They have some great film-makers and photographers. They produce some wonderful programmes. Their sports coverage is superb. Despite their biases most people trust ‘the Beeb’. Long live Gary Lineker, Jeremy Paxman, John Humphries and Natasha Kaplinsky.
In a letter the BBC recently wrote, “The BBC is obliged by its Charter to be impartial and the BBC is committed to reflecting a diversity of opinion in all areas, however this is particularly important in relation to religion…”
Their stated aims seem admirable. Sadly, their practise is very different. The same BBC regularly use the name ‘Jesus’, ‘Christ’, ‘God’ and ‘Hell’ blasphemously in their plays and films. They incessantly criticise Christian beliefs and values; they very rarely have anyone on air who expresses Christian beliefs. The same BBC readily showed ‘Jerry Springer the opera’ with its uninhibited blasphemy against Jesus, despite over 50,000 complaints about the programme. One cannot imagine them mocking any other religious leader like that, nor would one want them to. Remember, it is the BBC who didn’t even want to play Cliff Richard’s single ‘The Lord’s prayer’ some Christmases ago. Recently they appointed an atheist as head of religious broadcasting!
It is right and proper to respect other people’s beliefs and culture. But, the BBC abuses its position of power and pedals secular humanism as its religion. Secularism is as much a religion as any other, but it is backcloth philosophy to its regular output.
But even if the BBC kept to their stated aims, there is a problem. All religions are not the same, and cannot all be true. Hindus believe in millions of gods, Buddhists believe in none; Muslims and Jews believe in one God, as do Christians who believe that the one God is a Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Clearly, they cannot all be right!
The BBC portray religion as humankind’s long search for God. As humans, we were created to know God, but our wrongdoing, our sins, have cut us off from Him. There is an incompletness, an emptiness within us all. Spiritually we are dead, yet we know there is something wrong.
The truth is that whilst sometimes we would like to know God, we also run away from Him, and do our own thing. Instead of us searching for God, He has taken the initiative and come searching for us.
That is what the first Christmas was all about. God the Creator became like us whom He had created. He became a man and dwelt among us. It is as if He became our neighbour. Jesus said, “I have come to seek and to save those who are lost.”
Rules, regulations and rituals?
If you get the idea from the BBC that religion is all about rules, regulations and rituals, then you will be intrigued by reading in the Bible how Jesus spoke against such notions. Jesus taught that a person can know God in a personal way. He explained that God can be our Father and we may become His sons and daughters. Christianity is not about what we do, but what God has done for us. Of course there are things that a real Christian will not want to do, and others things that become their life-style, but the essence of Christianity is about God reaching out to ordinary people, so that He might bring us to Himself.
When Jesus was crucified, God was doing something remarkable. He took the guilt of each of us, and laid it on Jesus. He died carrying the can for our sin. It would take an eternity to pay the penalty for what we have done wrong, but Jesus, the eternal one, paid for it all in three hours on the cross. Sadly, you will rarely, if ever, hear that message on the BBC, yet it is history’s most significant moment. Jesus died so that we could be forgiven and reconciled to God.
On the first Easter Sunday morning, Jesus rose from the dead. We admire certain political and religious leaders of the past, but when they died they were buried or cremated. That was it! In contrast, Jesus rose from the dead, and is alive today. What we do with Jesus matters for eternity. Heaven is not for the good and hell for the bad, for no one deserves heaven. Rather heaven is for those whose sin is forgiven; it is for those who have been made righteous, or ‘good’ through what Jesus has done for them through His death and resurrection.
These issues are too important to get wrong. It would be an awful thing to go through life and then eternity and never know God personally. Don’t get your religion from the BBC! Read the Bible! Read Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, the four Gospels, or biographies of Jesus. Let Him introduce Himself to you. The Word of God lasts forever, and will be around long after Andrew Marr, Jonathan Ross and even the BBC itself are forgotten!