Fearlessly Courageous

The Flood of News How to not lose God in our Information Age

Have you ever seen old pictures of kids playing as a water fire hydrant, pumping its water out through this incredible stream water? Ever imagine what it would be like to try to get a drink with the speed and velocity of that water? It would knock your mouth out or head off. We are thirsty but just wanted a sip but it appears they only way offered it one way and that was way too much! In fact, it's painful.

That is what the news is to us today. ‘’We heard this dread awful commentary about politics, school boards shooting, deaths, drama, and violence and to be truthful and frank it is overwhelming. Even the expectations of coworkers seem to be: Have you heard? You haven't? Wow…how could you not?

When most of these are not matters that affect your life or that you intend to get involved with as a means of joining a protest or giving it a local voice. Yet too many are consumed with the news and or politics and the left or the right. Our world is so information-rich, it almost feels like a duty to be well informed and to have an opinion. But at what price of our time and attention? Isn’t that absurd when you think about it?

I read a piece that quoted Henry David Thoreau (1817 to 1862). He didn’t deal with social media and TV but lived through the news revolution, sparked by telegraph and steam-powered rotary presses. He received the news from abroad about this prince or war and he urged his readers to attend to more lasting truths:

"If you chance to live and move and have your being in that thin stratum in which the events that make the news transpire — thinner than the paper on which it is printed — then these things will fill the world for you; but if you soar above or dive below that plane,

you cannot remember nor be reminded of them”.

How does Phil: 4:8 speak to that? “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” The writer said; If we are rooted in these

deeper verities, we will be better able to discern which contemporary events are important for us to know about and what a proper response to them might entail”.

The novelist and essayist Barbara Kingsolver, in an essay detailing why she and her family don’t watch TV, describes a time when she missed out on an event that dominated the national consciousness. John Kennedy Jr. had been killed in an airplane crash, and her friend was shocked that she hadn’t heard about this tragedy. Kingsolver wasn’t apologetic for her ignorance and instead told her friend that this event made “no real difference in my life”:

“It’s not that I’m callous about the calamities suffered by famous people; they are heartaches, to be sure, but heartaches genuinely experienced only by their own friends and families. It seems somewhat voyeuristic, and also absurd, to expect that JFK Jr.’s death should change my life any more than a recent death in my family affected the Kennedys. . . . On the matter of individual tragic deaths, I believe that those in my own neighborhood are the ones I need to attend to first, by means of casseroles and whatever else I can offer. I also believe it’s possible to be so overtaken and stupefied by the tragedies of the world that we don’t have any time or energy left for those closer to home, the hurts we should take as our own”.

“When we are overwhelmed by far-off tragedies, we are less able to attend properly to those events close at hand.”

Distracted from Our Chief End

As Joseph Pieper (1904–1997) puts it, “The average person of our time loses the ability to see because there is too much to see!”

The necessary response to this abundance is to withdraw, at least partially: silence the phones, shut the computer, switch off the TV. This is, in part, why Thoreau made his famous two-year foray to Walden Pond. He needed to step away from the bustle of Concord life to recalibrate his sight. Even Jesus practiced this mode of withdrawal.

As Luke records, throughout his public ministry Jesus regularly “would withdraw to desolate places and pray” (Luke 5:16).

“By withdrawing from what seems most pressing in the moment, we gain the space needed to attend to what matters for eternity.”

This perceptual recalibration was Thoreau’s explicit purpose in going to Walden Pond. As he states his intentions in Walden, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” A few sentences later, he specifies that he hoped this deliberate mode of living would enable him to determine whether “the chief end of man” really is “‘to glorify God and enjoy him forever.’”

Thoreau’s neighbors — and many Christians today — would “somewhat hastily” assent to this doctrine, but it is difficult to follow through on this purpose when we are distracted and overwhelmed by all the information sent our way.

THE FRUIT OF WITHDRAWAL

Thoreau insists that insects are valuable for other reasons:

The catechism says that the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever, which of course is applicable mainly to God as seen in his works. . . . Come out here and behold a thousand painted butterflies and other beautiful insects which people the air.

Where is your quiet time? When do you purpose to get away and detox the flood of information the world throws at you and seemingly demands a response? How can one discern God's wisdom in response if one does not get away and seek God, his wisdom about what you should be focusing on? We are fascinated with the volumes from the fire hydrant when all we want is a gallon of water to take home.

When we step back from the information fire hose, we renew our ability to see God at work in the world and become better able to recognize how he might be calling us to join in his work.

Jaci Velasquez On My Knees

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73miZjdl-NM

Excerpts are taken from an article by

Jeffrey Bilbro

Professor, Grove City College