I recently came across a 2006 conference talk from David Neff, a retired CT editor, that later appeared in the book J. I. Packer and the Evangelical Future, published in 2009. (Dare we look back at what we thought the evangelical future was in 2009?)
Neff analyzes Packer’s approach to journalism and to thinking, and then gives these principles for journalism, which I find a helpful plumb line for my work in 2025. From Neff:
- Know your place in history. That means, first, remembering the struggles and achievements of those who have gone before in order to avoid reinventing what doesn’t need invention, and to appropriate the wisdom and emulate the courage that allowed them to meet their challenges so that we can meet those God in his providence has set for us.
- Truth trumps everything. Truth is health giving, and it should be the main drug in our pharmacopoeia, as well as the main course on our menu.
- Truth must be tempered, however, by wisdom and charity. Remember [Packer’s] words about the ministry of Christian criticism? “To think of sustained denunciation as the essence of faithful witness, and of the mindset that will not see any good in what is not totally good as a Christian virtue, is very wrong.”
- Truth must also be communicated with imagination and impact. If God’s word is a gleaming, two-edged blade, why should our communication dull its edge? Truth must be a fire alarm to the sleeping soul and the aroma of a boeuf bourguignon to a hungry spirit.
- Bridge building is better than bomb throwing.
- Appreciate the good in those with whom you disagree, and understand the motives of those whose deeds are evil.
- Remember the evil in your own heart.
