The Post Influence: Where is the Church?
Jubilee Centre February 29th, 2008
While most of the Post each Friday is immersed in sex, sleaze and booze, it was refreshing to read on the front page about Mama Betty Kaunda’s concern over excessive beer drinking among our young people. Interestingly, the concerns she raised also attracted a half page editorial in the newspaper, which stated, “No one can disagree with Comrade Betty when she says that the country is facing a serious moral decay and reduced life expectancy as a result of excessive beer drinking.” However, the Post in the same issue dedicates eight pages of its news and pictures to Naomi Campbell’s immoral life-style, to Zambian girls and boys drinking, dancing and kissing in our bars and to Hollywood stars who are on drugs. On the one hand the Post is urging the nation to be committed to virtue and encouraging leaders to seek higher and better things that “protect our children from alcohol.” On the other hand the same paper is condoning decadent Hollywood practices. The bible calls that being double-minded and unstable (James 1
.8).
As it is, the Post assumes that the standard for our young people is Hollywood bad habits. They seem to take for granted that news on partying, fashion, sex and Hollywood forms the benchmark by which Zambians will measure a good newspaper. Otherwise why do they have all that stuff in their pages? What can Christians do in this context?
For us who live outside the capital, the Post is our greatest source of information of what is going on in Lusaka. But we Christians must read the Post and be fervent in reading the Bible every day so that we may know how to pray and how to live our life as light and salt. We must use every means to help the Post to use the opportunity it has as Zambia’s leading newspaper to promote the highly respected Ubuntu values. In Zambia, Christianity is so intertwined with our cultural beliefs; therefore Christians working for the Post ought to report correctly and fairly on our beliefs in a way that will inform all Zambians.
Our churches that are having impact in the electronic media must consider how to broaden their impact by reporting on alternative activities that our young people in our churches are involved in that are giving them meaning for life. Most of our print and electronic media subscribe to certain prejudices about our young people in the church. They include, but are not limited to, biases that suggest that young people in our churches are seriously religious, ignorant and have dull lives.
But the youth in our churches get a vision for life, they grow in character, they learn about healthy relationships between boys and girls. They learn how to make good choices. Our youth are helped how to handle peer pressure; they receive lessons on HIV/AIDS, how to prevent it and how to live with it. Our churches are preparing young men and women for leadership that is rooted in excellence, perseverance, empathy, patriotism, integrity and fairness. Let us find ways to share this news of hope and a bright future for our children. And this may mean starting a magazine or a newspaper or broadening our television outreach to include effective youth ministry activities.
Lawrence Temfwe
