If you’re an avid news reader like myself, you’ll probably have noticed that the news is almost always, well, bad! A skim through the headlines today will leave you in no doubt that we’re living in an unstable world; if you think something bad happened today, something worse will happen tomorrow. You may even ask yourself why we never hear anything good. But the fact is, we don’t want to – good news hardly makes the headlines because it doesn’t “sell” like bad news does.
Today, with the help of social media, our morbid fascination with tragedy is fed so well. ‘User generated footage’ that tends to lead journalism and create an “important extra layer of information and diverse opinion” enables us to find out absolutely every detail of an event, albeit at the expense of truth, and amidst the opinion, noise and even misinformation at times.
In a Pew Research study of “Two Decades of American News Preferences”; war and terrorism remained the most followed subject during the 20 year study, with bad weather and natural and manmade disasters following in 2nd and 3rd place.
It’s rare that there isn’t at least one story that brings a tear to my eye, and another that leaves me deeply disturbed. I was recounting one such story to my husband a few days ago and his response really made me stop and think about how much time I spend every day immersing myself in all the ‘bad’ that is happening, compared to how much I spend dwelling on the hope I have in Christ?
Fear itself can be one of the reasons that we become so “news-obsessed”, wanting to know what is happening, and then finding ourselves delving into every detail of when, where, who, how and why. But at the end of this type of exercise what have I accomplished? I’m definitely not edified, or joyful. At times I’m discouraged, disillusioned, and maybe even judgmental.
But God’s Word tells us to set our hearts and minds on things above, where Christ is, and not on the things on the earth, (Col 3:1-2) and not to worry about anything, but instead to pray to God, thank Him, and His peace will guard our hearts and minds. (Phil 4:6-7).
It’s the Good News of Jesus Christ and what He came to accomplish on this earth for me, that I should be concerned with. I won’t find that in any newspaper, and it’s the news that I need to remind myself of every day. He’s done so much for me – where would I be today without His grace?
I’m not saying we need to be oblivious and detached from reality (the giddy sisters, Lydia and Kitty Bennet, in Jane Austen’s ‘Pride and Prejudice’ spring to mind), but a little care and wisdom in what we feed our souls will keep us grateful for what we have received and ever mindful of what awaits us in eternity.
Louise Carter
Image: Flickr/CC – Jon S
