Cheers & jeers

You can’t please all the secularists all the time | Marvin Olasky

When American Christians fight human-rights violations in China and North Korea or slavery in Sudan, New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof trends enthusiastic. He writes, "I've lost my cynicism about evangelical groups, partly because I've seem them at work abroad."

That's great, but when evangelicals focus on the problems of heterosexual adultery or homosexuality, cynicism returns. That's because anyone who follows the Bible will be a good guy to liberals and secular conservatives in some circumstances and a bad guy in others.

I've experienced this personally many times: Books I've written about poverty-fighting have gained some applause, or at least respect, but a book that spotlighted adultery as a leading indicator of politicians' problems garnered ridicule. Not much I can do about that: The Bible is pro-compassion and anti-adultery.