Line in the Sand—the story of December 15, 2023

 Today is a day I am thinking about drawing lines in the sand.  First, this was in my email in box, from The Dispatch newsletter.  If you don’t want to read all of it (tldr as they say), the short version is that this man was “encouraged” to leave a top job at the New York Times because the young staffers said his editorial policies made them feel unsafe and the oldsters there caved to the young people.

 

In a 16,000-word essay for The Economist, James Bennet—the former editorial page editor at the New York Times who was fired for running an op-ed in the summer of 2020 by Sen. Tom Cotton that advocated for the deployment of the National Guard to quell increasingly violent protests—criticized the higher-ups of the Gray Lady for caving to various pressures. “One of the glories of embracing illiberalism is that, like Trump, you are always right about everything, and so you are justified in shouting disagreement down,” Bennet wrote. “In the face of this, leaders of many workplaces and boardrooms across America find that it is so much easier to compromise than to confront—to give a little ground today in the belief you can ultimately bring people around. This is how reasonable Republican leaders lost control of their party to Trump and how liberal-minded college presidents lost control of their campuses. And it is why the leadership of the New York Times is losing control of its principles.” The Times has lost its way, Bennet argued. “Since Adolph Ochs bought the paper in 1896, one of the most inspiring things the Times has said about itself is that it does its work ‘without fear or favour,’” he wrote. “That is not true of the institution today—it cannot be, not when its journalists are afraid to trust readers with a mainstream conservative argument such as Cotton’s, and its leaders are afraid to say otherwise. As preoccupied as it is with the question of why so many Americans have lost trust in it, the Times is failing to face up to one crucial reason: that it has lost faith in Americans, too. For now, to assert that the Times plays by the same rules it always has is to commit a hypocrisy that is transparent to conservatives, dangerous to liberals and bad for the country as a whole. It makes the Times too easy for conservatives to dismiss and too easy for progressives to believe. The reality is that the Times is becoming the publication through which America’s progressive elite talks to itself about an America that does not really exist.”

 

Second, I listened to a podcast interview of Rosaria Butterfield on Life and Books and Everything. She has a book out I would like to read, but I think I got the gist of it from the podcast.  She draws lines in the sand pretty deeply and clearly, more so than a lot of Christians might be comfortable with. Her lines are about sexuality, homosexuality, and related, um, subjects. I’m conservative, and she makes me look loosey goosey.  Seriously, though, I recommend you go check it out at https://rss.com/podcasts/lbe/1142220/ , and other videos of her on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eykv-3hvFvI for instance. She reminded me of what this is all about, and it’s not compromising about identity, purpose, and truth about anything Scripturally, especially sexuality.

 

Third, I am dealing with a student situation that I obviously can’t discuss here, but it’s one of those times when I wonder if I will have to draw a line in the sand there.

 

So I come to the truth of today. I walked out of my office LIA 107B for the last time. Our building is going through renovation and over sixty people had to vacate it for the duration. Space was found for us, so I have a perfectly fine substitute for a while. The moving has been a trial, to say the least, and mostly for our administrative assistants. 

 

But I will not go back to that space that has been my home for 7.5 years, since May 2016 when my friend Kris Barton suddenly passed away and I ended up in his position and office. That sounds cold now, and it was definitely not something I aspired to or expected, but it happened and still makes my heart tremble.  That space, however—and a good bit of that around it shared by three colleagues and a conference room, will go away so that students can lounge there.  I’m not bitter…..

 

This transition will prepare me for the next one, retirement, which I am beginning to feel glad about. The other transition is my birthday Sunday, and I finally realize how old I am.  And in a week or two, our little girl will be here—she already is, just invisible to us.

 

So this weekend is about lines in the sand, demarcation, transitions, and being happy in it all.