Time magazine gets really, really stupid

I used to go through life not knowing what would annoy me next. Then I subscribed to Time magazine, and that uncertainty was mercifully removed.

I must say, though, that with this week's cover story, "Heaven Can't Wait," received in our home during Saturday's Easter vigil, Time has plunged to new depths. The author, Jon Meacham, describes himself as a Christian, but seems blissfully unaware of the most basic Christian doctrines. The article is on the purported conflict between Christians who hope to go to heaven when they die, and those who long for the resurrection of the dead. At one point he does acknowledge the orthodox view that, in the words of Shorter Catechism #37, "[t]he souls of believers are at their death made perfect in holiness, and do immediately pass into glory; and their bodies, being still united to Christ, do rest in their graves till the resurrection." In other words, Christians who confess the Apostles' Creed believe in both heaven and the resurrection.

As one of those Christians, I can't tell you how difficult it was to read this article. It's non sequitur after non sequitur, suggesting, for instance, that since the present order will be destroyed in the fires of God's judgment, we should work harder to preserve the earth's environment so it will be nicer when the resurrection arrives. I can't make this stuff up, and for once I wish I was.

An interesting story might have been on why the doctrine of the resurrection has been downplayed as the ultimate Christian hope in American evangelicalism, and whether this development is related to evangelicalism's gnostic tendencies. Instead, Time has published a major story which can't get even its basic facts straight. That may demonstrate, more powerfully than any editorial stance ever could, the magazine's dismissive attitude towards matters of Christian faith and practice.