot). Anyway here are the poisons they claim your kids are ingesting:

• Pluralism, which by their definition means "all roads lead to God." Apparently your kids are being taught by the bad men that others may find God without going the same way you did. Apparently you should teach your kids to be close-minded and arrogant in order to protect them from any unapproved sources of truth.
• Diversity - Yeah apparently the fact that we're not all carbon copies of one another is a bad thing. Diversity is a dirty word. Defined by them it means that they are being taught to tolerate other people's different lifestyles, heavy on the homosexuality insinuation here. I guess that the appropriate response in light of this danger is to drill into your kid's head that if they don't look, think, or act like us it's because something is wrong with them. To ensure absolute protection from this evil you should probably arm your kids with stones to throw at those diverse, evil sinners (for further instructions see the Pentateuch).
• Multiculturalism - I kid you not. Multiculturalism is a bad thing. And here's why. Apparently there is some movement out there trying to remove or discredit or diminish anything related to western culture and specifically to the Church in western culture. Yeah, I wish. Apparently even though we keep marching into countries, toppling governments, and setting up regimes in our Western-American image, we're losing the cultural battle. Suburban, white, middle-class culture is apparently on the decline. I'm sure it's because kids can't pray in school and abortion is legal. I guess the only possible defense is cultural imperialism.
  

It's a shame that this is what people do with the minds God gave them. Somebody actually took three complex, multi-layered issues and reduced them to this drivel. Not only did they oversimplify the incredibly complex, they mutilated the true definition of these three things in the process. Could we possibly sell people any more short? Is the average Christian talk radio listener so ignorant that they can't possibly handle a thorough and thoughtful examination of issues affecting our lives? Is the "battle" so fierce and so much in question that we have to keep raising up these straw men so that we can make ourselves look better? And don't we care about the people who get judged, alienated, and rejected in the process?

They say these things in the name of God, a God that by my observation values each one of these three characteristics.