The politics of mail sorting

I recently got back from a trip and decided to sort my pile of mail into categories according to degree of importance. There was a nice paper shopping bag handy for items at the lowest rung of the ladder---circulars, advertisements, and the perennial credit card offer. There were the bills, which though they do not meet the criterion of emotional importance, exert a tyranny of their own. And there being no personal correspondence in this batch (sigh), the top of the pecking order was given to the magazines.

'Twas then, as I did triage, that I noticed an unpleasant truth about myself. I have habitually given higher priority to publications by the heathens than to publications by my brethren around the world. That is, I have a subscription---which I paid good money for---to a slick, glossy newsweekly (one of the Big Three) that ignores God's truth and writes approvingly of debauched cultural trends. And somehow I have given it more pride of place than my Herald of His Coming and Voice of the Martyrs, which are doing the Lord's work and which I don't even think I pay for.

Worse, I have in the past been suspicious of the information in the Christian news publications I receive (for no good reason, I might add), whereas I read the "slickies" without qualms.

Why, can anyone tell me, have I copped the attitude of the enemies of God? I am reminded of Paul's bafflement regarding the Corinthians: They preferred the false teachers, who abused them and extorted from them, over the one who bent over backwards to pay his own way and not ask for financial help:

". . . If someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed [Or, in the case of the slick news rag, the God of Humanism], or if you received a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough. . . .

". . . Or did I commit a sin in humbling myself so that you might be exalted, because I preached God's gospel to you free of charge? . . . I ought to have been commended by you. . . . For in what were you less favored than the rest of the churches, except that I myself did not burden you? Forgive me this wrong! . . . If I love you more, am I to be loved less? . . ." (2 Corinthians 11-12)

Oh what deep and sinister psychological forces are at play in this mail sorting---in this sorting of the important from the unimportant, of the true from the false. But I will wager than at the end of this long day we are in, the voice of martyrs will have been heard and answered, while other voices and lies are but for a moment.

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